Those things break my trust.
If you say you are going to do something or be somewhere…do it.
If you cannot do it? Let me know…ahead of time.
And don’t pretend that you did let me know when you didn’t.
Monthly Archives: February 2016
By Flakiness and Inconsistency
Last Night’s Oscars
I loved Chris Rock.
He said some pretty incendiary things in a really powerful and light-hearted way.
I was truly wounded by the Tracy Morgan spoof of The Danish Girl.
I was glad that “Fury Road” picked up so many awards.
I don’t really care about what anyone else thought of them.
Illusion of a Future
“I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say.
“Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it–our life–hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.”
| — | Marcel Proust |
Mad Max: Fury Road
I just watched it.
Honestly?
It is a metaphor of my life walking amongst the cis-het war boys every day.
Their absolute insane shit, what with the horrible loud motors, the crazed music, and their orgiastic thirst for the blood of the weak, the meek, the innocent and women…
sometimes when men give me their disdain and hatred it is like how this movie sounded…that mad demon guitarist may as well follow me out in the world and be flailing like a madman while the world around me glories in my humiliation, my shame and policing.
I honestly fucking LOVED the warrior women in this…and the original warrior woman in “The Road Warrior” was my original hero and I was her wanna-be.
I freaking despise those who prattle on about “not all men”…I say that it is all men who will not allow a woman to redeem them. For it is ours to bring deliverance and redemption to them and their fucking macho bullshit quest to some fantasy boy valhalla…
…and I have had my precious memories shit on…I have had the sacred sheep that ran from the mountains to me at the behest of God been raped and savaged and murdered in the words and thoughts of one who ripped out my very soul and shook it bloody in my face.
No…not all men…any who will be strong enough to be weak and vulnerable and receptive in the moment to the mothers made of living flesh.
No doubt this post is full of pain, of rage…but my heart can take no more violation and rape and pillaging…I can take no more walking free and clear only to be mocked and murdered with every pair of eyes I meet.
Do you see…the job that Mama has in taking this twisty slimy dirty clay and making me into some kind of vessel fit and present in the world for healing?
I am no Furiosa…but perhaps a Capable…who might deliver some poor fool from his foolishness and turn him to the Life.
Very very challenging movie…watching my inner torment come to life on the screen before my eyes.
I Generate Content
Dear Constance…this is not for you, as you are demonstrably here because you enjoy reading.
Reader…this is for you: I produce the content of Grace Notes for my own sanity and therapeutic mental health. I write what I want, when I want, and how much I want.
If it is too much for you, then fade away. Others have before you…and others will after.
For I burn on helium and hydrogen, I am a halogen torch and I am flame and flame…
I cannot not write. I cannot moderate for some expectation or desire.
So-called friends have given up, gone away. Well…you can go too…or just get in the boat and ride the rapids.
Besides…the ride will give you the smallest inkling of what it is like to have this flow come OUT of you!! If you think the navigating is sumfin…imagine the containing and releasing of it.
Hey…Ima keep following hard after Mama…in a dry and thirsty land.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa
Okay…I Am Starting To Get This
In The Darkness Of The Night
in the darkness of the night
the night sublime, silent
the night stark, solitary
in the darkness
I stand outside your house
(in the darkness of the night)
and smell the fragrance wafting
to the stars above inhaling
the darkness
of the night
the smell of baking bread
the smell of your warm bed
I look into the window
and see your lips are moving
while you laugh and you talk
to someone in the light
so I turn up my collar
and turn away in tears
and grab a double handful
of sable velvet lonely
in the darkness of the night
We must protect rights of society’s marginalized | The News Tribune
We all have a responsibility to end sexual assault. Denying transgender people their civil rights is not the way to do that.
Source: We must protect rights of society’s marginalized | The News Tribune
A truly stunning well reasoned defense of my right to be.
Do you know that in most places transgender people are not recognized as who they are unless they have surgery…and at the same time the surgery is classified as “elective” and thus not covered by insurance…AND is also denied unless the person who needs the surgery obtains the permission and affirmation of 2 separate psychiatrists and surgeons?
