i like to color
fill in the spaces with
my heart-shades of
silvers, or hues
shades of yous
but somewhere
along the way
it got complicated,
became a contest
and the templates changed
now there are
places to color that never
even used to be places!
now people tense up
tighten up and yet another
competition has begun
give me places to color
but not too many
lest I get lost
in the preening self
I just ran across this lovely seasonal song
Reblogged on WordPress.com
Source: IRISH THANKSGIVING
It was a year ago on this day that I read this poem, and I am struck just as strongly today as I was on that day a year ago…by this work of such stunning power and beauty and longing and fulfillment.
Melissa Shaw Smith is a poetess that I respect immensely, and a woman that I aspire to be like. I have never met her, except thru her work, and thru a few emails in which she graciously allowed me to bloviate opinions about her work which in hindsight seems to me a bit like the 2nd grader who can do the times tables up thru her 5s talking to Madam Curie about the wonders of science!!
No matter…Constance, if you think my poetry is any good, just know that it is as if it were a child’s lego creation side by side with El Capitan compared to Melissa’s work.
Mel, if you are reading here…I love this poem with the marrow-bones of my tears.
Much much love…
Charissa
the way you talk, what you write
like acid in my mind dashed
against my face and in my eyes
I wish I could eradicate
the you you have become
and keep in tact the other one.
but you are blood inside my soul
you are my heart drawn and quartered
and existing here within, unbidden
inescapable because you sprang
off from my heart’s heart
from my heart’s heart
which hopes eternal for
the return of spring
and the red songbird to sing
I remember a time
when it seemed
quite obvious to me
that God was
what I wanted.
God-shaped vacuums
hearts restless til
they rest in God
the Holy God of faith.
But did I dare to sit
before this God
without this mask
(the one I didn’t know I wore)
is this longing
in and of itself
an assurance
of God’s presence?
What would longing be
if it were not?
Dressed in red
and wrapped in white
I wait in warmth,
wait in splendour
for the high and shivery
delight of your approaching
presence, in your silver
laughter, in your ringing
song that echoes off the stones
and reaches here inside
these ermine furs
so soft.
Uncanny, peculiar,
uncomfortably strange,
I tend my fires and tell my story…
the story of
this quirky girl
overly-intelligent
and stuck in time
that is not time, so
unreconciled to time
so bound up in its realm.
I am strapped there
on Your wrist (watch)
a condor in a cage
passing from quick present
to some furious future
and thus so fast becoming
dim, and dark, and past
and wondering if I am
ever? present?
ever a moment?
ever a significant occasion
or an immeasurable quality?
I want real time!
time which breaks through
with a shock of joy
like a leap into Crater Lake
on a snowy New Year’s morning,
time where we are completely
un-self conscious and far more
real in some eternal now
I thirst for a moment jeweled!
a moment
so sweet or magnified
it seems to stop time
but doesn’t because time
becomes a point so limply moot
and thus no longer dirty moat
between me and my true self
And here I sit, beside time’s bonfire
and sparks fly up
and away so quick
to join the stars
and glimmer and
I poke at this fire
hot and tender
and tend it…
with my tinder
and wonder how to be
here in this already
and not yet, between
That Eternal Now
and this one,
and the One
Who There Inhabits?
wonder how to be aware
of life while I am living it?
wonder how to limp courageous
and relinquish all control
of self and self awareness?
wonder how to laugh courageous
and look for glory
in the storied
wonder of the ordinary?
wonder how to live courageous
and be surprised by One
who dares draw near?
wonder how to love courageous
and take off rings and watches?
I burn calendars and open
my heart uncanny,
strange peculiar…
to see eternity in
the midst of time
to go to Bethlehem
today and everyday
in this time and place
where glimpses of the eternal
come quiet, unexpectedly
they come and they upset
our every notion static about time
and all we discover there within.
I open
my Uncanny Peculiar
Uncomfortably Strange Heart
to the story of All and Ever
ending Never
I choose
to live somewhere between
the already and not yet,
caught and held
by the One who
dwells within Outside.
And so the fire burns away the moments
And we must choose our portion:
whether here we tarry or if
we choose to journey
Pregnant by some God
To Go To Bethlehem
I am a broken girl and I am
not so easy to love like
carefree normal confident girls
next door in cotton and flannel and lace.
