in the forest, thru the mists
under grey clouds on the moor
I wander, wander…I linger
even though my time
here has passed and
so has day become night
and I a woman of the night
in all its mystery and splendour
and thus imbibe its secrets and its wonder
yet do I loiter…here in the forest
near the old house once filled
with glory and light and music
but now just an empty shell
under grey clouds on the moor
in the forests thru the mists
As it unfolds in front of me, that river
that river of green-streaked golden brown
that flow unceasing of time…that goes around
and comes around and goes around again
I can just make out in the flotsam and jetsam
all the refuse there that everyone has refused
to snatch up and drink and make a part
of their own will and way
I can just see those things that we threw
in together, wishing upon twinkles and glints
star-reflections ripply and quick on the river-folds
and they roll in time and show me their bellies to scratch
and I do, with recollections of willow days wandy
and star-nights silver thru the open window
wafting in the cool night breezes
that were the only blankets that we wore…
and the birds, singing songs of light, of times
coming hopeful and bright and all full of promise
and trees reaching, straining to drink the cool peaceful night
and so standing tall as our example, bending graceful
in the wind and standing strong in the rain.
And now, your hope and promise has arrived,
drawn in reed baskets from that river
and denial done, death thwarted
(for some time anyway, a go-round or two)
and I sit for us both, on the high bluffs
that overlook that flow,
that go round of time relentless
but constant and thus of some cold comfort.
it’s that space between
light and darkness
that rare mix
and combination
it’s in shadows I sit
in shades I live
and grey is brilliant color
variated and diverse
it’s the inbetween
that I relate to
that I am
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, high
above the sandy shore and on a bluff
that looks like it leans out
but really tucks back in
and stands in stone throw
to the singing sea-grass.
My house has seven windows
my house has one pure door
thru which no shadow enters
(for you won’t come to visit)
straight from the greenwood do you run
straight past my house without a glance
because the sea has given voice
to great desires, and great hungers
but you fail (as you once remembered)
to grasp the truth…these waters sing of me
my ever fall and rise, my adoration of your eyes
my ever in and out, my weeping heart, my spirit-shout
because I live between the forest and the sea
on a bluff there…I live
I live in that gulf between
you and me.
It hits out of nowhere
It can strike at any time
It is hard to get back up afterwards
it’s strange, how my words
are vibrant now, and safe…
my words are safe in themselves
they used to need your eyes
like vines need their trellis
eyes constant and seeing
and singing in the wind
like that trellis
whose sharp point
kisses the depths of earth
with its piercing pressure
insisting on being
a root descending
that trellis whose strands
thrum beneath my words,
and echo them to the singing winds
but they
(my words,
not the wind,
or the trellis,
or your eyes)
are strong now
and own-rooted
in depths and dirt
and though they
feel the twinge
of regret in your retreat,
they don’t mourn or weep
they are own-winded
in their own-rootedness
they are own-trellised
they are own-sung
they are own-caressed
and the sorrow in the wind?
it is the wind’s tongue in the gap
where my teeth-words used to be
that thing where people
cover their bodies with
ink and needle kisses
and waterfalls of memories
become tangible roadmaps
into the past thru the mist
well maybe that will hit it
but it has missed my marks
and maps and mists
because they are tattooed
in your heart
in my words
in my passion
the cry of the old house crawled out
between the bars and scrabbled
hard up the frozen-bone branches
it wrenched itself from the icy
grip of frosty-crystals and leapt
into the wind
into freedom
but the blood of its escape
remained running everywhere
and that lock still snikked shut
tight against the chain
and those cold long links
that stood arm in arm
against freedom
while the blood of this effort
was left in trails
smeared everywhere
in gory evidence of how
you turn it down over
and over and over
true freedom
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
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 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).
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
“I lose interest when I get ignored.”
–found online
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
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
…perhaps this could be me.
Right now? Sadly, it is still gravity that rules
and in times like these?
It’s hard to see
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
“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.”
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Even though you are dieting
even though you have chosen
gluten-free sugar-free vegan
and no-carb no-larb no spice
no me…I cannot help myself
it’s who I am, what I am
hopeful in darkness
so close and so soft
and the quick quiet sounds
like a grey purring cat
shining mutely in black
and eyes glowing with love
as I measure and stir and I dream
of that sure future that maybe comes
but likely will not
yet I bake, and I smile and I love
a lot
that’s where you are
ensconced on that point
buttressed by waves
and perched on a rock
merely seeking silence
or mere solitude
cute lil house
rosy red roof
pretty white walls
and everything perfect
and oodles of time
to parcel about
and divvy up, toss
in the air to the gulls
who wheel and who swoop
like rats in the air
to snatch up the scraps
you deign to throw up
for your own green delight.
They brush,
just brush up against,
in currents, drawn close,
and enter inside
my soft tender places
and I think they’ve found
their way there, by choice
and thus become company,
constant companions…
when, well
really they merely
are come here at random…
in currents.
I try
to latch on and hold
what just isn’t there
and then there are thrashings,
and pushings away…
and silences,
which I
despise even more,
with utter abhorrence
and horrified hushéd
held breath and no oxygen.
The lesson must then
be learned once again,
that lesson I’ve learned
again and again
the lesson that it,
it is always again
and never at last,
no, it’s never at last.
Eventually, yes,
I can stick with
the smart strategy
of the open hand
letting goodness just flow
and when
those who float there
on the aimless swift tides
wash in? Simply flow
and when they wash out,
when on waters they go,
well there is nothing else
that happens to currents
and what’s in them…no.
How many
waves have these rocks
been washed in to date?
