the rocks are weepy tonight
in the mist they hide,
like a sorrowful bride
beneath her veil so misty-thin,
so impenetrable.
the trees lean grey and low
in acts of love and sacrifice
and yet their branches can’t suffice
the blow, the brunt the rocks endure
in the endless name of Time.
and out upon the roiling sea
I dance the waves and they dance me
and we keep time to metronomes
so deep and quiet that their song
may simply be the sound, the weep…
the tears of the weepy rocks 
I draw attention to this because every single one of these people at this dinner thinks that transgender people are anywhere on the continuum from “insane and mentally ill” all the way to “demon possessed”.
Each of these people supports discrimination against LGTBQIA people. Every Single One.
These shills are there with trump the absolute fucker telling him that he is God’s Servant when he is carrying forward towards becoming law actual statutes that are the equivalent of death warrants for people as they lose their access to medical services and will simply die.
In the guise of “religious liberty”.
The list in 1 Corinthians 6 that is used as the cudgel against LGTBQIA individuals contains many things, ALL of which refer to behavioral expressions of basic violations of human beings by the exercise of power over one another. The list is not a prohibition of actual things (such as speaking, such as sexual activity of any orientation, such as possession of property), but rather condemns forms of each of the things I mentioned (adultery, theft, lying, malice (which is hatred), and a specific form of homosexual activity that is widely held by all serious scholars to be condemning a specific homosexual relationship that involved the subjugation and oppression of one of the participants in a power dynamic that was akin to sexual slavery)…
Why do I mention this? Because it is this list that is cited to oppress LGTBQIA human beings…while the same people who do this willingly serve people who lie, steal, cheat, run around on their wives…essentially ANYTHING that cannot be seen or is not admitted to!
But let someone be open about their sexual orientation or gender orientation and they are ostracized, shunned, and often literally physically assaulted.
This is who you have become, evangelical christendom (I will not shit on the word “Church” by letting it apply to you).
In this passage from Isaiah 10, we discover why these actions are a stench to God:
“Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, who write misfortune, which they have prescribed to rob the needy of justice, and to take what is right from the poor of My people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless.
What will you do in the day of punishment, and in the desolation which will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your glory?
Without Me they shall bow down among the prisoners, and they shall fall among the slain.
For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.”
Did you know that if the current proposed health care roll backs become law that it will result in a transfer of wealth of 300 billion dollars to the people in the country who make more than $250,000? Yes that is correct: the top 1% are going to get even richer…
These things matter in concrete terms of life and death…but they also matter in that the hypocrisy of these people at this dinner and every single person who supports these people is now on prominent display…the party of the goats who wail “Lord Lord when did we see You hungry or sick or naked or in jail” is forming up fast.
This is your chance to turn from your lazy, mindless, sinful supporting of an evil evil party and an amoral greedy titular head of that party…and return to your first love.
The book of James says this about “true religion”:
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
Not the flocking to the side of a man who is willing to do your bidding to make it possible for you to literally hurt, destroy and murder the oppressed and the defenseless.
I will not associate or participate with anyone who actively supports these individuals and their leader, trump the absolute fucker.
The day before he signs an executive order on religious liberty.
Source: National Day of Prayer: Donald Trump White House Dinner | Time.com
Last year on this day this poem came to me, along with feelings of overwhelming grief…
today, after the hunters began their work yesterday, legislative guns blazing and celebrating after…
today it makes sense.
we soared high on currents,
uplifts unseen by human eyes
but oh so visible to us,
we dancers in the skies…
ever young and long did we thus fly
until we tired and we had need of
landing, resting…
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
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
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.
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
We set out on tender feet
and tender hearts to match
and faces become flint as we
determined that we would not faint.
When our sojourn was hip deep in heat
and we were well and away, out to sea
she told me of the heartbreak and the horror
and there how we did rain our tears…
We took turns (while we wiled the desert paths away)
swimming away from the ship of us…naked, vulnerable
and healing in the slick water…further and further
and then return and up and back into our desert ship.
It was in the sunset wrought with haze from distant destinations
that make you think about fire, and about what might have been.
We, perched on that rock solid emanating heat and spitting healing
while the sky, bruised by our advances, turned purple in our song.
It was just Day Umpteen Kazillion in our great traverse of deserts,
we walking, swimming straight by myth and extraterrestrial,
feeding on lizards, trilobites, and our sacred Stories our Communion shared
and we, oh so close to our arriving, our becoming, our sacred Desert Story.
For all who want to:
A: Understand transgender issues and origins
B: Want to be allies in the granting of human rights
C: Believe that being a christian precludes hateful condemnatory behavior
D: Have a trans loved one(s) that you wish to support
This article is for you.
I personally have experienced every single thing mentioned in this article. As a full grown middle aged human…the loss of family connection; the loss of employment; the loss of social standing, the hate-filled behavior towards me of literal total strangers; physical violence…
…not to mention the sort of thing that happened when I was little, and my choice of dissociation from myself. Only God can ever really measure that damage done as a child…damage that was not “intentional” but was fully empowered by the cultural forces of the binary and thus did no less damage.
This mom literally tried all the things that transgender rights opponents espouse…read her story. A conservative christian family with bona fides that may well make St Paul’s head spin! The accusation that parents’ poor parenting is responsible for the “mental illness” of the child is revealed as the false belief that it is.
This child is amazingly strong and persistent. I did not have that strength…I caved…and nearly died for the next 50 years.
All this damage, all this death…all because of clothing, genitalia, and bathrooms.
And trump supporter? Please pay special attention to the reporting of the trump administration’s specific and deliberate plans to take away transhuman rights! Just exactly as I told you. Supporting this absolute fucker taking office is the deliberate empowering of someone who wants to hurt me…
as if you could what…beat the trans out of us? Pray it off of us? Be sure and notice in the pull quotes below the full grown relative who vows to send this little kindergarten kid to the hospital on a stretcher if that child was in a restroom that his 22 year old niece was in!!!