Can you see that double bind?
“You are not a person unless you are committed enough to have surgeries…but we are gonna make you pay for them with your own money and they cost in the mid to high 5 figures…AND we are gonna make you prove yourself to at least 4 separate people…only then are you allowed to be a real person.
“Oh…and before you can even start this process, or get hormones or anything else, we are gonna require that you live as your claimed gender identity at least 2 years, after which we MIGHT give you hormones…
“What’s that you say? By requiring you to live as your claimed gender while denying you the means by which you can physically fit in we are endangering your life from transphobic transmisogynistic men? Well, you are wrong. WE are not doing that…YOU are…with your damn stupid insistence upon being a person who is differently bodied than you are gendered.”
You see the double bind?
It reminds me of how amateurism was created in sports to try and keep POC out of the leagues, because only the rich and privileged can live and train full time and not need to be paid, because they already have their money.
In the gender area…only the gender-rich and privileged can make the rules that shut us out.
And then we are told that our life matters, that we have worth, etc…just not enough worth to be made whole. Just not enough
another way of saying not enough is
worthless
And that is why it is important to let us go peepee like any other human…that is why it is important to speak of us as subjects (you/I/we/she/her) and not objects (it/that/he-she).
“That Is A She”
my home lies
deep in the forest
near the roots
of the mountains
it is a space
from which eternity
pours effortlessly
right alongside sorrow,
longing and giving
and receiving,
that one unity
of space and going
to and from
that receptive deep
opening within
passing from
this world of woe
to a deep place
that’s not a place
but the echo
of my home
deep in the forest
near the roots
of the mountains
Your Silence And Distance Is Too Much
I Am A Person
This Is Me
“I lose interest when I get ignored.”
–found online
Salty Faithful Circle-Heart
The seasons of my heart are on display
thru the rain-flecked windshield
and the squeaky blinks
of the wiper blades
thru the tinted window glass
underneath electric humming singing
of the sleepy crickets sleeping off
a sunny lazy hangover day
thru the tines of the thrumming rake
so red like my cheeks and sharp
like my nose running to the tune
of winter’s coming tramps
thru the falling snow so silent
against the dark so thick, transcendent
pointing to the circle never-ending
the seasons of my ever-changing heart
thru the wonder and the hope
thru the suffering and love
thru the dying and the crying
thru the healing and the rising
salty faithful circle-heart
Afloat In Holy Black
in the silent frosty middle
you know the place, it dangles
from a frayed and rotted rope
by its twisted, broken neck
never climbing to the heavens
never rising, never sinking
finally to hell…suspended
still-born in the dead black moment
struck hard by fiery unjust suffering
lightening bolts of frozen mystery
electric silence of a God
who seems to become floaty-fog…
…and go missing in that moment…
that cold and lonely hour of greatest need.
And Defiance?
And Hope?
And Memory?
And Wrath?
Or Mercy?
God’s absence…ever-present metronome
clicking seconds tangible
but measured in life’s lurking horrors,
haunted concentration camps
shrieking dust-wreathed empty chairs
silent tables lacking breath
just one long open exhale
lasting always occupied
by aching absence of the Loved ones
gone…just gone…replaced by absence…
lurking pervert, shadow present
of God Absent in the hanging
in the hollow hanging black…
Or is it
Holy Black? Yes.
Afloat in Holy Black.
In the times of Holy Black…
This Holy Black when God seems absent
in our need, we are too small,
inconsequential lost in mystery
I ask where is God? Where am I?
Where is Divine Mercy Sweet?
How can I (or anyone)
Slip that rough coarse choking rope?
I go forward
They are not there,
backward, but
I can’t perceive Them.
When They act on the left,
I cannot behold Them;
They turn on the right,
I cannot see Them.
And yet I find in anguished cries
against God’s absence, They are present!
