“Just because that’s the way you remember it doesn’t mean that’s the way it happened.”
| — | (via deeplifequotes) |
Category Archives: Bullying
To Firetongue
Dick-tator
elaborate
intricate
wrought
invested
imposing
it’s still just
a brutal lock
and my subjugation
your only key
Your Masquerade
your finger comes at me
like you think
you are God
well, it would
if you actually thought.
but you don’t
think
you just assume
and instead of sparks
you give ice chips of death
yes, that’s it, you throw off
sparks of death and call it life
in your masquerade
And Dogs Ran At Us Hard
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, manna sweet to feed our
honking hearts, our silky souls to
take wing once again, in skies…
we thought forever we would fly
until that day the clarion calls they sounded
and the promises of haven-rest resounded
to our ears, our listening ears though with our eyes
we saw nothing but blind…blinds…we just saw blind
and swooping sounds from where?
and so we flew, we glided lower, lower
and so the guns did bloom and boom
and shot us from the keening clenching air
in lead-packed punches to the breast…
that took away our very breath
until we died, and dogs ran at us hard
to carry us triumphantly back into Massa’s yard
we, feathers fouled in blood, in gore, in mud
our necks floppy and broken in that flood…
of death that finally claimed us as its prey.
Close Vests
“play it close to the vest”
came the granite words beating
against my face cascading
on craggy cliffsides or was it
like cannons booming and crashing,
coinvesting indifference and distant
assumption, consumption and
constant presumption?
I couldn’t tell which was true
which one was stronger,
the smug or the deaf or
the dumb, cus they had
no ears, not that they
wanted to hear my voice
or my heart or my soul
desperate, traumatized, hurt…
But they certainly had words, oh yes,
and their unctuous tones quickly
said everything I was supposed to know
and nothing else…nothing else.
Close…play… “it”…vests…
what are vests?
And what does it mean
to play close…to a vest?
The vestiary vague and looming
is that closet where play can
be kept oh so close to the vest
(or costumes donned for cover)
The vestibule tells a different story
than the vestiges of vestiaires
that peek out from under those
fanciful covers…it looks so calm.
Which place is the womb
of a travesty played out, and
which one can make someone
divest a warm heart for stone?
Vests…what are they…hmmm…
There is gravest…that might be worth
playing close to, since crisis might
confront the bravest…in gravest?
But just the naivest? Well,
easy to push, just invest all
your privilege/position in triplicate!
And no one will ever be wiser!
I think vestal virgin
might be the best vest
as they cultivate flames
and harvest the fire
To keep the community
safe and secure well,
that vest I definitely
can play oh so very close…
play…is that a joke?
it…the most common term for me.
close…near, or shut off?
to the vest…I ask again which one?
Vests and me do not really
know about one another
I’m A Why
you do your best
to deny me but when
you can’t, you would rather
use me than see me
you don’t even know
you are not aware
of how much is denied me
already forever
the body, the flesh
the flesh become word
the love of my own kind
her intimate touch, and
what I’ll have never,
well is it offset
by what I do have…
and just what is that?
rejection by children?
gaslighting my past?
shunning me, shutting me
outside my group?
you pigs called “big men”
I am not like you
though cursed with your flesh
my heart never yours
and you princesses, women
my soul…same as yours
but my body a charnel house,
nothing in common
locked out of inside
locked in from outside
why do I linger?
why…I’m a why
Higher Than Hollywood
it is high above the smoke, the noxious fumes,
stench belched from bulls and bullies, flesh and steel
above the ego faces that still shield
the hearts and empty hovels lurking there
you know, that land of dreams that nightmare breeds
to stalk the streets where zombies walk in peace
that feeding ground of brains not being used
that parched and soulless place of no relief
lead me higher, sit me in the dirt
at least I feel vibrations of real life
in every grain of sand and pebble hard
and hold me, till I know that I’m alright
A Train In Winter
The route left the Côte d’Azur
at the golden height of Autumn
in the silver splendor sun
on the silky stretch of sand
Parallel lines
stretching out
Jews Christians
wealthy workers
old young
Oppression Resistance
never meeting until
the chain connects
in commitment,
in the blood of
one another
The tracks are different than normal tracks
Those will never meet, but these meet
in the meat and the smoke and the ash heaps
Of Auschwitz
In Dachau
Thru Treblinka
To Birkenau
A Train that left in Autumn arrived in Hell
A Train in Winter fueled with horror.
A Train Running Silent, Death Shark
along those metal tracks, sparks flying
whistle silent
and my trauma rides there too
cold in the shiver-cold cars packed
with the bodies and the empty eyes
and the ever playing rape and violation
as I follow my own tracks to my own connections
to face down dead flat eyes and masquerade eye lashes
that blink furiously to bat the truth away
Your Silence
The tiny echoes of your
small silence are dwarfed
by the elephant in the room
hiding under the lampshade
of your indifference.
I said it, yes
I said it.
You don’t say anything
even though I wait
every night and endure
every desert day hiding
under the hot sun
of my charade.
It’s time for bed
and I lay down
and still you don’t break
but instead you take
your silence-cuffs
and chain me
the nightlight goes out
so you turn on the light
overhead and it bears down
bright
relentless
and sterile
just
like
your
silence.
On Living The Gospel
It is not so much our slogans and statements, our creeds and commitments as it is the way we walk them out with our flesh and blood. Documents are empty hulls of potential…and every single day that we truly live those commitments we give them flesh from our flesh and blood from our blood.
The challenge posed by staunch commitment to broken people is that you then will have dealings with broken people.
This can be troublesome if you unconsciously expect that broken people will live and act unbroken. If you dribbled a crystal globe, and it shattered, and then when you touched a piece and it cut you or poked you, the challenge you would be facing would be full blown in how you reacted to being cut.