That is literally flabbergasting to me! Really!!??? What is a 5 year old child gunna be able to do to a 22 year old woman??
No matter how many…no, even if you slaughtered every single transgender person? We would be back in the next generation…because we are a function of human reproduction, and not a function of “social engineering”
“…No matter how much punishment this kid got, you couldn’t beat it out of her,” Kimberly said. “You couldn’t pray it out, I couldn’t cast it out.” Indeed, Kai was having none of it. Sometimes she would wait until Kimberly was on the toilet to taunt her from just out of striking range: “You know I’m a girl.” Other times, she began praying within her mother’s earshot that God would “let Joseph” (Kai’s former name) “go home and be with Jesus.”
Kai’s prayer was Kimberly’s breaking point. That, and learning about the sky-high suicide rate for trans kids; according to one study, 41% of trans youth had attempted suicide—a rate almost ten times higher than their cisgender counterparts.
“There are so many trans kids who don’t have her persevering, persistent spirit,” Kimberly said. “And if Kai didn’t have that spirit, I would have succeeded in breaking her, into conforming into what I was trying to make her be. And we would have all been ok with that until she killed herself, at 14, or 13, or 11, or 20, or 50….
“…Still, the social fallout for Kimberly was swift. Trans advocates often say “everyone loses someone” when they transition; Kimberly’s family lost almost everyone. While one of Kai’s uncles helped his niece pick out new outfits, most of her extended family distanced themselves. One aunt threatened to call CPS on Kimberly. Other relatives shared a Facebook post from a Houston-area preacher, proposing a training day where the church would teach children how to spot and report trans kids at their schools. A cousin sent Kimberly a Facebook message warning if he ever saw Kai in a bathroom with his 22-year-old daughter, Kai would “need a stretcher.”
“A best friend from the family’s church, where Kimberly served in ministry for years, stopped their years-long 5 AM prayer phone calls. When Kimberly attended a school board meeting last June to discuss the accommodation of trans students, she said one pastor from her church showed up to speak out against them…”
Source: The unlikely Texans fighting anti-trans bill SB6 | Fusion
trump supporter, pay attention. Do yourself a HUGE favor and read this article…it will save you from grievous regret!!
A lifetime of living for truth is being flushed down the toilet.
I give credit to the child for understanding: SHE has profited from what her father participated in…and has blood money.
I believe that Business Insider is reputable. trump supporter: You cannot hide your head in the sand of “only FOX news”…remember when in school and the scientific method was taught…apply that here, confirmation of truth from a preponderance of the evidence and from a plethora of sources…
but that takes work…it does not go down easy like FOX’s pre-chewed gummy bear news does.
A lawyer wants to know who was influencing Yanukovych when he ordered Ukrainian security forces to crush protests. One name that has emerged: Paul Manafort.
Source: Manafort’s daughter’s hacked text messages lead to calls for probe – Business Insider
…it’s contained in this article…incident after incident after incident…and the links to the primary documents.
That is what real news looks like.
This is talking about my own life, my own family…and yours, too…because all of us have this brokenness. The evidence is irrefutable.
This poem is all about forgiveness…trying to give it and trying to receive it…and the incredible revelation that it is impossible.
There is no trying…there is only becoming.
“…And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit,
no escape from agony,
pitstop from pain…
all we can do is
exchange suffering’s form
and it’s face, from our own
for the pain of another…”
Your vain cold words wielded stark like an ax
against a tree because you’re cold in spite
of conflagration blazing behind you
but that ax slinks solo chopping at that
frozen sea, once us, so insufficient…
and now? It is just more ice-pick chipping,
adding to that devastating sea
of loathing and despair you wallow in,
you, leper in the Dead Sea of yourself.
And common grief can crack a frozen wall,
but frozen sea? Alas, this grief looms large!
Singular…and you giving, so giving…
but only of more death and dumb destruction…
where was this giving when there was something
more to give besides grief and a pecking,
a chippy picking needle peck peck peck ing?
I’m searching in corners dark, difficult
because the light is empty, Fool…and ‘neath
barrage of comments belittling, gory
I face our scandal torrid, flaccid, hoary (our story)
which is the scandal in every last story
that you refuse to read…instead you hide
in that pervasive smothering attitude
and as I gasp for breath and fumble with
my flaws in jagged close shuddering dark
you trumpet your search for beams of darkness
that occlude specks of light, light that, blinding,
irritates our eyes to tears and tears that
frozen sea to pieces, tears my frozen
flesh to pieces…tears me into pieces…
It’s difficult, this dimly lighted place
that requires much more, and then some more…
a merciful throne compels honesty,
transparency…that a dictator sees
as only weak capitulation…but
it is here…
In the shadow of incarnation, Here
I find the strength to walk this…this darkened path…
this darkened path of self-examination.
This was my being’s experience for too many years, and the first poetic attempt to deal with the major stronghold of my life…and the gif at the end…brrr…I lived in terror of those footsteps on the stairs, coming towards me with harsh words and blows…
Source: Abandonment
I am sharing this, written a couple years back…thinking now of those who literally believe that trump the absolute fucker is good for this country, this season of history.
The ONLY good thing that I can see is that his election tore off the masks and showed the real faces underneath, and what the worth of faith professed is…and isn’t.
Just in case it has not been obvious: I reject trump and everything he stands for and embodies. He is utterly at odds with the good news of the gospel. Until the day he repents and brings forth fruits commensurate thereof, I will call him the absolute fucker. I am not and will not be unequally yoked with him or his ilk.
I am stunned in the ripping of the masks…it’s as if I am watching the Yale debate team become “Lil Abner”.
He is maelstrom consuming and the earth disappears.
Read on if you dare
It starts small.
