Tag: photography

If I Were King of The World

Published on by Tosha Michelle35 Comments

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This isn’t my most eloquent poem. I’m aware. My silly and playful side needs an outlet, too. For now, I’ve locked angst in the closet.

If I were king of the
world. For this poem
let’s suppose that
this is a thing.

I would never lose
touch with the details.
I would answer all
your calls.

I would be a regular
at the Starbucks you
hang out in.

There would be laugher
in thunder. I wouldn’t
pretend to be bigger
than you.

Salvation would be
found in art and folly.

The mourning doves
would learn jazz and
how to wing it.

The livable life would
be embraced. Slow on
recliners and TV viewing.

Everyone would have
a place at my table.
I would dispense milk
and clothes, but never
unsolicited advice.

Good sex and good
manners would be
cultivated.

Love would come
without conditions.
I would lay my kisses
on imperfections
and celebrate the
different and strange.

I would do my best to
catch hearts falling
from pine trees.

Everyone would be
required to read Henry
Miller and Fitzgerald.

The Karxashians and E
would be banned to their
own island. Egos and
ignorance too.

Like any king, I would
contradict myself, but
mostly, with humor and
nonsensical poetry.

Water would be
plentiful. Wine too.

I wouldn’t take away
all your burden, some
are needed. How flimsy
our characters would be
without them.

Earth would be spun
in hope. There would
be 7 days of fun. The
8th day, chocolate.

Instead of a robe
and crown, I would
wear yoga pants
and a T-shirt with
James Purefoy face
on it. Everyone would
know who James
Purefoy is.

Words would live in
evey home. Love
would hang out in
the kitchen.

The inner world would
would trump the outer,
which reminds me,
there would be no
Donald Trump.

-Tosha Michelle

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Little Boy Blue and Mary Quite Contrary

Published on by Tosha Michelle58 Comments

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Dear Past,

It’s been awhile. I come waving a
flag of peace and unarmed.
My arsenal is depleted.
I have no time for hate or malice
laced air.
I imagine like me
you want to live in peace without
the threat of guns and
claws. To awaken to the sound
of serenity, not bombs going off
in the distance.

I hope hearing from me doesn’t cause you pain.
Frankly, I miss you. Your theatrical ways,
always leaning toward a Shakespearean tragedy.
No time for much ado about nothing.
Although, everything had to be as you like it.
How you were
a master at parlor games and word play.
Your eyes a depletion
of fallen leaves and green tea.
Hair as dark as a grackle.
Arch so charming, fencing with
unseen stars. Little boy blue,
and Mary. Mary, oh, so contrary.
How our garden did grow.
Shells that pelted the ground,
causing wreckage and carnage.
It wasn’t all welts and hell.
There were days when light swelled
and sliver bells grew.

But i digress, as I climb a slide of memories,
backwards with slippery hands.
My legs lose traction,
my lungs clog with dust.

I end up on the ground negotiating
with my untapped toe.
Trying to reclaim the beat with
half recounted facts
and nostalgia’s false sense of rhythm.
Holding a few cards in the hand you deftly dealt me.
Beside me lies a map, marred
by revisions.
that reads let it go. Let it go.

I stand up, and realizes there’s a
tear in my heart, that I
mistook for my sleeve. I walk through the open gate,
ignoring the stained alleyways,
cobble stone,
and street lights shaped like a question marks.
The scent of orchids lingers in
the tired air.
My soul fighting off bees and
the counter winds.
You, dear past, will always sting.

-Tosha Michelle

Granny

Published on by Tosha Michelle59 Comments

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I’m snapping green beans
I bought at the store today,
thinking they would remind me
of Granny and sitting
at the kitchen table,
listening to her “well,
when I was your age” stories.

Hoping that just for a moment
I could hug her again,
feel the sureness of her being,
her sweet familiarly.

Go back before dementia
stole her mind,
and cancer her body.
The days of sweet tea,
peppermints, and house dresses.

