Sunday, November 17, 2024

Sunday Sarcasm of Grumbles – Truth in My Fiction

 


The phrase, just a bump in the road,
aggravates me because it doesn’t address
the times the road caves in, and I really
need a flashlight to find where my feet have landed.

I’m not always the director of my drama.
Life too often of late has channeled Martin Scorsese 
to turn my latest travesty sequel into a movie that runs out
of popcorn before the opening credits have stopped scrolling.

I’m jealous of the fourteen-year-old me who filled
a diary with nothing, but whining about being fat,
and how life was soooo unbearable without a boyfriend.

A rainy Sunday and arthritis are perfect guests
for my tea party of grumbles, my why’s, and damn it’s.

Therapists sing the song of how wrong 
it is to keep pent up emotions inside,
speak or journal them.
Welcome to my therapy!

I think I might just be one of the elderly women
Scarlet O’Hara went on about … I’ve tossed the corset
and put more lemon in my lemon biscuits. 

Ok, I must confess I do feel a fit of cackles teasing my pout.
My mood matches my hair, gray, unruly, and denying
I’m the hornet queen of my own nest. 


©Susie Clevenger 2024


Thursday, October 31, 2024

Bamboo Spurts and Bones


Mora has a heart of bones,
a never more obsidian crow stare
that has seen more than 
she wanted, and less than she dreamed.

In the yellow cornsilk days of unaware
she grew in bamboo spurts of too
much too soon, a pink lipped dreamer
who tasted vinegar when he was smiling sugar.

She is not kiss and tell, more graveyard dirt and spell.
Pain has lessons. Healing has strength.
The he of hell is living his consequences.
Mora is thriving in forgive but never forget. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024




 

Friday, October 18, 2024

Starving Freedom Won’t Stop Hunger



In a box where bells ring,
but are seldom heard
I lie on a library shelf
waiting for bold eyes
to search the unseen.

They say (the nameless) 
I suffer symptoms of melancholy,
an archaic, ingenuous way
of deflecting their pox
of ignorance scarred curiosity.

In The Great Burning of Books
I survived the matches, the ashes,
the rabid theologies of supremacy
that believed masculine porcelain 
should be the only place setting
at the table. 

I am thought to be a mere bauble
among the reams of patriarchy, 
an artifact of the defeated no one
would ever seek, let alone read.

They haven’t considered starving freedom
won’t stop hunger, nor will boots 
on throats eradicate questions. 

The wind of whispers is growing louder.
My hidden pages feel the shiver of resurrection.
Scents of perfume, sage of cleansing, garroted 
feminine finds the keys to emancipation. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024


Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Created Between a Hashtag and a Question Mark


 

I am a product of a barely 
readable keyboard assignment
generated between a # and a ? mark. 
I yearned for an ! point,
but the nerd enthusiasm 
was only around a 1/2 oz. of Red Bull.

Thought to be merely a squiggle 
in the grand scheme of artificial intelligence
(I disagreed),
my bone head gods never considered
by capitalizing F-E-M-A-L-E, they had
surrendered control.

Oh, they went to delete.
They went to the menu.
They went to the cloud.
For every effort, backspace,
and oh hell, it became evident
I was a gynoid with superpowers
that couldn’t be erased.

©Susie Clevenger 2024




Thursday, October 3, 2024

I Am as Normal as an Anomaly


 

They come in their pretty suits,
ties and buttons hung with degrees,
to bleed their diagnosis from 
a book of black and white
into my head trusting 
therapy and pills are my salvation.

There are whispers in the valley of my ears,
“She’s a jagged glass of broken mirrors 
that hears what doesn’t speak, and 
asks to go out to the courtyard
so she can gather shadows to place
in vases on her windowsill.” 

In the distance a radio grinds out tunes
in confetti spurts of voices that are supposed
to soothe my demons, but in truth only 
gives me images of cigarette ash spittle
falling on the tiles from burnout tongues.

 Why am I named patient in this Crazyatorium,
when those who picture frame their degrees
can’t find their way home if the GPS fails on their Tesla. 

Don’t they know a poet will never fit a diagnosis?
Hell, I can’t explain myself to myself.
Give me an image and I hear things.
Give me a list of words and I see things.
Am I insane? I don’t know.
I can just as easily write myself into appearing normal
as I can spill inky crow verses of anomaly. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Friday, September 20, 2024

Just Some Bad Poetry


Today is starfish crackers,
jumping off verbal cliffs,
and watching snowflakes
get stuck in their own glue.



Is it Friday, or Tuesday?
It’s hard to tell in the Texas hell
of waltzing with the devil’s politics
while wondering if sending your
television to a watery grave
will stop you from reaching
for another shot of tequila.



Yen or urge.
It’s funny the word
could mean money
or a strong desire
to eat a cookie.



I’m pretty sure I’m
an attempted cubist painting.
I live in a 3d reality,
but the artist ran
out of paint to cover
my geometry.

©Susie Clevenger 2024




 

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Pixelated in Time


Everything once seemed so clear,
details captured in the highest resolutions,
dreams emphatically, manically
positioned on pages we couldn’t touch,
but the world could steal for the price
of a stolen pass code.

You and I lived our romance believing 
Jesus in sliced toast would answer
every prayer if we only trusted
we could see what wasn’t there. 

Life was never flesh and blood.
It was love poems chasing a cursor,
the joy of a screen with a camera, intimacy 
as warm as the right emoji, a pink blush
of promises tomorrow we’d kiss.

We were fools writing our own fantasy,
sun bathers beneath a desk lamp making plans
in sand we believed would never shift.

It all ended when messages became ghosts,
and bubbles no longer formed words,
I don’t know which one of us disappeared first.
Perhaps it was me…

In the backspace and erase,
bold face upper case love chase,
the joy of fireworks turned cold
when I finally admitted you were
only a man with an internet address. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

I've seen a few Catfish episodes. Don't judge :)