Category Archives: Bullying

A Woman’s Full Truth

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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
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Sanctuary– For JD

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Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!

 

City of Bones

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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_above___revisited_by_coigach-d9h3eegBarcelona, 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.
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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.
Image 002 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.
Rise

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 moonlighttumblr_nw4iwesgqi1s2clnyo1_1280

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
shimmer 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…tumblr_o03sa8dubM1unv2uco1_1280Together we all

(words and banners and bones)

shine upon your battlements

Barcelona
City of Bones
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Feast Upon The Village Green

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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
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“The best revenge is to move on, get over it, and continue to succeed.
Never give someone the satisfaction of watching you suffer.”
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To EVERY Male Who Others/Polices Me

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Yes, clothes matter. | the girl inside

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Source: Yes, clothes matter. | the girl inside

This is a well written article and I recommend it

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Love At Knife Point

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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
a_pain_final_by_eikoweb-d7x97nr

 

I Don’t Like It

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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!
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Nothing To Lose

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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.
— Abi Ashra

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Heartbreaking Every Time

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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.tumblr_nxkbeuPHhR1tpcnfko1_500
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.
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SO WHAT!!!!!

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Well now,
everything you got is in excess
and it goes without sayin’s got to be the best
from your swimming pool to your daddy’s racing car
to that defenseless useless bomb shelter in your back yard
well I guess there ain’t too much you haven’t got
well all I can say to you about that is
SO WHAT!

Hey that house you’re living in is really nice
Now that I been shown all around it once or twice
I been raced around it on a guided tour
try not to miss any of the handmade rugs or fancy furniture
you got a electric typewriter so you don’t haffa work alot
All I can say to you about that is
SO WHAT!

To My Children, Thanksgiving 2015

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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

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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

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In Lonely Woods

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I walk alone in lonely woods
fading from fall to winter snows
moving from the warmth of home
to wander lost and barren
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I wonder as I move from tree
to tree and touch the scratchy bark
concealing living wood within
and warm there in the cold
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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 earthMAC_AUG08_ 033But no, this tree is walking still
moving and not going there
stuck here but there and not here
I walk alone in lonely woods.
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Hear Me Screaming (Transgender Remembrance Day 2015)

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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!

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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.

I Don’t Need To Go To Paris

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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

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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

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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

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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.Image result for e wetlands of Camargue
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…

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…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

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“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.tumblr_lh6nzks1YS1qgnixvo1_1280

Kyrie Eleison

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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.6fc85792c7aa0ac7bcd8e961963b8650

That Eternal Aftermath

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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 rainbowtumblr_ml9q09f3Za1rlrdqeo1_1280

LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

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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

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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.tumblr_nxmc5rLgC31ty8kogo1_1280

 

The Manse

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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

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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?b1673501d5fca66b3e993d2bc501e1e0The 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!!
Image 001Wreak 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?c50b02754305b6be20888171bf70747bChange 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 mantleb5473fdc349efbc7662f819b33488761
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.f7e25dc7979f521a11c72e4d682257f6Remember 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!f4c2fcbd902e9591ccb29be508b5d1eaAnd 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.c224a8d81d3e2f32afa2f3931428ca2b

 

Only Different Now

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Be yourself only
different now
somehow
with all
that
grief.tumblr_mubepqA5O41qznczoo1_500In case you ever
thought that
you were just
a being, just
a humble
presencetumblr_lx4e3kosSN1qzwaddo1_1280you are not just
anything, you
mean something,
more than that
you mean
everything,tumblr_mplmt2mrm41rfp1lho1_r2_500because everything that
means something
beats inside
of you.Image 003

“…I’m STILL HERE!…”

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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!!

I Learned This Today

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Some days, survival is going to be hard and people are still going to look at you
in the way you hate, with eyes narrowed in judgement, words like quicksand
drawing you deeper and deeper into self doubt, self hatred when they tell you
in how many ways you are not beautiful.