Granny could solve any problem
with a hickory stick or a stern look.

I miss her, even now years later,
I can’t help but compose
her in a poem- warm hands,
dark hair, sadness
that never left her eyes,
a lifetime of hardships

For a moment I’m ten again,
and Granny gives me her Irish grin.
Something soft but fierce about her.
Finding joy in an orderly
home and things done right.

How solid and healthy
she looks laboring away
over green beans.
Singing her favorite hymn
“In the sweet bye and bye”
Light shimmering through the room.
Real but unreal.

“We shall meet on that
beautiful shore”
Her notes gradually
becoming fainter.
The words descending,
echos from the past.
Love in every syllable.

I listen as evening opens
around me.
Sorrow changes its pitch.
Thee last of the sunlight
streams in the windows.
Swelling, even as it
disappears, even as it waves goodbye.

-Tosha Michelle

Not Quite Love in an Elevator

Published on by Tosha Michelle34 Comments

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Some people keep in
touch via the phone,
the internet, weekly
lunch dates.

You keep in touch by
pissing me the hell off.
Lightening up our
elevator display
of toxicity until
we’re stuck between
floors.

Listen, do you hear that?
that’s my head lacerating
on the wall.

My sense of peace
fractured.
Go ahead pick the bone.
I’m done battling
scratched glass.
Drag me through it.

It’s time to rinse
off the anger,
and nail all 1483 of my
grievances to your
sanctimonious door.

Martin Luther and me
the grand reformers
He sowed in grace.
I’m more prone to
mace.

Maybe, I’ll just try to
lose you in a place
I’ll never find again.
Unraveling your
foothold or finding
mine, up your………

I’ll save the hair pulling
spear throwing, and
obscene gestures of
distain for terrorists
and guys named Tad.

I’ll just vent my anger
in a silly poem
Snide as my temper,
but light as numbers
with no equations,
letters missing
sentences, and a
poet whistling
satirically at madness.

-Tosha Michelle

The Bliss of Madness

Published on by Tosha Michelle39 Comments

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I always find meaning
in madness.

It’s hard to know
who we are at times.
Our attention wavering
before the buttons are undone.

Plans run off with good ideas.
The future -crumbling paper mache
Our art supplies scattered
on the floor.

Now what will we do
with our hands?

Let’s put on
our mad hatter shoes.
Lose the map.
No phrase book needed.
Grab your backpack of
sin.

Take my arm.
I’ll be the voo doo
you do.
Try and not trip over my
tangled spirit.

Come with me
and let’s stroll down
a road that
will never lead to Rome,
but might lead to precinct
of hell.

Don’t worry, darling,
we can play king of the hill
on the torrid slope.
We can rattle the gates
Break the windows.
Take all that’s nimble
Dine on crumb cake
and bitter tea.

Jazz up the day.
Sun up the night.
Trust in chance and
let the cocoon unravel.

Afterwards, we’ll
distract the unmoored
shadows, and frolic with
sanity’s debris, while
madness steals the sky.

-Tosha Michelle

Swim

Published on by Tosha Michelle30 Comments

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The afternoon is sunny,
light falls warm
The breeze through the
car window full of lilacs

Soft air caresses your bare
arms. Everything is a hazy
green.

Nothing in the day speaks
of grief, but its there on
the news.

This should be a universe
of promise, of expectation.
The death of innocent lives,
feels so out of time with the
sky’s forget me not hue.

You think about rolling the car windows up,
shutting out the blossoming world.
letting winter settle in
Fear unpacking its suitcase
in your mind.

Consumed with rage over
black hearts and evil ways.
Terrorists stealing
what should be preserved

Their shrapnel of devastation,
an infinity of darkness
littering the ground
My hate is bigger
than your hate

You fight the urge to give in
to give up.
The world is breakable, but
your spirit is not.

We are all here trying to find
our balance on this broken
wheel.

Your heart constricts in a
fist of humanity.

