somewhere beyond
‘life as usual’
somewhere…
fish may be learning
to see the very water
in which they are submersed…
it’s a gift they seek
to give themselves,
a gift fleetingly
consuming time
and space like
ravenous gilled
furnaces burning
through revelation
and gold…
a scaly examen
looking backwards
into a future
coming hard
round the bend
and thus having
open eyes in this
lurking present
My heart always
beats thunderstorm surges
instead of blood
circling round and round
from ground to air to ground
I am splintered by great waves.
I am a window fixed
comprised of coloured glass
gathered from manifest-storms
of destiny manifest.
Sometimes I wonder what building
I should be hung in to let the light
shine thru formerly shattered me
now fixed, now gathered, now baptised
with those Bloody Loving Fingers dipping deep.
My hair luxuriant
breezy-blowsey and dancing
on the insistent playful zephyr wind
and combed and tangled all at once…
My hair heavy, shiny
and pregnant with dreams
not yet birthed and dreamt
my hair free, unkempt
Like Medusa before me
(before she was betrayed, before
she was raped and blamed and
cursed by that collaborator Athena)
my hair ravishing and alive like palm fronds,
like banners sparking and unfurled, unfettered,
undreamt and spread out into
endless ever-eager skies,
it wraps itself around dreamseeds
that float like stars, like fire-flies
and in its net they find a home,
a heart, and courage to lay down disguise
and take up residence in every
dreamer’s hopeful diamond-sleep
and blossom, unfold without care
those dream eggs held in my thick hair
What Cis People Say To Trans People Vs. What We Hear
“Oh, you’re trans? But you look so good!”
Rory Midhani for BuzzFeed News
When you shattered my heart
delicate globe shot thru with
tunnels and annals
and columns and canals…
when you stormed at me
on me in me with your
stoney snow of bitter black
granite and jagged icy nuggets
of frozen flecks so broken
She reached with fingers eager
to bleed upon the bloodless drained
edges of my torn and shattered soul,
fingers white and tender to the slash
and picked each cutty-edgy razor piece
up off the quick-sand floor
and put them all together, jumbly
but Her pattern knowing, more
than what I was before
And then She made a hole thru which
the eye can see, the heart can hear
kaleidoscope music and dance
of Her and me and your futility
and so I spin now, caught in moments
stark, or velvet, or even gentle fuzzy
and simply refract light from the
million shattered pieces reassembled
in mosaic magic, kaleidoscopic and supreme.
“Your line of work requires support. People who care about your wellbeing, who will be there to stitch up your wounds […] There is not a man or woman, no matter how fit he or she may be, who is capable of carrying the entire world on their shoulders.”
Can we talk about how we’re living an age where we can get an action tv show with a female protagonist and her male sidekick and they’re not in love and he’s a nurturing figure for her and she means adventures for him????
BLESS
I am a cello
alone in my beauty
inhabiting curves
like mountains inhabit
the space all around
so bright, luminous
and longing for hands
and legs all around
and the touch of fingers
on my strings tuned just so
like winds on the faces
of those shining ramparts
of stone, ice and lichen
that fall to the earth
in splashes of granite
and music like lava
slowed down by indifference
but still singing loudly
under the rainbow
across those tuned strings
and across my heart
for I am a cello
Your words were thicker than
The Black Forest
and thicker than blood
(by a long chalk)
you treated blood like water,
no, like stone, like brick
made without straw
(your house took all that)
and there, around that house
so flimsy a hufflepuffer could
poofty it away with ballooned cheeks
(and a sharp swift exhalation, just one)
you built with words a fortress
with walls thick and battlements
that do not gleam in sunsets
(like moonlight dancing with the sun on many-waters)
but brood and loom grey and flat
absorbing light and cutting off
every avenue.
I’m so glad I found you
(or did you find me)
here in the ups and the downs
The stairs are the same
the doors lead the same
in heat, in the dust and the brown
you carry those weights
responsibilities
like water jugs, like tambourines
but still find your way
to find where I am
and give me your heart, your heart clean
It is not only men who are in this class…some women too. Some children too…
There are very few honors greater than to be allowed to witness a woman’s full truth, full radiance, full depth. Any man who gets caught in the easy shallows and then bails not only misses a taste of the infinite … but remains incomplete – having missed out on an opportunity to reclaim a piece of his own soul.— Randall Alfred
“I want to care, but I don’t. I look at you and all I feel is tired.”
