The Sound of Ink

  Dressed for Consequences There is no romance in dread. It is a decayed ballroom where hell makes you dance the razor edge of making the wrong choice. ©Susie Clevenger 2022 Scars Uprising   In her garden of glass she was bold enough to grow among wounds. ©Susie Clevenger 2022 Spell of Paint   Art will find color in the deepest gray, find a path where night suffers without stars.   A paintbrush is the sorcerer’s wand casting its spell across canvas.   ©Susie Clevenger 2022

  Time feeds empty with growls and cardboard beggar notes littering sidewalks.   In the shadows where gods are deaf addiction writes funeral songs one needle at a time.   At the corner of destitute and gentrification money complains about dandelion homeless marring their patio view.   With huff and demand police arrive as badged gardeners to weed concrete of souls who are considered blight in the garden of profit prime real estate.  ©Susie Clevenger 2021 Word Crafters Prompt

  Photography by Anne Brigman I’m dressed for clouds. Like a gray wren in pearls I am a monochrome relief pressed into sky arguing with sunlight.   ©Susie Clevenger 2021 Word Crafters Prompt

  In the cavern of whispers where sea and sand roam waves write love notes on abalone, and wait for dreamers wooed by the music of poetry to surrender to its seduction. ©Susie Clevenger 2021

  There’s something about wings that makes me wish I had them.   Defying gravity to feel the sky without having to carry passengers complaining about the view is a bit of magic I’d like to own.   Oh, the pleasure of being a bird to drop an exclamation point on a gossipy neighbor who muddies the Zen of a sunny Tuesday would be a mulberry mission of delight.   If a wish was a feather, I’d wish to be a robin. I could arrive to announce winter has been shown the door and gray landscape must surrender to the reign of wildflowers.   Wait! Perhaps I should wish to be a crow, silence my introvert, join a flock, be inquisitive, problem solve with a wink of mischievous, write my opinions in feather quills and inky throat.   Yes, there’s something, endless somethings about wings that has me yearning to not feel the weight of finding my way through the hypercritical maze of selfish humans.       ©Susie Clevenger 2021         ...

  Abandoned on the edge of the moon, the silent space where my prayers pace the eye of God begging for an audience, I wonder if it’s brave to hope for rescue or trust I can rebuild myself from the broken glass that carried me here.   ©Susie Clevenger 2021

  Night burns its lamp moon across my skin where light seeks a vein.   High on twilight I roam shadows until monsters no longer dance in my head.   In the tree above me I hear a nightingale sing its heart into the wind.   Companions of melancholy we watch stars climb closer to the sun and wait for morning to erase our silhouettes.  ©Susie Clevenger 2021