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

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ The Book of the Dead

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

Shay's Word Garden Word List - Tomb Sweeping

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

Word Garden Word List ~ Silent Patient

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

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ B is for Bad Poetry

 

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 :)

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Jesus Cow

 

Don't Break an Aardvark's Glass

The tedium of walking on tippy toes

so the offensive won’t be offended

is not a gift I possess. 

Oh, I can appear cuddly with the obtuse,

keep my eyes silent, my face a gentle petulant,

but too often they seem to forget boorish 

will break the glass of jolly I have so patiently

kept half full. 

Ignorance should never ring the doorbell

of my dark humor, or test the shellac

on my carefully manicured mood. 

I love antiques, but have no desire

to live the crinoline politics of men

who are so fragile they succumb 

to vapors at the thought of progress.

All the cosplaying Captain Fred Waterford’s 

whine when I remind them Fred’s story

didn’t end well. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

"We only wanted to make the world better.

 Better never means better for everyone.

 It always means worse for some."

— Fred Waterford

Captain Fred Waterford is a character

in the book, Handmaid's Tale

 by Margaret Atwood. 

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Enter the Aardvark

 

Blame It On Stephen King

I spill ink crow tarot tracks

across a page trying to

write lemons into lemonade,

but there’s nothing pretty

in a journal of bruises.

Among sticks and stones,

broken bones, and vinegared potions

of all’s sunny in hell my Gothic Care Bear

muses keep quoting Stephen King,

“The Devil’s voice is sweet to hear.”

My verses are cruel, yet somehow delightful.

I can be the beast in beautiful, knife in a heart

when my humor is the syrup of sharp teeth.

I don’t play well with faux anything. 

I get more thrills in celebrating Halloween

than a sugar-coated Valentine’s Day 

filled with undying confessions of love

shopped from a grocery store aisle. 

Any way you shuffle me I will always rise with black feathers.

Isn’t it good to be honest? 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Full Dark, No Stars