Present in my blank assumption
that Their Silence equates absence
and tenacious faith in God
who seems so distant from our pain,
and silent to our acrid cries,
and absent from our acid world.
In the face of certain suffering
how else can I affirm God’s presence
in my midst except by taking
issue with injustice in this moment
of God’s long apparent ringing absence
God’s abandonment in the midst of towering suffering?
My protest against God’s pressing pregnant silence
would be deprived of dignity and meaning
if there were no Presence behind the Silence.
mercy and justice are enthroned
in a higher heaven still
and in this Lenten season,
in our hungry self denial
as we blindly grope around
in that towering Spiraling Darkness
of our own imperfect vision
and our wakened apprehension
of our God, we will to wrestle
with God’s absence so we can come
to experience the presence
of God in a different way
not that hanging purgatory
twisting in the idiot wind…no
Us and God…Afloat in Holy Black
“I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye has seen you.”
Fungus
i tried to explain
the majesty of mushrooms
who grow best in darkness
and thrive in the damp
and flourish midst breakdown
and live in the bullshit
but he just laffed derisive
and opened his wolfmouth
and said you are still
just a fungus
Gravity That Rules
…perhaps this could be me.
Right now? Sadly, it is still gravity that rules
and in times like these?
It’s hard to see
I Am The OtHeR
they sit beside the brook
its merry song tinkles around them
music from the heart of
the earth’s blood clearer than diamonds
more fierce than oxygen
and all they hear is the sound
of piss bouncing off stones
and fouling the dirt
in the presence of waterfalls
roaring with the immanent joy
of the void becoming UN-void
and spray like pearls on the way
from nowhere to as yet pregnant
oysters in deepest seas and
deeper sees
all they hear is a vague
annoying buzz of
an insignificant tramp.
and at that shore vast
that shore that makes them
wistful, hopeful, weak, strong
in, out, shrinking, growing
never changing never same
and the thunder of the deep
calling to Deep…
they cast their trash
and drop their gum
after taking my picture
Sensitively Fashioned
I am posting the paragraphs below because they describe me, inside. Oh no…not on the outside, I am large and just…well, Ima avoid saying.
But I am really struggling tonite…it was a very tough week since Monday…on Monday I was traumatized and humiliated in the course of living my life. Someday I will post about it, but for now I think discretion is of the order.
Here is what I don’t get tonite though: why do I always have to “prove” myself, when others do not have to?
Why do I have to:
Why do I have to:
1. Prove I am legitimate…who I know I am
2. Prove that I am “safe”…cus the assumption is I MUST be a pervert.
3. Prove I am a person…not an “it” or a “that”
4. Be met with suspicion
“I asked God why He made me sensitive, and He promised me that it wasn’t a mistake. He told me He purposely made me delicate, not so I could shatter easily, not so I could be frail, not so I could be told I’m “too soft” whenever someone tries to touch me…it was so I could know of the gentle beauty in living.
“And in my tenderness, I can love in a way the world may not know of yet. My compassion has the power to speak raging waves to calmness and I can appreciate the little things He created that go unnoticed. There is something special in being fragile, and it has nothing to do with weakness, and everything to do with strength.
“Being sensitive is a gift, He answered, and I shouldn’t be ashamed of it.” 🌿
Rape Culture=Apocalypse Culture
Residual Benefactor: The Purgatory of Dying Friendship
“As an undergraduate, I first heard the term “residual benefactor” in an economics class. A residual benefactor is the chump who gets whatever is left over when a company is liquidated — typically, not much.
“When we’re not careful, the people we care about often become residual benefactors: We leave them for last, giving them whatever bits of time are left over after we’ve attended to everything else.”
