Category Archives: Charissa Grace

Lil Mama’s Run

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i don’t run so well these days,
what with clouds of unbecoming
filtered thru rejection
inhaled into my heart
asthma my constant partner

i suck air in like water
and splutter to get breath
a leaky bellows creaky
and riddled with these tears
that steal away my power

but i like you so much
i follow here, behind you
and see the place your feet
left rainbows in the rocks
and fuzzy from your socks

so i just trot along
me, gretel in this stone
but looking not for witches
but for your heart, my friend
and your smile leads me home

and just when i despair,
and my way seems so blocked
i find your evidences
that you want me to follow
and I can face tomorrow

Like Mama

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and i must find the courage
to smear me on the world
like oranges on the morning
smeared on the fingertips
that pry with nails sharp

i must be resolved
to be spread thick and creamy
on hearts so dry and crumbly
and tasteless in their leaven
like butter sweet and saltytumblr_nqkwd8yiUl1rb2p37o1_1280i wanna be like Mama
so generous of spirit
so purposeful of heart
so resolute of vision
so loving in the tumult

let me light the longing twig
let me quench the burning branch
flame to tinder tender
and rain to thirsty flames
and known by Mama’s Nametumblr_nuj67qgboo1ufutspo1_540

A Treasure Made Trinket

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i clothe myself in wonder
for you, wrap myself in night
i am your pirate plunder
you can have without a fight

the milky way my shining sash
the moon my pendant true
and cricket song my lingerie
i give myself to you

you there, so strong, so brilliant
straightforward as blazing suns
your ready laugh, your brewing storms
the way your rivers run

from mountains high, jagged austere
you flow into the sea
for you i wait, indigo here
for you to give you me

we…night and day bonded and true
and joy our wonder-fates
you wrapping me, me inside you
Eternity awaits
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It’s In Rivers (My “Work” Response In Godly Play Training”

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Yesterday I did a training for a method of faith formation in children called “Godly Play”.  What happens is that you hear/see a bible story and then you do “work” related to processing the meaning of it.

The story I heard was that of Abram and Sarai…and when asked where I saw myself in the story it was immediately evident that I was with Sarai…in the back…in laughter…before seeing the promise come true.

Obvi I made a poem…but the opportunity to do it the way I did was SOOO freaking gratifying.

I hope you enjoy it

It’s In Rivers

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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

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Like Sunlight, Like Fog

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I’m often told I’m confident
(like the march of blazing sun
across the hills of night
awakening each day)

I’m told I look like rushing waves
that roll in from the sea
and pounce upon the sand
in joyful swelling sounds

This makes me laugh inside my heart
because I’m more like fog
that silent moves unsure
which way it wants to go

But still committed to the march
inexorable and slow
to be true to myself
in soft embrace sold out

to be completely there
and wrapped around all things
I cherish in the hug
of insubstantial presence

there, and yet untouched.tumblr_ntubpx3qIm1qm86t3o1_1280

The Birth of My Fourth

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it’s a crushing weight
tangible presence
part and parcel
of the essence
of this thing

just like red is
the truth of blood
and copper is
the air exhaled
by laughing lungs

it’s the love I feel
for your fire-self
your glowy soul
alive and strong
and destined here

to speak with laughs
to laugh with song
to sing in truths
to love in speed
to linger ever

as the crushing weight
here in my chest
upon my heart
this bloody living
love of youaaa

The Crucible of Grace

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If you seek to extend grace and love to cover over a multitude of sins, the worst thing you can do is undercut that extension by talking about it and pointing it out.  Right?

This weekend has been excruciating, because the long-awaited and much dreaded article outing me to the entire world was published.  And I am letting it stand uncommented on, because the person who wrote it apparently needs this as they deal, process, and move forward in becoming.tumblr_nj9hjr55am1sodq0ro1_1280But it is awful having my voice stolen from me…it is awful being portrayed as a cruel caricature of who I am and who I was…it is tragic to see the consequences of what I chose and lived twisted so tragically as life spins on by and the gravity of the Fall pulls everything to that fierce collision with nothingness…and it is heartbreaking to see the person that I literally would instantly die for, right now this moment, if it would restore them to wholeness, flail around trying to recover their bearings and watch as they grapple with emotions and choices and basically just suffer a sort of death process.