Each one in shape
and form, like, and yet
different and rolling and
rushing and coming and
then boom!! and boom!!
and thunder and boom!!
And then
shatter-spray…splash!
and then? There’s just water
(no wave), withdraw…and
recede and return…and
remain, waiting wet
for the next…
and the next…
and the next…
til the
rock finally wears down
in ever-come waves
and gives up the ghost
(holy and profane)
and rejoins the sand
(the dust of the heart
of the earth hung in space)
midst the
stars in the dark
and the songs in the spaces
and heaven awaiting.
the rattle of teacups
against those saucers
laced in time and air
with the lazy lovely
scents of scones
and cardamon
and swaths
of slathered
butter.
and then windows rattle
in their frames, pulsing
and buzzing in steps
as Important Things
stomp to the door
and lean hard on
that bell dongly dinging
incessant insistent
and the back door
opens, swallows me
and I am kicked
to the curb
casually,
casualty
of the business of busyness
and life that excludes
a spot at the table
once set for tea
and me
and now moved on
to dinner and diversion.
I’m up against it,
the wall that is,
its smooth surface
featureless and bland
and rough and raspy
all at once.
It shuts me out
and cuts me off
and defines me
as outside even
though I might
actually be inside.
But really, what
does it matter
since you are not
on the other side
and so this wall
meaningless is just mean?
Here is what hurts the most:
you deny it is there
and it mushes my face
up against it.
This morning I feel like reblogging my own poem. I write a lot, and sometimes gems get buried in all the driftwood.
I love this…from the title to the last word it is all in Haiku.
Source: Horizon Beckons: Passages From A Journey Painted in Haiku
The journey difficult and hard,
black and blue and bitter cold
upon the road thru long days old
and vales of death and darkness.
In hardship and travail we walk
and most of us will quit before
we reach the end, and yet that end
is still a mystery so vast…
It strikes me that of all the ways
to make appeal to human hearts
They chose to magnify the cost
and left rewards as afterthoughts.
What exactly is Their point?
What is promised with this pain
and sacrifice…and…what? Comes next?
More mumble mumbo turbo trouble?
Fatigue and hardship hand in hand
in times of darkness shared in light?
Not the cheery words that humans
think they need and want, but turn from.
Jesus looked at His best friends
and told them that in this hard world
they could be promised suffering
and then He spoke a miracle:
“Have courage, My dearest friends,
faint not! For I have overcome
the world and all that is there in”
And pain’s denied sour last say!
Somehow the Son of God joins us
within it all and thru it all
So what exactly is success?
Is it simply winning? Tell me!
Because something shines beneath!
Something lurks Gold and Beyond!
I smell victory past defeat
and virtue is its own reward.
The forest has swallowed my name, my face
Just like so many things before me
I entered the woods with my heart full of grace
but the forest just gulped and *poof* without a trace
I was lost, deep inside a birch tree.
I like to think it’s the same, just the same
as with so many things, just perhaps…
It mimics when God came to us, Incarnate
and They chained Themself to us both early and late
in the wood of our grim dark collapse.
And so now we wait, here in the wood deep and dark
We share all things in this broken wheel
Them and us and the tree
and what was and will be
Bound together forever we kneel.
Sometimes I come out of the forest, I do.
I walk in the world full and free.
But the wood and the God go with me as I walk
And They soar as I wander like some Divine hawk
Cus the forest, the God, swallowed me.
Maybe it was to learn how to love
Maybe it was to learn how to leave
Maybe it was for the games we played
Maybe it was to learn how to choose
Maybe it was to learn how to lose
Or maybe it was for the love we made
Oh, love is everything they said it would be
And love made sweet and sad the same
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out, aren’t you?
You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving
Maybe it was to learn how to fight
Maybe it was for the lesson in pride
Maybe it was for the cowboys’ ways
Or maybe it was to learn not to lie
Or maybe it was to learn how to cry
Or maybe it was for the love we made
Oh, love is everything they said it would be
And love did not hold back the reins
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out, aren’t you?
You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving
First he turns to you, then he turns to her
So you try to hurt him back
But it breaks your body down
So you try to love bigger, bigger still
But it, it’s too late
So take a lesson from the strangeness you feel
And know you’ll never be the same
And find it in your heart to kneel down and say
I gave my love, didn’t I?
And I gave it big sometimes
And I gave it in my own sweet time
I am just leaving
I am just leaving
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
They aren’t the same
without your eyes.
My poems, I mean.
They sit like museum pieces
once living and lustrous
but now flat and lifeless
and pinned to the wall
by the absence of eyes
your eyes
in particular.
but they
(your eyes and my words)
miss each other
like ships in the night
calling to each other
but passing slow blind
and I miss you terribly
in our existence
of presence
so absent
and me on the outside
with only
my words
an afternoon in winter…
the geese above the field…
the field beneath the rainclouds…
so thick and straining full…
the lonesome sounds of wind-song…
the listless rustling branches…
the silhouettes so stark…
the weak grey skies above…
Une matinee d’hiver…
the useless summer stubble…
it lingers on the creek-banks…
I tarry…there…I wait…
Behold, the darkness thick and lurking, growing
like ennui in my soul, in my heart doomed and waiting
in this long moment, seemingly forever
it will remain, this painted grey, this second…
this minute is an hour is a decade
and I exist here…floating in the nothing, growing-shrinking…
it defines me as some-thing…no…as Some-one
whose breaking renders her unbreakable…
The growing darkness lurking, insubstantial,
The river Ennui flowing out to nowhere, to everywhere
The shocking joy and wonder also shining, in
This painted grey, and gold all underneath.
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
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
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
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!!
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.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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