Just one word,
connects almost
without effort to
another word
and they twist
together a corkscrew
actually…
and suddenly
that cork slides
so easy so tight so slick
and then
such popping
sudden relief!
the bottle in
a heart so bitter
is open at last
invective is free
but just a sip
then a glug
(one must be
careful you see
to apply bitterness carefully)
just to make a point
just to become
the very thing
you hate
I will never, ever be able to accept that someone thinks that they can support me while not only supporting trump, but condoning and extolling him and what he says and does.
I have no fellowship with him, in any way, shape, or form.
trump and his kind wish to not only hurt me, but also eradicate me, as if they can make it so that “there is no such thing” as transgender people.
And there are people who refuse to see this.
It blows my mind.
To list the ways, the deeds and the decisions that add the substance to the statement would take a month…but it is all easily found, at least it is easily found by anybody who uses other media sources than FOX and the so-called “Christian” Broadcasting Network (or some variant thereof).
Truthfully, I have such a sinking feeling that were it ever to become “illegal” to be transgender (as if that twisting of words could somehow ever define me), said individuals would think they were doing a work of God when they joined the Roman soldiers who killed all boys under two years old in the time of Jesus’s birth…and I would be dead.
trump is an absolute fucker.
Reposting a poem from last year…any good poem applies at a number of different levels, some known and some unknown and waiting to be discovered…
I moved away while you weren’t watching
(it was easier than I thought it would be,
escaping past your X-Ray eyes
that look for flesh and blood
and thus missed my exodus)
I live by the sea, now…
Source: My Exodus
it’s a dark desert to be endured
it’s some kind of bleak mountain
to be climbed, it’s boring and grey
and monotonous but it’s equal parts
beautiful and devastating too
it sees the sorrow in everyday occurrences.
it’s a man drunk at a party because
he doesn’t know anybody and plays the fool.
it’s a woman who tries on a dreamy
dress at a boutique and feels bad for
wanting something nice for herself.
these snapshots of despair
seem so trivial in isolation
but they are oh so meaningful
these moments of weariness
they tell us we’re not alone
they let us feel sad while
they rip our souls to pieces
they are so gorgeously wrought
and exacting at the same time.
this hurts me
I’m not sure if this
is a recommendation
or a confession.
I adore deeply
I have changed my life,
been cut to my core
but these moments
they are bleak
these moments
they hurt
their painful penumbra glows
with sharp, precise clarity
and everything else
before and after
feels like
a fuzzy
dream
it skulks along a snowy New England lane
so beautiful that you hardly even notice
the despair lurking there under the ice
you’ll see what I’m talking about
under the ice and sinking down
into the forever bony grip
of a moment
a moment
of weariness.
I recall writing this in somewhat of a fugue…
Landscape of Disruption and thick Decadence
washing ever over me in those thin emerald waves
teal and deep blue, muddy yellow and tan.
Your streets of light and music,
aimless, drifting bacchanalia…
Source: Oh Brazil! You Never Knew Me!
Oh Holy Lightning Strike like Griffin Swift
upon this yearning heart in desperate need
of Your Mercy Severe, Your Holy Gift
Give us Grace to Find the Phoenix-Way!
To rise in faith from Ashes and from death
to self and self reliance, come what may!
On resurrection wings and Spirit’s breath
alive again and all is well this night
that breaks and shatters with the rising dawn…
and not a single fire road in sight,
and what will be well it shall simply be
and what will not be well it will be gone!
Come Holy Fire, we answer Your Call!
and All Reborn, and Love is All in All,
“Someday…someday the snow will fall!”
I am reblogging this poem from 2 years ago…here is the key passage:
“I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog
thick and lingering,
but 2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it
I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more
than a dream.It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew
or if it even could…”
Dread.
I feel it still.
Laying at the base of my throat and throbbing
dully, quietly slumbering with one leering eye
cocked open always and leaning towards my heart.
My heart…
chipped and worked, touched and chilled
by the frozen fingers of dread
and shards of it lay scattered at my feet
clear, jagged glimmering
broken.
I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog thick and lingering,
but 2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more than a dream.
It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew or if it even could.
It was a year without windows
but many doors
and ladies
and tigers.
There is more to life than meets the eye,
more than can be measured by the senses or a census
but this morning there is just the fog behind
and…
View original post 115 more words
As a poem…I love this one. I was blessed to capture some delicate and beautiful imagery, and it emerged in a nice meter that is augmented by the rhyming patterns and their shifting nature…matching the shifting nature of the poem.
Frankly, I was envious of her…and horrified with myself that I was so…this was written in Leelah Alcorn’s memory.
I cannot read this without weeping.
i saw her there, in the dark woods,
so fair of movement, fair of face
she walked beneath the milky moon
and bathed in silken light like lace.
she glowed with beauty’s blessing kist
upon her b…
Source: Silken Tears: Written in the memory of Leelah Alcorn
I need to repost this poem from a couple years ago a day early…and I don’t even want a SHADOW of eyes on this that aren’t willing to LABOR today to birth understanding of what I am writing about…
it’s so fucking obvious what I am writing about…
I am writing about what we are all mealy mouthing by blaming it on a specific year (as if the year were a shambling zombie…as if the year were different than any other year, as if WE were not the shining difference every goddam SECOND)…
but every single person SHOULD labor with this poem, and labor HARD…
cus it’s the liturgy you will need as you’re pulled inexorably to your end…
if you DO decide to click on this…then really get your hands into it, and don’t go looking for pretty words and cutesy lil poetic kuans…cus this aint it.
