Twins of Division

 

The religion of politics

and the politics of religion

are twins of division.

Both need money, prejudice,

demons created from difference,

and a superiority complex

they own the keys to the kingdom.

Pay a tax … Pay a tithe

Elections are bought …

Pastors need a bigger salary.

Politicians don’t want history taught.

Preachers want complete agreement.

Go tell it on the mountain

they both are at war with peace.

©Susie Clevenger 2026

This Poem is Hope

 

This poem is hope

in rockets’ red glare,

prayers rising through flames.

This poem is unity

where men plant war,

empathy in the cacophony

of sermons that call it sin.

This poem is human,

the color red, hands

that lift, feet that

walk the path of courage,

resilience in the blindness of discord.

This poem is the audacity of hope

This poem is empathy. 

This poem is unity in a world hungry for war. 

©Susie Clevenger 2026

What's Going On? - This Poem

Ghosted by Poetry

Words have been

quiet in me.

Not all words,

anger always

finds its voice.

It stomps 

on my brain

hoping to reach

my tongue.

Poetry has

ghosted me.

I beg for text

a smiling word,

a heart that 

doesn’t bleed,

but my pen has

found another poet.

Wars, billionaires,

death, hunger…

Are there any

new verses

to describe it?

©Susie Clevenger 2026

 

Stolen

little girls - 

old men's hands - 

yesterday was barbie 

dolls in boxes

today is childhood

 buried beneath

the dollar grin of hell

school picture dresses - 

devil's behind the camera

enough evidence 

to paper a prison - 

but money has its fist 

in the mouth of truth

© susie clevenger

Another Street in America

 

Sunday’s quiet
was broken by
six bullets, and fear.

Bang
Bang
Bang
Bang
    Bang…

Bang

My husband and I
held our breath,
waited for a scream,
but were smothered in silence.

Anxiously we walked 
to the door, feared what
might appear through 
the pretty glass of suburbia.

People were coming
through open doors
staring toward the west.

Hypnotized by questions
we moved as one until
we arrived at a corner home.

A house where Christmas
had been returned to the attic
was now rattled by a man
outside its walls who’d decided
to end peace with a gun. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

This happened across the street from my house. 

A young man backed up to our neighbor's 

garage door, and shot six times at a car

that was driving down our street.

We don't know the who or why of it.

We don't know if the person in the car

was hit by a bullet. Thankfully it was a cold

day in our neighborhood so no one was outside.

Weathering Me

Late November feels like summer

in the Texas south where heat

won’t let go of the thermometer

leaving weathermen reading tea leaves

trying to see if next week will predict a sweater. 

Outside my window there’s green grass,

a lone butterfly, and tiny bees who

still feed on heather that continues to bloom.

I can’t put summer clothes away because

Thanksgiving’s warmth won’t stare into

a crystal ball to tell me if Christmas 

will boil or spill ice on tree limbs.

I confess my holiday spirit has yet to arrive.

It’s stuck somewhere on Amazon with an

empty cart waiting for faux holiday cheer. 

Oh, my mood is a Grinch, my mind Stephen King

raking adjectives into piles, and my pen is

Charles Dickens before he sent Scrooge his first ghost. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

 

Gin and Keats

He whispered

in my ear

as I was sleeping,

“Tomorrow is already

in its sunrise somewhere.

You’re dreaming through

a thousand hellos while

yesterday still sits on

your eyelashes.”

I wish I could have heard it.

He’s always a poet when

there’s gin on the table.

Last night I was too tired

to wait until the bottle

was empty to hear a kind word.

In the morning quiet of alone

I found his journal, the back of

a grocery receipt, sitting next

to the coffee pot.

Somewhere in the fiction 

there’s truth…Maybe someday

he’ll speak words to me,

and not be Keats straining

poems through a shot glass. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

I just followed my muse.

A phrase here or there will

lead me to a poem.

 

Stones of Virginia

 Were the stones
Virginia Woolf filled
her pockets with chosen
or just convenient?

She walked years
of sun and moon,
but couldn’t find light.

It is lonely in madness.
It is a cell that doesn’t
have a key or enough
food to feed its skeleton.

Peace teases with hope
while mania plays with matches.