That is where the reality of creeds, statements and slogans truly emerges…the ones who react in shock or outrage or horror are the ones who thought that globe was a basketball. The ones who recoil in horror or anger or disgust are the ones who believed it was a soccer ball.
That is the distilled essence of walking out the Gospel: realizing that it is a message that attracts the hungry, the lost, the broken and it is not the creed which transforms but the living Presence of Christ IN that creed that does the work of healing and restoration.
Which means to live the Gospel is to be inconvenienced, to be confronted with wounds that stink and are infected, to change the emotionally and spiritually incontinent…and to do it in patient joyful tenderness.
Someone can make their point with stern words and terse actions…it is not hard whatsoever to understand a point that has been made…and someone else can walk their love with gentle hands and consistent presence, and then ask for whatever they want as the broken heal, and slings are discarded and casts are cut off and the lame begin to walk.
And then…deeper…closer…at the pulsing core…the revelation that is couched in those words from the cross “Forgive them Father…they do not know what they are doing.”
Those words have such compassion and understanding in them…they assume that most people would do good things if they REALLY KNEW the impact their troubling actions are having.
It’s such a good thing that we are coming to the place where we can even see that our statements and commitments and creeds have a unique calling to be expressed in our current climate…
it’s an even better thing when we count the cost…
it’s the best thing of all when we keep going and the word(s) become flesh.
One Week Of Hell
I am astounded at the absurdity and the letdown of the last 7 days.
I have learned that I am cursed with the notion that words mean things…specific and precise things, and some words can morph, can shape-shift depending on the wind or the light…or the scents in the air…
and so I have collected them…words. I use them like a carpenter uses finish tools, like a furniture maker wields her instruments of creation.
But I have also learned that others do not…
…others do not know that words mean things (they ass-u-me)
…others do not CARE that words mean things
…others use words carelessly
…others use words lazily
…others use words clumsily
So the next thing I learned is that other people freak out when I ask what they mean…they get upset, or angry, or worst of all puzzled, as if I speak in a foreign language, as if I am an animal that suddenly went Narnia and began to utter intelligible sounds…but since I am just an animal they need not be considered seriously, it is just a lucky co-incidence.
This freaks me out greatly when this happens…being a sufferer of brain trauma, this ambiguity and denial of meaning is like throwing gasoline on a fire and expecting it to go out like water has been applied to those unwanted and despised flames.
So I devised a coping strategy…I decided to ask for clarification.
“I don’t understand, would you please clarify?
“I am uncertain as to what you mean, would you please explain?”
“I am anxious and scared because the ramifications of what you said shout and gibber at me and I have no hiding place…will you please give me definition and reassurance, or if not then out with the guillotine and lop off my head?”
Sometimes, when I ask this, people deny there is anything to define…the inference is that I am crazy, reading too much into the words, finding things that are not there, and that I just need to mellow out.
“Take things for face value” they say.
I tried that. It led to betrayal and violation and deeper/horrific trauma and a conflagration that nearly was my end…thank God for God and for Phoenixes.
So that didn’t work so well…or rather, it utterly broke and stained for good that place inside which could (a little) stay still and let go and take something on its face…this is utterly absurd anyway, given the combination of words that are so carelessly used and the mutual exclusivity of those combinations…to take most statements at face value is to accept meaningless absurdity and to bathe in the vile flow emanating forever from the ruins of the tower of Babel.
This led to a different strategy…that of survival.
Maslow wrote about the hierarchy of needs, ranging from survival to self-actualization, and emphasized that when survival was in question self-actualization was a pipe dream if it was even present in the threatened consciousness.
I learned that words cannot be trusted when they are loose and running wild in packs like rabid dogs. I learned that other people do not want or will not choose to place them on leashes and seek to master them and use them for life rather than death.
(“The power of life and death is in the tongue” says the sage)
As I survive, I discover people and places where there are indications and implications that I might find sanctuary. I begin to trust, begin to hope…and then comes the dilemma…undefined words, confusing communication contradictory and capricious…
What do I do? Whenever I ask for clarity, that ask is offensive, shocking, puzzling, incomprehensible? But if I don’t ask, then I am doomed by this:
In the lack of clarity, I am compelled (powerless in this, actually) to find the worst possibility and the shade of meaning that places me in the worst place…and that becomes my truth.
Which of course leads others to heap on even more incredulity, and they say to me THEIR truth of me…
…as if I am an idiot for thinking what I think in the face of ambiguity…
which actually drives me deeper into the fires.
In these last 7 days this has happened to me…and I have happened to it as well, for I sought clarification…in open words, in more words than others consider decorous (because I want to be as sure as I can that I am clear in what I am saying)…in plain pleading plaintive words…begging words with empty cup extended in front of my dirty street urchin face…
and the bottom of lower than the worst has been the result…
The very worst thing, the ultimate blow that anyone can give to me in this place…
…………… is silence……………
no response
no reply
no nuffin
That silence has a voice. Did you know that? Silence speaks?
In knives
In slashes
In crushing fog weighty and inexorable
Silence gibbers sinister
Silence threatens with burbly graveyard chuckles
Silence goose-steps over my grave in shivery stampings
Silence screams that I am nothing
Silence screams that I am soon going to be eaten
(but only after I have been torn apart)
Torn apart by words…for it is on the other side of silence that others finally speak words…imprecise, wielded clumsy and ham handed, lacking nuance and deftness…and me, Andromeda without a Perseus caught there by my wrist, chained while the imprecision feeds on my liver in gnawing knife pecking beaks and ripping tearing talon claws…
It is in these moments that I wish it would just stop.
Just.
Stop.