The place this article was published did not contact me (though if they had, I would have said to go ahead…my loved one needs to speak unfettered)…the things that were written, well let’s just say that one person’s account sounds right until another person in a situation gives their lived experience, and then things are usually a lot more complicated and delicate in determining “what happened”.tumblr_n892glA3he1rmz4wdo1_1280Mostly what happened?  The binary.  The binary punished me from the beginning of my life, it trapped my parents into seeing me as someone I wasn’t…it tore my soul in half and left the only option forward for me a dissociation from self and adopting performance as my currency and agency in the world…it left a bloody gaping void within me that never ever could heal, and in which the Love of God was sufficient, but only just…it led to the birth of children who deserved more and got less in spite of me trying to give them everything…

What happened was a flawed imperfect person full of hope and love and wanting only to have kids and love them and raise them up into life did her best in the skin and role of a man…and is now vilified and excoriated for this…what happened is that I was born in a time and place and culture, and practiced the things that I thought were right and true and proper, and those so at odds with what I know now, what I matured into, grew into, and yet how does that undo things that happened 30 years ago?tumblr_nrqhpzN6nu1s5u2cno1_500And what happened was so much pain in my decision to transition that an entire narrative had to shift to account for the horror and the loss of a father…and I read of things, and am painted in ways that just do not match up with what I lived, what I remember, what emails and letters say to me, what other people who knew us and were around us a lot recall…

What happened was my dysphoria and depression and despair did indeed affect my heart and soul, and that affected everyone around me, and likely was the metaphorical equivalent to belts and abuse so does it really even matter if I never did the actual things I am accused of doing?  Actually no…it doesn’t matter that I never did them, because it is clear to me that I was them…poisonous, toxic, radioactive, damned for being absent and cursed for being present and above all accountable for every last ill in those lives so precious to me.

I never really understood before why God’s answer to the horror of the Fall was to come as Jesus to this world, and suffer and die…I do now though.  Because there are no words that I can say that would explain it, justify it, make it right, make it better, disappear it…all I could do would be to simply die in their place…tumblr_nu4nj5Mkg51rdq2opo1_1280…and if I could do that, I would want it to happen hidden, without anyone knowing, and the provision of that death simply being wholeness and happiness for my hearts…

I love you, hearts…I will grieve until the day grief itself is satisfied and all things are made new.  Say on.  Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you must.

I only ask Mama, please hold me close and sustain me in Your Love.

Forever In My Bones

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The echoing of silence
implications of ashes
a song inside my tears
a signifying bond
the moan within my blood.

The writing of a moon
engraven on this water
and carried by the winds
into your heart beyond
the reach of tongue or pen…

this is my ever burden
my sentence that I carry
forever in my bones

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Louder Than Beethoven

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She talks like cliffs,
speaking words of grey granite
and loose limestone that
stand against blue skies
and grab onto puffy clouds.

She’s exalted over valleys, far distant in chasms
between the green and the happy streams
and places there beside her words
where eagles spin and scream
and echo in the sunset’s gleam.

She is low meadows laying soft.
She is all signification, all there
but you must have faith to listen
because she speaks in silence
louder than Beethoven.

She is not easy or attainable
but she will not hurt you, just
make you count the cost
and if you don’t, then rest assured
you will hurt yourself.

I love her in the mountain air
and in the meadow mist
both lively and lazy.
She is my best friend, and
more solid than all the earth.
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Pearl of Great Price

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what do I
do with all
the loss?

I never knew
the absence
of things
could weigh
so heavy,
could loom
so large.

Truly the Pearl
of Great Price
does indeed
cost everythingtumblr_nlh0bryEtH1tc258so3_1280

The Baby Box

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Lee Jong-rak is the South Korean pastor who created the “Baby Box”. The idea is that mothers who do not want their babies, can leave them inside the box which includes a thick towel and lights and heating to keep the baby warm. When a baby is placed inside the box, a bell rings in Lee Jon-rak’s home which the box is attached to, and he or a member of his staff will go and collect the unwanted baby and bring them inside to his orphanage.

Hundreds of babies are left abandoned at the side of the road in South Korea yearly and Jong-rak knew the perfect way to save the lives of these innocent babies. There is a sign above the drop box which reads: “Place to leave babies.” He confessed that he didn’t expect the box to be as popular as it has been.

On one occasion a mother dropping her baby off explained to him that she had poison to kill herself and her baby but because of this box, she had an alternative. On another occasion, a baby was left with this heart wrenching note:

“My baby!
Mom is so sorry.
I am so sorry
to make this decision. 

My son!
I hope you to
meet great parents,
and I am very, very sorry .
I don’t deserve to say a word.
Sorry, sorry, and I love you my son. 

Mom loves you more
than anything else.
I leave you here
because I don’t know
who your father is. 

I used to
think about
something bad,
but I guess
this box is safer
for you.

That’s why
I decided
to leave you here.
My son,
Please forgive me.”

Sometimes I say the same things to my own children, but there is no answer, nothing but the wind whispering in the trees and memories that stain my heart red.

Walk Like Grace Kelly

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The other day I was marvelling
as I thought about Grace Kelly,
floating above the surface of the earth
with every step and every glance
and every smile.

She was timeless,
she was a rock and a river
all at the same time,
such redwood-tall poise
and ocean-depth intrigue.

