Ghosted by Poetry

Words have been

quiet in me.

Not all words,

anger always

finds its voice.

It stomps 

on my brain

hoping to reach

my tongue.

Poetry has

ghosted me.

I beg for text

a smiling word,

a heart that 

doesn’t bleed,

but my pen has

found another poet.

Wars, billionaires,

death, hunger…

Are there any

new verses

to describe it?

©Susie Clevenger 2026

 

Stolen

little girls - 

old men's hands - 

yesterday was barbie 

dolls in boxes

today is childhood

 buried beneath

the dollar grin of hell

school picture dresses - 

devil's behind the camera

enough evidence 

to paper a prison - 

but money has its fist 

in the mouth of truth

© susie clevenger

Another Street in America

 

Sunday’s quiet
was broken by
six bullets, and fear.

Bang
Bang
Bang
Bang
    Bang…

Bang

My husband and I
held our breath,
waited for a scream,
but were smothered in silence.

Anxiously we walked 
to the door, feared what
might appear through 
the pretty glass of suburbia.

People were coming
through open doors
staring toward the west.

Hypnotized by questions
we moved as one until
we arrived at a corner home.

A house where Christmas
had been returned to the attic
was now rattled by a man
outside its walls who’d decided
to end peace with a gun. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

This happened across the street from my house. 

A young man backed up to our neighbor's 

garage door, and shot six times at a car

that was driving down our street.

We don't know the who or why of it.

We don't know if the person in the car

was hit by a bullet. Thankfully it was a cold

day in our neighborhood so no one was outside.

Weathering Me

Late November feels like summer

in the Texas south where heat

won’t let go of the thermometer

leaving weathermen reading tea leaves

trying to see if next week will predict a sweater. 

Outside my window there’s green grass,

a lone butterfly, and tiny bees who

still feed on heather that continues to bloom.

I can’t put summer clothes away because

Thanksgiving’s warmth won’t stare into

a crystal ball to tell me if Christmas 

will boil or spill ice on tree limbs.

I confess my holiday spirit has yet to arrive.

It’s stuck somewhere on Amazon with an

empty cart waiting for faux holiday cheer. 

Oh, my mood is a Grinch, my mind Stephen King

raking adjectives into piles, and my pen is

Charles Dickens before he sent Scrooge his first ghost. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

 

Gin and Keats

He whispered

in my ear

as I was sleeping,

“Tomorrow is already

in its sunrise somewhere.

You’re dreaming through

a thousand hellos while

yesterday still sits on

your eyelashes.”

I wish I could have heard it.

He’s always a poet when

there’s gin on the table.

Last night I was too tired

to wait until the bottle

was empty to hear a kind word.

In the morning quiet of alone

I found his journal, the back of

a grocery receipt, sitting next

to the coffee pot.

Somewhere in the fiction 

there’s truth…Maybe someday

he’ll speak words to me,

and not be Keats straining

poems through a shot glass. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

I just followed my muse.

A phrase here or there will

lead me to a poem.

 

Stones of Virginia

 Were the stones
Virginia Woolf filled
her pockets with chosen
or just convenient?

She walked years
of sun and moon,
but couldn’t find light.

It is lonely in madness.
It is a cell that doesn’t
have a key or enough
food to feed its skeleton.

Peace teases with hope
while mania plays with matches.

Toxic positivity hammers
obsidian melancholy ignoring
pain should have its voice,
and not turned into knives
from smiling everything is sunny.

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Clinging to Moss

 How much can I take
is always answered with more.

Sunny is hard to find in pain.
Hope swims my tears,
and darkness stalks light.

I’m getting through this journey
on weaker legs as silence grows
wild in the corners of each room.

It’s hard to stay resilient when
I am walking tundra clinging
to moss and fighting cold wind.

Honesty isn’t always welcomed,
but I’ve learned to validate my
depression because denial uproots strength.

©Susie Clevenger 2025