…to keep my own counsel and bide my time:
“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
| — | Alan Watts |
Yearly Archives: 2015
That Moment Boundless
It’s when the grey wind
blows warm across
cinereal waters and
picks up pearly moist brushes
to push ashen stiff clouds
outta shape against cerulean canvas
of sky and space
It’s when dark grasses
and yearning branches
and leaves and needles
moan in jealous longing for
the fingers of that grey whistling
wind tasting of granite and glacier,
slow flows and sunlight
and dappled fruit quick
and sudden
It’s when I sit on the porch
and think of those times and spaces
and I remember your faces and my own
grasses and branches
and leaves and needles
stand on end stiff and electric
to catch anything…anything
blowing across my waves
in the grey wind
What I Am Trying To Say
“Between Voice and Thought,
between Thought and Voice,
between Presence and Absence,
oscillates the poetic pendulum.”
between Thought and Voice,
between Presence and Absence,
oscillates the poetic pendulum.”
| — | Paul Valéry, from “Poetry and Abstract Thought,” The Art of Poetry(Princeton University Press, 1958) |
Give Light Not Darkness
“Give light and darkness will disappear of itself” – Desiderius Erasmus
You Can Only Go Forward…
“I am so sorry to all the people I hurt while I was hurting.”
I saw this quote online this morning. It captures my feelings about that long, long past, much of which I am only dimly aware of having lived, but more like an observer than a participant.
Certain parameters have been laid out…and sadly those preclude forgiveness. Apparently, there really is more than one “unforgivable sin” (and really, each human being sorta gets to decide what sin is forgivable and what sin is not, no?).
But the truly fine thing about being a human being? The power of understanding embodied in choice and become action.
And I am…so sorrowful that the hurt that I was in…that I was in my “not-being” resulted in hurt to others. And yet there is nothing to be done about the then, and the to come has not yet arrived.
There is just the now…finally and at last the now…and I am in it.
Glad, Grateful and Free…
Charissa Grace
A Purposeful Work
Ho! You who are broken
in your maddening, modern conformity,
squeezing into the oh too tight tenny shoes
that pinch your toes and chirp at your soul!
Listen…take off your shoes and wander.
Aimlessly. Abandon agenda!
Give up your goals (just for a moment)
wander with no purpose on purpose.
After all, there is so much to do
that you cannot afford to not wander
away from the overflow days
and the many demands on your time and attention!
Toss out your check list and check yourself instead
and spend time pursuing
the unplanned quick moment
right now…in some eating, and drinking,
and wandering…
…from paths and from business
and rest, and withdraw
and pray with your passage
from boardroom to garden.
See the fat flowers
frolicking violet
hear the bees rockin
in time to the wind
listen for stories
and look at the birds
and see the white lilies
give life and give strength
and thus rescue your being
delivered from doing!
Stop to notice
let your thoughts
prayers rise and fall
with your breath
and your step.
Wandering is
purposeful work
without purpose
done on purpose.
My Bucket List
The other day?
I heard some men yammerin and scratchin
an sniffin each other with words and noises
and hey hey ho ho how bout them Cowboys hearts!
They were talking about bucket lists.
They didn’t know I was there (I was in a dress so I was invisible).
Well…a bucket list. I didn’t have one.
So I wondered, I wandered, and I decided to make one!
Yaay me! See? I can keep up with the boys!
So check this out!
Mrs. Reety-Doe has a great bucket!
It’s new, shiny, and oh wow does it sing
when her high pressure test water
shoots from that shiny raygun nozzle
and splashes its cymbalic sides and bass bottom
and then when the pressure of the water spilling in
gets so great it sings higher and higher and higher
and sounds decidedly like it hasta go poddy!!
Miss Fuzzy Gyrtle, now her bucket is wood
with metal bands and soldier staves all regular
but gentle curved and carved just so,
cradling the water gurgly and gentle inside
as its contralto hums and hugs the wet contents.
Ms Tidy-Hand, tho…wtf is up with that bucket!??
It’s really nuffin more than an oversize porcelain diaper pail!
Remember that sorta crazed ivory shiny dull white sheen
with the thin blue Germanic stripe around the bottom
that just comforts with its defining authority?
Thick, heavy, awkward…but so solid that dirt
just sorta gives up and leaves and when it drinks
from the hose it sounds like lederhosen in alpine
and beer steins clinking contrapuntal
to clakking autumn clogs.
But my favorite was old Granny Walker’s
worn out rusty bucket filled with holes
and memories and flowers planted in each.
Half-buried and cock-eyed and full
of Black-Eyed Susans and Pansies rioting
and ready to blow that chicken coop and run
for Tidy-Hand’s oh so ordered beds
and dig their toes into her perfect compost
like tourist ladies toes in Jamaica Brown Sugar sand
and stretch out ta rest…
Oh Granny…you know sumfin the rest of us
have forgotten we ever knew, don’t you?
So yeah…I have my bucket list now, so I got that going for me!
But I think
I will just keep on hiding in my hobbit wonder
beneath the magic cloak of unnoticed and smile to myself
thinking about
those neighborhood buckets
and the containers they use
in their gardens.
Zizzzi Gloucester
Every Moment Speaks
“Every word has consequences.
Every silence, too.”
