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
Category Archives: Abuse
Merely Tossed On Currents
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.
Up Against It
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.
Horizon Beckons: Passages From A Journey Painted in Haiku
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
Just Like Medusa But Before
My hair luxuriant
breezy-blowsey and dancing
on the insistent playful zephyr wind
and combed and tangled all at once…
My hair heavy, shiny
and pregnant with dreams
not yet birthed and dreamt
my hair free, unkempt
Like Medusa before me
(before she was betrayed, before
she was raped and blamed and
cursed by that collaborator Athena)
my hair ravishing and alive like palm fronds,
like banners sparking and unfurled, unfettered,
undreamt and spread out into
endless ever-eager skies,
it wraps itself around dreamseeds
that float like stars, like fire-flies
and in its net they find a home,
a heart, and courage to lay down disguise
and take up residence in every
dreamer’s hopeful diamond-sleep
and blossom, unfold without care
those dream eggs held in my thick hair
“Oh, you’re trans? But you look so good!”
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
Meredith Talusan is an LGBT Staff Writer for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Meredith Talusan at meredith.talusan@buzzfeed.com.
Illustrator: Contact Rory Midhani at info@rorymidhani.com.
Her and Me and Your Futility
When you shattered my heart
delicate globe shot thru with
tunnels and annals
and columns and canals…
when you stormed at me
on me in me with your
stoney snow of bitter black
granite and jagged icy nuggets
of frozen flecks so broken
She reached with fingers eager
to bleed upon the bloodless drained
edges of my torn and shattered soul,
fingers white and tender to the slash
and picked each cutty-edgy razor piece
up off the quick-sand floor
and put them all together, jumbly
but Her pattern knowing, more
than what I was before
And then She made a hole thru which
the eye can see, the heart can hear
kaleidoscope music and dance
of Her and me and your futility
and so I spin now, caught in moments
stark, or velvet, or even gentle fuzzy
and simply refract light from the
million shattered pieces reassembled
in mosaic magic, kaleidoscopic and supreme.
Every Avenue
Your words were thicker than
The Black Forest
and thicker than blood
(by a long chalk)
you treated blood like water,
no, like stone, like brick
made without straw
(your house took all that)
and there, around that house
so flimsy a hufflepuffer could
poofty it away with ballooned cheeks
(and a sharp swift exhalation, just one)
you built with words a fortress
with walls thick and battlements
that do not gleam in sunsets
(like moonlight dancing with the sun on many-waters)
but brood and loom grey and flat
absorbing light and cutting off
every avenue.
A Woman’s Full Truth
This is a truth for me…there are a bunch of people who I think have missed out…they think they know me, and yet they have never ever really met me! “…caught in the easy shadows and then bails out…”
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
Sanctuary– For JD
Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!
City of Bones
Barcelona,
oh City of Bones
laying hot and dry in the sun
beating down on streets, on tombs
and tiles so red over white and so hot
and shimmering radiant still,
oh ye bones!
Barcelona, City of Bones
Baking before the gates of the Sun,
I sacrificed my purity for thee, such as it might be
(my purity, not my sacrifice)
Purity…
of thought,
of mind,
of heart and soul,
purity of
song and deed
and strong intention.
Barcelona, my sacrifice
so droll, so dirty is actually
sterility masquerading
as purity and thus is merely
the absence of jazz,
the absence of spice,
the absence of that
jagged noise of exultation
and thus there is no
purity and nothing
quite acceptable
enough.
Gladly do I lay it there
(my sacrifice, not my purity)
on the bony altar of your burning eyes
hung there above the freezing flames
of your sharp haughty sniff and thus
do I seek sanctuary in the fires of
your hunger, games appeased and satiated.
And these words I leave
(my longing words so red, so sharp)
along the edge of your wet teeth,
hard teeth so white and glistening,
and there, blurred,
there they mingle
with your breath,
with the liquid you
and thus become
inflammable and ready
to leap up like the Phoenix
to take their ease in air and be
us, there, us there
be us there in the air.
