More Than Likely I’m Not the Feather in Your Tea

 

I am thought to be a devil,

running wild among wings and curses.

 

Muddy clay, oak limbs, and blue sky

hold me in their spell where words

are formed in feather strokes of ink.

 

Grown from roots of ancestors who survived

on plucking impossible from stone scarred bare feet

I trust the voice of earth more than the tongues of humans.

 

I am as old as yesterday’s eternity and as young

as the first rays of sun on a new day.

 

Beware or rejoice…It isn’t my journey to make

you feel comfortable with my freedom.

  

©Susie Clevenger 2021

The Sunday Muse #153

Escaping the Window

 

What offense your eyes hold when you look through me

to a window that mirrors only your reflection.

 

Anger shapeshifts through the sea of blue dreams that sail

my eyes where tomorrow is not our horizon.

 

Does love expire like moldy bread ignored on a shelf

or fade when sunlight turns bitter on your lips?

 

The coldness of detachment marches cigarette burns

through my mind as I fight demons dancing on scars.

 

I hate goodbyes, the breathless lingering hope feeds

that one more hour can rewind a broken clock.

 

I am enough…more than enough…Your blindness

is not my curse, not a sentence to serve because fear is my familiar.

©Susie Clevenger2021

The Sunday Muse #152

Not Every Cage Has Bars

 

Why look before you leap?

The fall may give you wings

to flee the glass they insist

you walk to pacify their bitter.

 

Wise is the one who trusts escape

is a better journey than pasting smiles

on a circle that never ends.

©Susie Clevenger 2021

The Sunday Muse #151

Drumming

 

Sunday was turned inside out

like a favorite sweater abandoned to shadows.

 

Expected comfort, the monotone of routine

became a scream in the cocoon of my wingless day.

 

There was no escape in a Zombie world of locked doors

and words funneled through lips wearied by counting days.

 

Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe… It’s crowing rant squawked

from the nest built of torn hours rooted in the back of my mind.

 

Madness sat its chair in my palms taunting me with careless

until my ancestor spirit tapped my spine with drumbeats.

 

Gnashing teeth and broken eye tears pulsed freedom

into the wounds I’d handcuffed to my spirit.

 

With fingers pressed against the river of my pulse

I let hope into the dark mirror I’d lived in for months.

 

 ©Susie Clevenger 2021

Word Crafter Prompt

 

Ink of Wings

 I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word.

 Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”

― Emily Dickinson

I place a word on the tip of my pen

to test the wind that will give it wings.

 

Do I dare let it be a crow, inky bitter,

dark prophecy wrestled from my tongue

where silence debates with consequence?

 

Or should it be hope’s feather plucked

from sunlight’s robin singing from

the timid limbs of spring?

 

Light flirts with sapphire strokes of ink

as I shuffle through the alphabet wondering

which words I’ll draw from poet’s tarot.

©Susie Clevenger 2021

Word Crafters Prompt

Bitter Apple

 

The apple doesn’t fall far from the teeth

or sweeten the mirror when the tongue

draws blood. 

©Susie Clevenger 2021

The Sunday Muse #142

Smoke Ring on the Wind

 

I’m no hand me down Eve,

dressing my tongue in submission.

 

I can’t be me in another woman’s misery,

but I can sing harmony when another devil haunts my ribs.

 

If there’s a different drum, I’ve already played it,

a different shoe, I’ve already worn it.

 

Time is a smoke ring riding wind

until the clock chimes midnight.

 

I’m made of bone, grit, and song,

an open-eyed poem swimming every river.

 

©Susie Clevenger 2020

The Sunday Muse #139

Sometimes only poetry can say it. I think there's just this deeper language, and away of putting your world back together again and breaking through barriers.  ~  Laura Nyro

When I write my music I see all the rivers flowing... sensual, spiritual, religious, animal, intellectual. ~ Laura Nyro