I have recognized this is also mostly the result of trauma in my life, and of that I have recently written…no, you cannot just “mellow out”, just “relax”, just “let it go and choose different”…thank you very much for your insensitive and ignorant admonitions…give me some credit, and imagine that a being as complex as myself might have tried that a time or trillion…no.
Trauma is with you like your skin, but it is a skin inside your skull and made solely of cockleburrs and foxtails.
And that is where this poem comes in…”Nothing Rhymes Orange”
It is short, considerably shorter than the ravings of this post (now you see why I love to speak in poem and nuance and layers)
Words
Uncertainty
Anxiety
Fear
Ask for clarity
Silence
That is the road for Charissa that leads to hell.
5 days of hell, and me still here and no one understanding the fortitude or fierce fight that I have been in simply to be here prattling on and on and on and on…
Silence says to me “Just shut up and go away”
Silence is the siren call crooning and never have those sharp rocks looked so inviting, so final, so untroubling in their destructive shadow.
But I? Well, I guess that I am even worse than bad…because in the face of repudiation and rejection shouted so eloquently in that Silence slouching towards this Bethlehem, I don’t even have the good sense to go…the courage to go? The integrity to go? Is that it? Prolly that is it since my integrity is called into question in the imprecision and indefinite miasma that masquerades as communication…
Is it that I am stubborn? Is it that I am curious and want to see how it ends without me breaking character and stepping off the stage in Act 3 of 5?
I dunno…I will just go with the end of “Papillon” (those curious can search my blog for that, those not curious, well why are you even still reading…did I not lose you in the Labyrinth of my words?? ‘Ware the Minotaur, sojourner!!).
I WILL NOT BE SILENT, even though so many will…
but I won’t lie either. These last 5 days have been a living hell inside my skull, and it hurts so bad.
More Hills
Everybody
wants to be king
of a hill
and that hill
just a pile
of dust
hot and red
and dry
or a dungheap
so silent
and stinking
with malice.
And yet
with more kings
than hills
and more dirt
than heart
and more dung
than wisdom
we just
collect hurt
and more hurt
from wounds
and from cuts
and from boots
on small faces
from despairing cries
and from silence
and malice
we just build more hills.
Poem Of Horror
I wonder in stars
inverse black against
skies of light why
I wasn’t worth
the fight.
empty my skull
with a spoon thru my eyes
scrape the bone clean
and give me the peace
of an empty mind
worthless
no value
no beauty
just me
in my
traumatized
brain
screaming always
and keening
The Cruelty Of The Ordinary
I am at an end of some kind
an end of expecting pink
when the sun arrives and departs
an end of hoping someone
somewhere would get it.
I am at an end of expecting anyone to
actually understand shooting stars
streaking thru the night and
my words piercing pulsing
pricks of light thru dull
dark and choking
indifference…
or any yearning
to pay attention
to urgent and plaintive
cries.
I who am
healed in words
am at last wounded
by words and endless
accusations and slander
and the opaque screens of untruth
I have been broken
I have been violated
I shall never
be clean again
I don’t think I will
ever be whole again
or fit for any service
the light thru the window merely
heightens that separation and
the scraggly fingers waiting
to claw my heart to ribbons
and lick the talons clean
in the moments between
sunrise and sunset
in the cruelty
of the ordinary
I Am Double
I am double
I am here and somewhere else
I am in caves of coming futures
staring out at fires casting shadows
of the past that flicker, flounder
and then disappear.
I am winter and I’m summer
I am autumn with some spring
thrown into my yellow gold veins
surging and pulsing with everlife
straining to throw off apples and pears
and some of that fruit
without a proper name.
I am true blue trueheart covered in shit-words
I am singing never silent song chained by silence.
you can call me whatever you want to call me
it doesn’t change who I am.
I am double.
I am here and somewhere else.
Pain-t-pot
Terse words…Words muddy
and swirling and steaming
like cream in cold-coffee
like death in soft-nectar
words lumbering lead-footed
fat flat and hard hulking
fear-shadows are lurking
in other death-words
words rain down like brain bombs
explode in uncertainty
pregnant with confusion
communion of judas-kiss
they use words like bullets
to shatter my skull
and blast my brain bloody
and turn my head into
an urn full of red
a paint-pot of death
that they can drink deep of
and spit on their canvases
in words and in brush strokes
dipped into the paint-pot
that my brain has become
from traumatic words
the top of my skull
ripped open by shrapnel
and now just a pain-t-pot
now just a pain-t-pot
Sorrow Is
sorrow
is the
most sensitive
of all created
things
(aye the
question lingers,
hangs, remains…
who created
sorrow?)
Sorrow has taught me much
of Holy Ground and tears
and coming times when
people realize that we
know nothing about
life until we know
sorrow and
sanctified
ruddy
dirt.
Sorrow
is such holy
ground and those
who do not learn to
walk there know nothing
of what living truly means
and that Life’s sacred truths
most precious are drained from
sorrow’s silver cup and learned in sorrow’s
frozen icy grip, so stark, lacey, frosty filigreed
Sorrow is a
wound that bleeds when
any hand but that of love
touches it and even then
must bleed again,
though not in pain
but finally in
tenderness
and healing
evermore
Brain Trauma
Wow…so little known about it, such a huge and impactful issue.
I have brain trauma…and likely have had (very mild) Reactive Attachment Disorder since my inception. That is not an official diagnosis, for Reactive Attachment Disorder is something very severe…certainly I have Early Trauma.
That makes me something called
“non neurotypical”.
A neuro-typical person has a brain more like a Four-Square Ball…slap it around and it dohing dohing dohing bouncy bouncy back up to the next player no problem.