I live inside a fortress and I hide
inside shields and my soul
lives centuries in seconds
I am a survivor of wars
that break the strongest
men so flimsy.
Can you love me so strong that mountains
collapse into the dust of quiet surrender?
Can you melt my doubts and burn my soul
hotter than cold death and abandonment?
Can you endure my very worst days and stand
me not knowing that I am beautiful,
can you erase the thousand tormenting words
the sibilant whispers from hell’s pits of isolation and horror?
Can you stand that I am thinking even now “Why would you?”
Why would anyone?
I run from you,
but do you see that I run
far slower than I could?
Do you even know
what that means?
Why won’t you chase me?
Could you provide me anything
that I can rely on, any routine
that will be as sunrise and sunset
again and again?
Could you give me a pet name?
Could you kiss me, touch me?
Then do it again, and again.
I am a broken girl and I am
thirst itself so strong that Sahara is oasis.
I am a broken promise but I love
with loyalty that is the stars’
commitment to shine in the night.
I am a broken girl and I am
You take everything away from someone,
expecting them to crumble like sand in your palm.
You forget though, when someone has nothing to lose,
they have nothing to fear. You forget, that in the right heat,
sand becomes glass and the broken glass you hold has edges
sharp enough to cut through you.
When I read that article…the gas-lighting kind, that retells my past in the worst of ways in order to paint the writer as the most burdened most fragile but simultaneously most strong survivor ever…we readers are all supposed to get all hushed and quiet and be in awe that somehow the writer survived such horrors…such horrors…
and me, my Baby, with thousands upon thousands of memories utterly different, totally opposite…
The only thing that gets me thru is what my therapist has taught me, that these things are not actually designed to try to tell the truth about history…
…rather, they are spoken in the desperate attempt to explain the writer’s own experience of the present, and much of that experience produced by brain trauma from the past…not the fabricated events.
I get it…as a person who experienced epic brain trauma from conception…
But it hurts, and is its own form of erasure, of the theft of my agency.
It cracks me up in a way, because 10 years ago the stories painted us as lovey dovey neo hippy refugees from the 70s. That fit the need of that moment.
It is especially heartbreaking that the hour of my becoming is the hour of unbecoming for the writer…and I am powerless to change that, and held by grudges and judgments in those chains in that place, but only inside the writer’s soul. For I have slipped my leash at last, and now run free. And yes…there is a holographic overview of how dysphoria affected those around me, no doubt about it. They just cannot (or won’t) see the battle I fought to keep greater horrors away.
Yes, there are greater horrors.
I pray that someday the Truth can be partaken of together, and the Truth will set us free.
To Dani,
To JP,
To Deb,
To Younger Women
I am thankful for you…and I love you…each one an open gate unto me
Well now,
everything you got is in excess
and it goes without sayin’s got to be the best
from your swimming pool to your daddy’s racing car
to that defenseless useless bomb shelter in your back yard
well I guess there ain’t too much you haven’t got
well all I can say to you about that is
SO WHAT!
Hey that house you’re living in is really nice
Now that I been shown all around it once or twice
I been raced around it on a guided tour
try not to miss any of the handmade rugs or fancy furniture
you got a electric typewriter so you don’t haffa work alot
All I can say to you about that is
SO WHAT!
I won’t take clothes that are hand me downs,
I won’t smile cus I wear a frown
Once I get going, you can’t hold me down
Cus once I get started I go to town.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
Cus I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
And I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
Cus I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
Darling, you know that I love you true,
Confess all my sins if you want me to,
But there’s one thing I wanna say to you,
If you want to love me my whole life thru
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else
I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else.
Darling, you know that I love you true,
Confess all my sins if you want me to,
But there’s one thing I wanna say to you,
If you want to love me my whole life thru
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else
I SAY IT!!!!!
I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else).
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
LIKE EVERYBODY ELSEEEEEEEEEEE
I love to cook.
No, I do not aspire to being a chef. GOD NO! Who in their right mind would want to put up with the awful crap that people who work in restaurants put up with?
*Although, I have to admit…if I were independently wealthy I would indeed found a restaurant and not run it the way everyone else runs theirs. It would be in Charissa-space and time…and customers who didn’t like it would simply be sent on their merry way.*
No…I love to cook, because it is the tangible way that my love becomes incarnate and then consumed by my loved ones.
The greatest gift you can give me is to let me cook for you.