Every silence, too.”
| — | Jean-Paul Sartre |
Confronting Your Own Privilege
“Is ‘heterosexual’ a slur? No. It describes an identity and experience. Because straight folks don’t typically experience their heterosexuality as an identity, many don’t identify as heterosexual — they don’t need to, because culture has already done that for them. Similarly, cisgender people don’t generally identify as cisgender because societal expectations already presume that they are. […]It’s an incredible and invisible power to not need to name yourself because the norms have already done that for you. You don’t need to come out as heterosexual or cisgender because it is already expected. Since it isn’t a derogatory term, those who take exception to it may be uncomfortable with trans issues, or perhaps they are unwilling to confront their own privilege.”
| — | K.J. Rawson, interview via the Advocate |
One of the greatest acts of advocacy you can partake of…confronting your own privilege.
My Other Hand
My one hand?
It’s what you see here
on the page making funny marks
that become funny meanings
in your musing mind.
But my other hand, well!
It reaches outside in the smoke on the wind.
It gropes in the night for a dear not-here friend.
it touches heaven
it waves at eagles
it feels the raindrops
and cries with seagulls
while the waves tumble in
and in…it is washed in them too
my other hand,
well it awakens you
Check Out My Hair
I lead face forward, my hair trails behind me,
smelling of all of the longings and seas
that evaporate in the hot sun of the rest
who think playing in shallows is safest and best.
My face is my sunscreen protecting my heart
in the winds and the rays of a place where it seems
that people don’t care and are not really there
and call daily connection dumb fairy-tale dreams.
It lets me go out and look normal and fine,
it lets me get by in a style called “all mine”
and it holds my eyes steady, they’re seeing and seen,
but my hair’s smell hides my secret “what I really mean”.
My hair holds my longing, it carries my ache,
my hair holds my grief over those who just take
and it doubts those who promise that they’re truly there
when it reaches to touch their face, but just gets air.
It’s perfumed with desire, and fear, and some hope.
It is curly and flies around, feels like a dope
because it tries to cross chasms on that taut tightrope
of belief in belief or some other dumb trope…
but that feeling of authentic being…that strength
of choosing a style that is me come what may,
when my hair is undone and is free in the wind
but still anchored to me, well my hair is my friend!
I am anchored to it! I think my hair is me!
It’s my soul’s silver banner unfurled by this sea
of humanity streaming and nose to the ground,
my hair pops in the wind and brings heaven around!
So be circumspect when I walk by you today.
If you wanna know anything about the way
I think or I feel…or I purpose to be?
Jus check out my hair…if you wanna know me.
And in Honor of Amelia Earhart’s Birthday Last Week
I simply haffa reblog this. I won’t blather about how incredible it is…that much is obvious even to turtles who haven’t peaked out of their shells in a month!!
So I wrote this admittedly brilliant little poem in a white heat on the train in to my summer job many years ago. It is one of the few poems that I only sent out once before it got published. Sometimes the magic just happens. I originally wrote it as a prose poem and that is how it was originally published. In the coming book it will appear as free verse. I like it better this way. There is more nuance with real line breaks. It is rare that I get chills reading something I wrote, but this one is special.
.
Flying Lessons with Amelia
.
I met her the day of her first crash.
The stars in my eyes reflected the flash
of the cameras, the sun kissing her
silver pocket compact. The photos,
shades of grey, didn’t do her justice.
Storm clouds only capture spring
by…
View original post 895 more words
Singing To The Bones
Speak to me gently…
I am listening with my bones,
instruments of hearing
my companions…
I listen by the fire.
Speak into my soul with touch and glance
while I walk to and fro and spread a feast
that’s fit for angels to consume and dance
under stars and with the silky moon.
Bone-music vibrates
from my bone-core deep,
emanates from my sternum,
surrounds me in its sticky grasp
and to its gentle bosom I am clasped…
in drum, in harp, in whistle call and
in that dance on puffy clouds in fall.
Hear its cry in my heart’s every pulse
and I must answer or I will remain
bereft and longing, agitated, always
and seeking in snows aslant and serious
and in ocean floors murky mysterious
and in that desert deep and in the forest strong
and beneath the breath of emerald wind’s ever-song
Finally, I simply rest
sitting in the shifting sands
and singing over long-dead bones,
my song arising, flying here and there
and hear the song of mountains and
the thrum of reefs against the waves
insistent, fresh and ancient
in the days, these days
that I am
Singing to the bones
My Coffee Speaks To Trees
it was a whisper soft, it was a song
at my neck’s nape i felt it trill along,
the answering conversation swirling by
my cheek in double time, so fleet, so spry,
and dancing round the rim of my red mug
and steaming coffee, rich and fragrant there
and laughing with the sounds come in the air.
i realized my coffee speaks to trees!
it listens to the message in their leaves
and steams its answer back in song, relieves
the longing of the root, the trunk, the bees
just bumbling sleepily along with ease.
what did they say, i wondered, so i sipped
and into that community i slipped
and heard the leaves, the gossip of their tongues
and saw the wonder of those fronds so young
just wondering what were they meant to wear
when autumn came, what would the color be
that each would take upon their limber self?
what dress? what blouse would scamper from Her shelf?
beautiful raiment, heaven sent and free
for each leaf to receive, to wear…and me?
