Remember when our nights mingled?
We paid our hours
in caresses and sighs.
The ache and the savor.
Our bodies a map of hunger?
We were red and blue
in equal measure.
Then we put desire away.
Photograph ourselves into today.
The clasped heart in a closed bird cage.
Clothed in yesterday’s what might have been.
Colorless. Now when people look at us
I wonder if they know
we are inside who we used to be.
-Tosha Michelle
You thought you were at an impasse,
a standstill. But that was just your heart
slowing down to acknowledge the pain
You don’t realize there are worst things
than missing the train, busting
your knee, the morning wasted.
Running from your past.
Drowning your demons in gin and pills.
You prefer a prescription pad
to a subscription to pain.
Widowed from your feelings.
You crave the next fix.
Anything to get you where
you’re going.
You look for a treasure map
scrawled in a dome of stupor.
Where the winds remain static
and the gravel never get stuck
between your toes.
You swim in a diluted river
by trees that don’t shrink or grow.
Nature weeps for the despondency of you.
I weep for the unlived life beneath you.
-Tosha Michelle
Hello, lovely ones. Yesterday, I posted a poem a day early to make room for today’s post. As some of you know, I host a literary podcast with my friend, Niles, called La Literati. We feature established authors, as well as up and coming writers.
Tomorrow, at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, we will be celebrating the work of three talented WordPress bloggers. Information is below.
We plan to make this a regular part of our show. If you are interested in participating in the future, please get in touch via my contact information listed on this site. We would love to hear from you.
About the writers:
Geetha-
Geetha Balvannanathan Prodhom is an Indian writer born within a multicultural family and raised between India, Tunisia, Europe and the Middle East. She writes poetry in English, French and Arabic and has published a collection of French poems in 2011 with another collection of poetry in English to be published in 2016. A fervent admirer of the Japanese art of Tanka and Haiku since 2010 and writing her own Haikus in English, French and Italian since 2014, she also writes short novels in English and in French on the themes of human feelings and interaction. She is currently working on a manuscript in English depicting the varied life she has led. Her blog is:
https://geethaprodhom.wordpress.com/
Deb-
Debra (D.S.) Levy is a writer of short stories, flash fiction, and essays. She’s had work published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia, Little Fiction, The Pinch, and others. Although she’s never considered herself a “poet,” she believes that whatever she’s writing has always begun with a poet’s concerns — concision, compression, sound, and the desire to capture moments of being. Since blogging at C-Dog & Company, she has begun (shyly) to share some of her free verse. You can find her
blog here:
Christian-
Christian Marc is a writer and blogger born in New Jersey, who lived in L.A., but is currently moving to Seattle. He is a two time recipient of the Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. He blogs at:
http:complainingisanartform.com/
You can also find my friend and cohort’s blog here:
Niles-
http://jamesdennard.com/
Link to tomorrow’s show:
On an entirely different note. Rest in peace, Glenn Frey.
For David and Jen and Tony and Jersey girl
Tonight I feel more alone than the moon
overthrown by the clouds.
I take solace in the rain, the sway of the trees
being shaken out like a well loved blanket by the wind.
I know you are out there under the horizon. We’re on the same Earth.
The moon plays peekaboo with you too.
I understand how time zones float like helium balloons across the globe.
But the sky and this poem know how much I want you here.
I want to look at you
and mark how time changes you,
as it changes us.
I want to love you up close.
It’s true as you say, distance doesn’t define love, we do.
We always find each other. I look up at the sky,
just in time to see the moon sneak through the clouds.
It whispers to me in sibilance.
For a moment you come closer. Comforted by the knowledge of you,
I speak to you in trees and air.
The gray eyes of the night translates my love diction,
as the Milky Way pours itself over two lovers
swept up on a star yet to be named.
-Tosha Michelle
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
Her poetry so simple.
God, strictly elementary.
Sometimes the poet wishes
to sing what she means.
She has no time for red velvet stars
or a cinnamon moon.
The flash of alliteration
or wandering couplets.
She prefers the bunny
in the hat.
She’s not trying to entertain
or get your cash.
She doesn’t mix her ink
or words.
She sometimes speaks in doubt,
she writes with her crayons out.
Her instructions are easy to read
but this isn’t some syntax
by numbers kit.
She cultivated metaphors and
coordinates for her mind.
Schooled in sadness,
she attempts enlightenment.
Prays to the paper on her desk,
while turned to some interior
door covered in blue.
Offers her soul in heartstrings
and unencumbered truth.
Sometimes the poet wants you
to understand the music
under the air,
to notice the
Milky Way
of scars.
