Tag: poems

Awareness

Published on by Tosha Michelle2 Comments

I remember when we thought everything would go our way before 911, before mass shootings, before division and racism became amplified and highlighted, back before we realized just how slow progress really is. Back when we stood for nothing but comfort and apathy, oversummering in our lounge chairs, oblivious to the bees circling, the wolves feeding near our doors, the terminal frost ahead.

These days there’s no closing our eyes to the ice laced rain, to the world’s breathless history, the cruelty of humanity foraging it’s way into our collective consciousness. We lounge no more. We wade out, knee high into the water punctuated with slippery rocks. We stand hand in hand in the middle of a turbulent river. Knowing there’s no getting around the realities of humanity short a few stem cells.
Still, we don’t lose hope. We know if we channel our anger into proactive socially aware  behavior, a new membrane can grow. Together we can cover the hills with our diversity song, drowning out voices of hate and bigotry. We can leave behind artifacts in the shape of question changing growth until the taint of today is nothing more than a microscopic bygone scene of old. Knowing now everything may not always go our way but finding purpose in the knowing. 
-Tosha Michelle

Ode to Grass Stains and Wildberries

Published on by Tosha Michelle131 Comments

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We create our own joy.
Come roll around with me
in the grass til our
clothes are stained.
Til the clouds turn violet.

Let’s eat ice cream under
the stars and hold each other
until the restlessness dissipates.
Tonight let’s not battle the hardwood floors,
the laundry chute, or the dishes.

Let’s defy gravity, monotony,
the drudgery of life.
Throw away the map.
Let’s find another way.
Eat the wild berries.
Live on the breeze.
Amp up the brightness of
the moon.
Who cares if the universe
complains?

Let’s create a language
that fits us, in a land
of pine cones and sage.
Red dress on the ground
where desire stays.

Nouns infused with passion
tongue, earlobes, necks..
Shuttering hands, quivering bodies.
The sentences of ourselves.
Infinitives, unearthing new verbs
and their allure.

Upgrading our love
to a window seat in first
class.

Rethinking how.
Reordering now.

-Tosha Michelle

Lost Lines

Published on by Tosha Michelle18 Comments

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This is my elegy for those lost lines of poetry.
The ones that died in my mind,
when I was in the store, out on the town
or walking in the park.
Those times when pen and paper chose to stay
home and take a nap. My usually
fruitful memory-barren.

Go, little poem off to the land of word limbo,
out into nothingness.
The braids of forgotten syntax and out of sync time
will guide you. You’ll forever dwell with untold
stories, names unrecalled, and dreams unremembered.
What if and
what never was will comfort you.

I’ll mourn for you as I sit at my desk
staring at the unfulfilled pages, lonely,
for lines that came and died suddenly.
Erased between here and there.
Sentences that turned into ashes,
leaving only the residue of punctuation
and a memory of the moment
just before I forgot to remember.

-Tosha Michelle

Istonic 

Published on by Tosha Michelle22 Comments


Sometimes, I feel like I’m a chapter
from a long forgotten red bound book,
sitting on the nightstand, lost amoung
the newest must read novels.
Other times, i feel like a Whitman poem,
beloved and well read.

Tonight I just have a broken feel.
I raise a glass of regret to memories
that burn, drink to dreams lost, and
loves that failed. Malaise in my bones.
Nostalgia my hydrophobia.

Here’s to:
the nights that turned sour, yet somehow never eroded the palatableness of a half full glass.
I still believe in the soothing cadence
of a soft voice calling my name,
that’s there’s still a double shot
of swoon being poured into a sturdy
pitcher just for me.

I can almost hear the seductive clang of ice, the jazz of a tenor sax who’s notes decant silk sheets, and that drunk dazed look from phenylalanine released, I sway to the knowledge that love is
so much more than that.

Sometimes just a melancholy riff,
a glass knocked over.
Still there’s sweetness left to savor.
The music only dormat to those
who refuse to listen.

-Tosha Michelle

Photo courtesy of yours unruly

The Next Big Thing

Published on by Tosha Michelle87 Comments

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Big ideas are everywhere,
from religion to capitalism.
There’s always someone
trying to sell us something.
I’m burnt out on the peddling.
I just want to be left on the
side of the road while I still
have a little sanity.
Let nature stand for all I believe in.
As for faith, I’ll leave that to the sun.

We all die in the end,
the good, the bad,
the blissfully indifferent.
It doesn’t matter how well
you sing the hymn,
or if you know the slogan
by memory.

