Angel of Sidon

 

She wears red, a match waiting
for the right kindling to turn
a cold room into a bonfire of heathens.

A wink, a blush, plump lips walking
the fine line between the blank spaces
of a hell fire sermon, she is the Jezebel
the pious curse, and the bold wanton
they never take to confession.

With splashes of jasmine holy water
she baptizes those strong enough
to relish their weakness, and teases
eyes to admit their obsession with curves.

While the choir sings blindly of light
they can’t feel, she collects the tarnished
notes of their hypocrisy, and rewrites
the blood song into Eve’s freedom from Eden.

©Susie Clevenger 2022

A Fool’s Catalogue of Violets

Bitter violets rest in their purple sulking,

false blooms hoodwinking fools their pressed petals

will canonize lost lovers as priests of the heart.

Dead bookmarks lie in my journals in crumbled

graveyards of inane longing…a fool’s garden planted

amongst the inked witness to my instability. 

How does one become blind to devils yet dissect

the most tender by listing flaws as if beauty of the flesh

was the gold standard by which to judge a soul.

Were I a sin eater I would be fat on my own misjudgments.

Nonsense argues a kiss can turn a toad into a prince…

What dignity is there in bargaining with fairytales?

I am an assassin, a rusted knife cutting spirits

into black valentines because I cannot bend

the strong into my weakness.

Romance, I hunger more for the idea than the truth

a candle only gives light when there is a flame.

Fantasy has no power to reincarnate reality from ashes. 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Stephen Crane

This poem was inspired by Shay's word list and the occassional junk food novels I consume. 

Silk Tongue Order of Discord

 

She is queen bitch,

a dark storyteller who

plucks words from

a coffee-stained alphabet

that makes pretty sound

like it has fangs and crows are

lullaby saints of midnight cradles.

A poised midwife of birthing mordacity

she sings mockingbird hymns

to narcissists whose self-absorption

has no skill in the discernment of mockery.

Sister Eris, of the Silk Tongue Order of Discord,

has a pharmacy of ironic elixirs, drivel of headlines,

and bombastic bloat, to anethestize sheep

so they will remain oblivious their promised future

is being built from recycled failure of the past.

©Susie Clevenger 2022

Shay's Word Garden List ~ Susie Clevenger

Vanity Hounds Me

 

Photo by Brooke Shaden

 

“Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually.
 But I'm not ready for that yet.” ― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

 A mirror doesn’t accuse. 
It is I who cuts myself
into a thousand miseries.

I am pottery painted
by every word I pull
through the glass.

An aged vessel, I search for flaws,
dividing myself by scars, and
yesterday’s photos…
a seeker of lost ignoring found.

Gratitude prods me to look
deeper than vanity’s gnawing hound,
but I’m too human to not wish
the calendar wasn’t turning me
into a dried apple. 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

The Sunday Muse #233

Dandelion Saviors for the Starry Eyed

 

They sit on Chicago

stairsteps like pretty

trinket jars waiting

to be stolen or broken

into a thousand sorrows.

 

Little girls of Edison Park,

glitter roses, who have

only read the book of innocence

where wolves are tame,

and costumes don’t have

pockets filled with dark riddles,

imagine castles and gardens,

not abandoned brownstones

painted with the shadows of weeds.

 

Life is a grizzly bitch who teases

with ribbons and shatterproof dreams,

but carries a loaded tongue to turn

bright eyes into empty light sockets

when stars don’t fall in answered wishes.

 

Yet where the blackened chewing gum

mars the concrete sparkle there are angels

who carry candles for the moonless youth

who’ve been torn from fairytales.

 

Mentors of the psyche who have lived

their own errors open their books

of misspent and share with the anxious,

life is a tattered shirt that will take patience to mend.

 

 ©Susie Clevenger 2022

Shay's Word Garden List ~ Ric Masten

 

The Stinging Inside Out of Newspaper Eyes

 

I didn’t think fear

had a rosary, but 

it pearls its dark prayers

across my skull leaving

grooves of cat scratch voices.

Insanity’s camera pours

its coffee-stained images

into my newspaper eyes

forcing me to read the

unseen as reality.

Pulled into the stinging inside out

I plead with the voices in my head

to not venture beyond my tongue,

to not build houses in my throat

of rotten words or toss baseballs

stitched with the foul thread of my delusions.

I’m a foreigner without a passport to normal,

a buzz kill’s humpty dumpty glued into broken,

workmen’s failed attempt to build on

rain puddle sand a chair that can hold

the weight of all the “me’s” that roam

the birdcage bus in my head

where everything enters, but nothing escapes. 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

It's that time of year when October pulls me through dark ink. 

Thank you Shay for your word list!

Shay's Word Garden List ~ Dave Kelly

Banging Cup of Helter Skelter

 

“Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.” – Blaise Pascal

 Insanity is a cell,
a blind man’s bars
where thoughts
play with freedom,
but a key doesn’t fit the lock.

Who am I if not, where’s beyond
if a cage holds what it won’t free?
Days wither on the throat of a scream.
I hear what can’t be seen…See what can’t be heard.

Climbing out in the center of falling in
I play a black chessboard dressed
as a blood thorn queen.

Helter skelter, neither here nor there,
what falls rarely finds up.
Riddles and swirls, answers that can’t find questions.
I’m there but not here…Gone but never leave.

I’m a ghost that breathes, skeleton without bones,
a mind that searches, a searcher who never finds.
I fish for reality without bait or hook. 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

The Sunday Muse #227