Izred's Necklace

Izred wears every prayer cremated in a liar’s lung around her neck in the stunning pretense gold can buy the ear of a goddess. A daughter born on the dark side of the moon, first born of the goddess Erebeth, she fed from the breast of shadows until she was old enough to eat the black tar of dying stars. Feral child of neglect she learned the value of hiding opinions behind teeth and eye until revelation held the fiercest sting.

Selfish weighs more

than coins hoarded

in a wallet.

Praying with an empty mind

won’t grow wisdom

in the heart of ego.

If you pay a goddess for attention,

her boredom may

establish your worth.

 ©Susie Clevenger 2019

Weekly Scribblings #2: Myth-Placed

Restraint

You stalk the wild in me,

hidden claws beneath my tongue

where words lie sharpened

to protect solitude when intrusive

camps at every door.

I catch glimpses of you in the mirror

when I search flaws to see which

brush can paint me out of questions.

Fire and moon

camp at the door of patience

waiting to see how many pins

my skin can hold

before I break.

 ©Susie Clevenger 2019

The Sunday Muse #90

Say It Again Without Meaning

In the moonless cage of gravity

the rusted wings of the canary

circle platitude’s corpse singing,

“Solitude doesn’t require a handmaid.”

Alone and lonely aren’t identical twins

nurtured at the breast of your perceptions.

Apparitions of every dishonest emotion

root on your tongue growing poison

from the rotted useless you feed them.

©Susie Clevenger 2020

Inspired by a Skylover wordlist

Monday

Monday sun poured into my bedroom,

work drunk and lonely eyed.

It pushed me toward a cup of coffee

to wash the poems from my tongue.

There’s nothing new in repetition,

grand in same old thing, crows have murder,

humans a nest of spines.

One step forward leaves you ten steps behind.

I walk three blocks to meet the devil at the bus stop

spinning lies through fingerprinted screens.

I feel alone in shoulder to shoulder, body heat

that leaves me cold.

Another week to empty my wallet into the hand

of more is mine.

Silence has no honor. Anger has its price.

I feel a question touch my shoulder.

Are you going to stand or keep your seat?

©Susie Clevenger 2019

Real Toads ~ Western Skies

The Raven You No Longer Silence

Does it burn, my dear? Does it trouble you

I have become the ink breeding scars

in the starless hours you can’t escape?

You were the cat who owned my tongue,

forced me to live by fist and bruise,

prowl night for one sip of light.

It isn’t pretty when chains break into truth,

when daylight burns away the shroud of threat.

Today is the future you thought would never come.

I have found wings; feel the wind of blue sky.

The irony is the cage you thought would always hold me

is now yours to pace and defend with teeth that no longer have claws.  

©Susie Clevenger 2019

The first line of my poem " Does it burn my dear? Does it trouble you" is from Kerry O'Conner's poem Firefly  I had several conversations about abuse this week, and when I read that line all those conversations began to mold into a poem. 

Real Toads ~ Weekend Mini-Challenge ~ 13 Poetic Bits of Kerry

The Darkness in Light

Pharos ~ The Lighthouse

Kerry O'Connor

@skyloverpoetry

Used With Permission

Her gnarled light holds

the passage of dreams,

the last words of water

lullabies sung to souls

who trusted the sea

wouldn’t betray them.

In her catacomb of candles

ghosts climb stairs of wailing threads

searching for the key of gods

to free them from the breast of stones

that makes them hunt fog to deliver death.

©Susie Clevenger 2019

Real Toads ~ Art Flash!/55 in December

Pilling (If only Risperidone was a Greek Goddess)

I woke this morning

with lemons on my tongue

and groans gurgling

in the pit of my brain.

How I wish I could remain

in sleep’s nightmare that

doesn’t require a pill

to keep me on the fringe

of normal.

My warden rests on its glass shelf

demanding I open the lid of my cage

and swallow the chain to hold

me to chemical sanity.

I argue the cinnamon elocution

of tempered mania robs me

of artistry, but the order of things

requires I swim with the tide.

Rebellion waits at Nyx-door

like the sheathed claws of a cat

waiting to shred perceptions

wild things can ever be tamed.

©Susie Clevenger 2019

A delicious list of words provided for poetic inspiration:

onyx,  groan, lemon, sticks, elocution, shelves, cinnamon, Twix, risperidone,

Nyx-door, warden, plunge, esthesis

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