Tag: nature

Just Stop

Published on by Tosha Michelle34 Comments

I want to reside inside the voice
of a Tibetan monk
And be lulled to sleep by the silence.
Instead the irritating cadence
of political discourse
Uncivil and unholy
The hills alive with the sound
of madness.
The breeze tinged with malice
even the birds
feel forsaken. Aimlessly looking
for just one branch
of grace. The tree limbs breaking
under the weight of
an uncertain future.
We beseech the earth for guidance.
Warring with hot air.
Hoping the world will revolve anew.

The axis and rhetoric
spin on.

-Tosha Michelle

An Introvert Goes to a Party.

Published on by Tosha Michelle87 Comments

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Tonight, I’d rather be home
getting lost in antique spines.
Craving the casual, yoga pants
and T-shirt. .Ditching this party
and dress. I can’t relate to
razzle dazzle, hoity toity
The desire for loud. My
symphony has always
been quiet.

These people
are a splinter in my isolated
hope chest for one. They
are a complex Allegory of
celebratory nothingness
Outward they glimmer
Inward, just a flicker.

I’m my own mistress of
distraction, mapping out
a poem in my head,
as some fool
in a too tight corset
tells me stories
about her latest boyfriend
who has a love for the
voluptuous and shallow.
The latter is just
an assumption on my
part.

As the clock ticks
inside my head,
sounding more
like bedtime, bedtime,
than tick tock. I note
the exit, I must reach
it before I’m tempted
to try hemlock.

I escape into wallpaper
border and sit down by
a napping cat. I stencil
my name on a gravestone
of banality and toss my
party dress off a bridge

I dissolve into particles
of light and reemerge in
bathwater of blessed
tranquility. I find kismet
with my bath mate, the
one I love-Solitude

We celebrate lavender and
quiet things. Afterwards,
I put on a night gown
of silence and
climb under a blue
comforter, under the
bluest of moon.
Finding serenity
in the stillness

-Tosha Michelle

Cold Heart

Published on by Tosha Michelle70 Comments

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Our love was a dark continent
we shared, violent and untamed.

It was unholy and seductive and left
destruction in its wake.

We were wind and fire.
Hot beginnings and painted
roads that led to secret gardens.

How quickly heaven was lost to us
when the sky destroyed the night
and the night decimated the sky.

When the lightening struck
we weren’t surprised when
the tree limbs splintered.

Knowing the branches couldn’t save us.

The storm burning away what
was left of the twisted roots
but never the wildness of our hearts.

The moon and I still yearn
for the chaos. Stealing our
breath and taking out sanity away.

God, how I wanted the pain,
the pleasure to abide,
but you can’t control the weather

Now the aftereffect remains.
and the wind goes on.

Closing all the windows as the
chill sets in. The cold comes
and you live with it.

-Tosha Michelle

Ensnared

Published on by Tosha Michelle69 Comments

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The wind breaks hearts
while the tangled tree branches
shelter their list
of grievances underground.
All they ever wanted was to be loved.
To the forest the tree stands
in regal glory and sweet familiarity.
All the while ensnared in the whims of nature,
the tree can’t break free from
the toxic atmosphere
The branches rustles to offset despair.
The husk marred by neglect
begins to rot
The sun attempts to change the tree’s fortune.
The pine leans toward the light, but the wind
draws it back in a jealous purchase.

Wrung out. Resigned to the oncoming storm’s chaos, knowing trying to shake it off
is futile. The tree lifts its branches in surrender. The
leaves, unencumbered by obligation, jump then fall. They would rather die than submit.

-Tosha Michelle

Silence

Published on by Tosha Michelle103 Comments

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Sometimes even the flutter
of moth wings is too loud.
I crave silence. I even write
in hushed tones under an oak
tree where nature seems
spiritual and serenity touches
me through the dew filled daisies.
I raise my pen to the sun.
I take in the charm of fresh air,
a storytelling of peace. It’s easier
to trust in the smell of honeysuckles
and the blueness above than humans.
People vanish with the seasons and create
noise and chaos inside my head. But the sky,
today, at least, is a reliable ally.
It whispers to me in
calm meditative tones
In the quiet I breathe again.