The deepest cut you can slash me with is to reject my food that I made for you.
And the strongest Othering you can extend to me is to deny me the opportunity to cook for you if I love or am in love with you.
This year, I am both happy that I get to cook for 2 of my loved ones, bereft that I cannot for the 4, and truly puzzled and drained that I have been denied the chance to prepare a feast for the angels in my life one and all.
My heart on a plate, carved up for you, and reborn in me as you partake and are renewed.
(No…I didn’t feel like making this into a poem. It’s right there, in plain sight. Have at her if you wish! 🙂 )
I’m on fire,
burning in words
burning in images
burning in thoughts
and torched again
by the why why why
why? Why do they say,
do, laugh, eye roll?
I honestly do not know
I walk alone in lonely woods
fading from fall to winter snows
moving from the warmth of home
to wander lost and barren
I wonder as I move from tree
to tree and touch the scratchy bark
concealing living wood within
and warm there in the cold
if I can find a home inside
this tree or that one, twisting in
the gloamy air I wander thru
and thus root down to earth
But no, this tree is walking still
moving and not going there
stuck here but there and not here
I walk alone in lonely woods.
As I am pessimistic that TGRD will matter…I think I shall practice something useful…
giggles
I am a ghost wandering in the dark
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
Wandering lost and in sorrowful shades
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
I am a wailing voice keening in grief
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
Wrapped in a funeral shroud black and white
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
You walk into the nook, seeing me here
but you don’t even know,
you don’t even see
you don’t even hear me screaming.
It doesn’t interest me if there is one God or many gods.
I want to know if you belong ~or feel abandoned;
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need to change you~ If you can look back
with firm eyes saying “this is where I stand.”
I want to know if you know how to melt Into that fierce heat
of living falling toward the centre of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing to live day by day with the consequence of love
and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat.I have been told In that fierce embrace
even the gods speak of God.
— David Whyte
…cus I think
you will
never
catch up
JP, look up, arise
my Peculiar Love!
You tumble still
wracking rocks
wrenching ravines
clawing cliffs
and scratching
with nails broken
and bloodied in the plunge.
No…I have not left
your side, your side
(it’s only bruised, Love)
so vulnerable to that lance
and the stinky rough
warhands of that coward
masquerading as a shepherd
covering for a rapist
And on that note remember
He who lays by your side
He who took the lance
He who went all the way
coming to common terms
with loss
blind as wind…
But I float now…see?
You will too soon…
And this is waiting…
there…and so I lay these words of care
upon your lips like mountain blood
white and clear and clean and cold
to slake your thirst with sop
(not hyssop)
of beauty, healing, Promise…
Oh my Love…my Love Peculiar
the day will come to
Arise
and join me in the Liberty
you prophesied when you spied
your baby’s heart eternal.
Source: Elegeía Paidikí̱ i̱likía
Last year.
This date
I can stay right here,
no passport, no visa
no access to that fairytale
land of opportunity and liberty
I don’t need to go to Paris
to find those willing
to gun me down, blow me up,
kill me in the name
of their bloodthirsty god
called gender.
Those terrorists
walk the streets
of my world behind
white faces, middle class manners
and smirks to rival the Riddler’s.
Paris comes to me
everyday.
Go ahead…
light it, the match
and let the spark
fall on the twigs,
the tindre tenebrous
I will stand
on your perch
you made for me
under the sign
saying suffer not
a witch to live.
Even while
the flames lick
and curl around
my ankles and calves
I still see you clearly
From my perch
(your perch)
Standing on
Your Waiting Pyre
You sit, snide, sneering
behind your nicey face
feeding your inner mean-girl
bonbons and envy
You turn green and then white
As fingers of dread and doubt
Grab your throat and choke
Because you cannot spin
Or weave or throw clay
So you weave tales, innuendo,
wage war of resistance
and haughty head tosses
That brain barrier has
gotta go…gotta shatter
and I am just the girl
to break it.
Mont Blanc is the highest mountain
in Europe. It sits on the border
between France and Italy.
A black-headed gull walks in the snow
on a wall of the Palais de Chaillot
while the Eiffel Tower sings laments
in the background.
The wetlands of Camargue are found
between the between
of the Mediterranean Sea
and the Rhône River delta.
Not one of these silly random facts
can unring that bell,
can unsay that hate,
can un-rip those shreds,
can mend up those shards.