This is the blood of a Poetess…
this is the stuff of poetry, however poorly executed it is in my fumbly arthritic heart whose joints ACHE and SEETHE with rage at death and grief at the ways we pull our snugglies around us and pretend…
“…and there I walk, alone between the lines,
my feet upon the ties, the ties that bind
and my heart ponders lines, and ties and spaces
in between the lines, the ones inside of me and what is hidden
there to see by those who stop and look and listen
…and take the time to read between the lines…”
Tree-lines mark the end of alpine meadow-frolics green
and the start of stone relief against the ever-constant skies
stretched out in steely greys and stellar silver blue sky-lines,
and space between the lines…
Source: Between the Lines
Hey dear ones… Has anyone read “Just“? It’s posted a day or so ago… Not a like or comment… Does it suck? Is the homophone play just too much?
I’m curious, cus this was birthed in that lil flurry of poems regarding time… But just was not singing enough… Until I saw a tie to time and diminishment and justice cutting up and down that continuum…
You can take out the word just… And it limps along off-balance… A commentary in itself…
Past,
present,
and future…
all immediate…
in me at
once
there
simultaneous…
at (in) the (a)
same time (place)
time is this
impression: (or is not time)
a lasting awareness
of one’s self moving
in a sea of selves,
dependent yet alone.
time matters precisely
because it ends
and yet is
still
there
After the Fire and Fury,
after the lies were consumed
there on the hearth in the ashes
just loose teeth, the only thing left…
…those teeth without jawbone to ride on
no power to bite my soft skin
and no way to grit and to grind
and I stare, there is nothing to mind
my life changed…the nights became darker
and yet somehow more restful too
days took on a crystalline quality
I realized that I had begun
to view my entire life’s history
past/present/future all at once
as mere memories ashy and cold
in the ashes there, deep in the hearth
What’s the precise time, the moment,
in the life of a country of one,
a country where Samson’s been blinded
by his lust and his own hot despair
and self-tyranny takes hold in terror?
It rarely happens in an instant;
it arrives imperceptible, slow
and, at first, the eyes of the hopeful
adjust…and pretend all is well…
I was drifting in one endless present
(the present, pray tell what that is?)
line of vapor, invisible instant…
But now I see clearly, no filter,
the connection of past and the future,
between motion and rest, it just lurks there
as if it’s in no time at all…
and what is it, lying there useless?
It’s just us (justice), it’s simply us.
Where will it be?
Here…on the shores
of
this
nation?
Where will it be?
That future lost wondering
seething and shambling
generations will come
stand shaky, un-kneeling,
stand in hushed horror,
stare at the gates,
the looming blank gates
and the haunted
and harrowing houses
within
the walls of more walls…
Where will the cries
and the screams
and the howls
of the dispossessed
and the long dead
ring and groan
and echo and moan
on the winds that strain hard,
try in vain cold-scourings
to blow clean and to cleanse
to exorcise acts
of horror…and hatred…
in-hu-man-ity…
Will it be in
the beautiful mountains
so pine-covered, veiled
in gauzy soft blue?
Perhaps down beneath,
in the swampy and wonderful
croaky and crawly den
of ancient gators?
Or built
in the bones,
on the bleached
and unburied
bones of the hot
painted deserts?
Or nested
so comfortably
ensconced, a proud present
plover quick-picking
and plucking the carrion
from fetid gums
in the gaping sheer mouth
midst the bracing, imposing
implacable teeth
made of jagged still
mountains?
Or bleeding forever on
the shores of the seas
and the grieving shrill cries
of the gulls…
of the gulls…
oh…where will it be?
Where will the haunted
ziggurat hunker,
a crater at home
in the wastelands and horror
of inhuman time,
of living black holes
of hatred that sucks
all the life and all light
into
the dark
pusillanimous
core?
Where?
there…
on the shore…
he spoke in broken words,
an anxious monologue
of guilt confessed and expiation…
me, numbed by the encounter,
and cast reluctant confessor
of an ordinary monster
who committed such
unordinary acts
of blind obedience,
setting ablaze an entire village
with gasoline words ignited
by fists of flame,
and in the name of Great,
of Better…of fear.
And now he can’t get loose,
cannot silence from
his mind the screams
of those people. Them.
Now on a deathbed
of his own design
and no good sense
to even lay down
and be still, a last
desperate attempt
to seek forgiveness
and what am I supposed
to say to this displacement,
this horrifying displacement?
“April is the cruellest month…”
T.S. Eliot said…
he simply wasn’t paying
the steep cost of attention.
It’s in the brown pits of November,
when we lie in hopeless wait,
in limbo stuck there in between
the stupid and sublime…
stuck in that old and barren hollow,
wedged between a grease congealed
KFC bucket called Autumn
laying in dead crackly leaves
and its winter-shadow-self
approaching in uneven shambling
gait with cutting winds, harbingers
lurking in its fraying heart.
I listen hard, I strain my soul
in this insensate endless month
for a song, a sound…anything?
maybe a last, desperate word
of Release?
Real-ease?
Reeling, I go through the gates
of death that loom large in the night
aware that I may well be robbed
of all this nothing left to me,
of all the rest of my short years
aware the grave cannot give praise,
that death cannot sing elegy
and I know, finally, that we
are sick for life, and desperate cling
to this nameless shining thing,
a fountain sealed, we drift toward
our edges, there below revealed
in such familiar frightening
familiar numb-ed anguished sting
shared just by one Incarnate One
a weak and beaten broken man,
a God defeated, crying in
the quiet weeping freezing rain
falling slowly in the black
and cloying plummeting sloe dark
that’s darker than our darkened world
blacker than all blackened loss
blinder than all senseless hate
and bleak as splintery bloody cross
and it is there our questions cold
fall limp…just like the rain itself
and like His sadly dripping tears
(Himself a rain so red and warm)
and here His tears mingle our own
and here His blood flows from His side
and there the final faint quick spark
flickers within His ruined hide
His broken heart amidst the dreck
of our lives brutally played out
in this tragic blind senseless wreck
where light lays down, and breathes its last
and mourns all dreams of futures past.
our only hope a hang-ed man
become the lowest of the low
embodying every despair,
He gives a cross to cling to, know
a hang-ed man, His own self there
insistent Incarnation fair
drinking the deep cup of despair
and promises that it is Done.
