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 /Sunday Muse #226

Earthweal Open Link Weekend #134

The chinaberry tree symbolizes the balance between good and evil. It inspires us to find the right balance in life.

Black and Blue

 

I am more than a dress,
a blues song you clothe me in
so your darkness won’t feel
as heavy as your tongue.
 
Where there’s bone there’s wings.
I can fly a sky of notes you can’t write
because freedom is a place in me
you can’t find.
 
Will and weather, cloud and feather,
what you think you hold isn’t even in your hands.
This black and blue bird is a sister of crows.
When the spirit says go, a murder will grow.
 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

The Sunday Muse #224

From My Throne of Abandoned

 

“She says she glories in being abandoned”

― J. M. Barrie

 I am the once was,

the seat of forgotten

where lost dreams

are mice infested memories.

 

In my bones questions

pierce the eyes of those

brazen enough to walk

the spine of my decay.

 

From my urban throne

of abandoned the voices

of my remains crawl faded

wallpaper into the ear of fear

or into imagination that thinks

it can speak my unknown tongue.

 

My days tick toward an eraser,

urban lust to claim what it can never own.

When  my heart is the carrion eaten

by steel jaws, my dust delivered to

a toxic grave, my spirit will remain

where it was first planted.

I’ll be the dandelion in rosy,

the chill no one can explain.

 

 ©Susie Clevenger 2022

The Sunday Muse #220

I was feeing gothic today.

 

 

Black Crow of the Highest Disorder

 

Her eyes are ice water and hell.

a devil’s handmaid dressed in her

bleakest Sunday best to pass judgement

as if it was holy sacrament.

 

A black crow of the highest disorder.

she carry’s her book of gossip straight

to the altar and opens her tongue

to foul every prayer.

 

It is what it is, but never should be.

A thousand hymns can’t be unsung

or sermons lead when there’s no reason to follow.

Her tar feathers can’t teach anyone how to fly.

 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

The Sunday Muse #214

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

 Shay's Word Garden Word List #7

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.

What the Ink Sees

 

Flying Outside the Wire

Freedom is an oily key,

a dangerous walk across

the ear of sanity searching

for the sound of your own breath.

 

Programmed by wire boundaries,

and wingspan of hell’s generosity

I am a wildling crow learning to fly

a sky that doesn’t stink of vengeance.

©Susie Clevenger 2021

Testing a Theory

 

Dressed to the nines,

the tail and spur of it,

I prance vanity’s sidewalk

testing the cracks in pavement

to see if my shadow will choose

to add or subtract.

 

Dear god, it is annoying

 to have fate boast

 it own’s the calculator.

©Susie Clevenger 2021

Flying Without an Airbrush

 

Stop staring!

I’ve been in enough kettles

to know the price of fire.

 

While you whine and photoshop

I’m flying where I choose

without the weight of airbrushing

myself into fiction.

©Susie Clevenger 2021

The Sunday Muse #191

River of Eyes

“Bone by bone, hair by hair, Wild Woman comes back. Through night dreams, through events, half understood, and half remembered...” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

With the moon hanging from a question mark,

and the wolf drinking from a river of eyes,

I walk the shore of shadows searching for answers

among star shells at my feet.

 

Christened with the name Impatient

by Pew Huggers of the Worst Intent,

I am tongue slapped with I don’t

have enough faith if I keep dropping why

into the offering plate of affliction.  

 

Caught in a murder of crowing

I pace in circles trying to find my escape.

 

In the pfft and hiss of judgement’s posturing

the wolf howls and then speaks,

“A clock doesn’t hear, nor a calendar predict.

There are questions that will always question.

Answers you wish to never know.

Understand the flame of human will only

burn as bright as the one who strikes the match.” 

©Susie Clevenger 2021

The Sunday Muse #189