A non neuro-typical person has a brain that is like a finely fashioned delicate blown-glass globe. It is scary beautiful, capable of much…except that since most people’s brains resemble said Four-Square Ball, they take the delicate glass globe, call out SERVICE and slap it down to the ground…
…and when it doesn’t just bounce back up?
They get angry and blame the non neuro-typical person.
Whose brain is splattered/shattered on the cement and needs time and space and something…SOMETHING…to reset it, and that thing is never the same and often times never comes and the storm just has to be ridden out…the raging river rapids ridden, bashed from rock to rock and battered until it spits you out at the other side…
It is awful…because as a non neurotypical I always feel so guilty…and I always feel like no one else receives the reality that I am trapped in. It feels like they think I am copping out and giving an excuse, having a built in alibi and justification…
…when the truth is during those times my brain aches and throbs and hurts and my mind feels like molasses-soaked cotton…and I have to work about a million times harder to just to be in my expected place.
When I was little, I used to walk around the house crying for no apparent reason, and according to the stories when I was asked what was wrong, I would wail “It’s the end of the world”…
…that is how it feels.
Typical reaction of others is either some form of shaming that I am not “bucking up and coping” and that is accompanied with boasts of how that person bucks up and deals with it, and concluding with castigation to quit feeling sorry for myself and just move on.
just move on. wow. if only.
if only…moving on sounds wonderful.
There is another reaction that follows often as well…someone will get close, someone will feel some twinge of sympathy or compassion and choose to come close, seeing ONLY the outlands of this territory of hellish trauma…and they will say things that lead me to believe they will be present in the nightmare.
Until they get a few leagues into it…and realize this land is like the Marshes of the Dead that abutted Mordor.
And WHOOSH…they disappear and brush out their tracks fast as they go…and I am accustomed to that and know how to cope with that. Cultivation of hobbies that can be done alone are therapeutic.
The last group though…they are the most onerous and dangerous. They are the ones who will not hear me when I ask them to please stop…please stop pushing me, please stop trying to help me in ways that are not helpful but are actually just all about them and their power-play (that they are totally unaware they are engaging in, as they see themselves as the great educator of the poor benighted and incapable person)…to them, they imagine I will fall to my knees sooo grateful that they deign to give me the off-scourings of their greatness.
That group is the worst, because I know what happens to me…and I beg them to please stop because they push me too far and I snap inside my mind and all my abilities and all my capacities go into defending me from harm…and I am intellectually capable of abstract thought and I am quick to sense and perceive what others are trying to do and I can out-think them and out-argue them.
I go into defense mode, and I cannot stop. Not “I won’t stop”.
I cannot.
I will observe every contradiction and throw it in their face. I will sense every inconsistency and challenge them about why they are trying to hold me to some things but not hold themselves to the same standard.
And those people? They leave finally, and usually bruised and hateful towards me because I hurt them…
…and I am the bad person, the unpredictable person, the inconsistent person, the unreliable person.
When in reality, my brain lies shattered on the playground pavement.
And then, the easy peasy low hanging fruit begins to beckon and croon…and the gender issue raises, and the tranny-freak thing sneaks in…their minds, my mind…it doesn’t really matter which by this point.
Sometimes I want to take spoons and go in thru my eyes and scoop my brain cavity clean and start fresh.
That, my friends, is what brain trauma does. And by the way? It can be traumatized by just about anything, really…the obvious culprit of war or tragedy…but it can be from bullying, it can be from the way our brain chemistry is, it can be from dysphoria…it can be from childhood events that were done without any bad intent but still resulted in trauma…
…and some brains can skate right thru things that traumatize other brains.
There is nothing to boast of if you are neurotypical…and there is no shame if you are not.
In the meantime, if you have a loved one who has trauma, be aware that PTSD is a real thing…
…for the traumatized person, from a neurological point of view, it is not just a memory. The traumatized person experiences the events of the moment, but their brain is present in the midst of the actual trauma!
The brain that is traumatized is functioning in the midst of trauma even though the events in that moment may not actually be traumatizing…but soon do become so due to the brain functioning in trauma. It adds itself to the pot of trauma, to the witches’ brew of horrors.
So that is the story of brain trauma. For more information, google it.
The Pain And The Poetry
“If your pain sounds pretty,
it doesn’t seem so bad.
If you use beautiful words
to describe your sadness,
people may line up
around the block to read it.
See it. Hear it. Fall in love with it.
If people don’t know better,
they might think they want it.”
| — | saintly-sinner |
Pressed Hard On The Edge
the fragrance of a thousand years
the sound of silent flying souls
my heart pressed hard against the edge
the thick and soft edge breathing hard
while loves sings always like the wren
and stars sing always overhead
I have places that I live
other places that I dwell
and silence rings in golden throng
words idle cannot do their wrong
and I take up your judgment eyes
and try to ride the dashing waves
until I fly, leave earth and try
to nestle soft and comforted
between wings of the butterfly
pearls beautiful drop from my heart
delicate, riding, perfumed red
or is it white, or golden black
and glowing lustre carmel clean?
but you…still…
heavy with your ego looks
and thick with all your privilege books
and me? Just ghosting in your world
a banner on the wind unfurled
my body pressed hard on the edge
On Ghomeshi, Memory and Trauma
I simply have to press this…I am the victim of stories that intimate people tell about me that are lies.
Flat out. They lie, because of many reasons, and I think all of the reasons are understandable: my transition, their own cognitive dissonance, it’s easier to scapegoat me than accept that their life is the way it is as a consequence of their choices…it doesn’t matter why they lie.
I still love them, because I cannot do otherwise. I am incapable of not loving them. But the consequences of that lie are stunningly strong and toxic.
My only hope is that they come to their senses in a way similar to what happened here in this article.