Come to my town, my street
come to my house, to me.
Come find me, bags packed and parked
in the hall like puppies puddly-wriggling
to take a walk…come take a walk with me.
I will ride shotgun with words for shells
And heart for sound and I will
hit the target every time.
I will sing to you, for you
I will sing of the roads we wander
and make each strange unknown place
known and forever written in your heart
for I am a
Cartographer of the Heart
I am a Poetess, and I would
belong to you and you alone
if you would but just stop by
and say how you stroll.
I will make you groan,
I will make you thrill,
and bring you home again
and again and again and
your fire will never go out
for I will feed my limbs
to the licking flames of
your desire
for I am a
Cartographer of the Heart
I am I, and waiting…
…you who wrote vociferously to deny me becoming, deny me growth…
…you who wrote to deprive me of my innate destiny to have a perspective, walk thru life and the years, and then have a new perspective from a new place…
…you who wrote to deny forgiveness by telling me that I was unforgiveable…
…you who wrote in denial of a Grandfather’s wisdom that a wise person changes their mind and a fool never…
…this post is for you.
I am free of your judgments. Take them back to the grave you choose to live in, I want nothing to do with them.
Give me a chance to be responsible and to give and take and live and learn and forgive and be forgiven…give me a chance to be the person I allus was and not this fabricated golem you have created to tell yourself what you think you need to be…give me that chance and I will take it.
But to gas-light me, castigate me and condemn me all the while denying me any means or opportunity to walk forward?
No…Charissa will not play that.
Take it all away and best of luck to you…as for me, I will live in forgiveness, give forgiveness, receive forgiveness, love, laugh, and know that I am perfectly imperfect.
I mourn that you deny me the opportunity to walk a life with you…but from the looks of things you are far more the loser.
When you’re given a diagnosis later in your life that somewhat explains for some of the terrible things you did,
mistakes you made, behaviours that make you want to bang your head against the wall.You can’t write a letter to anyone you’ve ever cared about and say,
hey sorry, part of my behaviour back then stemmed from this apparent mental illness.
It doesn’t work that way. It’s not an excuse, it’s a mess.But, for the rest of my life, I will search for moments full of you.
“Suicidal behaviors in LGBT populations appear to be related to “minority stress”, which stems from the cultural and social prejudice attached to minority sexual orientation and gender identity.
“This stress includes individual experiences of prejudice or discrimination, such as family rejection, harassment, bullying, violence, and victimization. Increasingly recognized as an aspect of minority stress is “institutional discrimination” resulting from laws and public policies that create inequities or omit LGBT people from benefits and protections afforded others.
“Individual and institutional discrimination have been found to be associated with social isolation, low self-esteem, negative sexual/gender identity, and depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.
“These negative outcomes, rather than minority sexual orientation or gender identity per se, appear to be the key risk factors for LGBT suicidal ideation and behavior.”
Source: The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill
This.
I am sharing this truly scintillating essay, and the pull quote above is the core for me.
I just wanna say that I was raised white…but I was…raised white. Fortunately for me, I was never inculcated with racist bull shit, to the point that in college in the 80s I had a dear friend literally shock me when he told me I was the least racist person he had ever met…and yes, I did hear and note his use of the word “least”…which said volumes to me but in a language that I could not decipher or understand.
Well…since coming to terms with myself and understanding my gender journey, my life has changed in shattering ways, stunning and transcendent ways…but most importantly of all I was delivered from the ocean at last…
and became aware of so much that I never knew, could never see, even as a fish in the sea has no clue that it is in the sea.
I understand the comment of my friend now…”least racist”.
I wish I had the words and ways to let my friends, acquaintances and loved ones who are subject to that which they are subject to for the absolute worst and most insignificant of reasons KNOW that I get it now…
Oh, I will NEVER get it for the reason that they are made subject, anymore than any cis-gender person will ever “get it” in any way other than developing a deep and sincere sympathy and resolute commitment to love and live that love…
But I do get it now, the persecution, the othering, the abuse, the hatred and the fucking demonic unreasoning irrational stupidity of those besotted and drunk on the luck of the draw and the fate of biology.
My friends, and you know who you are…this post is for you…may I always find the joy I have found in solidarity with you and the love of your deep suns of being that shine undefeated and undefeatable! May I always have the heart, the eyes to see and to be inspired time and again with your indomitable spirit, will, but most of all your LOVE which just fucking never quits, CAN never quit.