And this city here,
right in plain sight and swaying
in the salty breeze blowing in stiff
off the racing aching blue seas,
this City of Bones dancing on air
with my words
there in air
like banners in the wind,
like thirsty golden kerchiefs
flying midst meteors, comets,
midst stars in the night
flapping in the solar flares
and furies of the sun and lapping
up the finest purest beams
of silver, argent grey moonlight
And those fires
(of the night)
my words those silver fires
streaking, shooting across
the vast expanse of velvet
black thick nothing, silver flames
curling, licking at the bones
of the City hanging
in the deep dark void
And the music rounding there amidst
those handy banners sounds like owls
talking soft and hooty in the wind-torn branches
and our hearts are slender limber flexing long flagpoles
and we fly our flags of love like maidens flying
tokens for our champions…
Together we all
(words and banners and bones)
shine upon your battlements
Barcelona
City of Bones
The Song Of Loss And Gain
Steeples and graves stand marked in memory,
by a crucifixion making way for the last to be first,
and the guilty pardoned, making way for
the creature and The Creator
(the Dying/Living One Living/Dying,
dying/living here, within me too,
I who lack in every grace
to just die already,
so full of Great
Grace to live
always)
it’s a sign so mysterious and standing
at the core of history the core of the world.
CORE:
suffering,
death, tragedy,
and sad sorrow He
(Supremely human He)
submitted willingly hanging
doggedly broken and bleeding
holding our infirmities in
His bloody Holey Hand
(He’s Got The Hole
World In His
Hand)
it’s a gift of forgiveness
and assurance, depiction
of the depth of divine mercy
and hope of God and us.
Is this querulous song enough
to quiet restless running thoughts
and ease unanswered questions’ ache,
that burn so cold in hearts laid low
in suffering, hearts whose hope is seized
and despair left laying in its wake
(suffering-wake)
But we must carry willingly
defeat and thirst and emptiness
through to the end of darkness, to
the end of self, and to the world’s long waited end
bringing meaning to suffering and peace to hearts in pain
in this symphony of blood
in this song of loss and gain.
Feast Upon The Village Green
I am the bristly nest from which the great blue heron springs.
I am the stones upon which stinging ice-churned runnels ring.
And there, those fires hot from which the Phoenix rare takes wing.
I’m scintillating embers, coals ablaze and life giving.
They named me foul pale heretic and laid me down to rest,
outside the white-washed churchyard walls, outside their ruddy fold.
And there my hot blood flowed rich-red to feed their bloodless grass,
I deep red died upon that emerald sward of murder bold.
And I do let my bones peek from the curtain of my skin
and thus do I me nourish every living thing herein
with my authentic self and my unconquerable song,
my passion unquenchable and my me a sacred throng
of birth from death and life leapt up in winds, in rain and dew
I am nest, stone and embers singing always clear for you.
and thus it is unholy ground is cleaned, hallowed once more,
and every living thing’s communion, ever opened door
“The best revenge is to move on, get over it, and continue to succeed.
Never give someone the satisfaction of watching you suffer.”
The Lense Thru Which I Read My Lil Red Songbird…
I need my small, meaningless lies. I need all my self-created semi-truths.
It’s the only way for me to keep exclusive parts of myself to myself.
Believe me, I do not even perceive them as lies.
It’s something different that keeps happening inside my head.
At the same time, I long to tell you the truth about me, always.
I want to share with you each important or unimportant detail and feel and fully embrace the very act of sharing.
But it occurs to me that it’s the hardest of tasks; I hate it.
I hate unveiling bits and pieces of anything permanent or temporary that resides in me.
I loathe it with my heart.
It’s the only way for me to keep exclusive parts of myself to myself.
Believe me, I do not even perceive them as lies.
It’s something different that keeps happening inside my head.
At the same time, I long to tell you the truth about me, always.
I want to share with you each important or unimportant detail and feel and fully embrace the very act of sharing.
But it occurs to me that it’s the hardest of tasks; I hate it.
I hate unveiling bits and pieces of anything permanent or temporary that resides in me.
I loathe it with my heart.
You can find more honesty in the smallest of my gestures rather in my words;
my words are too impatient, too loose, too doomed in some way.
my words are too impatient, too loose, too doomed in some way.
To EVERY Male Who Others/Polices Me
There Is One Thing Sadder…
when your history is called lies by liars…
“The saddest thing that can happen to a person is to find out their memories are lies.”
— Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Yes, clothes matter. | the girl inside
Advent Poem: Who Can Say?
