2 Poems One List

I created both of these poems from the same word list.

 I wasn't sure I liked the first one 

so I decided to make an attempt at another one.

 I couldn't decide which to post so I just posted both of them.

Not Every Quote in the Throat

Some would like their claws in my jaws,

pour sour lemons in my tea to see

if I can hold on to every blue note I sing.

So many times, the rhymes hit a target

too close to truth and they want to turn loose

their anger on me because I found the music.

Not every quote in the throat is made to sugar

a day into a peppermint experiment of mindless escape,

but if a listener stays long enough to hear it becomes clear

we’re both hanging from a rope trying to cope 

and it’s often a song that unites instead of divides us.

©Susie Clevenger 2024

South Texas Can’t Sugar Tea a Snowman

Christmas feels more like

a month of summer than

snowflakes on a windowsill.

South Texas doesn’t like

to give up its heat, or lead

a hand to a cup of hot cocoa

teased with peppermint.

Walking down a Houston street

in December is muggy July jazz

dressed in a t-shirt trying

to convince the body it’s a sweater.

We Texans like a lot of sugar in our tea,

insult it with a slice of lemon, and

dance around bigger is better. 

But we get a bit jealous that

the only time it feels cold enough

to build a snowman is when

we pull ice cream out of the freezer. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Ishmael Reed

 

MotherLine

The Emancipation of Eve ~ Digital Collage ~ by Susie Clevenger

You can bury my bones,

but I’ll still breathe.

No matter how many

voices try to talk my mind blind,

I’ve been cradled in women's wisdom

even before I was born.

Eyes wide awake, hand to the pen

paper smells of ink, ocean stinks of men.

There’s no lift in a hand that only

touches bottom, or change when

a wheel moves backwards

in a world moving forward.

My feet don’t like to dance a loop.

My head hates dizzy, my body 

argues in the forced stand still.

You can bury my bones,

but I’ll still breathe.

Keep trying to talk me blind,

I’ll keep forcing you to see. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Shays' Word Garden Word List ~ The Return of Ellie Black

Sunday Sarcasm of Grumbles – Truth in My Fiction

 

The phrase, just a bump in the road,

aggravates me because it doesn’t address

the times the road caves in, and I really

need a flashlight to find where my feet have landed.

I’m not always the director of my drama.

Life too often of late has channeled Martin Scorsese 

to turn my latest travesty sequel into a movie that runs out

of popcorn before the opening credits have stopped scrolling.

I’m jealous of the fourteen-year-old me who filled

a diary with nothing, but whining about being fat,

and how life was soooo unbearable without a boyfriend.

A rainy Sunday and arthritis are perfect guests

for my tea party of grumbles, my why’s, and damn it’s.

Therapists sing the song of how wrong 

it is to keep pent up emotions inside,

speak or journal them.

Welcome to my therapy!

I think I might just be one of the elderly women

Scarlet O’Hara went on about … I’ve tossed the corset

and put more lemon in my lemon biscuits. 

Ok, I must confess I do feel a fit of cackles teasing my pout.

My mood matches my hair, gray, unruly, and denying

I’m the hornet queen of my own nest. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Shay's Word Garden List ~ The Last to Go

Bamboo Spurts and Bones

Mora has a heart of bones,

a never more obsidian crow stare

that has seen more than 

she wanted, and less than she dreamed.

In the yellow cornsilk days of unaware

she grew in bamboo spurts of too

much too soon, a pink lipped dreamer

who tasted vinegar when he was smiling sugar.

She is not kiss and tell, more graveyard dirt and spell.

Pain has lessons. Healing has strength.

The he of hell is living his consequences.

Mora is thriving in forgive but never forget. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ She Had Some Horses

 

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

Dixie Cups Held the Last Kool-Aid

Dixie cups lay reduced to red slime

mixed with the DNA of lips

who had drunk Kool-Aid while the world burned. 

Silence speaks in steam and stench.

Bony charred hands still clutch their book of rules,

their quibble phones, and black pearls 

identifying them as members of Fanatic Denial. 

Barely able to walk, shaken by the reality

I am still breathing, my eyes search for life

in the gasps of smoke pulsating around me.

Through the gray I watch human forms

appear in a ghostly resurrection of life

I first assumed were hallucinations.

As they walk forward, I see one of them,

a young woman carrying a journal. 

So many things storm my mind,

one being had I survived hell only to

be met with the foul text of failed ordinances. 

Prepared to speak every no in me, I stop

as the group keeps to its goal of encroaching

on the toasted bit of earth I believe

will be my final battleground.

Without an introduction the young woman

opens the journal and begins to read.

“According to the Magpie Record, The Lucid Tablets

now becomes the order of law. Article 1 of 

The Value of Truth requires every survivor

to go through gaslight deprogramming.” 

Who, how, where rests on the tip of my tongue

as I pinch my right arm to verify I’m not dreaming.

Seeing my distress the young woman 

places her hand on my wrist and says,

“I’m sorry to be so abrupt. We are standing on an ending

while a new beginning undulates beneath our feet.

