The Sound of Ink

Everyone ages – If you’re breathing, you’ve already collected some minutes rushing toward years. Time passes – I limp walk into another birthday, hair turning whiter, and attitude growing louder. There’s a limit – on how far I’ll go, and how much I’ll take, when wisdom has more rings than the twig I planted at eighteen. I’m there – The place where patience is thin, time is short, and people pleasing is a dance I no longer wish to attend.  ©Susie Clevenger 2025 NaPoWriMo Day 9  

I can never be all the things I want nor those others wish I could be. I want to read the unwritten, swim seas yet unnamed, and paint Sunday without crosses to bear. If I were a book, the reader would search the last page to try to understand why it was written without punctuation.  ©Susie Clevenger 2025 NaPoWriMo ~ Day 4  

It is in darkness life feels normal. Moon and starlight are old friends who’ve never abandoned me nor judged my lack of faith. They are guardians of my tears, counselors for my bitterness, angels administering hope. In the valley of shadows I can see more than  bleached headlines  of daylight hypocrisy.  Grown from a vine of sapphire, nursed by the galaxy when insomnia’s colic twists me into despair, I am stronger from walking darkness than sunburnt hours of abuse.  ©Susie Clevenger 2025 What's Going On? ~ The Dark  

"In my deepest January when grief  and life sits on my heart stoning joy I let my muse lead me to a smile" ~ S.C. January, dressed in the couture  of hand me downs made from  rusty leaves and autumn’s echo, dances her shadow down the sidewalk not caring if tomorrow the sun finds her naked. While humans moan of summer’s loss, January relishes the cold caress of winter.  There are no demands for shade  or knives pruning the fragile green of freckled stems nursing on her limbs. On the short days of light she is a  gallery for red cardinals, the sassy blue of the jay, and the obsidian sheen of a crow cawing its decree it owns the forest. Relishing she arrives first every new year January jokes with the wind, “Soon the Season of Resolutions will light its candle and humans will snuff it within a week.  ©Susie Clevenger 2025 What's Going On? ~ In Your Deepest January

Art should be served for breakfast, over easy or hard boiled, oatmeal or Danish, or a cup of black coffee poured into an astronaut cup demanding it needs more space. I love the mania of my insomnia is greeted with the weird on my walls, the odd on my shelves, and the bright splash of painted hearts dancing with shadows in my living room.  There is an anthology of quotes placed like easter eggs in frames for me to search when I can’t decide which mood to wear with my pajamas. An early riser wired with ADHD the squirrel cage in my brain attempts to conjure focus, but fails to leave crumbs for me to follow so the helter skelter  of my décor is the storm I find calm in. I enjoy my museum eclectic. It has bits of quiet and fever for attention. My curiosities, creations, and ink run cage free feeding on dust and fingerprints. Yes, art should be served for breakfast. I can sit amongst my gaggle of muses, spoon a teaspoon of cackles in my coffee, and ponder how many flowers it will ta...

Poetry inspired by art piece: Mirror, Mirror by Rosary Unate  used with permission Should I surrender my mirror to the eye of someone else? The truth in the glass is for me to see, to love, to search my spirit for strength, and acknowledge my weaknesses. Beauty is as unique as a fingerprint. I have no wish to bully myself into broken, to destroy my original to be a copy. Should I surrender my mirror? No! My mirror is mine. It is my choice what it reflects.  ©Susie Clevenger 2024