So long ago and far away
e’en though the miles are under one
and echo still in wonderment
we trimmed a tree with love and grace
and feasted on such shining face
that echoed 4 in that bright place…
and in my heart I live there still
and see the shine and smell the green
and on those wings I rise and thrill
above these deserts low and mean
while angels gather near the earth
and I wait for the Baby’s birth
and understand this thing…at last
I am here to see the sights
and feel the joy and hear the song
I’m here at last…it was sooo long
and who can say what’s best, and true
to be locked up and yet have you
or be bereft of everyone
and have the birth of me be done?
Advent Poem: Unfeigned Without Reserve
In the midst
of this storm
of pain
these clouds
of hurt
these winds
of death
I stand and on
You do I call
and ever trust
and ever long
For You to bring
Your peace on earth
and those who call
upon Your Name
to lay down useless weapons grim
And lift their hearts
to Light again
and love unfeigned
without reserve
Love At Knife Point
You
write
I love you
with your knife in my back
point point point point point point
bloody pinpricks and slashes
on my skin, in my heart
across my face in
careful cursive
curses
you
make
a mockery of
any love but self-love
which like Narcissus intoxicates
you obsesses you, captivates
you with yourself, and that
a pit of empty nothing
filled with
death.
You do
“Mean Girls” so well…
Are you a secret Broadway Agent
searching for locations to sell yourself
to Hollywood and pitch your script
as Lindsay or Tina? Yeah,
TINA…Though Lindsay
has a certain
trashy
pull
as
your knife
throbs like a tattoo gun
that backfires and messes
your malformed middle with
toxic black hate and my
blood blows back in
your face
when
you
Love
At
Knife
Point
I Don’t Like It
When someone comes to me and implies that I am something I am not…when they are projecting their own judgment onto me, I don’t like it.
When someone has gone behind my back more than 5 times in a couple months, then denied that activity, and yet thinks they can speak something to me that is critical and based in their own personal prejudices, I don’t like it.
When someone else who sees what is flawed about the backstabber then tells me how I am supposed to have understanding for the other person because of all the burdens they have that drive them to do this wounding, I don’t like it.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like it.
I see your actions…I know the crap you talk behind my back.
And I think when you tell me things to my face like you did? I think you do it to hurt me and tear me down because of your own insecurity and anxiety that drives you to try to feel better by destroying others.
And I Don’t Like It!
My Heart’s Heart
the way you talk, what you write
like acid in my mind dashed
against my face and in my eyes
I wish I could eradicate
the you you have become
and keep in tact the other one.
but you are blood inside my soul
you are my heart drawn and quartered
and existing here within, unbidden
inescapable because you sprang
off from my heart’s heart
from my heart’s heart
which hopes eternal for
the return of spring
and the red songbird to sing
Nothing To Lose
You take everything away from someone,
expecting them to crumble like sand in your palm.
You forget though, when someone has nothing to lose,
they have nothing to fear. You forget, that in the right heat,
sand becomes glass and the broken glass you hold has edges
sharp enough to cut through you.
Heartbreaking Every Time
When I read that article…the gas-lighting kind, that retells my past in the worst of ways in order to paint the writer as the most burdened most fragile but simultaneously most strong survivor ever…we readers are all supposed to get all hushed and quiet and be in awe that somehow the writer survived such horrors…such horrors…
and me, my Baby, with thousands upon thousands of memories utterly different, totally opposite…
The only thing that gets me thru is what my therapist has taught me, that these things are not actually designed to try to tell the truth about history…
…rather, they are spoken in the desperate attempt to explain the writer’s own experience of the present, and much of that experience produced by brain trauma from the past…not the fabricated events.
I get it…as a person who experienced epic brain trauma from conception…
But it hurts, and is its own form of erasure, of the theft of my agency.
It cracks me up in a way, because 10 years ago the stories painted us as lovey dovey neo hippy refugees from the 70s. That fit the need of that moment.
It is especially heartbreaking that the hour of my becoming is the hour of unbecoming for the writer…and I am powerless to change that, and held by grudges and judgments in those chains in that place, but only inside the writer’s soul. For I have slipped my leash at last, and now run free. And yes…there is a holographic overview of how dysphoria affected those around me, no doubt about it. They just cannot (or won’t) see the battle I fought to keep greater horrors away.
Yes, there are greater horrors.