I sat…and sipped…and marveled in the day
that I discovered this small secret way
of beans, hot water, roots and branch and bees
and leafy giggly gossipping ballet…
a secret language, dance, a brilliant play
and I now know my coffee speaks to trees.
Miracles of Modern Medicine
This used to be me…it isn’t anymore.
HRT works. My brain is soo much happier.
Constance, it is something so simple, and yet so profound.
I am glad I made it, and I am thankful to those who valued and recognized the essential me regardless of container/package.
And those of you who didn’t…wow. I don’t know whether I should pity you more, or those in your life who are similarly falsely assessed. That must really suck.
I am free…and oh God the flying!
The Twenty-Five Hour Yesterday
**(See the note at the bottom of poem please)
I deferred entropy yesterday,
with jaundiced yellow summer thoughts
that lingered in mid-air above
my head…then rose on winds…
Seraphim speaking at heavens brass
and brazen, silent skies yet become
broken by my desperate thoughts
and yet to become wild throat-shatt’ring cries!
I was silent with them until they
were just not silent with me! Nay!
They called out to Isaiah, Ancient
Mariner sailing seas of grief
and beauty in the winds of time
and loss…
“O that You would tear open the heavens
and come down, that the mountains
would quake at Your presence!”
And then time halted, entropy
deferred to my voice ignited in
screams for the speechless
in songs for the weary
in shrieks for the despairing
How FUCKING Long oh LORD!
WHEN Will You SHATTER Brass?
Tear OPEN Silent Faded Blue Skies
and COME DOWN AGAIN and
LAY WASTE TO INJUSTICE
and harsh LACK OF MERCY!!
slavery still happening
right here in River City
sex-trafficking thriving
looking up in Kansas City
poverty and addiction
meet me in St Louis
racism and genocide
above the fruited plains
all ignored while we obsess
over Facebook Fights and Twitter twatfests,
both garbage and cheap gossip dished,
in equal measure slung and sung
to show tunes and to shanties and
to soft-shoe shuffles
on Broadway!
How long, O Lord!
When will our
Purple Mountains
quake in Your Majesty?
And yet how shall I voice my cry
so bloody and alone? With deeds
just like some pile o crap, some smelly
filthy rag? With prideful blood-hoard
boasting buried in a pirate’s chest
so goddam deep?
And my heart faded like a leaf
and blew away like dried up failure
in the scheming eyeless winds…
And my vain colors oh so bright
and oh so pretty, my heart faded
in the face of all
the unjust things we do,
the things we are,
our inconsistencies and
our postmodern so ironic
ways so petty and deliberate,
so destructive and so cruel!
We stand before God today
even though entropy deferred yesterday
we stand before God as Their Potter’s clay
the urgency of the present moment,
shaped not by nostalgia for what once was,
but remembrance for who God was,
and is, and ever will be.
that fierce urgency of the now
within a world in need
not of more pointing fingers
and dividing speeches, but of
people willing to rise up
and work as if we now already
are God’s people willing
and surrendered.
I deferred entropy yesterday
It was the least I could do.
**Note to the reader: italicized words are meant to be heard in your mind to the show-tune they are from…
Google is an ally if you don’t know your show tunes, as is You-Tube.
If this were read aloud, the reader would sing those phrases,
voice dripping sarcasm and anger.
Oh…and if you don’t like it?
Defer Entropy
The One Who Knows
When we touch
The One Who Knows
we touch our own
pearlescent core
transparent and so brilliant.
We find That One Deep
in Elysian Fields of frolic,
upon the face of mountains,
and in the deep bone deserts,
we find The One Who Knows
in our fires of becoming.
It is the Valley of Dry Bones,
the charnal parched and bony strand
with bone-dust laying down for sand
that walking comes The One Who Knows
and singing re-creation songs
and the truths we tell make harmonies
to reach the very stars.
The One Who Knows is in the eyes
of dying children, hateful men
and weary women burdened, stripped
of womb and wonder, chained and whipped…
The One Who Knows is lurking deep
inside the secrets that we keep
and clings to every prideful steep
to conquer every peak and peek.
In our insistent blood They Speak,
in our starved souls, in raven’s beak,
in padded paws and jungle roar
The One Who Knows waits on Their Shore
calling
singing
crying
sighing
knowing
showing the dead how to live backwards
into forever and before the day.
My Sisters N Me
We stand at the shore in confidence.
Our feet rest on sands
but we walk on the waves
while everyone else thinks
that we are still slaves
of the old ways and means
of the city of dirt.
They have looked in my eyes
and seen me hopeful there,
and they called me out
singing that I walk on air
with them, light and free
even while being immovable
We are the fruitful vines
planted for new wine.
They hear my voice
and they touch my quick heart
and they lend me their beauty
and they stand apart from the
dull and the lumbering fools full of words
that just club and just crush…
they are for me and with me
and full of Kind Art.
We stand on shores, we wait for it,
the coming of justice and mercy
the liberty song
My sisters and me…
My sisters and me
Tears Of Grace
This time of day…“l’heure bleue.”
I know it as “the gloaming” and was conceived
in it’s glimmer glisten and was born
in its radiant dark glitter-glamouring.