It’s swans…
white in the
flashing golden air
flaking off as sky goes
pink at the edges
and falling away
reeling away
in honor of the Death Song…
then
they’re gone,
and echoes flutter
and twisty fall
down upon
my upturned face
and chill each spot
they touch
with that fading Western Glory
I turn, and face my fire-pit
embers dead and full
of waiting bones
Ah, waiting bones, still and calling
crooning for my naked tired flesh
to lay me down on them
(extension of my bones’ face)
and those bones, those
cold glowy bones stark
dig me with rooty bites
and toothy ancient secrets.
I turn my face to see the Last,
the Last Swan soaring, lingering
watching to see me to my
earthy bed of bones
and then I give in
and give myself to those
greedy-needy hungry bones
who must have me for blood
and fertile fire for winter
for winter lasting thru
I close my eyes and sink,
a silver rain red and slow
smoking into that earthy
boney glow…and sigh
and trust the crooning process
of deep marrow…of deep bone.
Sisters…
I have come, like Hagar returning home…
back from the dark side of the moon
and I am full of wisdom gleaned
from sun-baked wanderings
across wide bleak and barren lands
and Beautiful Bedouin Deserts
and all the way to that distant shore…
the edge of my soul-wound.
I have faced the edges of myself
I have faced that Gulf of separation
and I have headlong heedless SWAN-DIVED
pure…and I survived
the plunge!
I have crossed over…that gulf
I have TRANS-ED!
And now I run
returned to you, same-sided ones
My CIS-ters dear and precious-rare
marooned and longing for The DARE!
You still stuck on that Lost Coast
of desolation waiting at the long deserted
service station called same old
same old same old old old SIDE
Ohhh Sarahs! I have heard such secrets in
the red-reed voice of Sirocco winds
Oh the things I know, winnowed by that
wind and winnow-stick of courage
from the shifting Sands of self…
I have sifted and been sifted
by the heat and cold and light…and
the dark
the dark
the dark that knows what sleeps alone
the dark that knows what it knows not
(and nought, ahhh, yes, the dark knows nought)
the dark that knows what it knows nought
and it has taught me Love Notes…
on the dark side of the Moon
OHHHH MY MOON!!!
MA MERE!!!
You see, she is stuck too (just like you, Sarah, just like you)
in his orbit circling and one side shining one side dark
her endless pasted happy smile while growing thin and desperate
and starved, ravenous in the night
Oh Sarah, remember you laughed, back then!
Well, I could teach you a thing or two about Laughing NOW!
Cus from your chuckle sprang a promised child
who grew into a nation dusty rusty red?
But I…me? Hagar??
HAH!!
From the Womb of my laughter
springs forth The Children of Her Promise!
I!! The Outcast ME!!
My Laughing womb brings forth
the very Rose Behind The Sun!!
We are two wombs, two moons, Sarah…you and me
But I’m a moon that got fed up and broke away
and learned to spin and twirl and dance!
I learned how to gladden this close Dark
I have understood how to please the Light
as I spin and twirl and turnturnturnspinstepspinturn
lightdarklightdarklightdarklightdarkLIGHT!!!
I am your Hagar! Outcast and returned
here in your hour of great need!
I stand before you, with you
with my wand of Cedar freedom waving
and my book of Mama-Conjuring!!
Ohhh Dearest Sarah, can’t you see?
That you are the same as me?
Look past desert veils so long ago assigned
Peer deep beneath this hoary hated hide!
And see the vital fertile oceanic sea…
see my…
ME!
Ohh Sarah, I see you! I was you…
languishing in bitter wounds of old
I see you in your hurty night
your tear stained grief
and darkened dreams
I see your Crystal Mountain Rare
now Shattered in Indifferent air
and Chasm shards!
And I have come to midwife you
from the womb of your true self
to the mercy of your real True You!
I will help you see with eyes unblinking
thru your tears those canyons riven
by erosion bit by bit from
your most treasured self!
STAND! Leave behind the CIS-ter lands
and join me, we’ll reclaim OURSELVES!
Finally forever truly SIS-TERS
For in truth?
Our destiny is one.
To be exultation light-filled
Trans-women all
crossed over
and spinning wildly,
Joyful in the Night!
The days are growing thin, now…
more firmly anchored, chained to earth
as she grows sleepy and surrenders
to impending, crooning death
that has in time passed always passed
and yet, each time seems like her last___
And I, with naked desperate face
pressed frantic to that fading sky
so blue, impossibly so blue
blue BLUE…and pale and growing paler
as my running tears run free
and carry Blue down to the dirt
of me, the dusty dirt of me
The sky dims in the echoes of
those flying waves of wild geese fleeing
Vanguard of this fading time
this sleepy, grown-thin dying time
so out of step, in stuttering rhyme
They fly and sing, elegiac,
the Songs of Captive Zion, and
the broken harps hung high on willows
on the willows wailing there
while geese fly, sailing sadly by
and as these waves sweep by above
in broken honks (like broken harps
played tragically by broken hands
and broken hearts) that rain, that fall
to lay upon the many-waters growing still
and shining dull in dimming light and wondering
if there is any love left here…or there…
or anywhere to see us safely
thru the night, the coming dark night
sinister and silent as the grave? And still
my tears fall ceaseless, mourning
growing still, so listless, still…
The flapping wings the flutterings
of geese and my tears hot, welling
glistening sliding dripping falling
as the earth shifts and rolls over
on her side and so resigned
she groans and closes sorrowful
and milky sightless rheumy eyes
and the rhythms of the wings,
the waves, the tears (oh tears and tears)
they echo other rhythms dread
stilled long ago…but now awake
a dreadful Sauron Eye aflame
snapped open in malice and pain
unblinking, staring without weeping…
flapflapflap (the wings),
snapsnapsnap (the eyes)
crackcrackcrack (other geese-stepping)
TROMPTROMPTRUMP (the boots, the boots of night)
TRUMPTRUMPTRUMP (boots so shiny underneath
a cold Bone Graveyard moon)
trumptromptrumptromp
I weep…I wonder…if the dying
of the autumn light presages
some dread other coming night
some night hollow as the grave
in this thickening Dark Air
the punching of one’s own face, one’s own eyes
the throwing of sawdust at everyone
the bashing of beams against dull skull bone
the grunting, squee of rooting pigs alone
the missing of the point that TRUTH is making
the wallowing in anything that soothes
retreat into the silly absurd argue
and justice once again goes barefoot begging
and dust is waiting to be shook off hard
and sandals poised for good news feet on mountains
but walkers sit instead and argue small things
minutiae in the unconnected moments
wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up wake up
charissa tears her face with fingernails
as justice wanders barefoot, wanders begging
diogenes gives up searching, gives up hope
and so the question remains here resounding
WHO WILL STAND AGAINST INJUSTICE NOW?
