The past slips forward
under the door.
Slithering around on the
floor, tangled with our
muted perceptions and half
recalled facts. It’s dines
on our regrets, our annual
if only breakfast of crow.
We study it like math,
figures, we can’t quite grasp
We equate in retrospect.
under a ghost light
We ponder its multiplicity.
We survive on a broken
calculator and flashcards
that read don’t let go.
-Tosha Michelle
It feels safe to reside inside poetry. It’s my escape route.
Real and imagined.
Here I can live multiple lives
My feelings are diverse, if I tire of one emotion, there’s always another close as the ink on my hand.
Poetry holds my heart, and understands like water, I’m perpetually in transition. My words take on many forms. Some are steeped in reality. Others, solely fantasy, perhaps, live perceived in a parallel universe.
My soul never grows static in verse. My poet self, helps me gain confidence to live life as my real self, to have the courage to balance monotony and forgive the world its drudgery.
-Tosha Michelle
Hello lovely ones. Just a few random thoughts from a chaotic mind. Firstly, I’d like to say that, I really appreciate everyone who takes the time to read and follow this blog. It means the world to me. I’ve connected with some really wonderful and talented folks. I’m grateful for those connections and I know that some of those friendships will carry-on for many years to come. Having said that, I will be cutting back on the amount of time I spend here. Life has taken on a very busy tone of late. I will still be posting but the frequencies of my posts will be more sporadic and sparse. My goal is to at least post once a week.
Secondly, I don’t want to get political but I will say that now more than ever, I am praying for our country.. It should be noted, I’m not even a particularly religious person. It is my hope that love and tolerance will always win out of over hate and bigotry. it’s up to us to hold our leaders to a higher standard and demand that they govern with dignity, integrity and compassion.
Steps off soap box and looks for cake. Hands you a piece.
All besr,
T.
The ground frozen,
giving winter it’s shoulder
not impressed with the cold
or its icy sword and brass
knuckles. It’s nothing the
ground hasn’t seen before.
Soon enough a warm rain
will come, and winter will
have no choice but to retreat.
Let the rain come and cover up
yards, tree trunks
Let the rivers overthrow bridges
We’ll make boats out of
billboards and give everyone
a ride.
The ground shrugs winter or
rain. It knows, when it all ends,
there’ll be nothing left but dust
No place to gather oxygen.
Soon enough there will be
nowhere to rest.
-Tosha Michelle
Not even the sun saw me retreat.
I swallow my sadness whole.
You may ask what is it good for?
Where can it take me?
I need its darkness to find
the light, to show me the
way toward creativity
I draw blood from its
silhouette, and write
among its shadows.
I walk through purgatory
to find words.
A delicate concoction of arsenic
and ink mark my descent.
-Tosha Michelle
Abstract art by me.
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
The air crisp with autumn
implores the trees
and me to fall under its spell
The clouds dust the
sun away as if to say not
even grey can eradicate
such a perfect day.
The leaves even refuse
to say goodbye content to
hang around on the
ground. Devoting their last
hours to maple tips
and the call of Jack Frost.
My cares lossen by the wind
and the aesthetics
of burnt red and pine artistry.
Charmed by the earthy
scent of October.
I await a a sliver bone moon
Content with the early
dark beauty.. Its curves and edges
The voluptuous figure
of a falling fall.
-Tosha Michelle
I want to reside inside the voice
of a Tibetan monk
And be lulled to sleep by the silence.
Instead the irritating cadence
of political discourse
Uncivil and unholy
The hills alive with the sound
of madness.
The breeze tinged with malice
even the birds
feel forsaken. Aimlessly looking
for just one branch
of grace. The tree limbs breaking
under the weight of
an uncertain future.
We beseech the earth for guidance.
Warring with hot air.
Hoping the world will revolve anew.
The axis and rhetoric
spin on.
-Tosha Michelle
There are two or three men
desperate for her.
They beg to see, to touch,
to give her things,
the ocean and coastal terrain.
She’d give in if her head and
heart weren’t tied
up in him, trying to teach her
body not to yearn
for a waterless hill, the tidal waste.
Seconds of minutes of hours of days
wrapped up in him
So much connected to him, it now
belongs to him.
The illusions of shooting stars in
his realm.
Tonight she can almost see the
constellation or consolation
depending on her vantage point.
Stubborn in her convictions
She clings to the his crest, illiac
and shimmering peaks
She calls for him through a
whimsical sky.
For a moment she can almost
hear his cadence
but it’s only the whiskey drenched
moans of two or three
other men answering her through
a solid earth.
Resigned to sleep now. She drowns out their sound
Knowing only in singing dreams is the puff and mist of him found.
-Tosha Michelle
I must write to make sense
of emotions eclipsed,
sometimes before they begin.
I must write to find congruence
with those brief flashes of reality
that my heart likes
to distort in an effort
to help me live a life
that sometimes fails.
But it’s always infused with a
dysfunctional shot
of sugar and optimism.
I do my best to honor the upsurge,
but wallow in the gutter of melancholy
from poem to poem,
memory a friend and foe to
living, is cleansed through the
written word. The language
clotted by how I chose to
abandon or fashion the
hour of my regret or reprieve.
-Tosha Michelle
Everything I Never Told You 