Toxic positivity hammers
obsidian melancholy ignoring
pain should have its voice,
and not turned into knives
from smiling everything is sunny.

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Clinging to Moss

 How much can I take
is always answered with more.

Sunny is hard to find in pain.
Hope swims my tears,
and darkness stalks light.

I’m getting through this journey
on weaker legs as silence grows
wild in the corners of each room.

It’s hard to stay resilient when
I am walking tundra clinging
to moss and fighting cold wind.

Honesty isn’t always welcomed,
but I’ve learned to validate my
depression because denial uproots strength.

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Fifteenth Floor

I’m leashed to a pole

that buzzes and gasps

its needle tube into my arm.

Time means nothing 

when there are no shadows,

only neon watchkeepers

that pry my eyes open

with a flip of a switch. 

I’m asked, “Do you know

where you are?…Name three

things in the room…What

is the sentence you said you’d

remember?…Write it down.

I order food, but it’s not food.

It was warm somewhere in the kitchen,

but at the lifting of a lid by my bedside.

It is cold, foul, and my stomach rebels.

You have a fever. Here’s a Tylenol.

Do you still know who you are?

An eraser board tells me it’s a new day.

Maybe today I will go where they can

get me strong enough to walk again.

There is so much waiting.

I ride the waves of minutes

and masked faces.

It’s noon, I think…I still know my name.

I remember the sentence I chose

to repeat a week ago and can still write it.

The eraser board black inks it is Friday.

My doctor tells me I’m doing well.

Why am I mourning there are no shadows?

©Susie Clevenger 2025

I wrote this about my husband who is going through CAR T Cell Therapy for Multi Myeloma. The questions and writing are to check for neurological side effects. He's been experiencing some fevers and a lot of brain fog which can happen with the treatment. He's been in that room for two weeks now. Who wouldn't be confused?

 

A Rib and August

 August is filled

with dead

words from 

a narcissist.

A curled tongue

of “I am” brags

accomplishment

without knowing

how to spell it.

How did

breathing

failure 

ever rise

above

his bloat?

I suppose the worst

in him gave freedom

to spill the worst in others.

If it wasn’t so dangerous,

I could find humor in

holders of tissue paper books

and pulpit men not understanding

they’ve surrendered leading to following.

I 

enjoy

being 

a

thorn

when

so 

many 

think

I’m

only

a 

rib. 

 

Susie Clevenger 2025

Needles Without Ink

 

Saturday opens

its book of pain.

I’m tired of reading

the same story.

I search for an ink pen

to write a new chapter.

All I find is needles

searching for a vein.

©Susie Clevenger 2025

The Fading Yesterday Me

I don’t know the yesterday me.

She walked paths of bubble gum dreams

wearing skirts too short for crosses to bear.

I still have long hair, but gray has invaded

golden blond, and I look more hag than innocent.

Oh, my younger me tries to break the 

shadow door, but the creaking bone chain

that holds the key doesn't like to rattle history.

I live in the moment…Doesn’t that sound enlightened?

It’s not. I’m practical because my tomorrows are shrinking.

The yesterday me thought she knew everything.

Today I’m always on a hunt for my phone,

because it holds lists of what I’m sure to forget.

©Susie Clevenger 2025

You can also read it Here at Hello Poetry

I Won’t Wear His Sin

He would have me wear a crown

designed by misogyny to bear witness

I am his queen of the kitchen.

I did not taste an apple to wear an apron

or have my eyes opened to be blinded

by a book of submission. 

It is not a sin to rebel against tyranny.

Knowledge of my feminine freedom

is the power a weak man fears. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

 

Chain Your Heart to a Lamp

Dead carnations sing in the closet.

Dogs chew innocence from a shelf.

Sleeping lies are never quiet.

Voices in your head are very real.

Tigers’ eyes always see

when you think you’re dreaming blind.

Chain your heart to a lamp

so you can't blame darkness when you fall.

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Incidents Around the House

 

Madman Walking Aspirin

 

He’s a madman walking aspirin

as if he wasn’t the god of pain.

His drooling dementia spills

from his fingertips in the wee hours

of American insomnia onto a keyboard

that smells like ignorance. 

He touts he knows more than everyone

while important anyones hide war plans

to prevent targets from knowing the

when, where and how. 