On those days, look people in the eye and say
“I do not know how to be your version of beautiful, but I do know
how to be every version of strong, I am a survivor
and no one can ever take that away from me.”
— I Learned This Today | Nikita Gill (via meanwhilepoetry)tumblr_mthqw3QRvg1sex629o1_500

In Mid-Air (Ode To Facebook)

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Your words,
tossed off
trumpeted out
staccato,
running trills

like some
Miles Davis
of the trivial
not-thought-thru

remark

leave me
set on fire
and hanging

in mid-air

Evangelicalism, You Have Traumatized Me. – The Gay Post-Evangical

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Source: Evangelicalism, You Have Traumatized Me. – The Gay Post-Evangical

I am pressing this post…it is by way of confession for me.  I have done these things to people back in the old days…mostly in the early 90s, and my thinking well on the path of evolving and transforming by the late 90s…but I did them.

Said them.

Thanks be to our God of Love and Grace that They opened the eyes of my heart.

Someone I love deeply recently told me that they will never forgive me for those things said then…no matter that they ignore so much else.  They told me that I was not allowed to change my mind or views and that they would despise me forever if I tried to “claim” a road to Damascus experience and now “get off scot-free”.  They were cruel, intentionally so, and consigned me to their dungeon of never having status as a free person ever again.

Well…that was tough to read, and the choices that they make do not dictate my future nor deny me the grace of growing and changing and evolving.

But even if I spent my whole life in their dungeon, it would not make “right” the things I said and lived in those times…I truly thought I was saying and doing the right thing.

I was wrong.

In the spirit of forgetting what lies behind and pressing onward to the glory of God in Christ, I am rejoicing that I still have some years to help the ones in my life now who I have the chance to show grace to.

May any who read this who have been wounded and othered by the likes of such as I once was find healing in my confession…and may the ones who say they will never forgive quickly find opportunity to change their own views…it will broaden their forgiveness qualifications most helpfully, and empower them to forgive themselves.

 

Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) — Bad Words — Medium

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But the issue of abuse is more subtle — more invisible — and more than all the above.

Abuse does not arise in a vacuum. A healthy mind does not (need to) abuse. Abuse is created of trauma, and it is the traumatized mind which abuses. Whether to externalize, bury, escape its anger and frustration — the abused mind must purge it’s hurt in some manner, or risk being broken, split apart by it entirely.

But the troubling fact is this.

We have created an abusive society. We have normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse. We are abused at work, by the very rules, norms, and expectations of our jobs, at which we are merely “human resources”, to be utilized, allocated, depleted. We are abused at play, by industries that seek to prey on our innocence and literally “target” our human weaknesses.

And now we are abused at arm’s length, through the lightwaves, by people we will never meet, for things we have barely even said. We live in a society where school shootings are the rule, not the exception, where more people will have taken antidepressants than not…and now one where nearly everyone will have been abused on the web…for a random, off-hand, throwaway comment, an idle thought, something trivial, unremarkable, meaningless.

Source: Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) — Bad Words — Medium

I wanted to press that quote, pulled from a longer article that is fantastic in describing what happens on social media…

…and online in general.

The web is one gigantic megaphone, and one person with a point of view and a platform can do incredible damage to any number of other people with what they write and how they write it.

I myself have experienced this…where an article was written about me, about the most private and personal and painful things in my life and placed on display in the service of a personal point of view.

I didn’t recognize the person that appeared in the article, even while I remembered the things alluded to…and remembered the rich tapestry that surrounded them all…a tapestry comprised of the things that happened and the things I remember and the interpretation that is placed on them by so many players in the tableau…

I was horrified as I read the comments on the article by complete and utter strangers who had now decided that I was a certain way or a certain thing, simply based on these words made public, and while those words are utterly authentic as a representation of the thoughts and judgements of the writer they were abysmally inadequate in giving any genuine insight into the gestalt of the history that had been lived.