The complexity of cotton.
that goes beyond shimmer
and lace.
She doesn’t need you to toss her
a rose or two.
She just hopes you understand
the subtle cadences of her bird song,
spinning in hope’s current,
looping back art
to a natural sound.
-Tosha Michelle
Because if you are a human being,
you should try it at least once in your life,
assuming you’re already in that delinquent minority
of people who actually give a damn.
In which case it is imperative that you deny your nature.
Pay no mind to the wounded, those hurting, those living
in poverty, those abused and degraded
Your conscience might try to entice you
into fighting these wars.
Don’t be tempted to be a regime of change.
Be the most pathetic of apathetic.
Be an emphatic sack of nothing.
Become fish like with your feelings.
Let summer revolve solely around you.
Become Dionysius favorite daughter.
Affix yourself to a incubus of
laissez-faire.
Don’t have eyes that see and are able
to to derive a lesson from a flaw.
Don’t have ears that are able
to discern a cry for help
from a sports match on TV.
Don’t let your skin be alive with compassion.
Don’t feel sick in the bones
for all the horror in the world.
Let your indifference be museum quality.
Mona Lisa with a bottle of gin
and a party dress on.
Let your own selfishness uproot your veins.
Parade down the street and cheer yourself on,
while a homeless man begs for money or change.
This is how you do it. You have no time
for extreme emotions. No truths. No news.
Drink your tea, and steep yourself
into a stupor.
Sleep for years without a map.
Waste your life drooling and snoring.
The planet will spin on.
Who needs to feel the sun, the rain?
Dream toward less.
You can wake up when you’re dead.
Just don’t expect anybody
to look for you in the dark.
Don’t be surprised if your left stunned,
spinning, alone.
This is just one of the ways it could go,
if you take my advice.
I hope you can tell me another.
-Tosha Michelle
A little light Saturday reading from the greatest author in the world. Fondly, the greatest poet in the world. (in a galaxy far, far away, perhaps)
An analysis of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (William Shakespeare) by Dr. Joseph Suglia
“Happy Birthday, Mr. President! / Happy Birthday to you!” — Marilyn Monroe, 19 May 1962
With all of the graciousness of a Wall Street businessman offering a homeless man a wine bottle bubbling with urine, a Noble Lord orchestrates a play for the amusement of a drunkard and wastrel named Christopher Sly, who is deceived into believing that he is a noble lord himself. This meta-narrative, called the “Induction,” does not exactly frame the play that we are watching or reading, since the meta-narrative only reappears briefly in the first scene of the first act and does not resurface after the play is over. (It should be remarked parenthetically that Christopher Sly is pushed above his social station, in the same way the servant Traino will be pushed above his social station when he impersonates his…
View original post 1,579 more words
I translate myself in poetry,
often getting lost
in the fog of my mind.
Always looking for reason
in my narrative arc.
Here I roar and rage
all I want.
My words often drip
with disdain, despair.
The story loosely based
on my life.
Some truths are
too sacred to share.
Some truths belong
solely to me.
I try to decipher
what I’m really after.
Notebooks of fire,
letters stumbling around.
The margins full
of heart lines,
trying to capture
the red hours.
My pen sits up straight
and listens to the
commands of my interior
world
Language spills out simply,
but with fervor.
I create something
that is mine.
Fangled trees and damaged grass.
My cameo of grit and grace.
I give you my light, my dark,
my counter winds.
The oracles of desire.
I give then to you
before they burn away.
before they become a valediction.
My gilded fragments
of a life in blue,
suffused with question marks.
-Tosha Michelle
I thought I’d post something lighthearted for a change. Don’t get use to it. 🙂
You Know Who You Are.
by Tosha Michelle
You who carry sunshine in
your hair, the sky in your hands,
and blueberry pie in your eyes
You who knows all the words
to every Chet Baker song.
Why don’t you come by my record shop?
I’ll teach you the percussive du wop
Come unearth my city plot.
Right my upside down heart
with the lilt of your melodic
voice.
Stain my soul with your graceful hands.
Sing me your red velvet tune
with not one note of sorrow.
Scrawl on my tongue
your heart song.
I’ll sing along.
Make music to a woman
not so young, but not yet old.
My mind a score of hunger.
Patterns of passion across
my face.
Don’t be afraid to improvise
summer nights composed of
bodies and sway.
Wingtip and rosehip.
We’ll create our
own tune.
The tenor sax takes the lead.
It sounds like desire,
like it won’t ever stop.
Let’s crack the night with needle and groove.
Two lovers infusing the dark with rhythm and spark.
Everything I Never Told You 