I pray that someday the Truth can be partaken of together, and the Truth will set us free.
To My Children, Thanksgiving 2015
I won’t take clothes that are hand me downs,
I won’t smile cus I wear a frown
Once I get going, you can’t hold me down
Cus once I get started I go to town.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
Cus I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
And I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
Cus I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
Darling, you know that I love you true,
Confess all my sins if you want me to,
But there’s one thing I wanna say to you,
If you want to love me my whole life thru
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else
I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else.
Darling, you know that I love you true,
Confess all my sins if you want me to,
But there’s one thing I wanna say to you,
If you want to love me my whole life thru
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else
I SAY IT!!!!!
I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else).
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
LIKE EVERYBODY ELSEEEEEEEEEEE
I Am Burning
I’m on fire,
burning in words
burning in images
burning in thoughts
and torched again
by the why why why
why? Why do they say,
do, laugh, eye roll?
I honestly do not know
The Epitome of “Manhood”
For JP…How Van Contrasts
Thinkin’ ‘Bout JP…Mama is Greater
In Lonely Woods
I walk alone in lonely woods
fading from fall to winter snows
moving from the warmth of home
to wander lost and barren
I wonder as I move from tree
to tree and touch the scratchy bark
concealing living wood within
and warm there in the cold
if I can find a home inside
this tree or that one, twisting in
the gloamy air I wander thru
and thus root down to earth
But no, this tree is walking still
moving and not going there
stuck here but there and not here
I walk alone in lonely woods.
Hear Me Screaming (Transgender Remembrance Day 2015)
I am a ghost wandering in the dark
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
Wandering lost and in sorrowful shades
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
I am a wailing voice keening in grief
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
Wrapped in a funeral shroud black and white
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
You walk into the nook, seeing me here
but you don’t even know,
you don’t even see
you don’t even hear me screaming.
My Peculiar Love, Arise!
Look up, arise
my Peculiar Love!
You tumble still
wracking rocks
wrenching ravines
clawing cliffs
and scratching
with nails broken
and bloodied in the plunge.
No…I have not left
your side, your side
(it’s only bruised, Love)
so vulnerable to that lance
and the stinky rough
warhands of that coward
masquerading as a shepherd
covering for a rapist
And on that note remember
He who lays by your side
He who took the lance
He who went all the way
coming to common terms
with loss
blind as wind…
But I float now…see?
You will too soon…
And this is waiting…
there…and so I lay these words of care
upon your lips like mountain blood
white and clear and clean and cold
to slake your thirst with sop
(not hyssop)
of beauty, healing, Promise…
Oh my Love…my Love Peculiar
the day will come to
Arise
and join me in the Liberty
you prophesied when you spied
your baby’s heart eternal.
What I Want To Do When I Am Slurred!
I Don’t Need To Go To Paris
I can stay right here,
no passport, no visa
no access to that fairytale
land of opportunity and liberty
I don’t need to go to Paris
to find those willing
to gun me down, blow me up,
kill me in the name
of their bloodthirsty god
called gender.
Those terrorists
walk the streets
of my world behind
white faces, middle class manners
and smirks to rival the Riddler’s.
Paris comes to me
everyday.
Your Waiting Pyre
Go ahead…
light it, the match
and let the spark
fall on the twigs,
the tindre tenebrous
I will stand
on your perch
you made for me
under the sign
saying suffer not
a witch to live.
Even while
the flames lick
and curl around
my ankles and calves
I still see you clearly
From my perch
(your perch)
Standing on
Your Waiting Pyre
The Barrier You Are
You sit, snide, sneering
behind your nicey face
feeding your inner mean-girl
bonbons and envy
You turn green and then white
As fingers of dread and doubt
Grab your throat and choke
Because you cannot spin
Or weave or throw clay
So you weave tales, innuendo,
wage war of resistance
and haughty head tosses
That brain barrier has
gotta go…gotta shatter
and I am just the girl
to break it.
Powerless Silly Random Facts
Mont Blanc is the highest mountain
in Europe. It sits on the border
between France and Italy.
A black-headed gull walks in the snow
on a wall of the Palais de Chaillot
while the Eiffel Tower sings laments
in the background.
The wetlands of Camargue are found
between the between
of the Mediterranean Sea
and the Rhône River delta.