I was despairing…thinking of how the place of publication did Zero due diligence in fact checking or vetting or even giving me the common courtesy of a warning that they were going to take a small facet, one side of a terribly complicated issue and wave it in the air like a besotted banner of click-bait and titillation.

I couldn’t help but imagine the consequences should this have happened to any other number of people I know in my situation, and the yawn and blind eye turned to just another transgender suicide…

And more than anything else?  I knew that deep down inside I would have done nothing to stop the writing from happening because of the writer’s need to tell the story and tell it the way those eyes, that heart and brain lived it.

The issue is not the telling of the story…the issue is the megaphone and how it is choking itself on its own abusive streams. 

Contemplate the things this author points out, and consider your own interactions with social media…and know that there is a better way.

Do Justice.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly.
Charissatumblr_nsonrvhzRA1qesboko1_1280

No

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that moment when I am walking
no, floating, no…that moment
when I am flowing down
no, up, no…along the river
no, stream, no…torrent of
life and you decide

that you can just touch me
without permission or permission
no, consent, no…yes permission
and I stiffen in horror, in fear
no, terror, no…in anger because
you make me into nothing with your touch

but i mask it with my smile
no, grin, no…with my grimace
that you miss, you absolute oaf
because you think I am an otter
sleek and preening when I am
actually a hedgehog all quilly

no, thistly, no…all covered with razors
and shattered glass and broken promises
and splintered insults and shredded judgements

no, no—no—no, no
tumblr_nv0y4oL2iQ1qllucco3_1280

The Rustling of Those Wings

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I always thought vultures
slept at night, devil-red heads
bulbous on scrawny leather necks
tucked under fetid wing and pinion.

I was wrong.

They never sleep
but circle
endlessly
always

gliding around the dying
the rotten and discarded
waiting for that last quick breath
and then they land nearby
and hop like feather frogs
to their last supper never ending

I stick my head
out in the night
and cannot see them
but I know they are there
by the way
the rustling of those wings
echoes in my hearttumblr_nulpidcDV91utvlmvo1_500

Humiliation and Embarrassment

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Yesterday was the strangest day I have lived in a while…

…it started off with the strangest and most confusing comment I have had directed at me in a long time, one I am STILL confused about the motivation of the commenter…that hadda do with the topic of personality type (see my thoughts about that over here at this link: Personality Types

And then the rest of the day exemplified the stressors that get me spinning.

They don’t bear repeating, but wow was the day confusing…

One thing that is really stressful to me is when I am in the middle of two competing needs, each one to which I represent “help”, and each one is equally valid…wow is that hard, because what generally happens is that I get caught between a rock and a hard place…

If I meet the one need, the other one will sit there and testify that “Charissa is not here to help”, and if I stay with the other one then the first will go hungry and embody lack and THAT one will say that “Charissa is not here to help”.

Each one will think that I am simply inactive and have nothing to do so and thus am a resource to plug into the leaky dyke to staunch the leak.

And my perspective is that every moment of my day is scheduled, and generally the time I get to do other things I find in what are thought of as the wee hours…so when the two needs begin to compete? I am acutely aware that it is a lose-lose for me…meet one and not meet the other or meet the other and not meet the one.

Sigh…

And there was one of those experiences at the end of the day that was so humiliating and embarrassing that it made me wanna crawl into a hole in the ground and just disappear…let’s just say that something happened that hasn’t happened to me since kindergarten…

sigh

tumblr_nul12uwgjZ1qas1mto1_1280

Used To Be Me…

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…but now?  Even in the face of huge loss, no…especially in the face of these losses, this is never me anymore.

Thank God for HRT.  Thank God for Their Word, affirming me in my existence and Their Love for me…
Thank God for my true friend and sister and safe place to fall (you know who you are…always)

No, this is not me anymore, thank God!