— Elizabeth Scott
Amongst the thorns so sharp and bristley-bitter
and nestled in the crackley canes and stems so brittle
I sprang from buds clenched tight with fright and gripping
their green possessive cloaks around their high strung hearts
so pink, so red, so soft and velvet fragrant
The sun pried without mercy, without quarter
and his hot fiery fingers plucked and pulled
and deep inside those shrouding shawls veridian
the pulsing surging petals pushed back hard
and cracked the sticky emerald shells of shame
To blossom in the air renewed by wand’ring winds
and sway and dance, be wooed by every chance, to bend
low to the ground and then high straining for the heavens
releasing me, the fragrance strong, unquenchable
of grace and beauty, peace and love and joy.
Yes. I was born of bud and robust blossom
that fell away and left me hanging here
a kiss upon the cheek of summer memory
a promise in the winter of the spring
a herald of the Love of Heaven’s King.
Across its face the river ran
all liquid grey and velvet-slate,
fell down the cheek of hanging cliff,
around the lakey eyes of blue…
And out the other end it flew,
soft down on downy breasts of green,
thru meadows and thru softest thatch…
The river gathered fertile force
and ran down legs, insistent as
the wind that pushes clouds around
the world in days, it poured out fast,
it ran down mountain shins…at last
it reached the heart of deepest seas.
It reached the inmost core of me.
It fed me with its journey-feast
and quenched my thirst to be set free…
And then I my me offered up
beneath the summons of the sun
to become clouds pushed round the world…
And then, on mountains, me unfurled…
To fall and feed with heaven’s grace
And run again on mountain’s face.
Smokers…is it worth it?
I have seen this wonderful man in person and very much enjoyed his presentation.
I am posting this for anyone curious about a theological perspective about matters of gender, presented in dramatic performance and gentle words.
Sometimes I think about the future.
I think about the time coming, roaring
down on us like a runaway train
in the silent frozen landscape
of history not yet born.
In that time, perhaps these halls
these empty rooms occupied by
the outpourings of my wakeful soul
and bright quick mind and visions of eyes
that see beyond around the bend
will be wandered by real people with hands
hungry to touch, and know, and join with
my desperate lonely shouts and dances,
my perhaps pas de deux with Vincent and
his swirly starry nights hidden for years
Because right now? The halls are empty, the rooms
cold and dusty, and the cover-sheets of familiarity
and current contempt so casual drape
masterpieces and treasures and living
songspaintingspoemssculpturesintheair
I refuse to give in to the abandonment
thrown at me in glances that brush, stare
and walk by an embarrassment of riches
and I console myself with the comfort
of delusion and daydream that time
will finally thunder thru this station
brakes blazing sparks flying
iron rails red hot with inertia interrupted
and smoking with steamy melty insistence
that here there be dragons and dreams
and worthy immortal thoughts
of forever and forever
higher up
and
deeper in
The staves and the staff
the words and the notes
and signs of quick runs,
of slurs and sly rhythms
syncopations jazzy
and slinky and languorous.
The paintings in stippled
sharp actiony thrusts
and swirly quick strokes
and brushed side to side,
side-side and side-side
and circular motion.
My words here, my song,
art in living sound
and loud color on
display for a world…
and yet it is not
anything alive,
not thriving and wild
because your eyes knowing
are never touching…no
and so they hang still
they hide in dull vinyl
in grooves and in ridges
and gather bored dust
in lonely tumultuous
shouting soft silence
It simply said: “Fuck you. I am a giraffe!”
Use this
to text my heart
to write upon
my sanskrit soul
and scribe your name
into my being
it’s the only thing
that can connect
with me, on my
wavelength
Hush, Love…
say not a word
as I sit here in light
and desire is wafting
in shivery delight
see how it settles
and falls out of air?
Here, on my shoulder
precipitates there in
a silvery sheen of dewy desire
my love a
melty hot flower of
mmmmmm
say not a word, Love
but if you wish
you may bend close
here, to taste of my neck.
I am floating on free seas held captive
in the ice of your remove and shrewd appraisal.
My heart passion like living rock moving
red and liquidy, red like plasma pulsing
scorchy and inexorably drawn in hungry
longing for the icy stillness of you.
And where we meet, I melt
you, steamy/dreamy, and yet
you run quick-cold to the reaches
and rime-rimmed rocks and reefs…
And there I sit, captive in you
and waiting for the thaw of Love
to be finally completed.
Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!
I am not a place
for the faint of heart
or blustery of soul!
But I do get lonely
as the night wheels past
my achey longing heart.
Do you not suffer
the war in this world?
Do you not feel
all the pain in this world?
The loneliness and the
no hope in this world,
the boredom and fear
of failure, temptation
too strong to resist in this world?
