“You were drivin’ the getaway car
We were flyin’, but we’d never get far
Don’t pretend it’s such a mystery
Think about the place where you first met me”
Tag: poetry
Catch and Release
Happiness begins in summer air
when we lift our hands,
ink stained from editing a life
in need of revisions and
vision, a mid eve dream
reformed. Reborn.
Where we find comfort
in the stormy eye of
new beginnings,
in trying again
but this time in today.
Ready to risk, to breathe
to pick the window seat,
to upgrade to first class,
to meet the stranger’s gaze,
not caring if it’s a four leaf clover
or a curse.
Mistakes and Nirvana
flickering in from the West.
Happiness begins when we
finally learn to rearrange the whys
and start believing in the how,
even if we come up short,
even if we fail.
Knowing it’s all in the
catch and release anyhow.
-Tosha Michelle
Creep
Sunday Thoughts RH Sin
Dawn
We are always in the midst
of letting go of something
or someone.
Untying knots
Finger by finger.
Watching as the leaf whirls
in the wind across the grass
into the air.
The sky opaque resists.
We keep searching for
what might have been,
not realizing the beauty in
what is or could be.
The scent of his cologne.
The strong arm around
your shoulder.
His finger around a lock
of your hair.
The uninterrupted gaze that
you missed while your eyes
were on another.
The gift of rapt attention.
You finally see the light’s
transformation in the beauty
of his eyes.
Looking back no more at
the unintended one.
Just a imitation you
mistook as real.
Only stars in your head
after a fall.
The possibilities of love
become endless when
there’s hope of being love
in return
The eve of a new beginning
Giving birth to the life
you were meant to live.
-Tosha Michelle
On Friendship
Dedicated to Jane and Niles.
On days that should be remembered for
their cold rain, because of you all I see
is the sun breaking through.
You wrap me in a wool coat
and we wander through years of experience-
heartache, loss, hearty elms
and wilted vines.
Our friendship knotted with the binding
thread work of love.
We are the roses on the vines
Always pausing as another
flower is cut from our lives.
Knowing in the end none
of us is spared.
We walk on hand in hand.
The light of day disperses.
The light of our friendship
never shutters, never wavers.
The tint of the years fades details.
Age will eventually tint the nuances
but time can’t touch our souls.
Our heart won’t forget.
Thank you for always being
the one constant sky
I have prayed for.
-Tosha Michelle
Listen to You ve Got a Friend2 by Tosha Michelle 2020 #np on #SoundCloud
How to be an Expert at Life
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
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
Late Nights
Books are meant to be read late at night when the house sleeps
and the city huddles under a heavy lidded moon.
In these hours you can escape
from the kitchen drainboard deity
and the goddess of home and hearth
You can open the door to a street leading to adventure.
All you have to do is look down its length.
No matter which way you glance, magic awaits.
The crickets and lamppost light beguiling you with language
and the breath of imagination.
Power lines of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, infusing the body.
Perhaps, reminding you of something you once felt.
The words sustaining you. Fleshy and porous.
Iseult taking form with her thighs and Tristan’s lips.
You stay with them until you feel the sun kiss the nape of your neck
and you hear cars rolling down the street. Life’s commotion stirring.
All glass and asphalt now, waking the household gods, as they demand your attention.
You yawn, stretch, sigh, and close the door to the street’s salted pages and the night’s eloquent lure.
-Tosha Michelle
World Enough (In Terms Of)
You’ve taught me how far
I can go toward myself.
No need to run from who
I am.
That’s how it is with us.
Windblown fragments,
two are we.
Sometimes composed in rain
We always find our
sunny composure.
We converse fluently in
a language only we understand.
Your face never lies in the
way wedding songs and
lovers sometimes do.
In my head you’ve cut a groove,
leaving your initials there
Absolute. Right. Permanent.
They tell a story even when
my mind shifts and happenstance
grabs the pen.
The darkest ink is not dark enough
to eradicate the thought of you.
Our friendship a sonnet to pathless
woods, always ready to explore.
We reach for a state of grace,
Knowing life can only get worse, but
better too.
Tosha Michelle
Everything I Never Told You 