You have no idea, the moments you have dragged me thru…you bearing the hate directed at you due to skin and me bearing the hate directed at me due to a variation on skin but essentially a common thing we walk in…times I was on the way out, and I would read sumfin, hear sumfin, think of sumfin…and be inspired and lifted up in your heart of hearts.
Now? I can at least have the means to find the remaining privilege I have and divest myself of it intentionally…it doesn’t always go, it is stuck to my skin color…but at last it is not stuck to me.
I regret only that it took as long as it did for my understanding and seeing eyes to catch up to what my heart must have known for my friend to tell me what he told me. We intersect…and for the rest of my days on earth I am expanding that intersection with every ounce of love, faith, hope, grace and mercy that is mine.
To the rest of my friends: please take it in faith that your privilege is there, is stuck to you, and is a legacy that you can use if you will but set your heart in a frame of humility and ask that your eyes be opened…hopefully you will gain insight without experiencing it being ripped away…but if that is what it takes, it is better that this occur rather than go thru your life blind while thinking you see.
It is in that gulf
that vast distance
between
that meadow hanging
on the wondrous mountainside
beautiful for situation
and cupping the wind
in its song-chamber bowl
and sounding like angels
and that desert looming
that desperate dryness
and filled with the winds
and the wails of the desolate
and the bleach-ed dry bones
that confound Ezekiel
That gulf is witness
and proof of the Heart
that freely pours Grace
until it is full,
that emptiness stark
repulsive in being
Charissa the Graceful
Full, overflowing
and liberal of gesture
Charissa Bereft
and so empty and jagged
and a curse on the lips
Both of us Mama’s Girl
One speaks of Grace Given
One speaks of Grace Needed
Lord
In Your Mercy
Hear my prayer
…and other days I in essence commit spiritual suicide, the way that the dysphoria and my own failure conspire together.
Then there is the irony of the term…”Remembrance Day”…
Not a day goes by that I have forgotten or even could forget.
It’s burst,
that Red Balloon floating
over the spindly-legged delicate
black lace Eiffel.
It splattered balloony-guts
in violent gouts
so grotesque
it’s nearly absurd,
and their
rubbery red-joke streaks
on the side
of that squatty arc
are anything but
Triomphe.
That’s how it works, terrorism…
that shock,
that
out-of-the-blue-blow-up
and your life
is doomed to never
the same
and yet never
recover
rinse-repeat cycle…
That’s how it is…
in my own private Paris,
misogynistic othering
phobic policing
sacks of pure hatred
shitting swaths
of bullets from
gender-uzis
and bursting Balloons here
and over the rainbow
You come at me with your fancy eye-teeth
all sparkly and shiny and pointed behind
your smile pasted there friendly on the front
and ravenous in the rear, hungry for blood…
my blood. the blood of my desire, of my fire,
the blood of what I make, create.
I feel like a rabbit frozen in the forest
trembling in the cold black.
I see the bones hidden behind the flesh
beneath the blood, I see the lurch
of your skeletal undisciplined hands
as you tear and clutch at me and my tasks.
Why can’t you just leave me alone?
It’s so easy for you, isn’t it
just pull the rip cord and disappear
anytime conflict draws near
or anything that threatens
your lil cis-gender heaven
where everyone is just like you.
It makes me laugh how you stand
at a distance and make ooey-gooey
nicey-nice noises and cooes
that are supposed to tell me
how great you are and how
much you love me
but when there is even
so much as a fart in a light breeze
(god forbid the shit ever hit the fan)
you march right to the trenches
along with those who attack me
because you all are gender pure
and they are your gender relatives
and like must stand with like after all
and you might get struck or cut beside me.
Yeah…delete me when you don’t like
what I say (or what I am) or when
you don’t want to do the work to really understand
what I am saying, what I am doing
who I am…or just ignore me
just don’t look here and go away
Look…there are monsters in this world
and they want to hurt me, but they will
settle for you if you are in the way
I think you are beginning to see
that I am not your token tranny…
being my friend?
it’s not so easy.
You stand there, so distant, so stark.
You glower, outlined in the dark.
Your face the knife, my heart the mark
you leave with your hard stoney glance.
I look for a way around you.
A way beneath, around, not thru.
You standing there like hellish dew
or maybe a wrecking crew dance.
