Susie Clevenger's Blog

dead tree limbspeer into a lake mirrorhoping for one more spring
gray clouds smudgethe water with prayer
©Susie Clevenger 2025
What's Going On? ~ Capturing an Image

 

The space betweenme and the mirrorholds assumptions,questions, a palette of colors that promisethey can paint awaymy imperfections. 
In the vanity of brushestime sings of a muchyounger me, but the mirror is patient as it waits for myeyes to look intoits silver frame of reality.
In the rawness of morningwhen I look into the mirrorI see my dad, my mother’sbluntness, my daughter who now travels across the moon.
I am growing more graciouswith the woman in the mirror.I will never grow younger,but I can grow bolder.
There’s no expiration dateon a dream or a day thereisn’t something to learn.
Mirror, I don’t seek you asoften as I once did…I nowspend my time trying to be a person who reflectsthe spirit of the best in me. 

©Susie Clevenger 2025
What's Going On? ~ Mirrors

 

Tonight, the moon is dressedin lavender shadows, andrhinestone starlight.
A showgirl dancing ona windowsill, she temptsa dreamer to shed inhibitions. 
There’s no yesterdayor tomorrow at midnight.Luna’s wink through the curtainis a kiss without regrets. 
©Susie Clevenger 2025

 

In my desk drawerare broken things,bits of what were,hopes of what could be.
It’s a journal without wordswhere a red paper clipholds nothing together,and a tape measurenever reached the lengthof a bookshelf.
Tucked in a corneris a faded love letter from my husband,a few words about roses, andhow beautiful I was at seventeen.  
Sticky notes lay scatteredin confetti colors of green,pink, yellow, and bluewaiting for ink insteadof just taking up space.
I should clean it out…send most of it to a waste basket,but not every treasure box holds gold.
It could be my cluttered drawerfilled with broken things, the archaeological site of a dreamerwith a catalogue of stories to tell. 
©Susie Clevenger 2025
You can find this poem here at Hello Poetry also.

 

I am pale flesh,red heart, and dreamsbalancing on reality.
There are days my boneswalk me beyond a horizonof stars and stripes war,the book of religion, andinsanity packaged as truth.
Yet, there are days I sitin a plastic chair wonderingif I am breathing or just a statuewith iPhone hands and hollow skull.
I struggle to own my wordsin the mine camp of Algorithms pouring everything I write or sayinto the clutch of Artificial Intelligence.
Every day I pinch myself to feel pain,embrace tears that prove I still have empathy,and place myself in another’s shoesso I don’t become so callous I ignore suffering.
I am human trying to sustain my humanity.
©Susie Clevenger 2025
What's Going On? ~ Being Human

 

Where is peace in this cigarette worldof light a bomb, and smoke a nation?
Fingers doom scroll until minds go blind,and eyes flicker as apocalyptic night lights.
I often find myself between hell and moonlight.Honesty stalks me with my own addictionto the thing in my hand that I try to denyis the cheerleader of chaos.
Like an ink pen hungry for confessionI journal pain, exclaim anger, and cryuntil pages are smudges even I can’t read.
I’m not a tree, but I’m a daughter of earth.I’ve watched leaves dance, green grow brighterwhen lashed by wind and assaulted by rain,so the forest is where I run when humansstrip the flesh from my smile.
In the shade of an oak’s generosity, the potpourri of pineI am quiet, hold every why inside my chest, and letwonder dance through my spirit, open my brokenness to joy and listen to the voice of limbs. 
In the calm of my own heartbeat, I feel my ancestors,human, and woody roots, sing light still comeswhen you’ve burnt every candle. 
©Susie Clevenger 2025
What's Going On? ~ Yearning For Peace

 

She roams wild nightin watercolors paintedwith the brush of autumn’s chill.
He doesn’t know her name…Where she lives…Or if she is even real.She is a ghost beyond his curtainsthat makes him blush likea fourteen-year-old boy.
He’s not sure why he chose to buya house with land the size of a churchparking lot, but if hell has a Bible,it hoodwinked him into weakness. 
Everything around him had been abandoned,turned to rust and rot, and broken windowsthat winked every time he traveled past themto reach his driveway haunted with silhouettesof tree limbs pasted on the pavement by the moon. 
It was early October when he first sawthe ethereal beauty walking among thefrost bitten roses of his garden. 
She appeared to be talking to an owlwho sat immobile on a fence postso enraptured it didn’t budge whenhe opened the back door. 
Startled like a skittish kitten, sheescaped into the shadows, and nowooing of his voice could lureher from her seclusion.
He stood at his window for weekswaiting for night to drink the lastwine of sunset, hoping, praying as if he were a newborn convert climbingout of baptismal water, she’d return. 
Then on the last night before winterwould break morning’s horizon shewalked out of the ebony to standbeneath a lantern he’d placed on a post as if it were a lighthouseto bring a ship safely to the shore. 
He watched her standing, staringback at him wearing a dressso sheer he could see the pink of her flesh flirting from beneath it.
He tried to hold the stare, not blink,but he couldn’t stop his eyes from closing.In that tiniest eyelash of time, she disappeared.
A hundred questions wrestled with his sanity.She’s real...She’s not real…She’s real…He concluded it didn’t matter. After alllove was insanity, a risking of a heart notknowing if it can remain whole. 
He wasn’t sure if tomorrow winterwould steal her from him or she was a waif of Autumn who wouldreturn when the oak dipped leaves in orange. 
What he knew, if she was real, he wouldn’twant to tame her. She had awakened the wild,the fragile, the bold in him. Love had brought freedom. 
©Susie Clevenger 2025
Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Bittersweet

 

This poem is an April day without sun.This poem is two hummingbirds huddled in a rose.This poem is rain turning grass into emerald sparkles.
This poem is walking water puddles,and giggles echoing in the street.This poem is a girl holding an umbrellabelieving she is the princess of wind.This poem is an April day without sun.
This poem is moments that pass too quickly, photographs from newborn to graduation.This poem is storms, tears, broken hearts, a friendwho sits with you while you fall apart.This poem is two hummingbirds huddled in a rose.
This poem is a day with gray cloudsa spirit trusting she’ll find the rainbow.This poem is a girl becoming a woman, green eyes that hold memories, singing when there’s pain.This poem is rain turning grass into emerald sparkles.
This poem is days without sun.This poem is a friend in a storm.This poem is tears with emerald sparkles.   

©Susie Clevenger 2025
What's Going On? ~ Poetry Is...

NaPoWrMo Day 24
 

 

There is a madness to loveso compelling words chase itto try and explain whytenderness can growin a heart turned to stone.
Few seek to become vulnerable,yet the spirit will open as orchid petalswhen love finds the tiniest space of entry.
Umbrellas held so tightly to protecta soul from another storm of rejectionwilt beneath the summer flush of attraction.
The rebirth of a heart welcomes fragile,the risk of breaking, because to feellove again is a horizon void of despair. 
©Susie Clevenger 2025
NaPoWrMo  Day 23
Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Tenderness

Dear Moon,
At night your face

is my comfort,

nightlight, prayer candle.

In those last moments

before I dream, you

are the compass

of my imagination.

You are in the palm

of my hands, a verse

in my poetry.

Thank you is not enough,

but it is all I have.

With Humbleness,

A fragile Poet

©Susie Clevenger 2025

NaPoWriMo Day 20