Not knowing whether to cry or hug her, I break the ice

from my voice to say, “Miss, I don’t know who you are,

but I was on the Magpie Council when the Record,

and the Lucid Tablets were written. 

In the time of the Great Lie the Secret Scribes

oversaw housing the Council’s work

for the Reformation of Freedom in a location

that was known only by them. 

Because of security I never saw the journal

you are holding in your hands, but I know every word

that is written in it. 

Let me introduce myself to you, “I am Magpie Agent 5. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Philip K Dick

 

The B(itch) of Beige ~ Sarcasm Intended

I don’t like herds

or sheep parkas

that smell like gaslighting.

The crazy of a pencil puppet

is the ride on the dotted line

too often leads to becoming a robot. 

I’m not so naïve as to not understand

I must occasionally allow myself

to appear to be a hostage of conformity.

You know, dress in faux beige so I can

pretend I never read a book or understand

history has a catalogue of too often repeated. 

Oh, if I were truly a Bitch Goddess

I’d slap minds with my opinions 

until my tantrums carved them

into my likeness, but I can be wrong.

(I’m so humble.)

So, I acknowledge my broom may

have a few loose straws that 

require attention. 

It is difficult to walk the tight rope

between unhinged and a bit stable.

I do wear sensible shoes though,

and apply my sarcasm only when needed.

©Susie Clevenger 2024

When I write, I'm never sure where I will

end up, but I chose the word beige and got curious

about its symbolism. My fingers rushed to Google

to discover there is much to know about beige.

Symbolism Of Beige

Symbolically, the color beige brings

 a sense of energy and strength – 

a trustworthy, dependable kind. 

 This is due to intellectual abilities,

 wisdom, ideas and knowledge.

Hmmm, Obama's suit. 

Word Garden Word List ~ Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

 

Squabble of Thumping Cackle

Spring is a cackle grackle

ceremony of black wings

fighting over a single seed.

It strikes me a bit like

a political debate 

where there’s no moderator

to control a feather duster

storm of opinions.

I swear if they could drink wine

they would be drunk on their own voices

before one sip of cabernet could be swallowed. 

Do humans cheat in their chicanery

by stealing their audacity from a bird

who has no fear or care electric wire

could change from a seat into a fryer?

Grackles have so much toxic air in their bombasticity 

it is a wonder anything around them can breathe. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Word Garden Word List ~ Richard Wilbur

 

Paper Doll Child

I grew up a paper doll child,

something to dress in hand me downs,

and ignore if my tears got too loud.

Nobody noticed they were planting rebellion,

tilling insomnia, or trying to put me in boxes

too small for my imagination to breathe.

There wasn’t anything vague about being ignored,

no excuses of being too busy, just a front door

that pushed me out to seek solace in wild things

that grew outside windows that winked with dust. 

It was tough trying to balance secrets and threats

when my ears rang with a voice whispering,

“It will always be your fault.”

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Word Garden Word List ~ Let the Right One In

I actually wrote two poem for Shay's Word Garden Word List.

The second one is from my Twila Series on my blog Susie's Sentences.

Aunt Tita

 

Why Can't I Just be Feral

There’s nothing worth claiming

in this sterile cottage of beds

where mirrors watch and secrets

are only as safe as the whispers that hide them.

It is not popular to be called insane

even though it is a plague that stalks

every mind, and torments the brain

with visions the tongue won’t describe. 

I came for help, a map that had little green trees

marking the path back to sanity, or that is what

I envisioned therapy would provide.

You don’t stroll through nightmares

or talk your way out of hell where

every thought is bolted to a rusty lock

that has long lost its key.

White coats with needle hands

stab me into faux relaxed long enough

to tighten the leather to keep me

from flying the coup of metal ribs.

One chases famous only to wish

it would leave you the hell alone.

I’ve honeymooned with every tabloid it seems,

although I wasn’t asked if I wished 

to be married to their distortions. 

Oh, why can’t I just be feral?

After all isn’t that what feeds

the top spot in the headlines.

I suppose someone will want to publish

my memoirs, collect all those inky journals,

to expose the only prayer I ever wrote

was a plea for the window ledge

to be wide enough to hold both feet.

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Word Garden Word List ~ Gracefully Insane

 

The Dark Mess of Hoping

 I’m breathing in blank spaces,

the chilly calm where words

hang in icicle spikes waiting

on faith to perform a ceremony of trust

you are what your kiss spoke on my lips.

Fragile stalks me as if I should accept

its curse, become a fainting, messy chapter

in a romance novel I would cringe at reading.

I am more attuned to dark magic than

a simpering, palpitating heart weak

wish for a golden wand to slap you

into what I want you to feel for me.

This sleeping bus of weirdest emotions

is the silly, severe heart crashing I’ve

never imagined I’d be trapped in.

Stop laughing at me as if I were a guppy

swimming in a fish tank waiting for attention

(even though I am), and tell me whether

the fruit of this moment will bring blessing

or rot on my memory until I grow nothing but bitter.  