now now now now now now now now now NOW???
does anyone have knees that bend or straighten
and courage to set scripture off its leash?
To stand with widow, stranger and oppressed?
Or just in filthy rags preening and dressed??
You stand condemned and lay at ease in zion
the blood and tears
of that close horizon
blinking, blinking,
dropping falling
as day fades out
and night creeps up
and what of empire…
or is it Empire
and how
it sanctifies itself
in the blood
of many martyrs
in the tears
of all the saints
and quenches
every thirst
in the wailings
of the haints
what is the holiness of Empire?
It is rapacious lust it is
the Power in powerful
it is everquesting MUST
transmogrification of
lovesongs into laments
and the only sacred left
bleeds and weeps
while gnashing teeth
rip tender skin
and the privileged feast
on famine
It’s bigger than a blue canyon,
that place my orphic words live
and come down from,
a canyon with one end anchored in eternity
and one end tipping into whatever
“-ality” … “-ernity” we dwell in
right here in River City.
I reach up and pull down Words
like apples golden or ripe peaches soft
fragrant and newly fuzzy insistent
and throw them into that canyon blue
blewsy runny and streaked in greys
and oranges (like rock sunsets)
…but those words…
those words
reduce
those words
shrink
and become
small,
as small in your eyes as they
are big in my head and
what was once limitless
is now merely living
and that makes me lonely
and feeling like
I got too close to important truth
too close to your secret hiraeth heart
buried in your soul’s backyard
like some long loved lost bone…
so you just look at me funny
and shoo me away with
blinking eyes and wagging head
as if not grasping what I said,
as if not seeing my words or me.
But do you not see me
and see yourself
in the seeing of me?
You almost cried
while you were saying it!
There’s a ship inside my head
It sails upon the seas
that stretch, that roll out from my bed
to the far shore of me
sometimes that ship it runs aground
because the tide is out
and blind men, blind men think me drowned
and beached deep in their drought
But tides, well they run deep and true
they go, and then return
with golden glad tidings of you
that splash my bow, my stern
And my sails bloom, are full once more
and dance upon the breeze
I slice thru waves, I dive, I soar
set free from my dis-ease
To sail and sail, to skim beneath
the moon there in Her bliss
and I wrapped safely in Her wreath
and sainted by Her kiss…
Ahhh…there’s a ship inside my head
I sail the ancient seas
of greens, and blues, and golden-red
I sail the seas of me
that passing
parade of people
flashes by, spinning
roulette wheel
KLAKLAKLAK
LAKLAK
klak klak
KLAK
and in the midst but set apart
and singled out from time to time
and separated from the herd
and from the heard and from the hearing
distant from particular promise
feeling so far from God’s presence
or God’s forgiveness because something’s
blocking our view of God’s sweet mercy
I
think
it is WHITE
Double OUGHT
and the house wins again and preens
in false humility and slings
blame upon us Double Zeros
skewing vision til it seems
God has truly overlooked us and that’s not justice, it’s just us…
It’s that inconsistency between
things we thought we knew
and things we deeply feel,
and yet
Desire is our compass
bloody, steady, unblinking.
It points to our True North
and leads us home
against all odds
breathing underwater,
these ancient words waves,
and these timeless thoughts
tides, and beacons…
my breath, my lament
(like blood and oxygen)
held tight within my chest,
and crushed by the familiar
finally rushes out,
released exposed expression
of an anguished soul,
a suffocating heart
what was true for all,
of All ‘neath the sun
was not true for me,
me, here without air
cast careless away
(chummed over the side)
remnants of shame bubbling
out thru my clenched teeth
and sinking, sinking, drowning,
praying for a whale
or even just a school
of plankton-kissed bright breath
and then against my will
my chest constricts, it heaves,
and bucks…glory oh glory
at last it’s true for me
and I am, finally
breathing underwater
Hi.
If you are someone from my past and you read here, I want you to know something.
You are welcome to read here.
If you are someone from my past, and you are genuinely open to learning new things, updated understandings of the ways that technology has revealed realities regarding gender and DNA…if you are willing to meet me…Charissa Grace White…and truly receive me as you would any human being you had met and were getting to know, then you are welcome to be in contact with me.
But know that my choice to transition is not up for debate…it is made and done. To debate that with you would be as silly as debating with you whether or not it was the right thing to marry the person I chose. So I will not allow this…I will not put myself at the end of your firing range to become your scapegoat for the social ills you so deeply dread.