It’s the glamouring that the earth casts
when she hides from the hunters who roam the world
and gobble up the quiet dark and then rough-belch
their choking smothering counterfeit-communion
*non-light*
Outside her glamouring, round about
shuttering houses and shuddering hearts,
gardens darken and grow quiet within
while the ravenous rave and wander wild
and hunt,
brandishing their bluebeards
and pulling
stars from the air.
Gardens crouch and sing silent
dirges to sounds of hunter-horns
and thunderous hooves, clatter-hoards
who ride and murder
*the tender sable satin night*.
But inside,
safe in L’heure Bleue
I wander, and
I think of you
*not-lost*
I slide thru grey grass
lining the sinewy river,
I slip thru shadows like
a cat rubbing against
*your limber long lingering legs*
The gloaming dark,
the never ending
extension of a day
that never ends
*and never arrives*
but instead just stretches in this endless summer hour,
this full blue one full of blue light
dark and thick and more potent in its indigo flourish
than any wagging threatening bluebeard.
It’s the hour when the earth tries to hide her sorrow,
hold back her tears and so I slide down her face
instead, quiet like a swan upon the surface
of a silent-blue snow rimmed lake
while she glows in the dark-blue
light and gloams, she lets me
fall upon herself blue, like
tears of grace.
Ya Just Can’t Force Friendship
The Poem You Write
It’s in the spaces between words,
in moments you do not do,
it’s silent sounds of what you say
*that sound of what you utter not*
When I describe it, it just twists
and stands akimbo and aloof
sings of itself above your ears
there…it’s the poem you write yourself.
To set your pen to page and speak
your “Let There Be”, it gives a shape
but that leaves so much shaped behind
*the space your body takes in water*
when you dive in and swim and the space moves and disappears
Tomorrow I will write again
and let the vision in my pen
pull apples from the very air
and sprinkle heaven in your hair
but today, it’s the poem you write
in what you don’t say, don’t do, that kite
invisible and flying high…
your poem surrounds my heavy sigh
For Lynda Carter’s Birthday
Auuugghhh!!!! I LOVE THIS!!!
And for That Writer Fellow, I give you a portion of a poem from the upcoming book:
Postcards from the Amazon
a celebrity correspondence
I.
My exercise routine?
I practice on
the parallel bars of I am
woman and hear
my golden lasso roar.
I beat Superman
at arm-wrestling, every time.
II.
And oh, the boys,
my colleagues: tights
bulging, faces half-hidden,
capes cracking in the breeze.
Their voices deep as a well.
Their jaws so straight and sharp
you could shave with them.
…
VI.
All women are gymnasts,
swinging
themselves from one necessity
to the next,
swinging, like Jane, from vines,
like me
from golden lassoes. Women hurtle
themselves
over every obstacle made by nature
or man,
break free from steel-forged chains
or do not.
This last is why women have
sisters.
…
Precious Time
All the places of the world
that call and beckon me,
the wander lust and longing heart
to travel there and be.
Be rooted in such rare terroir
and taste of precious life
unfurling right before my eyes…
but Time…that silver knife
has cut me off from my own heart
you there, and me out here
I’d trade the world and all its wonder
just to have you near.
Present and Uncontained
It feels so fiercely good
to be free, to be found
in the reds and swirls
and sweats of my sisters
wise and strong
and wild and welded together
in the midst of bare trees
and empty pots
and dusty dirt.
We are living flesh,
we are alive and well!
We send the puppets of clay
back to the pile
from which they fell,
and now so impotently they yell.
My sisters strong
receive me, brood over me,
warm me, inspire and inform me,
challenge, elevate me!
Here
in the dust
in the wind
present and uncontained
by anything
except living flesh.
We Are Come At Last
Marshal your forces, you protectors of the crown,
send your dogs running, your dogs of dreams,
your dogs howling, full noses of my fur, my pelt!
Bring on your hunt, your horses in full gallop
and chase for all you’re worth, your lust and fear
of free blood running red, and full, liberty’s blood!
Your coats, scarlet! Your smirks, affixed with tax,
and become terrible twisted rictus in your sweaty efforts
to hunt this free fox leaping, yipping, dancing on the dawn!
They shall come to me, your dogs, and wriggle ‘neath my touch!
They shall hear my dog-whistle words, too high for your dull ears
but so keenly attuned and pitched to their own straining hearts!
And they shall call to their comrades, your horses, who will alert and thrill
and leap into the air to gallop freely there…and you unhorsed…you laying there
upon the blood-stained grass of yesteryear…
Your time is up, for we are come to hunt you down
and tear that red coat straight away right off your back
and tossed into the sky, our banner free unfurled and our war cry…
No Longer! Not Anymore!
The Wine of Joy
“I have drunken deep of joy
and I will taste no other wine tonight.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Don’t Worry…
…in truth people are far too preoccupied with themselves to ever truly be interested to really know others.
“Don’t let people know too much about you.” (found online).
It is the rare human being who is free enough from self to even want to know the empathic experience of another’s life.
Just think: so many ills that plague us would simply fall by the wayside…
Oh wait. I guess there was a very wise and kind person who walked the planet a couple of eras ago who said that all the teachings and commandments of all the religions and all the prophets and laws were summed up thus:
“The greatest commandment is to love God, with all your heart and soul, strength and mind…and the second commandment is just like the first one. Love your neighbor as yourself, and do to others only those things that you want others to do to you”.