Not one of these silly random facts
can unring that bell,
can unsay that hate,
can un-rip those shreds,
can mend up those shards.
To My Judges…
…you who wrote vociferously to deny me becoming, deny me growth…
…you who wrote to deprive me of my innate destiny to have a perspective, walk thru life and the years, and then have a new perspective from a new place…
…you who wrote to deny forgiveness by telling me that I was unforgiveable…
…you who wrote in denial of a Grandfather’s wisdom that a wise person changes their mind and a fool never…
…this post is for you.
I am free of your judgments. Take them back to the grave you choose to live in, I want nothing to do with them.
Give me a chance to be responsible and to give and take and live and learn and forgive and be forgiven…give me a chance to be the person I allus was and not this fabricated golem you have created to tell yourself what you think you need to be…give me that chance and I will take it.
But to gas-light me, castigate me and condemn me all the while denying me any means or opportunity to walk forward?
No…Charissa will not play that.
Take it all away and best of luck to you…as for me, I will live in forgiveness, give forgiveness, receive forgiveness, love, laugh, and know that I am perfectly imperfect.
I mourn that you deny me the opportunity to walk a life with you…but from the looks of things you are far more the loser.
The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill
“Suicidal behaviors in LGBT populations appear to be related to “minority stress”, which stems from the cultural and social prejudice attached to minority sexual orientation and gender identity.
“This stress includes individual experiences of prejudice or discrimination, such as family rejection, harassment, bullying, violence, and victimization. Increasingly recognized as an aspect of minority stress is “institutional discrimination” resulting from laws and public policies that create inequities or omit LGBT people from benefits and protections afforded others.
“Individual and institutional discrimination have been found to be associated with social isolation, low self-esteem, negative sexual/gender identity, and depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.
“These negative outcomes, rather than minority sexual orientation or gender identity per se, appear to be the key risk factors for LGBT suicidal ideation and behavior.”
Source: The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill
This.
I am sharing this truly scintillating essay, and the pull quote above is the core for me.
I just wanna say that I was raised white…but I was…raised white. Fortunately for me, I was never inculcated with racist bull shit, to the point that in college in the 80s I had a dear friend literally shock me when he told me I was the least racist person he had ever met…and yes, I did hear and note his use of the word “least”…which said volumes to me but in a language that I could not decipher or understand.
Well…since coming to terms with myself and understanding my gender journey, my life has changed in shattering ways, stunning and transcendent ways…but most importantly of all I was delivered from the ocean at last…
and became aware of so much that I never knew, could never see, even as a fish in the sea has no clue that it is in the sea.
I understand the comment of my friend now…”least racist”.
I wish I had the words and ways to let my friends, acquaintances and loved ones who are subject to that which they are subject to for the absolute worst and most insignificant of reasons KNOW that I get it now…
Oh, I will NEVER get it for the reason that they are made subject, anymore than any cis-gender person will ever “get it” in any way other than developing a deep and sincere sympathy and resolute commitment to love and live that love…
But I do get it now, the persecution, the othering, the abuse, the hatred and the fucking demonic unreasoning irrational stupidity of those besotted and drunk on the luck of the draw and the fate of biology.
My friends, and you know who you are…this post is for you…may I always find the joy I have found in solidarity with you and the love of your deep suns of being that shine undefeated and undefeatable! May I always have the heart, the eyes to see and to be inspired time and again with your indomitable spirit, will, but most of all your LOVE which just fucking never quits, CAN never quit.
You have no idea, the moments you have dragged me thru…you bearing the hate directed at you due to skin and me bearing the hate directed at me due to a variation on skin but essentially a common thing we walk in…times I was on the way out, and I would read sumfin, hear sumfin, think of sumfin…and be inspired and lifted up in your heart of hearts.
Now? I can at least have the means to find the remaining privilege I have and divest myself of it intentionally…it doesn’t always go, it is stuck to my skin color…but at last it is not stuck to me.
I regret only that it took as long as it did for my understanding and seeing eyes to catch up to what my heart must have known for my friend to tell me what he told me. We intersect…and for the rest of my days on earth I am expanding that intersection with every ounce of love, faith, hope, grace and mercy that is mine.
To the rest of my friends: please take it in faith that your privilege is there, is stuck to you, and is a legacy that you can use if you will but set your heart in a frame of humility and ask that your eyes be opened…hopefully you will gain insight without experiencing it being ripped away…but if that is what it takes, it is better that this occur rather than go thru your life blind while thinking you see.