It’s The Dependable Part That Is Tough To Find…
Christian, Let My Transgender People Go! (When Bigotry Uses the Bathroom)
On The Way To Scarborough Faire
by a frosty window, cracked
just a bit to let the roasty room
(and our toasty toes) sip some
air so fresh and crisp and clean
that air, smelling salts cast up
and out and in by the sighing seas
that rose and fell contentedly
as you lay there…asprawl by me
our night so many years ago
and yet it never happened
except in our hearts twining
(or in mine anyway, cus
I am allus pining for what
has never happened but could have)
and me saying “I am in love with you”
and you asking “does that mean I love you?”
and me answering with lips, with tongue
and you opining with moans, and lungs
yours, mine, in, out, heave, sigh
and the seas…so content
and so restless
and so content
and so restless
there on the way
to Scarborough Faire
It’s On…
it’s on the naked branches
stripped bare by winter lashings
frozen crushings and dim light
dark night and the howls and owls
and the lonesome silent music
of lost longings and long waiting…
it’s on the roof built solid
so snug against the cold
and cupping all the golden warmth
that glows inside the heart
and sings inside the soul
of Spring returning fast…
it’s on my face that Mama splashes
all Her Love, Her Grace and Peace
She beautifies my ashes
She oils my grieving heart
She clothes me in Her Raiment
and purifies my spirit
and I sing once again
reborn and free again.
My True Name
the sun scurries from the rim
of the far horizon, hurries
up to its important stage above all
things beaming.
it’s gonna have a helluva day
throwing shade at everyone
especially me, this moonchild
that sunshine passes thru.
the sun forgets everything
but its self-important run
to heights to glare down from
imperious, impervious, and naming.
I could look straight at it
but if I did, it would be quenched
in my knowing, darkling gaze,
my look that sees the backside
so I look away as it names me
wrong, other, afterthought
aside, and that old flame would
just as soon burn my ass.
but in just mere moments
when I lower my gaze, the sun
forgets I ever was, except maybe
to laugh and snicker at the moonchild
but the moon remembers
and so do I
the moon, soft, beautiful
receives me
knows my name
my true name
And Always Unavailable
whether friend or lover
That Line?
that line?
right there.
the one stretching out
from somewhere to nowhere
i crossed it
but not just stepped across
on dancing feet
i danced across
and caper on its grave
But My Choices Get Me Right Back In
Demure In That Sunset
you looked out on our landscape
the one we saw outside
that just mirrored the one
we share between our hearts.
you said that it was beautiful
and though I did agree
I said nothing, and did defer
demure in that sunset.
the winds blew cold, freezing
like un-freeze-able ice
that twisted round our toes
and nipped sharp at our nose
but it did not seem to phase you
there in that beauty sprawled
as stars began to sing
and blood began to bring
you to my yearning soul
that never will be whole
in this night breaking bright
we held each other tight
and then our lips did meet
the wind paused, then attacked
and drove us closer still
love you I ever will.
In The Still Hush
in the hush, in the still hush
of the dying day, the waning day
see the sun, ohh the setting sun
shining rays, rays trickling
down the winds, on the breeze
to the beach, in the reach
of ocean waves, wild waves crashing
to the sands, the sparkling sands
in the cold, the rush of cold air
all around, and fresh in us
on that quiet, quiet darkling
winter evening.
A Gulf So Imperceptible
the distance between you and i
is the same as that distance
between myself and me
a gulf so imperceptible
two souls that intertwine
and yet a smokescreen intervenes
and my heart never to be touched
my inmost parts so liquid, so creamy
laying fallow, uninhabited
thinness, membrane thinner than
a butterfly wing, or maybe even
just one molecule thick
but never can be broken thru
never can be jumped across
to stand there with you
That Sacred Mountain
“I reckon she tours 45, 47 weeks a year” he drawled
that soft spoken voice crawled out of wiry limbs
and a throat red and wattled and jiggly while he
wagged his chin.
“Why, she may clear two hundred thousand a year”
and those words drew my eyes lifted, my ears
and I couldn’t decide if he was more
Richard Farnsworth or Robert Duvall or
just a one-off salt knowing everything about nothing.
“What’s it gonna take, til she strikes it hot, clear
and becomes the next Joan Baez?”
I stifled my own mirth, jammed it deep
like musket balls tamped down the barrel
of an old long-rifle and lowered my gaze
like the sharp winter moon bending to earth
to harvest tides and turns and yearns.
