Tag: photography

Feel This

Published on by Tosha Michelle195 Comments

image

What if feelings were simply
make believe, and the pain
we suffer just a made up thing?

But they aren’t.
They’re real, aren’t they?

How they rule out hearts.
We let them lead us around
and try to explain to our mates
why we just had to have one more
pair of shoes, or to our parents why
we snuck out of the house to
meet our boyfriend again.

I remember how I used them to
explain my relationship with a
higher power, but ended up
doubting, because I felt like a
prisoner about to be hung.

How quick the righteous were
to drop their blade of intolerance
of judgement. But I escaped.

Briefly, I was absent of feelings,
and free from authority. I thought
I had moved out from under the
snide mouth of the patent leather
of life, too naive to understand there
would still be judgement from those
other misconceived safe places.

My heart breaking like a glass.
Coca-Cola bottle on the sidewalk.
My life there between the cracks
and crevices, where it’s ninety-nine
degrees in the breeze,
but there is no breeze.

Pain grieving in the hot sun of truth,
and in my existence. Do we give into
the black and blue assortment of scars
in the making, or do we fight to move
past the doubt and adversity and
into a peaceful existence?

Can we choose happiness even
if our feelings have no proof?

-Tosha Michelle

Dream

Published on by Tosha Michelle46 Comments

7b63b4808e35e5c346f8e771af917922.jpg

Today I sat on a swing
and swung for hours.
I could do this forever.
Perhaps I’ll be a child,
cradle to grave.
Flying through the girlish shadows
of the magnolia trees.
Eternally in love with the beauty of life.
I am most myself when
I recall my innocence, the nectar of sweet fruit
You’re welcome to join.
Come swing with me.
We’ll sing a duet and watch
our melody fly high above the breeze
our lyrics floating into the evening,
marking the setting of the sun.
In the aftermath, we’ll sit moonlit, and heart swept.
There in the meadow with our spring minds
and a cotton candy glaze.
At peace we won’t begrudge
the extinction of the day.

-Tosha Michelle

My rendition of “Dream”

Demarcation

Published on by Tosha Michelle60 Comments

image

Self doubt creates a slavish universe,
where we are constantly lugging our
insecurities in a backpack up a hill
that gets farther away the closer we get.
Along the way we keep looking
for disaster while trying to breathe.
Our catastrophic mind only perceiving danger,
creates a wedge between reality and self
where we only see the flaws and fractures.
Forgetting where we buried the bounty,
forgetting their is a bounty. We attempt to control
our bodies without mastering the spine.
Our souls become a membrane of
hopelessness, happy to reveal all we are not.
Our foolish spirits chose to adhere.
In our hand we hold a gun and a map of our head.
We journey on trying to find our way
with a broken flashlight, forgetting to
open our eyes, we cut our foot
on a shattered mirror. Briefly, we stand still,
and await clarity’s arrival. Satisfied. We turn and
head back towards self worth.
Finally, remembering, we hid the key
to the treasure chest
in perception’s drawer.

-Tosha Michelle

Politics

Published on by Tosha Michelle128 Comments

Guess what? It’s not Sunday. I can’t stay away from you people. I think it’s safe to say I have an addictive personality. Fortunately for me, I’m not much of a drinker and I’ve never tried drugs. I suppose there’s worse things to be addicted to than blogging. Dr. Diva, I’m looking at you.

The following poem is a commentary on politics and politicians in general. I apologize for the bitter tone of the post. I’m just truly fed up with the current political climate.

image

Amplified darkness.
No music, just noise.
A voice of self, of selfishness.
The handiwork of greed.
This me-ness of rancid meat.
Broken into bitter bits, then
cut into sharper pieces.
No integrity as a whole.
Just hungry overgrown babies
crying and clawing, howling in
the wind, choking; on the last bit
of protein. Washing it down
with well water; trying to soothe
their unwell throats.
We the people become the soil
trying desperately to reabsorb
that which is lost.
Only there’s no pureness left
just toxicity. Acquainted only with squalor
and dehydration. Constricted, but still
we resist and hope for higher ground.

-Tosha Michelle

Emily

Published on by Tosha Michelle41 Comments

image

She spent the month of July
with Emily Dickinson.

The sun burned her eyes,
but she read on.

Her cat napped at her feet.
Nearby you could hear people
playing volleyball.

When inspiration failed, she
looked for a thing with feathers.

She wore an old t-shirt that read
“Heart, we will forget him”

You could see her reading,
into the evening. Her face
lit by moonlight. Every word
her night cap.

While others slept,
she thought about Emily
and what she would do.

Having arrived at a poetic conclusion,
she takes out pen and paper
and writes with modest ink.

For a poem she loses herself
in a room of another life,
in a house far away in Amherst.

Knowing she’s just a small star,
basking in the glow of another.

She composes verse about
her summer companion.
Emily the loner and recluse.

And shares how her favorite
poet became her muse.

-Tosha Michelle

Reprieve

Published on by Tosha Michelle68 Comments

image

Leeches and vultures
and time I can’t swallow.
Eyes on the tulips
under ice.
My heart in need of air.

Interior dialogue
Some voice I can’t decipher
endless fears,
needless worry,
and a place to contemplate rest.

-Tosha Michelle

Own the Years

Published on by Tosha Michelle67 Comments

image

Before the years vanish
Let your body wander.
Be a lover, a traveler.

Let the theatrical lights
shine on you.
Bathe in the syllables
of adventure.

Crown the stars, and
dine on constellations.
Drink up the sunlight.

See the Nile, and tropical islands.
Take note of each sunset,
the mountains, the ocean.
Don’t let there be
a single empty page
in your life book.

Be a door swung open,
withhold nothing.
Dare to do, so you have
no regrets.

Don’t let your life
be haunted by dreams
that happened elsewhere,
and to someone else.
Haunted by the ones you never met,
the journeys you failed
to take.

Lift your arms up
and embrace what you make be.
Belong to the jungle,
the marketplace,
the English cottage,
the abbeys of Italy,
the domes, and to all
the scenes of your life.

-Tosha Michelle

Yorkshire Pudding

Published on by Tosha Michelle16 Comments

I’ve plugged this A-hole before but here I go again. If you aren’t following the King of onion gravy, insomnia, strange dialect, weird dance moves, and Chandler Bing wannabe. Shh! Don’t tell him it’s 2016. You’re missing out on some truly diverse and interesting prose and poetry. All kidding aside, his wordsmithing is phenomenal but what’s with his Angelina Jolie lips?

Sooooooo

Follow the yellow brick road. Take a right and follow this guy. The man behind the curtain is pretty OK.

No. 3060 – http://wp.me/p27egX-2Qs

But I Don’t Wanna be Queen.

Published on by Tosha Michelle101 Comments

image

Don’t sit with your legs
crisscrossed.
Sit like a queen

Mind your manners.
Curl your locks.
Priss and preen
Everyone knows the
world loves pretty.

Don’t sit with your
legs crisscrossed
Sit like a queen.

Smile.
Show those gleaming
pearls.
Never be cross or mean.

Don’t grow old,
frail or weak.

Don’t sit with your legs
crisscrossed.
Sit like a queen.

Paint your nails.
Fingers and toes.

Give up food.
Remain a size 2.

Be the princess
married to the king.

Don’t sit with your legs
crisscrossed.
Sit like a queen.

-Tosha Michelle

Silence

Published on by Tosha Michelle103 Comments

image

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