Baggage
I've walked the liminal space between
the past and the present,
unpacking suitcases filled with insecurity
and all the fearful things
I never wanted to witness in the light of day.
It's a brave task
diving into murky bogs of misbelief.
It's difficult to taste
Shadow’s lessons on your tongue
and swallow its nourishment without hesitation.
It's a warrior who willingly sacrifices
cleaved skin to the past's pricking thorns,
only to bleed its chaos into clotting ashes.
©Trisha Leigh Shufelt
Break & Bloom (Available now)
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Bones to Butterflies
Humans cannot face what
the trees understand. Shrouds have no pockets. We
barter our lurid truths when death comes to call
while the trees release their gilded colors in a death
dance like brittle bones breaking into butterflies. Death is
a specular secret written within the veins of each leaf but
only revealed in the silence leaning to listen after the
branches break free of their painful
fears and glide with grace into their metamorphosis.
©Trisha Leigh Shufelt
Unearthing Nevermore-Golden Shovel Poetry inspired by Edgar Allan Poe-Available now
Golden Shovel line-What we call death is but the painful metamorphosis-Edgar Allan Poe- Mesmeric Revelation 1842
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Alice
Alice
falls into the dream—
a dream
splits
the roving stream that seams
the weaving world.
Time has no measure—
an eternity of whenever
sails
and falls
through wherever
she wishes to wander.
She paddles in wonder,
the tea-spilled depths
swirling in saturnine shades of
rust to golden brown—
the depths in which she drowns
until she is found
tripping
the waking world once again.
©Trisha Leigh Shufelt
Sunder the Silence (Available now)
Image-Lissy Elle Laricchia
https://www.amazon.com/Sunder-Silence-Trisha-Leigh-Shufelt/dp/B0CJLCV9ZL
Bedlam Bells
Delusions aside, I wondered how
long it will be before the
echoing emptiness entombed me. Danger
can be a subtle snare in sanity's reeds that sinks
one slowly into madness and,
without warning, swells
into an all-consuming abyss. By
the Gods, I wish I had paid attention to the
warning bells. Now, I am sinking
into shadow. Or,
I have become the
shadow itself, a darkling, swelling
and swallowing every morose metaphor in
its path. I am the
hollow girl, harvested in anger—
a cold iron bell around the neck of
a ghost. I am the abulic aftermath of the
warning bedlam bells.
©Trisha Leigh Shufelt (Unearthing Nevermore)
Read the end word in each line to reveal the golden shovel line from Poe's the Bells.
Edgar Allan Poe-The Bells 1848
https://www.amazon.com/Unearthing-Nevermore-Golden-Shovel-Poetry-Inspired/dp/B0CXMQHL7F
Dark Mother
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Sylvia Plath
Spoken word poetry for Mirror
An Ode to Poe
I sat there
in the sylvan silence; a whisper was
heard. The autumn leaves stirred as a
caw cried out from the throat of a corvid bird. In the dim,
dreary shadows, a figure emerged from the mist.
An unkindness of ravens echoed his name and flew over
the trees that reaved the sky of its steely stars. "All
hail the Master," they cried as feathers fell from the
sky and inky blackness covered the earth
in a cloak that celebrated his triumphant rebirth. And
as the last feather turned into a
silver quill, all the cold, all his earthly ills became warm
and seeded the leafy ground with an infinite glow,
never to diminish, only to grow. His name upon
the lips of every poet in the
land, across the waters,
and within every hourglass sand. Now and
evermore, the Master shall take his flight amid
dreams that loom the crescent night. He shall inspire the
poor and the rich
with his words and rhymes. This October
7th, 1849, weep now or nevermore. He leaves
a legacy that extends to the banks of
every shore. Be still. Let this mystery explore. For the
winds wish him well, as do every forest
creature who dwells within the ancient realms. A
bell rings within the deep well of his resonant rainbow
ridge—a sepulcher from
which his words still live, and ravens fly between the
heavenly firmament
and death's darkened edge. He had
come and departed solemn just as surely
as the last dew-drop Autumn leaf had fallen.
Morella 1835/
The Raven 1845
An Ode to Poe ©Trisha Leigh Shufelt
Unearthing Nevermore-Golden Shovel poetry inspired by Edgar Allan Poe ©Trisha Leigh Shufelt
Available now on Amzn.
On a capricious night
On a capricious night
life lacks background music
I count the clock
a metronome
tock-ticks instead of tick-tocks
ablaut reduplication runs amuck
a curious linguistic trick
my brain should flip-flop
like King-Kong or
hickory-dickory dock
but each tock
louder than the last tick
flicks an incessant ideation
like a magic trick
ignites a candle wick
and coaxes a quick trip
inside a surrealistic canvas
across dark corridors
covered in milk box faces
cloaked in smoke
my clumsy fingers
caress cracked glass cloches
reflecting
green shag carpets
leading to
locked coffers lacking keys
where Christmas cards
foxing with age
cushion packed collectibles
curious
I rush past rusty rooms
of restless sleep
where thoughts seep
in over-steeped tea
that sours by the hour
I rise and surmise
attempts to still
this endless ride
is as pointless
as a dog chasing its tale
as relentless as
the wind whistling outside
as limitless as
the trees whose shadows stretch
like the hands of the living clock
a soundtrack strangling my senses
no longer a slow and steady tock,
but a ceaseless ticking vivace.
©Trisha Leigh Shufelt
Spill the Tea Poetry 