But when she came out she was clothed in midnight.
She wore night sky round her shoulders adorned
with stars golden and shimmering in arpeggios, waves
rippling, flowing as she mounted the stage all gawky
adolescent walking into high school for the first time,
all snowy egret eternal and established and impossibly thin.
Thin, lined with years like irrigation ditches dug
by needy and loving hands from her dirt and her face
a sharp, flat smooth blade fierce, angular and unrelenting
until she sang, and
Mama picked her up and
she became more diamond brilliant and
turning than tossed tomahawk whirling fast.
She spoke
of the Sacred Mountain,
she spoke
of Blue Lake
and the Holy Hallowed
ground made ready
by the steady
devoted padding footsteps
of the people of the lake.
Her voice was red,
red smears on blacks and deeps
crimson moans in velvet folds
and bright cardinal ever song
over the burlap of everlasting deep.
Snow, rain, wind, beauty
swirled her round and fell
from her slopes in glitter-jets
and flocky-flecks and cloudy bunches,
fell to our listening hearts
yearning in the darkness.
And my tears fell as I heard her,
tasted her in this present sacred singing moment
while she spun her tales right down the rails
and into our true heart amber and yearning
and I recalled the Sanctuary she built for me
from her pain and need and naked suffering trust
that temple of holy hurt that I dwelt in, grieving
mourning the coming loss of love and sweet devotion
I dared not leave that place then
I did not want to leave this place now
but she reeled them off and some brand new
and rose from that folding chair grander
than any sovereign throne fashioned
from naked blades or fragrant petal
RedRedRedRedRedRedRedRed
And like a mountain
just up and walking off
she strode, spare glorious
slopes cloaked in snow
and feet clothed in rain
and wreathed in wet and
the blossoms of many trees
Walk On Daffodils
I can walk on daffodils
barefoot, light and free from ill
See, I have feet, light, beautiful
feet that walk on top of things
and yet so sturdy under me,
feet that will not crush flowers
yet will trod on serpent’s head
impervious to fang and tooth
impervious to words and hate
feet stained carmine with grape blood
but never wrath, never that
cus I just walk on daffodils
and tread the yellow golden road
Blessed Meek
Hemingway said that one should write
hard and clear about what hurts
but what if what hurts isn’t that
which stony lays heavy and dark?
what if tend’rest touch and rest
is what hurts deepest, what hurts best?
intimate soft whispers, silk
and lacy heart of cream and crunch
quiet whispers over head
of breeze on branch, what brutal punch
is gentle beauty, soft and blurred
by grateful tears, my precious pearls
slipped down my velvet slick white cheek
I write for all we…blessed meek.
And Yet Because
…and yet because you don’t come round anymore, you won’t even know
I Burn So Free
Unmoored in the white expanse
chained by air and frozen flats
white as far as eye can see
and just one speck revealed there…me
Photo Credit: After Exposure Studio
www.afterexposurestudio.com
red on white, no blue in sight
carmine bold against the night
a blood smear there upon that face
so cold, so neutral…blooming grace
I burn there in this gelid place
and nothing here to burn but ice
that smothers every spark and glow
and so I turn my heat high…slow
and steady, burning every flake
and fleck of frozen haughty glance
I use as fuel your silences
and melt the emptiness of chance
that random stark coincidence
of when you turn and look my way
but lend me not even a branch
to burn, just more cold arctic grey
It matters not, I burn my me
I choose to be a fire hot
and brighter than the silent white
I burn the ice…I burn so free
This Morning’s Purple Fog
this morning’s purple fog
slapped my cheeks hard
when I left the house
they were rosy red and pink
but now?
deep purple–
bluish violet blush–
heliotrope-tinged–
by the purple fog.
it shocked me
with its iridescence
and made me
bite my lip to stifle
exclamation, exhalation
of purple mist breathed in
thru my clenched teeth
and open heart.
and now?
with my mouth so bloody
so torn and pierced,
I seek to write and lips
my pen and paper yes,
I write with
my bloody lips
and scribe with
my bloody mouth
as the bloody breath
of the winter-sotted earth
rises from those
spring-dreaming dirt clotted lungs
and slaps
my cheeks hard…again
with this morning’s purple fog.