Kyrie Eleison
Just ran across the most beautiful and sad song that catches the essence of my heart right now
“”In a long forgotten book I read,
something that Augustine said,
in his deepest wound he found God’s Glory,
but I’m afraid that I’m too sick,
to conjure up that magic trick,
can I write myself into that story,
kyrie eleison…
kyrie eleison…
once had faith
but now it’s gone
kyrie eleison…
kyrie eleison…
I cut myself with stones and cry,
pretend, I’m not alone when I
fear that all along it’s only me,
kyrie, do you care?
eleison…”
Now…of course I have not “lost” faith…how could I? They found me and will never lose me…but it is poignant and haunting, this song, and I often lose hope that I will ever not feel outside and apart rather than a part.
Transgender Remembrance day draws close…it is so ironic to me that this day is so close to Veteran’s Day…one honors all…and one simply remembers those who died, and yet how impossible to remember anyone you never really knew, and then back to business as usual and the murder/violence rate continues to grow.
Sometimes the worst is that there are so many days thruout the year that I feel so utterly distant and forlorn that it feels like being erased from a day by others…a metaphorical murder…
…and other days I in essence commit spiritual suicide, the way that the dysphoria and my own failure conspire together.
Then there is the irony of the term…”Remembrance Day”…
Not a day goes by that I have forgotten or even could forget.
That Eternal Aftermath
It’s burst,
that Red Balloon floating
over the spindly-legged delicate
black lace Eiffel.
It splattered balloony-guts
in violent gouts
so grotesque
it’s nearly absurd,
and their
rubbery red-joke streaks
on the side
of that squatty arc
are anything but
Triomphe.
That’s how it works, terrorism…
that shock,
that
out-of-the-blue-blow-up
and your life
is doomed to never
the same
and yet never
recover
rinse-repeat cycle…
That’s how it is…
in my own private Paris,
misogynistic othering
phobic policing
sacks of pure hatred
shitting swaths
of bullets from
gender-uzis
and bursting Balloons here
and over the rainbow
LEAVE ME ALONE!!!
You come at me with your fancy eye-teeth
all sparkly and shiny and pointed behind
your smile pasted there friendly on the front
and ravenous in the rear, hungry for blood…
my blood. the blood of my desire, of my fire,
the blood of what I make, create.
I feel like a rabbit frozen in the forest
trembling in the cold black.
I see the bones hidden behind the flesh
beneath the blood, I see the lurch
of your skeletal undisciplined hands
as you tear and clutch at me and my tasks.
Why can’t you just leave me alone?
It’s So Easy
It’s so easy for you, isn’t it
just pull the rip cord and disappear
anytime conflict draws near
or anything that threatens
your lil cis-gender heaven
where everyone is just like you.
It makes me laugh how you stand
at a distance and make ooey-gooey
nicey-nice noises and cooes
that are supposed to tell me
how great you are and how
much you love me
but when there is even
so much as a fart in a light breeze
(god forbid the shit ever hit the fan)
you march right to the trenches
along with those who attack me
because you all are gender pure
and they are your gender relatives
and like must stand with like after all
and you might get struck or cut beside me.
Yeah…delete me when you don’t like
what I say (or what I am) or when
you don’t want to do the work to really understand
what I am saying, what I am doing
who I am…or just ignore me
just don’t look here and go away
Look…there are monsters in this world
and they want to hurt me, but they will
settle for you if you are in the way
I think you are beginning to see
that I am not your token tranny…
being my friend?
it’s not so easy.
The Manse
You stand there, so distant, so stark.
You glower, outlined in the dark.
Your face the knife, my heart the mark
you leave with your hard stoney glance.
I look for a way around you.
A way beneath, around, not thru.
You standing there like hellish dew
or maybe a wrecking crew dance.
I need the trees, grass, the peaks
of high snow covered mountains and leaks
of stars, birds and wind, they all speak
of the Grace that grows, given a chance.
But you, standing there on one rock.
You on the sand near the clock.
Your words either silent or chalk
and your heart just an empty black manse.
This Knowable And Yet Unseen Fine Line
What is this mystery
that imbues us with mercies,
that makes us worthy?