The deflection celebrity is the star of abuse,

the bottom of the barrel, the toad who

will never be prince, but to some he’s

Orange Jesus who can turn their world white. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ The Catcher In The Rye

Two Elephants From One List

Elephants and Madness

I won’t apologize for

addressing the elephant

in the room.

In all the begats I chewed through in the book

of misogyny I never found a woman who was

assigned any title above a breeding cow or criminal

with curves that forced men to think with their genitals.

In the time of erasers, I threaten masculinity 

by my rashness to denounce the red apron

of submission and speak in full sentences

that indicate I have read books banned as feminist. 

My madness is mine…It grows and prospers…

I come from a river of poets who swim

in dreams, ink rafts from visions, and aren’t

afraid they’ll drown if rejection pulls them into rapids.

©Susie Clevenger 2025

--------------------------------------------------

Elephants With Forks

Elephants climb into a rowboat

as if they won’t drown from

the weight of their ambiguity.

Oh, they don’t fool me.

I’ve read a history book,

ate from a liar’s wooden spoon,

and dressed in wool spun from a pulpit.

It is hard to admit I fell for the begats,

trekked through Leviticus, and waded

through revivals carrying coins to lay

at the feet of manipulators.

I’m surprised I survived my chain

of not worthy with any faith, but

once I got off the roller coaster

of the bible brand of the south, I was

bold enough to journey to healing. 

There’s so many why’s in me and yet

there are a few answers why I drank

from a cup that took me where

I should never have gone.

Two little girls, an empty cupboard,

and a promise there would be food

if my husband and I followed

the fork without questioning 

where it led. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Disclaimer: These poems are written from my experience

as a Southern Baptist for over twenty years. Everyone has the right

to their religion and faith or the right to have neither. I am a survivor

of indoctrination and the depression that came with it. 

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Anne Sexton

 

From the Book of Louise

Have you ever landed in a flock

of eggshell people, the thin skinned

beretta tongued who love to see you bleed,

but don’t want you to leave a scratch

on their egos with truth?

They’re all into their star spangles, white

tabernacles, and Grinch charming.

Peacocks levitated on red, white, and blue

thinking they’re so holy you must walk

a gangplank if you call them out for their hypocrisy.

Well, I’m way past the egg minuet, and

have started clogging when cornered 

by a schoolmarm smirk spill of people

who like to make the water boil, but

don’t want to swim in the heat. 

I’m all into avoiding, keeping my peace with distance,

but when devils come to my doorstep, I’ll stomp a few shells. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Louise: Part 3

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Still Life With Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl

 

Don't Corner a Poet

It’s just me, out of my mind

sipping on helium, pondering

why a tuna fish sandwich

is on a vegan menu, and how

to install a security system on

a dollhouse without a door

or glass on the windows.

I’m not pretty when I’m backed

in a corner, but hey, there are

those who don’t listen when

I say my vocabulary has teeth. 

There aren’t any caution signs

on a poet … They can hop from

a flower poem to beneath an umbraculum

so dark with honesty a reader will

seek a priest even if they’re not catholic. 

So if you don’t have a tornado shelter,

don’t create the storm … I’m not pretty

when backed in a corner, and not timid

about writing with my teeth. 

  

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Four - legged - girl

 

Not Much Gets Past Louise

 

He makes me as comfortable

as a crow sipping gin in a guillotine.

I’ve never been moonstruck enough

to get blushed cheeks when a snake

calls me Sugar.

That wolf in Wranglers is more

like a piece of gum in the bottom

of my purse than the Romeo

in a mirror he sees with that comb over.

Now I’m not one to judge a man

who’s been saying goodbye to his hair,

but when he comes with a Bible

and thinks every woman is born

to submit, I’ll put on a black robe

and sentence him to leave. 

This isn’t the first time he tried

to Genesis me at my cash register.

Hell, most every Tuesday night

he slaps down a six pack of Bud Light

on the counter along with an apple.

Wal-Mart expects me to be polite

so I keep that smile on my teeth,

take his money, but not his crap.

I politely inquire, “Brother Don,

does your congregation know

you like to take a bottle to visitation?

©Susie Clevenger 2025

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Calling a Wolf a Wolf