Bitterness of heart
amok in this world,
not knowing fully
who we are or who thou art,
not knowing this,
just knowing thy love
is beyond every knowing.
No other love has power
to fall on us and make us whole.
No other touch can withstand
the fall of Ancient Time
Here inside a civil war
between me and me.
all the time winning
and all the time losing
because I am a world,
a universe and I cannot
be explored in just one day
It will take seasons,
whole winters and
years of summers
to mount up on wings
and cascade over mountains
talking with you
sometimes is either
a slap in the face
or a slammed door,
and yet the Void…gaping gulf,
it is but exhalation
in the Light of your shadow!
And falling
into that seeming nothing,
yawning and gulping, well
it is but a dropped stitch
in the Banners over me
of You.
Ohhh Love,
it longs with me for thee
even though we’ve forgotten
thy name’s shape and feel and sound
and the way it breathes in me,
the way it speaks to me
in whispers, like wind
whispering between the clouds
to speak to earth
in breaths from beyond
like the way
you touch my ankle
when we sit upon
the floor there,
by the fire
in the speckled-star-lit night
gathered close
outside the house
just like a mama bird who nestles
down so gentle on Her chicks…
I miss you terribly
and ache so,
ever in this moment.
Barcelona,
oh City of Bones
laying hot and dry in the sun
beating down on streets, on tombs
and tiles so red over white and so hot
and shimmering radiant still,
oh ye bones!
Barcelona, City of Bones
Baking before the gates of the Sun,
I sacrificed my purity for thee, such as it might be
(my purity, not my sacrifice)
Purity…
of thought,
of mind,
of heart and soul,
purity of
song and deed
and strong intention.
Barcelona, my sacrifice
so droll, so dirty is actually
sterility masquerading
as purity and thus is merely
the absence of jazz,
the absence of spice,
the absence of that
jagged noise of exultation
and thus there is no
purity and nothing
quite acceptable
enough.
Gladly do I lay it there
(my sacrifice, not my purity)
on the bony altar of your burning eyes
hung there above the freezing flames
of your sharp haughty sniff and thus
do I seek sanctuary in the fires of
your hunger, games appeased and satiated.
And these words I leave
(my longing words so red, so sharp)
along the edge of your wet teeth,
hard teeth so white and glistening,
and there, blurred,
there they mingle
with your breath,
with the liquid you
and thus become
inflammable and ready
to leap up like the Phoenix
to take their ease in air and be
us, there, us there
be us there in the air.
And this city here,
right in plain sight and swaying
in the salty breeze blowing in stiff
off the racing aching blue seas,
this City of Bones dancing on air
with my words
there in air
like banners in the wind,
like thirsty golden kerchiefs
flying midst meteors, comets,
midst stars in the night
flapping in the solar flares
and furies of the sun and lapping
up the finest purest beams
of silver, argent grey moonlight
And those fires
(of the night)
my words those silver fires
streaking, shooting across
the vast expanse of velvet
black thick nothing, silver flames
curling, licking at the bones
of the City hanging
in the deep dark void
And the music rounding there amidst
those handy banners sounds like owls
talking soft and hooty in the wind-torn branches
and our hearts are slender limber flexing long flagpoles
and we fly our flags of love like maidens flying
tokens for our champions…
Together we all
(words and banners and bones)
shine upon your battlements
Barcelona
City of Bones
I didn’t change. I just found myself…
Not a big Bukowski fan, but this quote? Omg!!
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
— Charles Bukowski
So many people these days judge me…they dramatically confuse my gender journey with some sort of sexual expression and/or indulgence…and there is not any sort of intersection between these two. Let me try to explain.
Like the graphic below says, sexuality for me is an expression of, a following result of something far greater and grander.
I think that sexuality is sacred and precious…and also the ultimate powerful created thing, for from sexuality a human being created in God’s Image can emerge…and no, that doesn’t mean that I think sex is for procreation only. But because that potential is there, the act itself is an act of being, and as such it is transformative…
…it is gonna change you, in essential fundamental ways.
Thus…for me? Sexuality that happens apart from true and lifelong committed love is simply hell, for it ultimately serves to sever the human soul from all relationships except relationship with self and self alone (which is the best description of hell that I can think of)…
Sexuality that happens in the context of a committed and lifelong monogamous relationship?
The closest thing to heaven that I have experienced this side of its Eternal Shores.
I know I am in a vast minority of people…those who both celebrate sexuality and its essential vital importance to a whole life…and also advocate its selective expression…as a symbolic act of worship and fidelity.
I love you, my Dearest Darling.
Forever
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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