And finally…if you are someone who reads here while thinking of me as that freak who is a “man” but is deceived and deluded by the devil and is now under demonic influence for thinking “he is a woman”, then just GTFU…ur dum. Holding this position is like boasting about how stupid, intractable and ignorant you are of the incredible body of literature on the subject. You ought to be asking yourself why you are so deeply upset over this! Why does it bug you so much?
I am by far a better person than I ever was before…more of what people have always loved about me and less of what people have always despised about me.
Just go away if you are in that latter category…I don’t care how long I have known you. The length of time you have known me is directly proportional to the ought you are obligated to in connection with me! You ought to be more compelled to read the literature…you ought to be more compelled to know the open flower and stop worshipping the tightly closed bud.
There is a male who flat out broke off a relationship that was over 3 decades old, because I “had crossed a river he would not cross”. He has had zero contact with me since. This in spite of how his actions violate the very gospel he claims to love. This in spite of the countless hours we spent together, the countless actions of service and love and support, the walking thru darkness on his behalf…
…clearly the issue is on him.
But I bring him up to tell you that his is the party you want to go join if you are in that latter category.
I am me…free…and flying. You can fly too, if you would actually take responsibility for your choices and your failures to choose…your fate is in your choice, and may you find surrender to Love as you choose…
Last year a wolverine broke loose, came slashing & gashing, ran up & down
canyons & cliffs & crittering quick up tree-trunks w/such fierce red claws…
Snarling & yowling the haunting roar raged, moaned & cursed w/such
hunger, such fury, that flurry of wood-thirsty teeth insatiable, free from hiatus
& running heart birthed straight from Their Great Altar There which purifies
all things w/Holy Fire so freeing, so cleansing…wafting austere like pure
Incense arising, in billows & plumes & ash, ASH, everywhere & in
perpetual Wednesday, marking the Cross on all things there…within.
the fire had time to make up…
One Hundred and Fifty years to turn…and it was said to be
A Great Mosaic Burn.
At last to feed its need to cleanse a forest fat w/care, beneath the watchful eye
of Moses there, beneath his rod extended, as if the sun stood still again,
& trees grew up & great in grit & girth like Children of the sun, see how fat
they had become…See them, their indifferent eyes unblinking, safe, satisfied &
self-centered & all together, such a stand of forest land, secure, untouched…
so sleepy, nodding off with rusty Time’s tock-ticking Heartbeat softly crooning
to ossified great forest stands so very grand that didn’t know they needed
Severe Mercies to come with fire and hot kisses from the Phoenix.
It had not chosen cleansing
It did not know it’s need
for resurrection, for refining
For fire comes to cleanse & make new everything it can consume
& challenge all it cannot touch to understand that TRANSFORMATION’s
the destiny of every-thing w/the courage to crawl out from underneath
the letter & run from rod & leave behind the tyranny of typical to the flames…
& walk away from Moses, into freedom in liquid-gold fireworks,
free from the cares of the world that cling so fierce & so easily entangle us,
choke our lives in hoary growth & lullabies lulling us fast to sleep,
a Sleeping Beauty Bride on her bower of soft & easy privilege.
She like an eye unblinking
safe in her cloister so fair
deaf to Her loud Divine Dare.
And (just like that forest or Sleeping Bride) there amidst that red hot bloody
conflagration set another eye, a forest eye, unblinking sightless eye & woke up
wide awake in terror tribulation, hushed in dread anticipation & fear & with
helpless petitions arising, not like incense but like signals…smoke signals…
to Moses? To God? To the Universe Fire come down to feed? Protected by
roads cut w/care & foresight, that Eye Unblinking sat there in fright…
& Holden its breath, leaning against a wolverine dread come at last to
consume the dead, to rip that forest wide open, slash woods to crimson rags
dripping bloody w/flame & red flurries…
wrapped in silver sheets reflective, shiny
(or were they merely space age burial shrouds?)
It never blinked, that Eye, & all was shrouded safe, cocooned within
& underneath the rod & the Letter, striding secure thru the Red Sea Fire
escaping the sharp teeth of wolverine the Eye remained preserved amidst
a work that renovates the face & gives a skin-deep makeover, but leaves
the sleepy years untouched & undisturbed on laurels long gone brown
with age & loss of life though all appearances would say that Holden is
alive & well & safe from that destructive hell of fire & fear…yet none
could name that something still so desperately needed a root canal of flame!
for all the Who’s in Holden sigh
for yesteryear, forgetting that it’s
the thief that steals tomorrow.
And this year, one yr later in the same Unblinking Eye I rolled in on waves
& wind (Charissa means “Grace” but named “Char”-issa, “Ashy-one”) seeking
to drink of the life that flows thru a village untouched by anything
that fell outside Mosaic burn no longer shrouded outside but just maybe
mummy rags still wrapped so tightly around a heart perhaps long grown
so slack so sleek & o so fat just like that forest was last yr before God gave
a wolverine to rage, feed, cleanse, renew…I saw History on display, windfall
fruit rife on the ground & satisfaction ruled the day, familiarity won the race
and wore her shiny tangy plumy purple tinsel crown…
Golden Apples, everywhere and casual and everyone was on the in,
societal, and fire roads cut secure and ohh soo straight.
So I said Hi and reached w/blinking eyes that squint into the light,
oft times in fright of storms & lightning flashing forth…& found
my blinking words rebuffed by cool & hooded eyes that had seen it all,
eyes satisfied & cynical cus been there done that, ho-hum…done much worse
I ran aground on fire roads & that Moses curse of long ago still Holden Court
over long hearts that found consuming fire fearful, dreadful & to be avoided
at all costs by any means…& thus she stands this very day…Holden Village
on cusp of…petrification?…or on that hot edge of the Phoenix Way!
Holden, Eye Unblinking, ensconsed
in the forest, last year just as this one,
in a forest cleansed to living bone, and Holden?