************************************************************************************
Have you ever had a moment when you suddenly realize that your memory of an event is not actually what happened? A few years ago I was talking to someone about a pretty life-altering event that happened…
Source: On Ghomeshi, Memory and Trauma
The Aggregate
There are blows in life. Some of them are soft, lil love taps from beyond and they leave a red mark but you know it is gonna fade. Others…well, they will leave bruises, and yet those mottled tattooes of violence and hurt are temporary too.
Some of them are so bad that they break parts of us off completely, and we have to heal and go on.
But the things I wanna talk about here are the ones that are so small, so tiny by comparison, and so constant.
I am talking about the aggregate effect of blows that come to people who are unable to heal from the last one by the time the next blow lands.
And in general, this aggregation is not the same for a cis-het person as it is for a transgender person…dysphoria has a tendency to make the blows extra sticky. In fact, I would say that the slings and arrows and attacks that we face as transgender people more closely resemble concussion syndrome than anything else:
…….each…..
….blow magnifies…..
…..EXPONENTIALLY….
and gets WORSE and WORSE…
So you can end up pushed absolutely into the red zone, completely pegged out at your absolute capacity to endure the words and looks and spurnings of the majority of people you meet…and one small word lands and shakes things exponentially yet again…and poof…….
you are falling, having been pushed too far and you are over the edge.
And that is when the desperation sets in…when you literally do not feel like going on anymore…when it doesn’t matter if you go on because no matter what there are always gonna be the ones poised to pounce and hurt…ready to throw your past into your face…ready to out you for their own purposes and without your permission. And then they reason that “Hey, you are an out trans-woman so what is the big deal?” Never recognizing that they have robbed you of your voice and your words to tell your own story in your own way.
I will confess that I choke on words when I reach out to someone in desperation, needing to talk with someone who would listen and understand and accept…and then hear their “counsel” back is “Charissa you shouldn’t talk about it so much.”
So…hold it in and die in the aggregated crush of burdens…or talk about it and be rebuked.
In times like these? It is tough to see any good reason to keep on
The Story of Esther…told with SPUNK!!
Found online: not written by me but GAWD I wish!!!
anonymous asked:
Cat Cat Cat! Purim is coming up soon. Can you tell us the Purim story, with swears?
swanjolras answered:
oh my god, is this my thing now. OKAY, fair warning, this one’s gonna be… real long.
OKAY SO LIKE. way back in the waybackwhen, we’ve been kicked outta judea for the… first? second? first time.
(we got kicked out of israel/judea a… few times. we got kicked out of spain twice, we got kicked out of the netherlands three times, we got kicked out of france and bavaria five times, we got kicked out ofmainz in particular four times…god bless the gentiles honestly they’re god’s appointed travel agency. ANYWAY)
so we’re in persia. and we’re under the rule of king ahasueare– king ahahasay– king ahasueueueueue-
KING AHASARARUARAUAEREASS, who is having a Party
and king ahdahahaah has a wife, vashti, who is among the hottest women in the whole country. like. picture michelle obama crossed with robin wright. sort of like a 40-year-old raven symone. are you picturing it? good. king ashashsasd isn’t. cos she’s hiding in her room
king aheshhh, who is quite drunk at this point, is like VASHTI. VASHTI I WANT YOU TO COME OUT AND HAVE FUN AT THIS PARTY. I WANT YOU TO COME OUT AND HAVE FUN AND WEAR YOUR CROWN
vashti is like ughhhhhhhh FINE
king aaaaaaahhahaha is like …ONLY YOUR CROWN
vashti is like …not fine
so, because this is ancient persia and men are terrible, vashti is promptly divorced and king aughjesus decides to hold the Country’s Biggest Beauty Contest, where the Most Beautiful Women in Persia will all audition to be his wife!!! (I TOLD YOU MEN WERE TERRIBLE)
BUT. WAITAMINUTE. PAN OVER PERSIA AND IN ON
haman, a smug motherfucker with a three-pointed hat, size 7, and a zero-pointed ego, size 300; a councillor for the king. haman, because ancient persia does not have any kind of government that could reasonably be labeled “sensible”, writes and institutes a law that says Everyone In This Country Must Bow Down To Me When I Pass, because Reasons.
BUT, guess who does not bow down to people, you guessed right,it is the jews. chiefly and specifically in this instance an equallysmug (but much less powerful) motherfucker by the name of mordecai.
haman passes mordecai, is like “you don’t look like you’re bowing??? that is not a bow shape??? exPLAIN.” mordecai is like “r u god? i don’t think yr god? i think god would have better taste in hats? so”
and haman is IRKED but THEN mordecai overhears two courtiers having a conversation that goes something along the lines of:
COURTIER ONE: i am going to kill the king
COURTIER TWO: wow, what a coincidence, so am i
COURTIER ONE: lots of killing. like. a bunch. so much of the being killed is going to happen
COURTIER TWO: great plan.
and mordecai is like, well. that’s not good, but also… that’s good… because i’m gonna go and. tell the king. that’s a thing i’m gonna do, right now, and the king is like SHIT!!! THAT SOUNDS IMPORTANT, SOMEONE GO KILL THOSE DUDES, and those dudes are gone killed
and the king goes to haman, our motherfucker with the terrible hat, and goes “theoretically, my bro. if there was a dude so fab you had to honor him, like, the most. how would you do that thing” and haman’s like “ah! this theoretical person! definitely not me! i would, theoretically, give that person a fuckton of money and also fancy clothes and also tell the kingdom that they were the best in persia. that is what i would do for mys- for them.”
