Old school style. Happy weekend, beautiful peeps xx
“Why do you keep a comin’ around playing with my heart?
Why don’t cha get out of my life and let me make a brand new start?
Let me get over you the way you gotten over me, yeah, yeah
Set me free why don’t cha babe
Get out my life why don’t cha babe (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)
‘Cause you don’t really love me
You just keep me hangin’ on
No, you don’t really need me
You just keep me hangin’ on”
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
Knowing that I’m less than a diamond,
no emerald or pearl, only mere glass.
I’m not afraid of being common,
or choking on insecurity’s bone.
I carry no bitterness in my veins.
Just a faulty valve of naivety.
My blood pulses with compassion.
The flow of humanity.
Brokenness, the barbedwire
fence I like to call my soul.
I trip over needle and thread
trying to sow a stronger spine.
I back tack kindness to my sleeve
and watch as my heart slips to the floor.
Hope perches on my breastbone.
I listen to it’s tune, wanting to soar.
It drowns out the murmurs
of negativity and doubt.
Finally unencumbered,
I sing along, the words repeat
“go on” “go on” “go on”.
-Tosha Michelle
.
I sit. Heart in hand. I
create. Some of you
may turn away from
the blood. The red
spilling over. It’s OK
if you do.
Sometimes it scares
me too, but still I
hold it. Palms out.
I’m giving you what
frightens me. This
is me saying, yes, I’m
still here.
I give you my less than
moments, my insecurities,
my madness, my ideas
about life and love, my
shrine of longing.
My heart slipping from
my hands, falling past
my knees to the floor.
Falling toward your
shadow I hope you
will pick it up.
Feel the hopeful
beat that wars
with my still
soul and chaotic
mind. I give you
my wounds.
We connect through
our pain, my friend,
my reader. Through
the hornets in our
coffee cups. Our
syllables of what
we can’t forget.
As we suffer together,
fear becomes less.
Our hearts beat stronger
Place them on the
dashboard like a
plastic Jesus.
It’s doesn’t matter if
they leak on the
floorboard. It only
matters that we travel on,
even if we’ve misplaced
the map, even if our sanity
becomes displaced, even if
we drive down a reckless road
on a moonless night.
Understand, if we want
heaven and angels,
sometimes we have
to ride around with
our demons.
Understand, sometimes,
darkness is the heart of
life, of beauty, of art.
-Tosha Michelle
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
But now I’ll go sit on the floor
Wearing your clothes
All that I know is
I don’t know how to be something you miss
https://m.soundcloud.com/tosha-michelle2020/last-kiss-cover-vocals-only
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
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
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
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
Everything I Never Told You 