Like I said…you don’t need to worry about letting people know too much about you…they are not really interested compared to how much they are focused and obsessed with themselves.
Woman Under The Smiling Moon
I finally did it,
worked my hungry nails
underneath that hidden edge
along the ridges of my heart
and got a grip
on the flesh of my face
and ripped it clean off
and heedless of the cost
though I had counted carefully
as I knew how to count.
Everyone says I wore a mask,
I was a mask, and I just shake my head
and laugh, because they live out there
and they know nothing (what a pit to know).
That face? It was me so not me
and it held me in its grip so fiercely
and so furious in its keening hunger
to fit me to itself and find its being finally in me
But when I tore it from me
and snapped its parasitic drain
I saw the moon above me
and knew its secret then and there:
there is no man in the moon!
I am woman and I am free…
the moon is gentle in the night,
swimming ever above me.
Shadows and Silences
you consign me to shadows and silences
when you look away from wonder
when you sit and ignore joy
when you know what you don’t know
you put me behind panes
separate even though somewhat visible
I can see them there in front of me
by the dew of the morning fresh
you will always think you have measured me
but you have never really bothered
you dodge every questing tentative hello
and your twisting just says goodbye
but light is a funny thing, it changes
when you think it’s rays, it is drops
and when you see drops it is beams
light is never shining as it seems
you know i will sit here, still
because I do not go away
but I hunger in shadows and silences
just stuck here by your faint halfway
Intention
“People show their true colors,
unintentionally. Pay attention”
*Quote found online*
in what they do?
in what they don’t do?
in what they speak?
in the spaces between those words?
in what they do not say?
what are colors, true?
what are these intentions?
I think people mostly don’t,
intention
gosh it’s lonely sometimes
A Hot Summer Day And A Deck
a hot summer day and a deck
the sun it glints off of my glass
the sweet-tea ginger peach muddle
the mint wafting from sweaty ice cubes
floating, melting, disappearing
my peach is sweet, tart, it’s just right
fuzzy-firm against longing loved lips
I turn perfumed pages so eager
the story unfolds right before me
on a hot summer day and a deck
the book of you writes itself page at a time
it expands in my hands and the cover wanes old/new
it waxes familiar to my touch then *gasp*
“I never knew you”
every turning page snatches my breath
because I’m not quite sure if the next one
will be there, it could be blank or worse
it might write itself while I am reading
words forming from nowhere, just scrawling
in the high summer light on that deck
I can’t put it down for the life of me
I smell you in air as I fan those thin pages,
flip backwards but not ever reading ahead
(there is no ahead to be read in this book)
I miss you this hot summer day…
Kind, Beautiful, and Foolish
“beauty will save the world.”
I read that and went on tilt
tilt permanently.
And when I repeated it?
I discovered this:
“beauty is an incommunicable mystery”
we worship Her simulacrum
in fashion/beauty businesses
we dissect Her til She’s become
a body flayed and labeled, neat
or purely abstract notion sweet
or distinct but distant divine Tweet.
Beauty, oh Beauty,
my blood and bones
inescapable essence
of my inmost being!
Your hand gives help not harm,
mercy sweet for malice-charm,
forgiveness never ending
in the midst of endless non-forgivings
who think me idiotic because
I will not join them in their feast
disparaging, destructive
and ugly in the noggins
and practice of those thoughts!
Beauty, let me take what’s cruel,
what’s discarded by the fool
and spin it into treasure bright
and I will caper in the night
become Sweet Beauty’s Ever-Fool!
My blood, beautiful foolish flow
spilt from this creamy skin so torn,
stripped away and splattering
upon the dismal dusty ground,
each crimson drop hung glittering
in crystal sun and pregnant with
the chance to drink of God right now
and They imbibe our Grateful Vow!
My face, my bloody hands, my crowns
once mourning, heavy ashes dark
now shining in Her presence sweet,
I cast those crowns down at Her feet
I wash with Oils of Joy and praise
that repair ruined cities there
and step into the gaping breach
with cups of cool water sweet
with words like stained glass murals bold
my heart a great cathedral, gold
me with my shards sat at Her feet
my offering of helpless thrall
for She is become all…my all.
And Incarnation sounds that horn
Participate, and come partake!
Imbibe glory, intoxicating!
For it’s Beauty, Beauty saving
all the crushed, cut down, outcast!
Day is come! Night is passed!!
For Beauty will push through and soar
high above this broken shore
transcending all our ugliness
in our following, courageous
and pressing thru the mystery
to find the stairs of transcendence
and be reflections of that Beauty
“beauty will save the world.”
I Shocked The Snow
When it fell certain,
so sure in icy curtain
that always found its weighty bosom
enough to smother any flame
and quench any taper burning,
it was shocked to touch my coal,
it recoiled from those embers
and gathered in itself
and gained in substance frozen
and thus renewed its fall.
But when it touched my petals
(those tulips in the snow)
with icy graspy fingers
around my petal’s throat
to choke out warmth and heat?
It found itself diminishing!
It found itself becoming flowery
losing all its crystal majesty
and melting into cool waters
that I drank to slake my thirst
And thus I knew myself, and sure
that I could withstand cold and ice
and still bloom in winter, hang the price!
