Vanity Hounds Me

 

Photo by Brooke Shaden

 

“Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually.
 But I'm not ready for that yet.” ― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

 A mirror doesn’t accuse. 
It is I who cuts myself
into a thousand miseries.

I am pottery painted
by every word I pull
through the glass.

An aged vessel, I search for flaws,
dividing myself by scars, and
yesterday’s photos…
a seeker of lost ignoring found.

Gratitude prods me to look
deeper than vanity’s gnawing hound,
but I’m too human to not wish
the calendar wasn’t turning me
into a dried apple. 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

The Sunday Muse #233

Dandelion Saviors for the Starry Eyed

 

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

Shay's Word Garden List ~ Ric Masten

 

The Stinging Inside Out of Newspaper Eyes

 

I didn’t think fear

had a rosary, but 

it pearls its dark prayers

across my skull leaving

grooves of cat scratch voices.

Insanity’s camera pours

its coffee-stained images

into my newspaper eyes

forcing me to read the

unseen as reality.

Pulled into the stinging inside out

I plead with the voices in my head

to not venture beyond my tongue,

to not build houses in my throat

of rotten words or toss baseballs

stitched with the foul thread of my delusions.

I’m a foreigner without a passport to normal,

a buzz kill’s humpty dumpty glued into broken,

workmen’s failed attempt to build on

rain puddle sand a chair that can hold

the weight of all the “me’s” that roam

the birdcage bus in my head

where everything enters, but nothing escapes. 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

It's that time of year when October pulls me through dark ink. 

Thank you Shay for your word list!

Shay's Word Garden List ~ Dave Kelly

Banging Cup of Helter Skelter

 

“Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.” – Blaise Pascal

 Insanity is a cell,
a blind man’s bars
where thoughts
play with freedom,
but a key doesn’t fit the lock.

Who am I if not, where’s beyond
if a cage holds what it won’t free?
Days wither on the throat of a scream.
I hear what can’t be seen…See what can’t be heard.

Climbing out in the center of falling in
I play a black chessboard dressed
as a blood thorn queen.

Helter skelter, neither here nor there,
what falls rarely finds up.
Riddles and swirls, answers that can’t find questions.
I’m there but not here…Gone but never leave.

I’m a ghost that breathes, skeleton without bones,
a mind that searches, a searcher who never finds.
I fish for reality without bait or hook. 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

The Sunday Muse #227

Symbols and Such

 

In the bizarre ritual

of dividing self

between reality

and gingerbread expectations

of love, I walk the island 

of my watch trusting

a vase of ecstasies 

filled with lilacs and peonies

(symbols and such)

will woo romance

to my door before time

robs them of their blush.

With all the romanticizing of romantic

there must be a tall, handsome (malleable)

male roaming his soul to find words

to proclaim (feebly) of his heart’s loyalty

to all things me.

Surely the astigmatism of a besotted eye

would find me so irresistible my kitchen 

of herbs and bones would not offend.

There are islands of letters I’ve collected

from the fallible inklings of masculine absurd

who think their bodies are Eve’s wonderland,

a place where submission would be my blessing.

Of course, no man is an island. 

He prefers a skulk where he can

thump and bluster he has the 

prowess to own any vixen he desires.

Oh, who would believe I’m a fainting goat

lying prone in dreams of Prince Charming.

Springes line my sidewalk to trap egos

silly enough to think a wink and muscle flex

are enough to reduce me to shivers of surrender.

I am a black widow of various talents who knows

how to protect her web from the dissection 

of her spirit to accept less to parade a perception of more.

©Susie Clevenger 2022

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Amy Lowell

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