“GREAT” says the king. “OKAY GO AND DO THAT FOR MORDECAI SG? SG”
…anyway haman is plotting like a motherfucker, which he is, and mordecai is mad afraid, but there is no time for plotting or fear because guess what it’s beauty contest time, motherfuckers
and guess who mordecai has enrolled in it, it is HIS NIECE, ESTHER
esther is hotter than vashti, but, like, in a chiller way. in my head, samira wiley.
(in my head, esther is a lesbian. in my head esther is my girlfriend. right. ANYWAY)
king ahooleyhoo immediately picks esther, as she is the Most Beautiful Woman In A Ten Thousand Mile Radius (as are all jews OBVIOUSLY), and she is taken up into the palace to be the most beautiful and powerful woman in a ten thousand mile radius. and she is also mad smart, so
what does a mad smart woman do? a mad smart woman does not tell her new husband, the king of the persians, that she is jewish. that is a smart move.
meanwhile haman has finished his Plotting and has resulted in this: he is going to get revenge against mordecai by Killing All The Jews.
“oh yeah,” say the jews. “real original.”
meanwhile esther is wandering around in king asdfasdfasdf’s palace, where there is literally no kosher food, because the only people who could order kosher food prepares specially would be a) the king (who does not know she is a jew) or b) haman (who is a motherfucker).
so esther’s eating seeds and nuts and gettin increasingly hungry and increasingly irritated and eventually she’s like, HUSBAND DARLING, CAN I SEE MY UNCLE; the king says yes, upon which mordecai is like ESTHER? ESTHER HAMAN IS PLOTTING TO KILL US ALL. ALL THE JEWS. DO SOMETHING
esther is like, i have a solution to this. the solution involves getting naked.
so she holds a banquet for her husband the king, and at the banquet is like WOW… GOSH… I’M VERY NAKED… AT THIS BEAUTIFUL BANQUET WITH KEGSTANDS. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A LOT OF SEX AND GOOD FOOD, DARLING HUSBAND
darling husband is like fuck yes, gets drunk as shit. esther is like okay. yes. now that you are full of good food and heavily sexed up, can i have a thing. can that thing be that you vow to protect me from anyone who wants to kill me
…sure, says king aheshehaara. i mean. as things to ask for go. that went
great, says esther. havin a banquet tomorrow night too. be there or be square
king ajldfghfdghk;dfghufgsdoi has no desire to be square, so he comes to the banquet tomorrow night to find that esther has also invited… HAMAN? “well,” he thinks to himself, “i have never pictured this threesome before, but y’know what, life is a rich tapestry”
but they are eating? and not sexing? and eventually esther goes “ah okay remember that promise to protect me from anyone who would kill me. what if i told you. i knew a dude who would do that thing”
“I WOULD SUPER KILL THAT DUDE,” says king ahassafrass, who has exactly 2 problem-solving methods
“great,” says esther. “what if i told you… THIS IS THE DUDE”
!!!!! says king ahahahahhfewsse.
!!!!!! says esther.
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ says haman.
so esther REVEALS SHE IS A JEW! and that haman is implicitly PLOTTING TO KILL HER! (“i didn’t– I WAS NOT AWARE,” says haman. “WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE FUCKING CHECKED THEN,” says esther. “OR WAIT. ANOTHER SOLUTION. IT’S DAWNING ON ME. AN EPIPHANY. YOU COULD TRY NOT KILLING PEOPLE”)
and the king has haman hanged on the gallows on which he was planning to hang all the jews. and guess who is instituted as councillor in his place, that’s right, IT’S MORDECAI
who declares that the anniversary of Us Not Being Dead shall be celebrated every year forever with dressing up in costumes, and also that we shall eat little cookies shaped like haman’s hat, and also that whenever haman’s name is mentioned we will yell like hell
hey, says king aharseadslic. could, theoretically, this holiday include getting so drunk you can’t tell the difference between mordecai and haman
…i guess so, says mordecai
right, says king ahasuerus. carry on, haman
AND SO WE CONTINUE THESE TRADITIONS OF EATING COOKIES, WEARING COSTUMES, AND GETTIN SLOSHED, even SCATTERED ACROSS THE WORLD; and yes, i will be spending my thursday gettin drunk on my way to rome
so pour yrself a whiskey, put on a fake beard, and raise a glass: it’s purim 5776, and guess what, motherfuckers?
you still ain’t managed to kill us yet.
Such A Beautiful Disruptive Moment
the dam finally broke, and
I just kept smiling, smiling,
smiling like Aphrodite.
and why wouldn’t I?
tornados run across this fruited plain
fires race around these redwood trunks
each one natural, powerful, hungry,
and THOSE things, well…
I think I would run
I know I would
but a dam? well, pshaw!
a man made that, thinking
to choke out a river? HAH!
stupid dolt, we just kept pushing
Aphrodite and I.
I kept smiling because She
gives me Her Nod, Her
quick chin lift and dancing
bright flashing eyes that tell me
every hour is Holy
every sensual second
is Sacred in its quick
butterfly rise and its
sad sinking sunset.
and that pile of patriarchy
eminent in threat and rattley-death
hard and straight and deaf and dumb
(fee fie foe fum!!)
jammed down Her fertile river-craw,
those dirty fingers down the throat of love
that choking violating deep and rough and raw
in turbine hums exploding in the cries of mourning doves
well it’s blown now…and on the run
in painful splintery disjointed strides
streaked with dirty water and rust
and ruined careful engineered remains.
and Aphrodite, that river, and me
lick at the bones with our eyes
and our waters and our ululating
triumphal throat-splitting ear-spitting
SCREAMS OF RELEASE!