Othered Once Again

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it’s like the instantaneous arrival
the spontaneous appearance
the epiphanous eventuality
in one thunderous moment
of dull leaden light that clashes
and smothers and chokes out
everything else…

that moment when fear
puts on its mask of hate
and joins the ritual circle of death,
eyes wide shut,
and I am othered
once againtumblr_ndypq0jxEy1r7aeyoo1_1280

Open Your Eyes

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Two viral photos from this weekend destroy the myth of ‘post-racial’ America: On left: a Cleveland cop pulls a gun on two unarmed black women after a minor traffic accident. On right: a white man at a Confederate rally grabs his gun in front of cops and they tell him to calm down.

Cleveland cop: http://bit.ly/1M1iw3a
pulling gun on cop: http://bit.ly/1JIioFy

This is real…you get treated differently based on your skin

Posting A Very Sobering Reflection

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All…this is a post from a tumblr blog I follow, not my own writing, but her concluding question echoes many things I have written about, namely that all the “Remember the Dead Trans-girls” rallies change absolutely nothing.

We don’t want to be remembered.
We want to live…be fruitful and share life.

I don’t want you to say my name when I am killed…I want to say my own name in the zest of life!  Without fear of attack, policing, othering or rejection simply for being born.

I echo Jen’s question:  since last weekend’s events, what has changed?

PS:  Language alert!  If you are offended or defiled by scatalogical language, proceed with caution!  F-bombs and other such things are in evidence!

smartassjenrebloggedsmartassjen
Maybe if…

smartassjen:

Maybe….maybe if every man who has ever hired a trans escort, if every boy who has ever beat off to trans porn, if all the guys I and thousands of others have hooked up with via Craig’s List, if the millions who fetishize our bodies, who enjoy us on our knees in bathrooms, who press us against hotel windows, who lay with us in our beds, if the men who adore me and my sisters, but only behind closed doors, would STAND THE FUCK UP AND SPEAK OUT…maybe 21 year old women just enjoying an evening out with friends wouldn’t be beat to death.

Maybe if all of you who read this, our allies and friends and colleagues and family, would call out when others make jokes at our expense, even when we’re not around, if you’d tell advertisers and producers and journalists and writers and comics that you’re not okay with them making trans women nothing but the punchline of jokes or tragic tossaways, that you know us, that we’re not disposable….maybe groups of people would stop feeling so free to harass me and my sisters, maybe crowds wouldn’t just laugh when a man spits at me, or just watch when two young men chase me down the street yelling “shemale”…maybe if you ALL stood up and said enough, maybe a young woman just being herself wouldn’t be beat to death in the streets of the supposedly best place on earth to just be yourself.
Maybe if all the gay men who act as if equality means marriage, if all the white feminists who only serve those that look like them, if all the queers who drop “TWOC” like a shibboleth but don’t know or talk to or walk beside any actual trans women of color…maybe if all of you saw what was happening here and how your actions allow it, how every moment of silence, of waiting for people of color to start the conversation about race …maybe this child could have enjoyed a few more years of being beautiful among us.

A 21 year old was beat to death in our streets. It happened because she is a woman, and of color, and transgender. It happened because our men won’t admit they love us, because our friends aren’t speaking out against the thousand little dehumanizing actions of others, because our own “LGBT” community isn’t comfortable talking about race and class.

This has to change. Now.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130822/central-harlem/transgender-woman-dies-after-savage-beating-cops-say#video_modal_13772731841756

I wrote this two years ago.

What’s changed?