My roots go deep in fire and joy
amidst the snows so white.
On Leaving Behind “Too”
“You are allowed to outgrow people.”
I found that quote this morning…and it startled me, scared me, and then I was quietly excited about its implications.
I have never had any friends in the past. There are a lot of reasons for this…some are due to me, and my own flaws and stinkeroo heart. Some are due to others who saw me as a pile of treasure to be used and exploited.
But mostly…I never had any friends because the people I wanted to be friends with were women…and I was stuck inside a biologically male body! This automatically shifted all friendships into the “potential romantic partner” realm…or the “creepy dude being overly friendly realm” (which I never was but was always terrified that I would be perceived as)…
…or with males, it put me in the realm of absolute befuddlement: they with me and me with them.
My therapist has helped me to see the ways that males treated me just as they do other women in our culture and this revelation has been key in accepting and forgiving myself.
But in the past 6 months, I have been gaining friends. Amazing, towering women (who would shout derisively at me that I call them towering lol) who have opened their hearts and spread their wings to me…earthy, rooted women who have twined their roots into mine and have stood with me present…every day.
They are teaching me to value myself appropriately and not sell myself so cheaply for bread crusts when there is a whole feast of friendship on the table.
So I am gaining in perspective…in experience…in confidence…and in direction. I don’t think I want to be part of relationships that are not substantive and real. I don’t want to be in connections where I am thought of as a bother, a chore to be tended to, or a minor annoyance to grasp (like a pineapple).
I am a very unique person…and I am a force. I have been called “too” in the past…”too much”…”too intense”…”too passionate”…”too hard on myself”…”too high a standard”…
Well. Let this be known: I am not “too”
I am me.
If that is “too” to you, then likely we are not gonna really connect and grow together. I have tried to slow down, to sit down, to tone down, to quiet down…and I die inside in guilt, doubt and self-judgement.
I am not doing that anymore…taking that label to myself about myself “too”…
and I am knowing that I am simply me.
And that is the best and only thing I can be…
Those who will shall find me and in these new lands I will become even more…and less. Less that “me” that is self-judging and critical and self-hating…and more in their wonderful offering of themselves to my heart.
But especially less…for it is in the “less becoming” that I truly become.
I have been knowing this for sometime now, without really knowing…
well, I am getting there…
Shattered
things i thought
held me up
and help me up
i found out are shaky
i am thought odd one
guilty of excellence
called by the many
unreasonable girl
pieces are breaking
from the mosaic
but where they hung
there is nothing but grey
all around me the bricks
that I thought were solid
turn liquid and broken
and leave me hung, shattered
The Day I Turned To Stone
I remember that hard day,
the day I turned to stone,
how my heart filled with such dismay
horror-struck to the bone.
Words floated in the smoky air
and zeroed in on me
and stung me in my fleshy-chair
word-wasps and angry bee.
I broke out, far down the road
so many years gone by
and there laid down that heavy load
of stone, beneath blue skies
and put on my warm softest flesh
and bloomed in my true form…
me, grown in stable gender-creche
and at last here…reborn.
Feather and Fur
It’s puzzling…
the sheer effrontery
of those raucous rooks,
those rapacious ravens…
they flock around
(why? I couldn’t say)
and act all furry and red
and soft and they think
their beady close set eyes
are so foxy…
I act bored and disinterested
but I watch them carefully
with slitted eyes
and coiled muscles
ready to jump away from
blood-thirsty beaks
and harsh cries
that tear the air apart
and leave feather and fur
in their wake.
For JJ
They Are Real Words
Constance…google the odd words in my F-Word Challenge…they are all real
Fishy Truth Flopping
Fabrefaction can sometimes just be false and fiery
fallaciloquence, and kindness forgotten in that findible
fountain gushing from a feckless friend’s
flosculations…white lies become just lies that fumificate
frenigerant fillies and leave fishy truth flopping…flopping
No one nominated me, but this looked fun…here it is: The F Word Challenge:
Write a prose of five lines, in which every line should start and end with a word that starts with ‘F’. Keep the link of the original F- Challenge in the post, so that the creator may get a pingback. This challenge is open to anyone who sees it, or reads a F- Challenge post from someone.
here is the original link:
https://erikakind.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/the-f-challenge-2/
The only way to respond to my transgender child’s desperate plea was with love – The Globe and Mail
The only way to respond to my transgender child’s desperate plea was with love – The Globe and Mail.
Oh Constance…oh. This. I felt this myself, and I rejoice in the knowledge that this child can benefit from the progress we are making in understanding gender identity and what it is, where it is, and how to live and be fruitful when the body and mind are at opposite ends of this spectrum.
Oh Reader: the stories like this are multitudinous…how long will you dwell in that territory staked out by your ignorant and obstinate predecessors who labelled the epileptic demon possessed or the sufferer of birth marks on the face as touched by satan?
Reader, how long will you add the talmud of your own carnal mind to the Word of God and then use that as a club on your fellow image-bearers who are different than you?
How long will you continue to push your chips into the middle of the table and bet on a losing hand?
It makes me sad…it makes me glad that I have been delivered from that place, and yes, I have “lost all things” but here is what I have gained: knowing what it means to walk with Jesus “outside the city”, having counted all things loss for this Honor and Delight. He cut off all other sources of life, and all the more to His glory that it would be not me who lives but Christ who lives in me.