She was full of herself
in the best of ways,
Grace.

And here I sit breathing
this same air she might have breathed
and wondering what chance in hell
I have if death actually managed
to pull her feet down to earth.

Nevertheless, I hop
each stride I take,
kicking one foot out and up
to step on that invisible riser
like Grace did…

and I try to walk like Grace Kelly,
on the air like Christ
on the waters.

In This Fresh Forever Air

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after a storm the air
scrubbed and electric
and crackling with ancient
newness, fresh like a goddess
reborn in wonder and at home
moves across my face
and into my lungs
like eternity alive
and shouting
singingtumblr_nsmq8vCOoe1u4jpboo1_r1_540after we clear the air
and our words sparkle
fresh, cracks highlighted
by tears like raindrops
offered in falling curtains
of feeling, of love, of joy
lingering slightly stained
crimson like liquid crystal heartstumblr_nlh0bryEtH1tc258so7_r2_1280it’s then we see each other
again for the first time ever
and our hearts say hello you
while our eyes scream missed you so
and our voices twine again in song
like the sound of rivers
with the light of mountains
in the fresh forever air
in this fresh forever air32a2468b7da296b817b109c7db52c231

That Awkward Moment…

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it lays there, bloated
in between when you
and the other person
connected and laughed
(or that’s what you thought)

and when you speak
and your heart falls
out and open
on the floor
with the inscription

would you like
to come over
for dinner and wine?

eyes narrow,
furrowing brows
and glance off
to the side
and it shifts

and it’s game over
flowers fade
the smell of smoke
and burnt cookies
lingering

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100 Times

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I’ve been thinking about
repetition and returns
and things you get
to do all over.

Heart beats
breaths
sleeping
waking
thousands, maybe
even millions
of times?

Watching seasons change
Solstices turning
Great storms breaking
Epic bike rides
and train trips
down the perfect
silver tracks gleaming
like a brilliant arrow
shot into the golden
distant beckoning horizon.

Christmases
Thanksgivings
Birthdays
vintages of wine
harvests

You might get
100 trips
around the sun
if you are lucky

if you are lucky

100 times

and we treat
each trip
like it’s a heartbeat
or a breath
or a short night’s sleep
when it’s really
that train trip
down the silver tracks
into the golden end

100 trips, alas
100 trips, oh glory
100 trips so gladtumblr_nmp3is7zVY1r4pkz0o1_500

What It’s Like To Transition

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How about you, Constance?  What transitions are you facing in life?

They are worth the suffering.

This Place of Living Bliss

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a foggy night in late summer
seems like such a strange thing,
seeping up from the ground
like bathwater draining in reverse

we go walking in this cool
clammy oddly warm chill
orange under streetlights
and red under starlight

and I sit and watch us walk
away thru the rising mist
and wonder how we got here
to this place of living bliss…

The Center of All Things

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I sat down by the fire
in the middle of the roses
planted all around
and fragrant with buzzy bees
so busy in the dusk.

The air shimmered
as you approached
skimming across the grass
like a clipper ship
under full sail and
high on the sea.

And when you sat down,
beside me there in
the crackling fragrant
breezy busy air
it was like the entire
universe had come home
and I was at the center
of all things.tumblr_nsobtj0n6y1qbjv4ko1_1280

Waterwheels and Wonders

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I’m pretty lonely, now
that I am not in
the juggling circle
with all your other eggs
tossing around frantic
and always on the edge
of splatting on the stones.

I just got tired of the suspense.
I got bored with the panic
of will she catch, will she miss
and that somehow miraculous
growing of another arm
there just long enough
not to hold but to toss
back up again spinning
in the cool bracing breeze.

And the worst times
when I hadda catch myself
and then pretend that you did
so you wouldn’t drop you
splatting on stones
and seeing that a huge
quantity of love diluted
by a huger number of recipients
is just about like no love at all.
So…I sit now…watch you juggle
and see the eggs move round
and occasionally I snatch one away
so you can twirl just the most important.

I can’t do that thing anymore,
where I am something to be
managed, parcelled, watered?
I wanna be ground to your feet
soil to your roots, sun to your leaves!
I want you to be breeze neath my blades
and rain on my petals and sun synergistically
all around me and warm.

So go ahead and keep in rhythm,
there is nothing over here, don’t reach.
Eggs hatch, and become real,
and you can quit imitating
a windmill and become instead
a waterwheel and wonder turning you always.
born

Unplanned Grief #4

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Across the ocean, you,
there without drowning
and I don’t know how
that happened, because
I grieve and take on water
in sputter-gulps and gasps,
dog paddle-fighting every wave.

But this your journey you have chosen
alone and must…choose alone.
I regret so deeply that you also choose
to live this life alone as well.

But I have choices too
and I choose Spring
even though my favorite
season is Fall.