Death Don’t Have No Mercy In This Land

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I want to say something to you, cis-gender friends. Please PLEASE hear this heart, and not a strident voice. Do not mistake my intensity for blathery emotional anger-slinging.
Do you know that the number of murders of transwomen has already surpassed the TOTAL for 2014?
I am talking about people…just like me.10888800_860222750703458_5712320641834860244_n
For the last few years every time there is another murder of a transwoman the news gets pushed around in trans-circles with sorrow and shock and outrage accompanied by cries of “this HAS to stop!!”
And yet here we are…in mid-August and already surpassing the totals for last year…and this is just murders, by the way…the numbers are even higher if you throw in suicide.
My dear friends: this is not ever going to stop until YOU decide it must. It is on YOU.tumblr_n1l8erJ0Tc1rlcnpko1_1280
Because what power do we trans-women have? What standing do I have? When I am spit at for simply walking in public? When I am hated on with eyes for holding my head high and forgetting about gender for a moment and just flowing in being like any other person can?
And then there is the intersection of race and gender variance, and ohhhh the absolute tragedy of how the blind become even more the blinder…
…because it is the same with race too…the stink of that zombie that lurches freely thru our society eating hearts like rotten apples and screaming for more, that stench is even greater than the sheer indifference shown to the plight of transwomen, so if you are a transwoman AND a woman of color?tumblr_ndcafcJAat1qdrgtco1_1280
Well, to know just how that is, simply read of the condition of the remains in some of these cases…faces bashed into a bloody mash…dismemberment…stabbed with an ice pick repeatedly…dumped in the trash…lit on fire…
Cis-friends, until this is no longer okay with you, we shall continue to be harvested by death with impunity.  Our blood cries out and will never stop, never cease.  Until you choose to use your privilege for someone “less than”, then the wolves will continue to hunt and the transwomen die.  And the rest of us will continue to flap our gums about what “has to”, knowing full well that stop is not a choice a ravenous beast makes.

How many is it gonna take to push you to the place where you yourselves will step up?  One a day?  Would that do it?An Indian worker removes the petiole from red chilies at Shertha village, near Ahmadabad, India, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012. A worker earns around ten Rupees ( 0.20 USD) for removing the petiole of 20 kilograms (4.4 Pounds) of red chili. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

How about a hundred a day?  One Hundred Women a day…marched to the town square and shot dead at dawn.
Will that do it?  And if so, then what is the difference between a hundred a day and one a day?
What is the difference between one a day and one a week?
What is the value of a transgender life?tumblr_nnlmpdE8Q91sthjo3o1_1280

We Are Come At Last

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Marshal your forces, you protectors of the crown,
send your dogs running, your dogs of dreams,
your dogs howling, full noses of my fur, my pelt!

Bring on your hunt, your horses in full gallop
and chase for all you’re worth, your lust and fear
of free blood running red, and full, liberty’s blood!

Your coats, scarlet!  Your smirks, affixed with tax,
and become terrible twisted rictus in your sweaty efforts
to hunt this free fox leaping, yipping, dancing on the dawn!

They shall come to me, your dogs, and wriggle ‘neath my touch!
They shall hear my dog-whistle words, too high for your dull ears
but so keenly attuned and pitched to their own straining hearts!

And they shall call to their comrades, your horses, who will alert and thrill
and leap into the air to gallop freely there…and you unhorsed…you laying there
upon the blood-stained grass of yesteryear…

Your time is up, for we are come to hunt you down
and tear that red coat straight away right off your back
and tossed into the sky, our banner free unfurled and our war cry…

No Longer!  Not Anymore!
Related image

Feather and Fur

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It’s puzzling…
the sheer effrontery
of those raucous rooks,
those rapacious ravens…

they flock around
(why?  I couldn’t say)
and act all furry and red
and soft and they think
their beady close set eyes
are so foxy…

I act bored and disinterested
but I watch them carefully
with slitted eyes
and coiled muscles
ready to jump away from
blood-thirsty beaks

and harsh cries
that tear the air apart
and leave feather and fur
in their wake.

It’s An Artform

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To practise this quote, and to also be one who extends Grace…it’s an artform.

But I get this now, in ways I never did before, and I have been walking in it…early and often.

It has been a wise move, and I have grown well in it.

“Don’t let someone get comfortable with disrespecting you.”
tumblr_nop2whGn1p1qc3hxxo1_540