We suck, we clean, we set free and tear
the stench of man right out of marrow
and sow Sacred Communion, Holy Power
of Body and Blood anew across the waters,
alive again, alive
those waters once again
alive
So…keep smiling and just yank
that unruly thread until it comes unfurled
and falls apart, all fall down
in one beautiful disruptive moment
such a beautiful disruptive moment.
Me Moon
when you speak of me
you speak of weeds and brambles
thorns, nettles and stoney ground.
when you think of me
it’s craters and dark
and bare landscape stark
and lacking curves.
I am gardens, moon, roses, sea.
I am me, in bowers and blooms
and labyrinth beds of unusual growth.
I am small trees and tall firs
fragrance stirs, honey bees
I am Grace in the echo
of the moon’s deep wells
I am tides reaching and running
yearning and aching
I am reflected light
soft yet bright
sometimes yes often no
but always…always…
always aglow
Please…think of what you know.
the endless ache of bones
the songs sung in your marrow
the shadow in your eyes
the light that holds your heart
think of who you know
vertigo
when gravity gives up
finally worn out
in my grave insistent
persistence at breathing.
And why…yes, this is important
the why of me
dancing on desolation
rhyming in respiration
overthrowing tables of treason
and though it is dark,
it is not night, My Love,
no.
it is the season of silence
that speaks, that sings
sings in me garden
sings in me moon
sings in me roses
sings in me sea
sings in me
Live Life Laff Love Lift
I’m awake now, seeing what I see.
I am scared, scarred, and yet unflinching free
you have lined me, scored me,
blew smoke in my face
but though I blink, I do not shirk
my ever choice for grace
but I am becoming…dangerous, un-dis-eased
at home in my skin
and learning how to harbor deep
my treasure-heart within
my chest, within my me
within this cage of bone and flesh
within my life decree where grace
and Grace and I do mesh
live live live live live
Life Life Life Life Life
laugh laugh laugh laugh
Love Love Love Love Love
lift lift lift lift lift
Crushed In Switzerland
that illusion is breaking up
like ice squeezed tight and crushed
in the fists of inevitability
and spring
there is no such thing as neutral
in a world pulled tight, pulled taut
between that endless winter
cold and bleak
and ravenous in black
consuming every weak
meek heart and undefended
and the coming
time of harvest
when all things
are marked
paid in full
and the ever-day
dawns without the sun
and sings unto the moon
“olly olly oxen free!!”
But you, like the ice
must be broken up
must choose to become
either water, or air
or forever frozen
in evil’s horrid grip
You must become
crushed in Switzerland
and thus set free forever
Your Silence As Well
Abandonment
This poem is one year old…I wrote it last year trying to deal with my worst enemy in this world.
I wanted to repost it, because frankly right now there is a great deal of uncertainty in my life…forces vie and swirl around me. People are easily inconsistent and squirt out in weak places…some vie for power, and some seek to judge from outside observation and have no clue about inside motivations…to give up power in deference to one who seeks it, only to have another assume that I am shirking my duties hurts me immensely.
I think most of those feelings are exacerbated by my old enemy:
Abandonment
You, long my nemesis and hater of my soul. You’ve chilled my days and frozen all my long night’s coal in hours of stark terror and silent desperate screams on razor blades I’ve la…
Source: Abandonment
Your Tragic Tranny Chalice (dedicated to Costco)
I was feeling fine, my day was good, and the sun shone outside.
As I walked the aisles looking for the stuff deemed so necessary
(after all, it HAS to be the Costco brand…cus KIRKLAND)
people smiled and we were soft on one another…
until I got to you, Checker, you with your fear become repulsion
become anger become hatred become revulsion become revenge
and your decision that I was a fraud and committing fraud
you who have let 5 ft tall dark skinned dark haired women
use the card of a nearly 6 ft tall blond norwegian woman
you who let half a dozen people use this common card,
the Holy Grail: the Sacred Costco Card
and yet me, who most coincidentally and closely resembles the card holder
but happens to be trans, me…you choose to police.
And loudly, and publically and angrily, and relentlessly.
whoever you are, you hard hearted shrew, I hope you never feel the way I do
I hope it never happens to you, for it is worse than the underside of dog-vomit
which is about what you thought I was made out of, based on your words and tone.
and then when you called over the henchman to loudly flat out dehumanize
and disappear me into what you want me to be in…boxed in your word SIR
(as if sirs walk with flowers in their hair and flowing jewelry and trinkets and flair)
and everything inside that I was began to melt
it was your western version of acid in the face
thank you, Costco zombie of horror and hate.
you don’t even remember anything but
the spectacle of tears and your own sweet wine
of derision that you drank from my heart become your tragic tranny chalice
but I will never be able to forget, because your acid burns my face yet and still
and I don’t even know if anyone cared enough to hold you accountable
and that diminishes me further, becoming even more of no account or worth
may the Lord restore my heart and give again to me an unscarred face
Me To Bullies
A Different End To The Story
All full of himself and stiff
gait wobbly, bopping up and down
walk waggly, blipping circley side-side
aggressive lean forward looking
for something to pierce, to rip
pent up all day inside the clothes of decency
but out now, unleashed now from the world of men
and striding like Colossus thru the realm
of women and children and all that rage
and self loathing his ticket to intoxication…
just looking for a reason, a place
to vent…and vent that place, tear it
to shreds and bloody ruination plunging
his vicious teeth deep into soft innocent
flesh not yet on the planet 5 years.
He wore his privilege like porcupine quills.
And then his tongue, bullwhip cracking
his pig eyes squinty and squealy and sweaty
and his anger was only surpassed
by his sanctimonious self righteousness
and utter unawareness of anything but himself.
