Drift

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Longing befell me on a sharp
right turn, wrong.
A dark disciple rose up in me
I call her nostalgia

Our love is like snow
that refuses to stick.

I am always breathing in want
and exhaling regret
in your icy air.

I take water into my lungs,
and pretend it is you

I measure sugar and salt
in equal cups.
The yearning for both,
making me desperate,

Sugar.
Salt.
Drift.

I keep looking for a blizzard,
but the sidewalk is bare,
and the treacherous sky
swears snow never fell here.

-Tosha Michelle

https://m.soundcloud.com/tosha-michelle2020/the-scientist-coldplay-cover

Istonic 


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

Something Else?

Life is an imperfect story
And the poet leaves things out
My poem is telling.
But is it telling me?
Is my wordsmithing soulsmithing?
My pen taps on wood, in hopes of getting somewhere.

My mind uses words, as grapes uses wine
Glass by glass I pour myself
into the narrative
Endrunken wishes and longing,
secrets and half truth spill
red on the pages. revealing my broken
rain song, my ink crazed brains

-Tosha Michelle

Gravity, Heathcliff, Cathy- Music and Friendship

For my lovely friend Alex.  Thanks for being my pal, confidante, partner in crime, and fellow foodie.

You can follow his blog here:  Lots of wonderful stuff there.

Alex’s blog

A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world

 

Sage

Tonight I surrender everything
I have left undone to the wind
broken promises, letters I wrote,
but never sent, almost loves,
lost loves, regret. No questions.
Why or how no longer matter
They’ve been used up by yesterday.
Some just hallucinations
along my misguided way.

I’ve lingered too long in bramble
My skin marred by briars
Looking to find my way out
by the light of others eyes.
Hoping someone would decipher
the hidden shapes of my soul.

Alone with the begotten shadows,
iilluminated by the moon
I find clarity. The answer in release..
In letting go, I become lighter
Besotted with the fever of liberation.
A lomg time gone now
I find myself.
I am free.

-Tosha Michelle

Misguided Ghosts


Sometimes everything is rhetorical
Everything is monochrome
My limbs wracked with rain
I tread gingerly.
I make promises I may not keep
Go on with my soltuide,
my soliloquy.
I’m almost out of words.
Knowing you cannot grasp
what you cannot hold
Things vanish all the time
And what is only left of me, is
me only.

-Tosha Michelle

Upon Viewing The World

We’re all in the dark
and it’s not early
Maybe not too late
We sleep in narrow beds
in rooms shimmering
and burning from a sickhearted
moon.
The stars reflect a defective hue.
We long for a powerful eclipse
or for a comet to appear.
Angels feet on fire.

Thinking our world is woven
by the fragile string of fate.
We waste the moonlight.
Gazing at static air.

-Tosha Michelle

Matter

Sometimes we have to
carry what we can and
discard the rest. I’ve
been talking inventory
of my life, trying to
decide what to leave
in, what to leave out.
My back sore from
the weighted
backpack of other
people’s burden I
lug around. I’m
cutting insanity from
my life with no written
apology. I’m burning
bridges so drama
can’t follow me home.

There are people I can’t
live without. People who
litter their bedroom’s floor
with clothes and always
forget where they put
their keys.

I do my best to give them
my time. I give them my right
not what’s left.

Tonight I say a prayer to
the God of humanity, to
give me people I can
love and dispense hope
to.
and the courage not to
wish away my plea.

Tosha Michelle