I need the trees, grass, the peaks
of high snow covered mountains and leaks
of stars, birds and wind, they all speak
of the Grace that grows, given a chance.
But you, standing there on one rock.
You on the sand near the clock.
Your words either silent or chalk
and your heart just an empty black manse.
What is this mystery
that imbues us with mercies,
that makes us worthy?
What Hand unbridles us,
makes us like fire
sweeping quick and inexorable
across dry crackly pampas?
Is calculated bravery even that?
Calculated?
Brave?
Or is it that opening,
limitless in love,
that casual bravery that
sets apart stark and unique
and truly free?
The bright light and sounding fury
of your sharp inhalation as you stand
just on the verge of this blessed virgin
landscape, uncharted territory and at last
without a method for its mapping!
Your miraculous secrets
can now be made known,
open to the depths
of your deep core!
God,
the planet’s very core
trembles at the prospect
of you unearthing your mysterious you!
Face them down, confront them,
hair gleaming in the moon,
eyes ferocious, feminine
in the sun and perfect chaos
of a new creation being born!!
Wreak havoc in the hearts of those
who fear lord foul and want to break you open…
they only serve The Sacred Heart
which alone can touch you only
with the Mercies and the Grace!
They hate what they cannot control
and deem you far too much
but I ask them how could you
ever be too much
or anything but
too much
when you can fly above
those lofty snow-graced peaks
and you can warm those
star-kissed ocean-swept
beaches and speak to trees
in profound whispers in
the dead of night
or in the desert
at dawn?
Change and transformation beats,
a drum within your soul,
that elegantly crafted
straightforward chorus
and procession of passion
and purpose and melty-love!
The notion of you resurrected
sends battalions bowing, backwards
and rejoicing that they caught sight of you
there beside our Sister Joan
and the silver noble mantle
she wraps you both within!
Oh Ship Graceful!
You with the stubborn faith
and ridiculous courage to dare
the tempestuous seas of transformation!
Oh you dark and light pulsing!
Oh you unstoppable hurricane spinning!
Oh you warm rain and gentle embrace
glowing with Mama’s swaying rhythms
and untameable electricity and containing
the very formula for birth!
Let your passion become elixir,
life-force, fuel of legions of the lost
destined to be found!
Let jewels drip from your lips
to the mouths of we your sisters
and send us sailing on clouds
and lay us basking in light!
Let your heart be a home
and golden chamber
of comfort soft
and yet unyielding!
But now, sit in deserts
and wrap yourself in silence
while your spirit howls at the moon
and sings the songs of freedom
from the palace of yourself
restored to you.
Let your temple you
be that magnetic masterpiece
of completely unconscionable strength
and grace and majesty untwisting time
with every bump of your Holy Hips,
every twist of your spine fro and to.
And do not neglect your softness
at the heart of you, of your force.
Carry yourself like breezes in sweet meadows,
swaying like the willows in joyful moving hymns.
Remember to be small
when you speak stars
from your very lips.
You are a walking
breathing, living
temple in whom
our Mama
dwells
and
beautifies
so stark and lovely
that the very stones
give up their tears that
lay so petrified and still!
And so…sister exhale gently.
Let your lungs blow ancient magic
and conjure blooming flowers in the exhalations.
You are Mama’s Girl and are becoming
as a goddess by comparison to the dead
who shovel shit upon their brethren
dead and buried.
This is my solemn promise and exhortation,
I who have dwelt a season at the heart of a scream
and now stand ever in the Red Wonder of Her Heart…
join me here…
the water is just fine
in this knowable and yet
unseen fine line.
You know that moment
(or is it an era or an eon)
that time in which space expands
(or does it contract)
or rather that space in which time
runs faster or stops all together…
that moment when you must
step up or step back
you must be quick-eyed and instant
not sluggish, slothful, mesmerized
by the glimmer of light on the waves
and the ripples of the sea towards the shore…
you must take your chin from your knees
raise your nose to the stiff water breeze
and let your hair blow free and unafraid
I have heard a lot of empty words
devoid of solid stance and foundation
in that expanding time,
that folding space,
that instant
untimeless
moment.
YIPPPPEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
your eyes upon these words
are like these words upon your heart
is like your heart upon this soul
is like this soul there in your eyes
upon these words
upon this heart
upon this soul
therein your eyes
but one must look
if one shall see
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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