Emphasis of NO

 "I often question my sanity. Occasionally, it replies."
- Darynda Jones.

In the weedy, overgrown
garden of my mind lucid
stomps its foot like an impatient child,
and demands I pluck dandelions
from the edge of my teeth
to at least form a sentence 
of more than one syllable.

I feel saying no doesn’t demand
adjectives, excuses, or explanation.
There isn’t an obscure essay buried
in my throat filled with paragraphs
of reasoning…just two letters, 
a verbal stop sign, NO.

The blackbird in me, dare I say Raven,
prefers the watcher’s perch to the
chattery bluster of raking my thoughts
to reassure sanity I haven’t slipped 
into my dotage.

So, what if I appear to be a faded yellow magnolia.
Consider the flower’s pod that appears to be
a mere dried cone, but inside is bright blooded
with red berries…I’m not everything I think
nor everything one sees.

Rather than hold court in my own head
arguing there is more than enough evidence
I have not lost my mind, I just address the
pestering interrogation with my sworn
testimony of truth, “No.” 

Susie Clevenger 2023

Word Garden Word List ~ William Wordsworth

Not Every Moon Carries Salvation

 

Widows of the moon dance

their disjointed steps across

the eye of night hoping 

to lure mortal flesh to test

the maze of eternity.

In lace cuffs stitched with ice

and gray wind they turn cartwheels

across window ledges leaving notes

only nightmares can decipher.

Dreamers seasick with visions

roam their own imaginations

trying to escape what daylight

planted in their irises, and words

that are keys that never open doors.

Pale sisters of bladed slivers of light,

they wander the impatient breath

of 3:00 a.m. muting tongues that

pray for deliverance. 

©Susie Clevenger 2023

Word Garden Word List--Keith Reid

Sharp Edge of the Spoon

 

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

E. M. Forster

There was no spoon feeding life to me,

gentle nibbles from a mind set on

sugar coating there would be more

days of blackberry thorned hours than sweet pudding.

How does one speak of horror 

to a child who trusts fairytales

grow reality from glittered imaginations?

I learned so very young monsters 

don’t leave when a storybook presses

them between its pages…They stalk you

at dinner tables, in empty rooms,

within the sound of voices oblivious

to screams trapped in the cage of your throat.

In the oddity of breathing terror circumstances turned

me comedian, precocious child full of questions,

a crybaby at scratches while silent in the clutches

of a demon.

In the etiquette of spoons never judge

the one who doesn’t hold it correctly. 

She may be a survivor who’d rather

eat the soup than explain why she

doesn’t have an affinity for shallow silver.

©Susie Clevenger 2022

The Sunday Muse #240

Chalk Lines in Lace

 

Her wedding feels like chalk lines

marking the demise of freedom.

Love is blind until all the pretty lace

expectations get torn into dreamer’s compost.

 

Conflated vanilla odes written about

‘til death do us part’ never mention

death can come with its coffin while

the heart still beats, or the spirit can starve

on the gruel of monotony.

 

Candor bites its tongue, worries words

into origami butterflies when it is the lone

voice of reason in the hymn notes of glitter.

 

Like an induced birth piano keys urge

her heels to walk an aisle she questions,

yet fears to deny because a day of assumptions

is so beautifully candlelit she doesn’t want to be its failure.

 

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”

― Oscar Wilde

 

 ©Susie Clevenger 2022

Shay's Word Garden Word List--Paige Ackerson-Kiely

The Sunday Muse #238

 

 

Angel of Sidon

 

She wears red, a match waiting
for the right kindling to turn
a cold room into a bonfire of heathens.

A wink, a blush, plump lips walking
the fine line between the blank spaces
of a hell fire sermon, she is the Jezebel
the pious curse, and the bold wanton
they never take to confession.

With splashes of jasmine holy water
she baptizes those strong enough
to relish their weakness, and teases
eyes to admit their obsession with curves.

While the choir sings blindly of light
they can’t feel, she collects the tarnished
notes of their hypocrisy, and rewrites
the blood song into Eve’s freedom from Eden.

©Susie Clevenger 2022

Friday Writings #55: Bleeding Hearts

A Fool’s Catalogue of Violets

Bitter violets rest in their purple sulking,

false blooms hoodwinking fools their pressed petals

will canonize lost lovers as priests of the heart.

Dead bookmarks lie in my journals in crumbled

graveyards of inane longing…a fool’s garden planted

amongst the inked witness to my instability. 

How does one become blind to devils yet dissect

the most tender by listing flaws as if beauty of the flesh

was the gold standard by which to judge a soul.

Were I a sin eater I would be fat on my own misjudgments.

Nonsense argues a kiss can turn a toad into a prince…

What dignity is there in bargaining with fairytales?

I am an assassin, a rusted knife cutting spirits

into black valentines because I cannot bend

the strong into my weakness.

Romance, I hunger more for the idea than the truth

a candle only gives light when there is a flame.

Fantasy has no power to reincarnate reality from ashes. 

©Susie Clevenger 2022

Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Stephen Crane

This poem was inspired by Shay's word list and the occassional junk food novels I consume. 

Silk Tongue Order of Discord

 

She is queen bitch,

a dark storyteller who

plucks words from

a coffee-stained alphabet

that makes pretty sound

like it has fangs and crows are

lullaby saints of midnight cradles.

A poised midwife of birthing mordacity

she sings mockingbird hymns

to narcissists whose self-absorption

has no skill in the discernment of mockery.

Sister Eris, of the Silk Tongue Order of Discord,

has a pharmacy of ironic elixirs, drivel of headlines,

and bombastic bloat, to anethestize sheep

so they will remain oblivious their promised future

is being built from recycled failure of the past.

©Susie Clevenger 2022

Shay's Word Garden List ~ Susie Clevenger