But keep reading…maybe one of these days it will penetrate your fear that nothing can separate you from the love of God: not even swimming in rivers that you imagine I have crossed.
(c) Salford Museum & Art Gallery; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Fractured Fairy-Tales: The Tumble of Goldilocks
“That’ll teach her to respect other being’s things!!”
Walking Backwards Thru Snowy Fields
It was a bird’s eye view,
a bride’s eye view,
all in white inside those
clean inviting borders
and me suspended overhead
and anxious in the tale told below.
I could see the tracks I left
there in your field, small
hot holes in the icy frosting
so beautiful, or buttons black
against that argent wedding cloth
in the pristine cold and dusky dim dark.
I felt shame in their
crooked, casual assumption
that anywhere inside the fence
was safe and I could wander freely.
I saw that my crooked beadwork
detracted from your day’s pure garment.
But that is why I am here,
whispering down your chimney
in the voice of the wistful winter winds,
soft, mellow, sorrowful and sheepish
and urgent too! Cus I never meant anything
but a blessing and admiration.
I wanted you to know…
I walked backwards tonite
in my snowshoes and those
actually worn backwards
and as I stepped into the telling tracks
one by one
they filled themselves in
and I took my birch branch
and waved it gently
across the surface
and thus erase any trace
that I had ever been there.
I shinnied over the fence
and up the roof, and I think
Ima stay here awhile, in this nook
on your roof next to your chimney
where the faint heat speaks of warmth
below and laughs within and a time and place
where all are home and all is well again.
If I Could
I would open up the boxes
if I could…
take out all the hurtful things
and replace them with surprises
and treasures and delights.
I would take out death and horror
I would remove all harmful additives
I would open up the cigarettes
and replace them with
the weapons of a happy childhood
If I could
I would
Tripping On Mountains
When I looked upon your
crags and cliffs, their sheer faces,
granite and lacy lined in clouds
and light reflected in the facets
created in the interplay
between ephemeral and substantial…
When my heart rose, unbidden even
and reached for stars those ramparts high
pointed at in joyous and triumphant
anthems of liberty and struggle
to cross the gulfs of space so dark
and find the threshold of that light…
When my feet flew, up trails brand new
and yet paths that felt so warm familiar
that I could run with my eyes closed
and have no fear that my mind’s eye
saw clearly every twist and turn
but I failed to see the burn…
When I stumbled, over root and rock
and tumbled right back down the scree
and the scattered talus slope…of me…
in the way again
caught up in delight again
carried in short sight again
feeling foolish and too fast…
again…
When I looked upon your cliffs and crags
so beautiful, so austere,
so far above me
As Is
The sounds it made were bold, cavernous,
an opera in a wooden box.
The grown ups said this was an early model
and it was in mint condition.
They spoke in hushed tones.
A perfect treasure, a magnificent and flawless toy.
It was not sold “as is”…
“As is” marked the clock that had stopped ticking,
or the rocking horse that had a crack in one of its legs.
That label also conveyed a certain sense of defeat,
a lost cause—a treasure bearing some distinguishable,
irreparable flaw.
I have always felt “As is,”
that label covering over
the tag inside my collar
that says “As I long to be”
and the treasure of me
going awry…in only a matter of time.
Well, thank God
They delight in “As Is”
rather than sacrifice,
They dote on broken spirits
They comfort contrite hearts
and will not despise the humble.
“Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows…
But he was pierced
for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities.”
Isn’t it strange
that we who are saved
by One who was broken
should struggle in the presence
of brokenness at all?
we are never nearer
than when we come
with nothing in
our hands to offer.
And “As Is” gives a certain hope,
for in this recognition of brokenness
we see the promise of
wholeness.
For Jack…whom I love
…sometimes we experience life and it brings us to a place. A place…not the summation of “things that happened” but to the place of “being happen“…it’s more about our experience of being in the happening, and the way that these happenings pass thru us and are colored by us.
Sometimes that ends up as a “result” where we can hear one thing…and think another thing that is entirely other than the speaker thought, meant, or was even aware.
And time passes…and then we gain a new perspective, like seeing a mountain from a valley, and then seeing the same mountain from a neighboring peak, or looking down from a cliffside into a canyon and then experiencing the canyon from the canyon floor.
Perspective is everything, midst the actual reality of experience.
In the meantime, this quote is a reliable compass as we experience a one direction life in a multi-direction being.
In Flames And Becoming (For Charissa, on her first birthday)
I lit myself on fire last night,
so deep within the forest green,
deep in the dark, and black with night,
this full sloe night of birth and dreams
and true becoming in earth brand new.
I found the heart of that deep secret wood
and there in its tough-tender core that lay
so quiet, t’was forever winter and brilliant
and glad in the glade and the still and the snows
and the frozen mists wreathed round that door (Her Door)
and crystal light skittered in ice jewels that glittered
on burnished ground gritty, substantive and pebbled
and real…real like me…and that Ancient stone table
awaiting me waiting there, and charred remains…
hinting at that dazzling “forever-more.”
There…in the frozen deep heart so pure,
so true and alive in that rooted green wood
that beckoned me step into it with my courage
and my heart, my faith and my love,
my faith…in love and in Grace.