What Hand unbridles us,
makes us like fire
sweeping quick and inexorable
across dry crackly pampas?
Is calculated bravery even that?
Calculated?
Brave?
Or is it that opening,
limitless in love,
that casual bravery that
sets apart stark and unique
and truly free?
The bright light and sounding fury
of your sharp inhalation as you stand
just on the verge of this blessed virgin
landscape, uncharted territory and at last
without a method for its mapping!
Your miraculous secrets
can now be made known,
open to the depths
of your deep core!
God,
the planet’s very core
trembles at the prospect
of you unearthing your mysterious you!
Face them down, confront them,
hair gleaming in the moon,
eyes ferocious, feminine
in the sun and perfect chaos
of a new creation being born!!
Wreak havoc in the hearts of those
who fear lord foul and want to break you open…
they only serve The Sacred Heart
which alone can touch you only
with the Mercies and the Grace!
They hate what they cannot control
and deem you far too much
but I ask them how could you
ever be too much
or anything but
too much
when you can fly above
those lofty snow-graced peaks
and you can warm those
star-kissed ocean-swept
beaches and speak to trees
in profound whispers in
the dead of night
or in the desert
at dawn?
Change and transformation beats,
a drum within your soul,
that elegantly crafted
straightforward chorus
and procession of passion
and purpose and melty-love!
The notion of you resurrected
sends battalions bowing, backwards
and rejoicing that they caught sight of you
there beside our Sister Joan
and the silver noble mantle
she wraps you both within!
Oh Ship Graceful!
You with the stubborn faith
and ridiculous courage to dare
the tempestuous seas of transformation!
Oh you dark and light pulsing!
Oh you unstoppable hurricane spinning!
Oh you warm rain and gentle embrace
glowing with Mama’s swaying rhythms
and untameable electricity and containing
the very formula for birth!
Let your passion become elixir,
life-force, fuel of legions of the lost
destined to be found!
Let jewels drip from your lips
to the mouths of we your sisters
and send us sailing on clouds
and lay us basking in light!
Let your heart be a home
and golden chamber
of comfort soft
and yet unyielding!
But now, sit in deserts
and wrap yourself in silence
while your spirit howls at the moon
and sings the songs of freedom
from the palace of yourself
restored to you.
Let your temple you
be that magnetic masterpiece
of completely unconscionable strength
and grace and majesty untwisting time
with every bump of your Holy Hips,
every twist of your spine fro and to.
And do not neglect your softness
at the heart of you, of your force.
Carry yourself like breezes in sweet meadows,
swaying like the willows in joyful moving hymns.
Remember to be small
when you speak stars
from your very lips.
You are a walking
breathing, living
temple in whom
our Mama
dwells
and
beautifies
so stark and lovely
that the very stones
give up their tears that
lay so petrified and still!
And so…sister exhale gently.
Let your lungs blow ancient magic
and conjure blooming flowers in the exhalations.
You are Mama’s Girl and are becoming
as a goddess by comparison to the dead
who shovel shit upon their brethren
dead and buried.
This is my solemn promise and exhortation,
I who have dwelt a season at the heart of a scream
and now stand ever in the Red Wonder of Her Heart…
join me here…
the water is just fine
in this knowable and yet
unseen fine line.
That Instant Untimeless Moment
You know that moment
(or is it an era or an eon)
that time in which space expands
(or does it contract)
or rather that space in which time
runs faster or stops all together…
that moment when you must
step up or step back
you must be quick-eyed and instant
not sluggish, slothful, mesmerized
by the glimmer of light on the waves
and the ripples of the sea towards the shore…
you must take your chin from your knees
raise your nose to the stiff water breeze
and let your hair blow free and unafraid
I have heard a lot of empty words
devoid of solid stance and foundation
in that expanding time,
that folding space,
that instant
untimeless
moment.
Only Different Now
Be yourself only
different now
somehow
with all
that
grief.
In case you ever
thought that
you were just
a being, just
a humble
presence
you are not just
anything, you
mean something,
more than that
you mean
everything,
because everything that
means something
beats inside
of you.
“…I’m STILL HERE!…”
This line has inspired me for 40 plus years…literally.
Watch to the end…For I am committed to living to that…the end.
PS: the irony of the fact that this movie is called “Papillon” is not lost on me!!
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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