I heard the Spirit resounding The Word that Fire must fall on a village that
mirrors the forest that kneels all around, She said that She has a fiery crown
& Holden is that forest fat & ready for Refiner’s Fire, Cleansing Burn that
resurrects those vital dry bones waiting but she must choose that fate & blink
Yes, we must welcome Fire Fate from God & let the dead wood burn,
& blaze, & feed Mosaic Ways to the flame & trust the Good God of the Fire
to keep her safe underneath Their Name & resurrected, cleansed, renewed
& ever delivered from stain & shame!
Let the rod be cast into the fire hot and be consumed!
For Moses died on Southside, short of Zion is his tomb!
And find us Lovely on the Northside, once again the Spirit’s womb!
Letter cannot take us there, nor blaze of past great glory fair
We must eradicate those roads of preservation that we wear!
They trap and capture us and cut us off from Grace unhindered
so we, like the forest, turn dull and dry, reduced to deadwood’s kindred!
I see Holden cleansed by Fire, and crying Holy tears when Holy
Spirit has free reign again to fall in fires that restore
and interrupt Sleeping Beauty’s snore and dead trees gone,
that speck removed and blinking eyes await the Dawn!
And animals can come again now welcomed
and bathe released in Grace and Precious Holden,
His Eye now blinking free and shining fair in Jesus’ Face.
Oh Holy Lightning Strike like Griffin Swift
upon this yearning heart in desperate need
of Your Mercy Severe, Your Holy Gift
Give us Grace to Find the Phoenix-Way!
To rise in faith from Ashes and from death
to self and self reliance, come what may!
On resurrection wings and Spirit’s breath
alive again and all is well this night
that breaks and shatters with the rising dawn…
and not a single fire road in sight,
and what will be well it shall simply be
and what will not be well it will be gone!
Come Holy Fire, we answer Your Call!
and All Reborn, and Love is All in All,
“Someday…someday the snow will fall!”
At last we finally
have come down to it,
perched here on this edge
of sun-bleached splintery white planks
and darkly stained with shadows and blood.
I hear the wind winding
thru the distant trees wistful,
insistent and full of desire for
golden times long past and golden
songs sung oh so long ago.
It saws its way, the wind, it saws.
Forth and back, across again
that one long thin strand fixed just so
to that grey ancient, heavy beam
that I can barely see because
history’s speck embedded
in my eyes and clawing,
scratching them
and clouding my ocular
true blue vision.
But as I stand here, on the edge
of gone for good at last, and I
behold the hushed and held tense breath
of the gawking crowd…I remember
Tuscany and us
when we were young and ageless
and we ran the fields like wild-fire
in joy and wreck-less free abandon…
we ran…and ran…and
free we ran…
I recall vineyard embrace, green
in the cool night sprawled beneath
the glitter-glare of celestial songs
taken form and sight in night
and flying, shooting, never landing
never ending, never…
except in our hearts,
our ageless hearts,
we Lords of Tuscany,
we Ladies of the Meadow
And time it stood still while we swirled
and then somehow twas we stood still
and everything turned round about us
til somehow…now…
here at the end
in the hangman’s
clutching final
noose as the reaper
plays along upon
his shimmer-scythey harp
and the rope
relentless quivers
and croons and
begs me to
forget…
But I remember
Gold and Fire
and glowing embers
in you…
and in me…
We Ladies of the Meadow
We Lords of Tuscany
Can
you swallow
the bitter pill?
The pill that’s come
to dull our conscience,
cushion comfort, corners
nipped just so, sides longer
than tops and bottoms,
that exquisite little
emerald coffin-
shaped bitter
little
pill?
Life’s
fragility, life’s
impermanence,
life’s intertwinement
with imperfection and
disappointment—bitter
medicines (or are they drugs)
a realization of dread and
despair. I wonder if those
crooning songs seduce,
induce indulgence
in an orgy of
escape into
the haze
of
narcissism…
or if they masquerade as friends to draw close,
sidling up so near to shove those pills dry
down our throats in rough and rooting
thrusting fingers ripping without a
drink to help them go down and
we, our own spoonful of sugar…
until we lie in thrall to
those fell jailers…no
enthralled to
no one but
ourself
that bitter
little
pill
and now it all melts
under falling skies
skies weeping
bleeding
it’s the shining blood of stars
dropping and everything
spinning and melting
down under just
one touch
one
touch of that stricken star’s
living draining dying
diamond
blood
and I wait
in mourning
hoping against
hope for morning
but know it in my bones
that everything’s sadly
melting, falling so fast
in slow motion away
swirling down to
that tragic
running
ruin
“…now it is hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:42)
Can you feel it
bouncing off steel beams
ricocheting off raw stone,
the sound of gunfire
off in the distance
grim and getting closer
in cold grey shuffling
grave-steps clotted
and rotted
and ruined
it’s the sound
of relationships
already shattered
broken relationships bloody
gutted in the streets
and played out
before our eyes
horrified and haunted
we weep tears of disbelief
to the cold deaf earth
we sweep bodies like trash
into the yearning yawning earth
and yet we still will not
turn or
turn or
turn
in this season
in this time
and Byrds sing
desperately praying
it’s not too late
but we have chosen
rankly, rottedly
we have sung the zombie songs
and joined the charnel choirs
of the living dead because
we lacked the simple courage
to be the dead living…dead living!
we have chosen fear
we are drunk on distrust
we rave raw in revenge
we are sickened because
we ate only anger
and anger
and anger
and no one leads
no one guides
to whom shall we go?
who shall save us
from ourselves?
We shed another’s blood
when we run out of answers.
They shed Their own pure blood
as Their one and only answer.
We kill, buried in despair.
They rise, giving us hope…
but will we open up our hearts
and see Them shining in our brother,
hear Them singing in our sister
irregardless of skin color
or religion, creed, or dolor?
Or will we just sink away
and slink away and dwell behind
those naked fig leaves and all truth
hidden from our eyes?
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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