Life is freshly pressed and
the creases only hold for so long.
I’d like to believe in
the lottery, mail in rebates,
and a free trip to Hawaii.

In my crisis of faith,
I have moments where I wonder
if we all just fade to dust.
Our molecules scattered
in the wind.
Left with nothing but our
collective darkness,
where there are no charge
off or loopholes.

All I know for certain
is I know nothing.
Oh to have the wisdom of Solomon.
I look for assurance
in the clouds.
Punching the fog.
I fall back on my upbringing.
close my eyes and
pray for grace.

-Tosha Michelle

Unsustainable

Published on by Tosha Michelle48 Comments

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That fall he carried his notepad everywhere.
And on those crisp evenings,
I felt him shape and merge
words with paper.
Above us an inky sky,
and I longed to be nothing
but the syntax and nuances
taking form in his mind.

I rest my head on his shoulder,
watching the swaying of his pen.
I become one with the shuddering lines,
that won’t be still.
They reach out and caress my heart.
Stalling my breath.
Touching me here and here.
For a moment, I’m what he shapes.
What he imagines.
I glimmer in edges of the dark lines,
until the words splinter from me

The lines, like the writer,
elusive as the stray wind.

-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

For You

Published on by Tosha Michelle56 Comments

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For you, I would paint
the undercoat of grey
a cheery yellow.
We would live well
in a settled blue,
touched by fiery red.

I would give you words
to eat, starting from
scratch. Syllables that
teach us how to be happy,
how to negotiate with
dark clouds.

For you, I would gloss
the vernacular of porn
stars, and crack the night
open with anatomy,
and backseat geography.
Unbuttoned periwinkle
shirt, pants flying off.

I’d be the force of nature
you saw God in.
a piece of light that turns
to a flame.

I’d take you where we
could water the moon.
Two celestial wonders
finding a new constellation.
Alive and quivering in
the unknown.

For you, I would offer
my fractured soul and
a flight map of scars
I’d give you my outlaw
truths, the real story,
and a fresh love
devoid of pipe smoke.

I would give you days
made entirely of lilacs
and grapes.

Together we would relearn
how to claim the drumbeat
and rise like a dove,
just winging it.

-Tosha Michelle

My cover of “Falling Slowly” One of my favorite songs.

Of Trains and Beautiful Men

Published on by Tosha Michelle92 Comments

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The man on the train
accidentally touches
my hand and in that instant
a dogwood leaf lands
on the rain kissed glass.
It flinches against the
window pane.

The man is distinguished,
in his elegant suit and
periwinkle shirt.
I can tell he is
used to being admired
by women.
The leaf makes its way
up the glass.
I can feel the warmth
of his thigh
as it rubs up against
mine with every thrust
of the train.
I would be so proud
if he were mine.

Our eyes connect. Hold.
His pulling me forward
His face is tender.
I imagine he believes in
Shakespeare, distant ships,
stray winds, Miles Davis,
the sweet sound
of needle to
groove.

I bite my lip to keep
from moving closer.
I want the warmth
of his name
in my mouth.
There’s an erotic energy
between us.
He reduces me to ashes,
I never want to brush
off.

What if we started
a conversation?
What if he gave himself
over to me?
What if he touched me
there and there?

The trees sway and
blur in the window.
The clouds look like satin
sheets we could lie in.
His beauty makes
my eyes ache.
His full lips, a glazy
pastry’s crust.

He jolts against me,
his arm brushes my breast,
I become a shivering thing
as the train comes to
a stop.

He wears me out
and I don’t even
know his name.

-Tosha Michelle

My second attempt at “Use Somebody”- Kings of Leon Cover.

Gravity

Published on by Tosha Michelle79 Comments

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From a distance
I make out his shadow.
My eyes cling to the bruised
way he stands.
Below him lies a sunlit garden.
Green, luminescent.
The dew is so heavy it must sit down.
The breeze feels like a hopeful lover.
There’s nothing I don’t see in him.
Beauty’s edge.
The tip of grace.
The hint of masculinity.
He’s in my misshapen skull,
below the skin.
I’m drawn to his sensual gravity
I wish fabric away on a four
leaf clover.
Under his clothes I’m bare
I plummet. I fall for-
toward his sexy order,
Shifting heat, molten.
Release is found on impact.

-Tosha Michelle

My cover of “Million Dollar Man”

Listen to “Million Dollar Man” Lana Del Rey Cover (piano and vocals) by Tosha Michelle 2020 #np on #SoundCloud