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
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Dandelion Saviors for the Starry Eyed
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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
Saturday, September 3, 2022
Fighting for Balance
Mother Earth clings
to the throat of a chinaberry
praying she has enough hope
to escape the malevolence of humans.
Forced into a dying cocoon
she summons lightening
to ignite the wings of a phoenix
to bring resurrection from
the wreckage of failed dominion.
Lessons never learned; trust never earned
leave acid fingerprints of war and greed
on Mother Earth’s womb while she begs for salvation.
©Susie Clevenger 2022
The chinaberry tree symbolizes the balance between good and evil. It inspires us to find the right balance in life.
Thursday, January 6, 2022
Crawling Across Jell-O
Fear salts wounds
knifed by zealots
who march in factory
parades of cloned
tongued pushers
of caustic positivity.
There are times
the rosy picture
can’t and shouldn’t
remain framed
on a face that
only wants to fall
into the snotty
blabbering of broken.
Strong doesn’t mean
you can always stand,
never doubt, never question.
It is feeling your knees give out,
the taste of bile, weary raging curses
at the rain of agony storming
through your spirit…It is crawling
across Jell-o circumstances
trying to breathe your way
into the next hour.
©Susie Clevenger 2022
It has been a long three weeks of agony with my oldest daughter's new health emergency and it continues. Poetry is my journal, so this is a page from mine.
Friday, April 26, 2019
When Text Meets Metal
My left leg looks
like bloated carrion,
a buzzard’s feast.
Healing from
another’s inattention
takes all my attention.
This morning begins
with standing on agony
and sweet talking my groans
into believing today
will turn a corner to less pain.
Twice my leg has escaped
the knife, limped away
from sever to hold me
upright in my screams.
How far is a shoe?
How impossible is
a shoe lace?
Today my cane and I
have one goal…to reach
my front door.
It is written in present tense, but it comes from my experience of rehabilitating from a car accident in 2006.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Gone
I searched your hollow eyes
for my face, elbowed my way
through memories to see
if even a sliver of mirror
held my reflection.
All I found were wisps of blond hair
and a little girl clinging to the edge
of the drowning pool crying
she’d never learned to swim.
Gone, pulled under by the rapids
of erasing I watched myself disappear.
Mama blinked and spoke, “I can’t find my baby.”
©Susie Clevenger 2019
Alzheimer's Foundation of America
Real Toads ~ Just One Word ~ Sensation
Saturday, June 30, 2018
No Place to Hide
Her eyes can kill, or so they say.
There’s nowhere to hide when her
green eyes collide with secrets
before they can pool on the tongue.
It doesn’t matter how deep in your bones
you bury what shouldn’t be known, Trysis
can see what shouldn’t be sung.
A needle for pain, a knife for lost.
Ponder what you will…Prepare for the cost.
An eye for an eye…She’ll always win.
There’s no shield for where, no protection from when.
©Susie Clevenger 2018
Trysis is a fictional name I conjured from the prompt. :)
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
The I of the Storm
I storm through May
with prayers howling
across my tongue.
There are few answers
to my questions, little solace
in climbing agony.
Weak, but rooted in dandelions,
I gather every seed of resurrection
to lift me out of darkness.
I mortar another brick
on the wall of hope
wondering why rocks crumble
in silent wails.
The dandelion represents healing and the ability to rise above life's challenges.
My daughter, Dawn, definitely possesses the dandelion spirit to thrive in adversity.
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