Why, you ask?
Why did I immolate my tender heart,
and my teary soul?
Because…
I’ve grown tired of misuse,
I’ve grown weary being taken
there, for granted and discounted,
not allowed to breathe or be…
and so I lit myself on fire
with the living breathing flames
and unbecoming sticks of me.
Why? Because…
The river called me, bid me come,
the fields wooed me to walk in them
amidst their wheaty woven tresses
and their rustly whisper blessings
words so urgent, speaking of
the needed fires that would burn
deep in the forest, fires of love
and burn me straight down to the ground
where Phoenix waits, my lost and found…
because the stars swam overhead
and flew across unfathomable deeps,
because the fox ran on the night
because its paws tattooed me sweet,
because the fires beckoned me…
I lit me there, me…blazing bright.
There, in the flames my starved soul
it did remember its deep song,
words springing full in fiery dance
and I sang there in my one chance
to reclaim me…
and my own knowing of myself
and knowing this Divine Romance…
I came,
ghosty, buried, squirming there
outlawed by law, thus qualified
to call out Law once and for all,
as mere smoke drifting in cool night air
and dissipating…then disappeared!
OH! How I burned!
I danced in red flames fundamental,
so elemental and essential
in the drum beat, and embodied
in the whistle, in the call
and hue and cry, in fragile beauty
and in loss and in the cook-fires
and the dreamtime, when bereft and full of longing
OH…I burned there…
OH…How I burned!
In the forest…
In the snow…
I burned there…
Burned for Her…
I burned for me.
I’m not going on without me any longer
and I’m not a mark, or soft sweet honey pot
for strange predacious thrusts of others, NO!
I know when things must die, must die
…and when those things must live.
I’ve learned to walk away,
I’ve learned to stay
as the watcher and the knower,
oracle and visionary and intuitive gold maker,
as creator, quiet listener, inspiratrice, clever inventor,
and a guide to vibrant life that lies so deep in the deep green wood
and that same life it glows in me, it grows in me and goes beyond
me always and no matter what may matter, what may come,
Come what may, come my way…
That was last nite…
the fire of my bones
Today I have me risen…
and walk the path of crones
I am centered, un-apolo-getic,
rooted in the truth and all that I am now is…
is raw and wild
with ancient knowing
of the blood
so fiercely flowing
thru the rivers
and the streams
in the creek-beds
of my bones.
Today’s the day
to rise from ruins
(necessary ruins precede my rise).
Today’s the day to burn away,
the old that is just not aligned
with truth that feeds
those fires hot
and fuels transformation.
All of the animals gathered and watched
what they thought was a glorious sunset
on the horizon, that far lost horizon.
But it was just me, burning, on fire,
and all ruins falling and Phoenix arising,
cus I lit myself on fire last nite.
I lit myself on fire…last nite.
I Think It’s Memory
There’s deep green truth
in the spectral grey heart
of this ghastly pale notion
haunting our desperate minds:
our own truest blue heart
is most deeply discovered
in desperate ragged edges,
jagged, sharp, contrasted,
in tight precipice moments
(both high, and oh so low).
It’s on those thresholds,
in those moments
of “life”, of dismal death,
weighted and full moments
where indecision and decision
wrestle for supremacy,
where comfort lulls,
boredom deceives,
and indifference dulls…
Tell me, what’s the essence of a heart
delivered from this life lived badly
to a certain death well-died?
And there and back again
into life lived and risen
from the bony spectral grip
of that small death called
cowardice?
Iris Fox ©2013 Gretchen Powers all rights reserved
I think it’s memory,
(and of course courage
to forget what is dead
and press on in pursuit
of those matters that matter)
to bravely (courage)
recall (re-member)
those things long ago
when first love was
fresh, free, fragrant…
that gives us perspective
to risk a decent death
and choose to lay down all
in hopes that we will rise
before the Great Rising.
It’s when we remember
in poised precipice moments
that we can see most clearly
how our affections flow
and what and who we are…
But:
what we remember deeply,
all that we have ingrained
into identity assumed
(like costumes for the play)
it’s far more likely we’ll recall
when crisis, pain or comfort make it
hard to remember anything,
the deep memory will hold against
temptation of forgetfulness in
“the Forgetful Green.”
If we refuse to actively remember
the story in which we participate,
(moments where God
has acted mightily,
the times humanity
has learned in tears
of reality and immortality,
of the autonomy of God
even in this)
then in sickness and in health
undoubtedly we will forget
that memory even is a thing
in this world that’s forgotten
and bids us forget as well.
Lay aside the panaceas, cure alls,
life supports, and take up courage
to embrace a good death given
Die a Decent Death, in faith
that such thing does exist!
What is a good death?
The question’s asked and answered
by people who mourn and lament,
who weep at gravesides lingering,
who live and die and live as those
who follow That One gone before
in boldness and then risen high
above the false finale of
the gasping gaping grave!
A decent death, a certain hope…
I think it’s memory…
I think it’s memory.
It’s An Artform
To practise this quote, and to also be one who extends Grace…it’s an artform.
But I get this now, in ways I never did before, and I have been walking in it…early and often.
It has been a wise move, and I have grown well in it.
“Don’t let someone get comfortable with disrespecting you.”
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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