And I? Constrained by bonds of love and consternation
responsible for hearts and souls, and yes his own as well
I bit my fucking lip until it bled, and imagined
my nails raking his face to shreds
the way his words tore the heart
from my precious precious angels
and here I sit, impotent work
with keyboard and words and tears
of sorrow, of ruination, of rage
and longing for the day when a man
won’t be such a dick.
I sit longing for a different end to the story.
What Transmisogyny Is Like
It hits out of nowhere
It can strike at any time
It is hard to get back up afterwards
The Blood Of Its Escape
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
We must protect rights of society’s marginalized | The News Tribune
We all have a responsibility to end sexual assault. Denying transgender people their civil rights is not the way to do that.
Source: We must protect rights of society’s marginalized | The News Tribune
A truly stunning well reasoned defense of my right to be.
Do you know that in most places transgender people are not recognized as who they are unless they have surgery…and at the same time the surgery is classified as “elective” and thus not covered by insurance…AND is also denied unless the person who needs the surgery obtains the permission and affirmation of 2 separate psychiatrists and surgeons?
Can you see that double bind?
“You are not a person unless you are committed enough to have surgeries…but we are gonna make you pay for them with your own money and they cost in the mid to high 5 figures…AND we are gonna make you prove yourself to at least 4 separate people…only then are you allowed to be a real person.
“Oh…and before you can even start this process, or get hormones or anything else, we are gonna require that you live as your claimed gender identity at least 2 years, after which we MIGHT give you hormones…
“What’s that you say? By requiring you to live as your claimed gender while denying you the means by which you can physically fit in we are endangering your life from transphobic transmisogynistic men? Well, you are wrong. WE are not doing that…YOU are…with your damn stupid insistence upon being a person who is differently bodied than you are gendered.”
You see the double bind?
It reminds me of how amateurism was created in sports to try and keep POC out of the leagues, because only the rich and privileged can live and train full time and not need to be paid, because they already have their money.
In the gender area…only the gender-rich and privileged can make the rules that shut us out.
And then we are told that our life matters, that we have worth, etc…just not enough worth to be made whole. Just not enough
another way of saying not enough is
worthless
And that is why it is important to let us go peepee like any other human…that is why it is important to speak of us as subjects (you/I/we/she/her) and not objects (it/that/he-she).
I Am A Person
Fungus
i tried to explain
the majesty of mushrooms
who grow best in darkness
and thrive in the damp
and flourish midst breakdown
and live in the bullshit
but he just laffed derisive
and opened his wolfmouth
and said you are still
just a fungus
Gravity That Rules
…perhaps this could be me.
Right now? Sadly, it is still gravity that rules
and in times like these?
It’s hard to see
I Am The OtHeR
they sit beside the brook
its merry song tinkles around them
music from the heart of
the earth’s blood clearer than diamonds
more fierce than oxygen
and all they hear is the sound
of piss bouncing off stones
and fouling the dirt
in the presence of waterfalls
roaring with the immanent joy
of the void becoming UN-void
and spray like pearls on the way
from nowhere to as yet pregnant
oysters in deepest seas and
deeper sees
all they hear is a vague
annoying buzz of
an insignificant tramp.
and at that shore vast
that shore that makes them
wistful, hopeful, weak, strong
in, out, shrinking, growing
never changing never same
and the thunder of the deep
calling to Deep…
they cast their trash
and drop their gum
after taking my picture
Sensitively Fashioned
I am posting the paragraphs below because they describe me, inside. Oh no…not on the outside, I am large and just…well, Ima avoid saying.
But I am really struggling tonite…it was a very tough week since Monday…on Monday I was traumatized and humiliated in the course of living my life. Someday I will post about it, but for now I think discretion is of the order.
Here is what I don’t get tonite though: why do I always have to “prove” myself, when others do not have to?
Why do I have to:
Why do I have to:
1. Prove I am legitimate…who I know I am
2. Prove that I am “safe”…cus the assumption is I MUST be a pervert.
3. Prove I am a person…not an “it” or a “that”
4. Be met with suspicion
“I asked God why He made me sensitive, and He promised me that it wasn’t a mistake. He told me He purposely made me delicate, not so I could shatter easily, not so I could be frail, not so I could be told I’m “too soft” whenever someone tries to touch me…it was so I could know of the gentle beauty in living.
“And in my tenderness, I can love in a way the world may not know of yet. My compassion has the power to speak raging waves to calmness and I can appreciate the little things He created that go unnoticed. There is something special in being fragile, and it has nothing to do with weakness, and everything to do with strength.
“Being sensitive is a gift, He answered, and I shouldn’t be ashamed of it.” 🌿
Rape Culture=Apocalypse Culture
My True Name
the sun scurries from the rim
of the far horizon, hurries
up to its important stage above all
things beaming.
it’s gonna have a helluva day
throwing shade at everyone
especially me, this moonchild
that sunshine passes thru.
the sun forgets everything
but its self-important run
to heights to glare down from
imperious, impervious, and naming.
I could look straight at it
but if I did, it would be quenched
in my knowing, darkling gaze,
my look that sees the backside
so I look away as it names me
wrong, other, afterthought
aside, and that old flame would
just as soon burn my ass.
but in just mere moments
when I lower my gaze, the sun
forgets I ever was, except maybe
to laugh and snicker at the moonchild
but the moon remembers
and so do I
the moon, soft, beautiful
receives me
knows my name
my true name
That Line?
that line?
right there.
the one stretching out
from somewhere to nowhere
i crossed it
but not just stepped across
on dancing feet
i danced across
and caper on its grave
Take A Chunk Outta Me
while you draw your hard lines
and box with your words
i struggle in time
with the death-rattle birds
and thoughts like hyenas’
gibbering glee
as those dead zombie jaws
take a chunk outta me
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.
And Gold All Underneath
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.
“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.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
You must be logged in to post a comment.