-Tosha Michelle

Endless 

Published on by Tosha Michelle7 Comments

I drink this silence
like water.
I eat serenity like bread.
The pines and oak reshapes my
chaotic head.
The moss green and grass
pillow my body.
Shadows uphold my unadorned soul.
Gravity thy name is Earth.
I fall toward you today.
I grow with the light,
and the beauty of an unreadable sky.
I’m as warm and as calm
as the sun bare face shinning
down on me.

-Tosha Michelle 

Upon Hearing of Your Passing.

Published on by Tosha Michelle48 Comments

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Years from now when I read of your passing, I won’t imagine you in some abstract place. I want to picture you where you were the happiest- by the stream, where the ocean is never far, with book in hand, countless chapters, and no one to interrupt you.

Relaxing under a cerulean sky, blue-winged birds soaring.
The years, an heir to what was, golden, swinging light
as a breeze on an olive branch. The sky opening in their final valediction.

The sunlight dusting your hair, the fringe of grass.
The water from the stream flowing upward against the backdrop
of an eternal, carefree day.

The wisp of yourself pouring into the syntax in front of you. Words open again and again. Never taking back what they promise.
A thousand words to sustain you. Peace hemmed cover to endless cover.

Paused on the footnote of the page, you look up. Freedom in your gaze. Liberation in the moment. How still you are. How content. The words happening here. You look back down: your finger in the book. Your heart still, attuned to the glimmering of the stone.
The precipice attained.

-Tosha Michelle

In Search of Emily and Her Feathers

Published on by Tosha Michelle15 Comments

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Hope at times seems
to drift and waft at a distance.
Nothing more than
stray wind on my neck. My
saltless palms
trying to grasp its alluring scent.

On damselfly wings,
it soars on the breeze, passed
my open window.
Sweeping the white clouds,
while dancing on
the edge of the horizon.
Moving to the tune of prayers,
palms of faith.

The creature of
someone else’s mind.

Speech unwoken and
without weight to tether it
to the ground.

It floats here,
just out of reach.
Dim. Quietly,
with heavy laden eyes.

I’m glad to have not lost its aura
entirely, but to see it
move at the sky’s whim.

Hope resting on the updraft.
I wait here
on my knees, expectant, dreamily,
mournfully, with the
skin of my unclothed heart for
its downpour.

-Tosha Michelle

Psalms of October

Published on by Tosha Michelle39 Comments

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October is the month for praise;
the beauty before winter’s gray.

It blushes the clouds with pink,
and paints the leaves canary.
The air so crisp and busy,
still warm from summer’s memory.
The sun brush stroked in red
streaking through the trees,
before their abundance
is carried away.

October is the month for praise.
Before a somber dullness
takes over.
Turning the days into
unkind nights,
when every thought we have
is nostalgic

October is fall’s long
stem rose;
trying to right the
wrong of December’s chill,
and mother nature’s
stony stare.

The red rose rises up,
as if to make amends
for what will become
of the bees and ants,
and all of us who strive
to live harmoniously;
those condemned to ice
and Jack Frost’s
fixation with noses.

October is the month to praise,
so we offer up our apple
cider alleluias,
in the field of the great pumpkin,
and await winter’s bitter thud.

-Tosha Michelle

Call. Don’t Answer.

Published on by Tosha Michelle35 Comments

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I sometimes long to be a

name no one answers, a

name that no longer

tolerates humanity. I yearn

to take the wintery chill

of my mind and go off by

myself, to live in a great

empty space, where

the breath of solitude can

falls on me like clouds,

-The only greeting needed

the green grass. I long

to belong to none, to be

elusive as residue.

The sun in my arms,

the only embrace I

need.

Then (as it always is)

Someone asked

“so how you been?”

How quickly the name

answers.

-Tosha Michelle