Love pours out, gold as honey.
A living lightbulb goes off,
illuminating the transparent
glass of intimidation.

Hope waits beyond despair
You note how the heavens
embrace the sky.

The blue so deep, so thick
You could dive into it
You could swim in it
until you reach the other side-

The Fold Into Winter

Published on by Tosha Michelle36 Comments

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I’m walking through the
Queen City,
moving toward what?
It’s late
November, late afternoon,
The light, leafs
through its book of buildings.
Tall high rises,
The trees telling a back story.
My thoughts are
dark, tangled, melancholy-
as my thoughts
tend to be. This is not a
forlorn plot.
I’m content, enough. Biding
my time, on Trade Street.

In the distance. I hear the
bluesy notes of
a saxophone. For a moment
the sky opens
for me. My imagination shines
like an angel.
The air is so vibrant and busy
my whole body
feels weightless. I let my mind
wander down a
rainbow path. Time turns around
I am the princess of a
lightless country. Free from
the angst of
my mind. The molecules part
for me. I breathe
in serenity. The horizon clear.

I hold tight to the illustrated pages
I listen to the noise
of magnolias. I’m released from my self critical ways.
The words behind words are full of
grace… for once
devoid of longing. I brush a bouquet of daisies
from my hair. My own avant-garde
parade- lace, glitter,
sunflower seeds. I hold tightly to
the plot even
as the sun decides to deviate
from my happy
narrative, turning back into
clouds, tumbleweeds,
and hornets.
I accept the fragments from
the sky. I have
no choice. The stained alleyways
beckon me.
All I can do is keep walking
All I can do is live this life.
Write this life.

-Tosha Michelle

The Absence of Sun

Published on by Tosha Michelle53 Comments

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I try to nail sunlight

to paper.

Instead, I always

capture rain.

The light is so elusive.

It won’t even scribble

its initials on my

waterlogged pages.

The darkness is

never shy.

It always invites

itself in.

My pen has been

swimming in

its ocean for

quite some time.

I dive to bottom

of a well written sea.

The light remains

unread.

-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

A Letter to Hypocrisy

Published on by Tosha Michelle51 Comments

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Disclaimer. The following is not an attack on Christianity. It is simply a commentary on the hypocrisy of self professed Christians who only seem to advocate fear, hate, and intolerance. I’m also a bit perplexed over the demonizing of Starbucks cups and peace-loving Muslims. Note, the only religion terrorists know is hate

Dear Potentially Clueless,

Your rally cries taste like stale coffee.
You with your righteous indignation.
You who think your religion is the only one that matters.
You who have cleansed your lips with hate.
The sheerness of your nothingness confounds me.
I want to cover my mouth and nose to avoid your plague.
Where did your humanity go?
Do you really ask yourself what would Jesus do?
Do you even care anymore?
When did the Bride of Christ turn into the whore of intolerance?

The beauty of the cross lies
in forgiveness, love, compassion.
Your kisses say razors,
blackened moss, barbed wire fences.
They scream Judas.
You love your religion more than God.

Do you not understand how your
sanctimonious songs will never
resonate hope or faith?
Your notes are shrills,
an emphatic kind of
warning in the undertone.

You sacrifice your Christianity
on the altar of ignorance and ego.
As I write, I’m afraid I’m becoming what I loathe.
I never want to fall into what I once was.
What I want is change. I want you to be changed.
I want to drink from the red cup of sunshine,
to eat the good fruit.
I want to know that the world is made up of possibilities.

I wait for a world where love falls like snow,
where halos slide down slopes of imperfections.
A world where God forgives our folly
and grace overshadows our need for holiness.
A world where my skin comes alive with the pitch of tenderness.
Where the green leaves are dewy,
and hope becomes a shivering, tangible thing.

Until, then I’ll sip from my red Starbucks cup
and let serenity diffuse in my mouth.
The bride of caffeine and open eyes.

-Tosha Michelle

Praying for Paris and our world.

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