Tag: photography

How to be an Expert at Life

Published on by Tosha Michelle136 Comments

image

If you can’t leap
then fall.

Correlate. Equate.
Arrange. Rearrange
Be an apprentice of the years.

Sometimes breathing is in the
spinning as the still world passes.

It not the heavens that matter,
but how you soar through them.

Teach your broken spirit
how to navigate landmines.

Remember that yesterday is just as
relentless as tomorrow.

Your griefs and sorrows are not
the worst of griefs and sorrows.

Find hope in pain. The new pain,
the old pains that returns.

Teach your heart to be sensitive
to the music of your bones.

Don’t be afraid to tear your
skin away and begin again.

Don’t become immune to
the overwhelming.

Listen to your nude soul’s intuition
Let your mind await instruction.

Don’t concern yourself with the
breakable dawn.

Use your talents, the seeding
of grain to nurture survival.

You are the boat, the canopy,
the light, the decree.

Remember the eternal sleep,
the erasure, always lurks
in the shadows,
ready to loosen souls
and carry us toward some
unspecific light.

Life is all in the choosing.
Come September, come
December, then April
For today, choose to live.
Choose to be.

-Tosha Michelle

On Becoming A Raven

Published on by Tosha Michelle20 Comments


The beautiful edgy woman
with the death stare
is sure I’m a one way door.
The all American girl,
a one shot deal in
illuminated skin.

She would never suspect
that I drink in
crows like the sky,
that I find clarity in chaos.
that I drowned Barbie
in a pool of cement,
that I may look like a black and white
1950’s candy sweet darling.
But inside my heart wears
leather, tattoos, a storm brews
beneath my skin.

The years giving me
color and form.
taking me from
red blush to blood red.
as summer turns to fall.
Underscoring the
damp edges of my soul.
Finally, growing
into my backbone.
I’m the other side of her
projection now.
A soul reborn feral.

Finding beauty in asymmetry.
Nurtured by rainfall that pools
into darkness.
Filing my nails on thorns.

Naive Southern Belle no longer.
The nightingale turned
into a raven with teeth.

-Tosha Michelle

The Blue Notes

Published on by Tosha Michelle34 Comments

Hey y’all This will be my last post for a couple of weeks. I have to turn my attention to writing a research proposal. I wanted to just buy it a ring and a box of chocolate, but guessing that is out. 😜 My lame sense of humor never goes out though. Seriously, it likes to hang around the house and perform standup in front of the mirror. 

But I digress, I’ve also got a couple of job interviews lined up. Wish me luck and I’m getting back into non profit work with survivors of human trafficking. It’s shocking how prevalent modern day slavery is.  There are so many atrocities in the world, I suppose it’s not that surprising. Love and action can make a difference.  We just have to break through the apathy.

On a lighter note, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for the likes. Gifts would be better. Yep, there’s that nerdy sense of humor again  Below you will find a poem and my musical attempt.  Hope you enjoy my mournful side. It constrast greatly with my silly side. All my sides wish you the best though xx

If I write it down
I can’t take it back.
When I’m gone, and
the wind of your world
is still scented with
my verse, what then?

Who will I be to you?
a bittersweet arrangement
of molecules only legible
under certain nostalgic light?

If your voice fails you
give them my words.
Tell them this is how
she adored me,
with syntax and lyrical sighs,
bleeding emotions.
The wingspan of her poetry.

I dressed you only
in the sun, too far gone
to halt our ending, but still
close enough for you to cling
to the last of light.

You’ll find me somewhere
lost between the pages of
your life. Sitting on a
porch swing singing
the blue notes, softly
as the intervals slowly fade.

Tosha Michelle

https://m.soundcloud.com/tosha-michelle2020/the-scientist-coldplay-cover

Beginnings

Published on by Tosha Michelle36 Comments

Kiss me that hard,
that deep.

Punctuate the sentence of us
with your tongue.

Make a victim of the air
with your hands.

Dance with me until I can’t
stop sparking to your drumbeat
thighs and comprising hips.

Let your lightning enter and defile me.
Douse me with the sweat of roses

Write me over in thorns and
petal blossoms.

Let the bees pollinate

Honeyed and satiated.
I come unhinged.

-Tosha Michelle

Fill Me Up 

Published on by Tosha Michelle45 Comments


Because I’m an empty vessel
waiting to be filled.
I find myself flirting with sin.
I do it by way of pen
and paper. Trying to stitch
hope into my skin
I snuggle inside words. Poetry
can’t hurt me the way a
man can. In verse, I can build
anticipation again. Doors open
inside my head. Verbs press
against me, hard and
wanton. I find a sacred niche
between the lines. Here
I take the light. Here it never
darkens or leaves.
Devotion blesses me with sweetness
and excess.
Heaven is found in scenes that are
too scary and loud to live.

I’m an empty vessel.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Romancing myself with
my poetic wooings.
Damming myself to things
conjured, a Paradise
devoid of air, the shadows of
a scarred soul, and the
language of mangled spirit
Waiting to be loved again.

-Tosha Michelle

Warmth’s Inner Light

Published on by Tosha Michelle35 Comments

No longer content with the
winter life and its flannel
sleep. Self and it’s terms
finally meet

She wipes away
the frost from her soul
And sees spring illuminated
beyond the cold.
Sunlight the trinket she’s
always possesed
misplaced for awhile
shine from within.
Her sepia world
long deprived of green
become vibrant and
alive again.
She walks away in blue
with plenty of heart
by the light of her own
eyes, no longer needing
to find it in another.
-Tosha Michelle

Delicate Decadence 

Published on by Tosha Michelle47 Comments


Poetry never visits me

dressed in lace

Sipping a colorful drink

Singing and swaying

to a happy tune.

Instead, poetry likes to weep

in my ear, turned out

in black with a bottle

of scotch

Miles Davis on replay.

There’s happiness in me

to be written, to be lived.

I’m never as melancholy

as my writing would suggest.

Joy is just waiting to be

unfolded like a love

note hidden in dresser

buried under layers of clothes.

One day I’ll give into

nostalgia and find solace

in the lyrical prose.

It’s just there so much art and beauty

in the exquisite feeling of

sadnes. My strictured soul

finds solace in its untamed

sweetness. Its bluesey notes

lnown to me, heard by me,

sung by me, felt by me.

The delicate decadence

-Tosha Michelle