Written for My Father…
“…and then you turn your head
your beautiful estrangéd face
to the other side of midnight
and behold that silky rain
(as if for the first time)
that Never Ending Irish Rain
fell green across the golden waters
and washing down those greying sands,
quiet, themselves ablaze, a-falling
like stars straight thru the night…”
Source: Never Ending Irish Rain
The place of Beauty
in a broken, breaking world,
how to recognize it
rather than define it,
those moments that stop us
dead in our fatal tracks.
Do you know beauty
is conducive to stillness?
It isn’t that which excites
or makes us want to replicate it…
Source: Haunted, Haunting Beauty
“it has long been rumored
there was a night, that night
when Juliek, on brink of death
played Beethoven so hauntingly
in the dark for dying men, starved,
doomed to meet dark doom so soon
but regaled in that lurking dark
with beauty’s fire unquenchable…”
Source: Haunting Beauty, Redux
I am posting this for those readers who still may not understand the complex physiological and psychological factors that work together to form our gender orientations.
In light of the fact that the Bible is utterly silent regarding the so-called “morality” of gender, this article could be especially helpful for those of you who claim you love Jesus and yet treat transgender humans like Hell.
May God spare you the kind of treatment that you have handed out to others in the name of Jesus…but that is not how it works, is it? The fact of the matter is that the exact standard that you employ to show your rejection and hate of transgender humans is the one that Jesus will hold up for you on your day of dawning…
sometimes scared I hear
the stink and the hot blood
rushing thru the crowds
like demons on the loose
the hounds of Torquemada
sometimes I see them
all the people in the streets
lost and in a mumble
of pain and crazy jumble
and death in every tumble
and I just wanna lay there
in the streets so dirty
teeming with the garbage
of privileged excrement
and tear my chest wide open
and with my desperate fingers
claw my hurt ribs agape
and reach in for my heart
and rip it from my soul
and hold it over head
and let my blood gush forth
in step with all my tears
and wash it all away
why can’t it wash away
oh Jesus wash, oh Jesus
why is it them not me
i think I’m gunna cry
and cry and cry and cry
while my heart bleeds and bleeds
until it’s bled all dry
“…and the nuance is gone,
disappeared in the mist
along with soft kisses,
it’s all been dismissed
by orange fading soft
into white then returning
to orange, and orange
and then just more orange
so i sit here, i wait,
i remember another time,
other days full of
sweet music and rhyme…”
Source: Nothing Rhymes Orange
Standing beside gull-force winds
strong enough to blow a waterfall
back into its own face, something
no man has experienced but needs to
I watch Beauty roll down and meet unbelief.
And I remember all over again how I am haunted
by the ghost that grows when Beauty glows and screams
to the body transcendent and compelling and
then goes silent once again
a waterfall thundering down
and pushed away with every might
and longing stirs all over again
as I just wonder how it is
that God can be resisted, how
that God has chosen suffering, now
in person and in heaven, wonder
that God is…that God is…that
then the song is sung by Beauty’s
absence in the scattering
the scurrying, no one cannot not be aware
and longing for the shelter
of The Safe Wing Stretched Divine
though it feels ominous, and gone and here
the absence of what cannot leave
beauty…or itself.
a guillotine to answer to the knife in my clenched fist
and I realize I must go thru this once again, this absence
that leaves all things scattered, scurrying, suffocating
in the Stripping of the Altar, in the scattering of all
and the sound of tombs slammed shut
and the sound of screaming triumph
and the sound of darkness looming
and the sound of Beauty Silent
all compel a halt to movement
so we listen in the stillness
to the absence, to the absence
to the looming screaming absence
and the Sound of Beauty Silent
everyone denied it.
that He was killed
that He was alive
that there was a Door
that the Door was closed
everyone denied it.
that there was it.
that it was.
that she was dressed
that she was it.
She knew better
because dawn had done
and blue was shining
in her golden hope
She knew open and empty
were Something.
Born transgender…
concealed…
in rushes, in tulies
wandering deserts
and walking lonesome valleys…
and we walked around the sun
50 times, spinning, circling
while I, spinning and circling
spiraled out of myself
torn in two
or maybe parted
by Solomon’s Silver Blade
my inner me stifled and screaming
“Give Her Away! Give Her Away!”
as he just shrugged and said
“I don’t wanna be here anyway”
but then to come to myself slow
trickling back home
and draining up and in
before coming out
the sun so bright
the wind so fresh
creation dancing
and the stink of hate and horror
and the sting of brutal spittle
and eyes that bruise and stab
and the cries of the powerless
and the silence of the othered
and the dust of death settling
I dance, I sing, I SHOUT!
I whirl and lift that dust to the wind
as my offering of violent worship
of our Liberty God, Our Graceful GOD
our LOVING GOD
and I hear Their loving strong whisper:
“For such a time as this you were created”
and I take my place with Ester
and take Mary of Bethany’s hand
and settle into this truest truth for me:
“My maids and I will fast likewise.
And so I will go to the king, which is against the law;
and if I perish, I perish!”
And again…from Last Year:
it was a village
no longer existing
it was a laugh
that echoed that village
and hung in the air
like smoke from a fire
extinguished in nightfall
and drifting in winds
and lonely midst stars
while crickets and frogs
lament as it faded
and pebbles and diamonds
all heaped up at random
and sticks and steel swords
all jumbled together…
Source: A Handful of Memory
My own poem from last year…I do really favor this one.
it looks the same to you
whether you stand
in winter or summer
…the gate of my heart…
Source: ever Spring, ever Autumn
in that place…
it only exists
between your lips
when you are sleeping
and I am awake…
it’s the same place
between the dark
freshly plowed field
and the deep night sky…
I live there, quick
in every dear breath,
in between them as well
touching your parted teeth
the way moon touches sea
my love touches you
your want touches me
I am a doorway
eternity dwells
and we enter thru
in every dear breath.
Do you know the place where the light passes in?
That’s where you’ll find me when darkness is seeping
from crevice and cranny while Spring trudges weeping
I sit in the place where the light passes in.
You’ll find me there singing of beautiful life
and of faith like pure gold burnished shiny with hope
as my tears fall like diamonds so soft in the wind
In that place where the light, where the light passes in.
Listen…you barely can sound out the echoes
that buzz in the trees and bounce off the crags
and run back and forth from my mouth to my chin
In the place where the light passes in, passes in
It’s tempting to think that I never have lived
a sad day or bad day when dark gathers grim…
But I have…what’s the secret? Outside and In?
Why I let the light pass thru, and out, and then in…
I’m the place where the light, where the light passes in.
the fog gathers, nesting
over the deep quiet glen
dialing down sunlight
damping every sound
in this gloam my supple soul
nestles in, gives up control
and ceases struggle to be good,
or important, or subtle
and she feels the fog like still joy.
if you wish to care for the soul
you must decide it matters
more than human life
and simply know…still
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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