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Word Garden Word List ~ Night Road

  

Blueberry Skin or Claw

I’ve been off my meds

so long I can’t tell 

if the bear is real

or I’ve been caught

in the fly trap of a meme.

Every doctor has a pill

with a suicide note,

umm I mean side effects,

so maybe I’m just

dancing in a hallucination.

This forest looks a lot 

like concrete with a Camero

in metal mating season

sniffing a pollen yellow stripe

for a female who thinks speed

is an aphrodisiac.

A scenario keeps spinning

in my head about choosing

between furry Godzilla

and stick shift Romeo.

It feels like I’d be safer with claws

than trapped with the one

who likes to film blueberry skin

with a camera. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Word Garden List ~ Help! A Bear Is Eating Me!

 

When Doves Join Foxes

 

On the skeleton box car of bones and screams

the damned rattle the bars while

the wealthy dance their extravagance

along the tracks of hell.

Bloated on gold and blind to suffering

their pittance of charity doesn’t go as far

as their red leather shoe soles chasing recognition.

It doesn’t matter where I travel through history

the same is the same – The poor suffer

while the moneyed own the key to the wallet. 

When doves join foxes and creatures chase light,

the grave bell no longer scares the bleeding. 

Climbing stairs that only go down I carry a sword

with names of the who’s who of no longer should be.

A slice through a chain, a song of revolution

emboldens the desolate to seek retribution.

In the fire without smoke I watch the meek become bold.

There’s nothing fiercer than nothing left to lose.

I’m no superhero, no goddess demanding praise,

just a woman who wants to remove the rails

from the track so history can’t carry its malevolence

into the future. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Shay's Word Garden ~ Life After Life

He Expected Me to Run

Idris called it textbook random,

little questions framed in generalities,

getting to know someone without

truly getting to know someone.

His pop quiz surveys

weren’t innocent or casual.

He liked cruel for dessert and

feeding piranhas for fun.

Tell the ignorant a lie three times

and they’ll take it as truth.

I became the topic, the target,

of Idris’s petty collection

of insufferable friends.

 

Tired of the shoebox of bs

he thought I couldn’t escape

I clawed him with truth, 

“A peacock will lose its feathers when

Circe comes to claim its tongue.”

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Circe has often been identified as the first witch in Greek mythology.

"The Sorceress," 1913, by John William

Word Garden Word List ~ Thirteen Reasons

 

Everybody's An Object of Something

Harlyn is tattooed with bitter bandages,

vivid scarred blood signatures of bullies

she’s had the ovaries to survive. 

Not many welcome different because it doesn’t fit

the definition of candy-coated pseudo normal. 

In this modern soap ring circus authentic is surreal.

Harlyn doesn’t care if she fits in nor does

she want to be an eyeliner zombie doing Tik Toks 

so her face will trend while her spirit calcifies.  

Everybody’s an object of something.

Usually, it’s attention…Why hide when

someone's always carrying arrows. 

When she gives it much thought, she knows

she’s always under the gaslight.

Funny how the unread believe they own the bookstore.

Copy and paste aren’t shoes she’ll ever wear.

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Word Garden List ~ Save Yourself

 

Wishing for Persephone

In this sludge of wildflowers

I grieve for their petals 

trampled by feet oblivious

to their pain.

Like astronauts from another planet

humans chased the perfect landing

to place a photograph as a flag,

conquerors who never considered

the legacy of their shoes.

I’m sure the valerian craved

their pink and white blossoms

could have sedated the callous plastic sheep

before they ever reached anything green.

Oh, I too love photos, bright images

capturing a countryside rainbowed with spring,

but I look where my feet are going as to not

assault euphoric rebirth with the crush of my boots. 

If I were Persephone, I would pluck

the spotted spurge of armchair busybodies, 

and turn them into fodder for Aphthona. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

 word-garden-word-list-spill-simmer

So Many Plumes in My Portfolio

 Oh, I do love to dress in pink and black,

a tabby witch who has crows and flamingos as familiars.

There’s so many plumes in my portfolio no disconnected

shaman can figure out which part of me holds the reason

I need his sage to drive out my impertinence.

When you’re born female, you’re stalked with you must,

you can’t, you should, you shouldn’t…My skin is much

thicker than the apple peel placed between my teeth.

Silly man, you made me who I am…If you don’t like the view,

you shouldn’t have opened the window. 

©Susie Clevenger 2024

Word Garden Word List ~ Poetry Outloud

Insanity Is a Parking Lot

I roam like a withered cloud,

the white foam of cotton

against blue long gone.

Why isn’t there comfort in madness?

My mind builds a memorial for every demon

that has left its footprint on my chest.

There is no ink in dead flowers, yet I chase

their petals trying to find enough color

to fill a single thought. 

Is sanity a stroke of luck or a creature

some can tame while others are cursed 

with feral.

I wish unfinished would leave bread crumbs

so my brain could be tricked into believing

life had a map.

Insanity is a parking lot where I watch

everyone escape, but me.

Susie Clevenger 2024

Word Garden Word List ~ William Wordsworth