Letting Go Today
I’m letting you go now, even though
you don’t want to be let go…
See, the problem for me is that
I cannot live inside this status quo
not any longer…so I’m letting go.
I need someone who wants to talk
and giggle in the live-long night
and make hay while the day is light
and while away the time…
the time…
the time so fleeting
and wasted there on us
in heaping frivolous mounds.
I’m sad because so many asks lay dying
in inboxes and archives
and yet a scream of horror
or sadness or of sorrow
will bring a hurried call
today!! And not tomorrow…
and thus the status quo is kept,
our jailer, not our friend
and my heart languid bleeds red
out and fades away again.
I don’t know what a best friend
is supposed to do…
I only know what I do.
I’m sad and lonely
and letting go today.
Whether Cold Or Hot
when Truth a blanket insufficient is convicted
and self not be well covered over hands so cold
and madness gibbers in your shiv’ring teeth that chatter
and feet exposed to cold night air and bones that feel so old
I say it’s Self that must be altered!
For Truth it is the size that it must be
Seek not to grow the Truth, for it will alter not
But shrink your self to fit beneath…
whether cold or hot.
My Warm Song Ever Out
Grey charcoaly puffs
hurry past my face,
red-rubbed raw
by the same dog-winds
that chase those whinny clouds
over head,
over mountains short,
steep and rocky rumbled
raised up stubborn
not a whit like
those poofy powder puffs
that drop down low and
poof
puff
phooph
over thistles, scrub, leaving
their rainy powder wet and steady
on the sharp and sternish moor.
I cannot tell which I’m like more:
the puffy mists hurried, harried
the stubborn hill ready-rough
the moor, thistle-bound and stark
I walk on, and breathe
the cold air in and blow
my warm song ever out.
I Am Eve
shhh…let your words speak silence
between the worlds I travel in
while holding sacred tension
in my loins, my heart and core
do not knock me into knowing!
I must dance, delicate and light
in order to Unknow and enter
Mysteries Highest, Deepest Delight.
I mustn’t find my way to answers,
rather, forget to remember them
and lose my questions in the
silence spoken silent
and resounding.
I am not ignorant,
I am not naive!
I am not foolish…
my name is Eve
and I am crown
to all creation
and forging trails
unknown into what
he knew and
then discarded and
I must simply
thus Unknow.
Standing on the diamond threshold
at the pearl crossroads
living emerald heart
and pulsing ruby blood
My body is the gateway
and my soul’s forgotten
questions and the music
playing deep within
celestial night.
I am Eve.
The Sight Of Naked Branches
on the grey rough ribbon unfolding
and stretching out before us
between lines and lanes and fields
and orchards in a naked bunch
row by row
the green crawled over those naked trunks
as if ashamed of barrenness, but delicate
and all in uniformity, trunk to branch
and branch to tree, and then I felt it
reach toward me
and all my questions fled before
the sight of naked branches, trunks
shrouded green, awaiting Green
no answers did they speak
yet no question remained
remembered, needing answers
and one with myself
we rolled on home.
Afloat In Holy Black
it’s a thousand points of light
stark against the black
reflected in my eyes
refracted in my heart
a thousand thousand times
in gold, in yellow hues
embedded in the sable soft
stuck in molassess skies
amber warm and endless sloe
i feel the tête-à-tête
vibrate around me, in me too
and I begin to know
that I will never fade, burn out
or disappear in black
for I’m a thousand points of light
afloat in Holy Black
Take A Chunk Outta Me
while you draw your hard lines
and box with your words
i struggle in time
with the death-rattle birds
and thoughts like hyenas’
gibbering glee
as those dead zombie jaws
take a chunk outta me
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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