I will always be right here
to offer you swimming lessons,
yes, always and forever…
but I will not drown with you
because how could I see Spring
return to claim her crown?

So instead I sit and watch waves
in this unexpected storm, this fat
cloudburst of grief unplanned
and out of budget.

I grieve the living when the living lie
in tattered shadows of what could be.
I wish it were different, but nonetheless,
I am okay, in spite of all these griefs
unplanned.tumblr_nth3mqRDE01s5neh1o1_1280

Unplanned Grief #3

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Thus shall I let go
(like trees release their breath
and birds release their flight)
of all that keeps us bound.
Blood by blood
and hope by hope
and I swim, harder,
faster now.

Because my grief
is my life boat,
I know I cannot drown.
But I still hurt for you,
your loss your sadness
crumpled, misshapen
in all this…and this,
most of all I hurt
for the aloneness
of your journey

you unmoored
from past and future
dark and just beyond
the curvature of your
moon so dark tonite.

But tho I hurt,
though I have
no tears left
I am alive
and I embrace
my own life
as my own
and mindful,
vested in
this journey
that I take
and undertake
at last.heartwild-e1439930587744

Unplanned Grief #2

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Waves in steely oceans
of sandy sorrow and me
bound by blood and bone
to you alone, forever
in red-stains wrapping white
chains soft and firm with
my gallant foolish choice
to summon forth
a fragment of God.

Before I know it
I’m on the edge
of another wave,
silver, falling green
wave of grief
when I recall
you have never
died…you are here,
struggling to get
through your own
waves, and…searching
for the way
to survive into
your life in spite
of me.

Those dreams I held for you
(I hold them for you)
they keep me in that still place
and I fight it when those feelings
blow away as easily as my breath,

They were my dreams anyway,
not yours, and life — yours —unfolds
under your nose, a mole emerging
from our messy lawn of dandelions
and daisies and bluegrass…and your dreams?
I dunno, they taste like a conjured normal
new and unfamiliar to us bothtumblr_ntboapcTuc1s5neh1o1_1280

Unplanned Grief #1

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I hadn’t planned on grieving.
It just sorta happened, sorta blossomed
like a small grey cloud appearing
against that impossibly happy blue sky
while life scurried by, rushed across
the intersection of Existence and Vine
and the fluffy cloud became clouds
and clouds and they clawed their way across
that untouched sky so blue so blue,
bluer than my heart or my breath.

Your body is still warm
(but oh so cold inside me)
your mind whirring on
(but seized-up inside my soul)
your voice chatters (in my mind)
like squirrels or gears
in someone else’s ears,
while your lungs billow
poisons and false memories
in out in out in out in

and my grief sucks in
and my grief blows out
and so on…tumblr_neh6qd5wIg1qg7ipyo1_1280

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

no melody down here in sight

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it was eyes,
everywhere each one
attached to a beak, each beak
trilling so shrilly, chattering
in clakkety chirp-chirruping
in brackish raucous screams

loserloserloserloserloser

this forest was once a place
of wonder and the night
so full of promise but now,
it’s like the stars have fallen
from the sky and become
these birds, these birds with eyes
and beaks and nothing to sing,

just screams in a trackless forest
with a past turned out to be a dream
and a future that’s just a strip mine
yet unzipped, undug, yet torn open
and a present consisting of merely
the sound of these eyes so sharp
and beaks blunt just like red clubs

and no melody down here in sight

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?

The Ruin and The Wreck

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It’s the ruin and the wreck
of what has been, what might have been
that stands so stark, abrupt against
the soft caress of night and in
the harsh daylight that shows the stress
and strain and bite of time…
so cruel, so kind

in dismantling artifice
and taking more to leave it less
and thus confer a grace upon
the mess of pride and prejudice

there…in the gentle wind’s soft kiss,
that which remains and sanctified
by tears from skies so gray and eyes
so blue and thus made holy in
the loss they gain substance
and stretch across

our hearts
our spirits
our souls
that yearn forever,
ah forever
it will burn
there…that fire

and those bones that burn so bright
in the ruin and the wreck
of what has been, what might have been
become what isImage 005

If You Insist On Living In My Past? Stay There

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If you hear people from my past speak of me.
Keep in mind they are speaking of a person
they don’t even know any more.tumblr_nr1hx2eadR1shxmbso1_1280

 

Come, My Love

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Come, my love…
walk out in the river with me on waters
still and soft beneath our souls
and slightly giving underneath our feet

the surface dips and we will sink
but never past our ankles, just deep
enough to get our hearts wet, soaked
in mysteries of our journey-dance

and underneath the Moon-Glow Glance

and we will carry our essence there
into the river deep and swift
and we upon the surface light
and walking in this river night

upturn your cup!  pour you out quick!
and I will do the same with you
and mingle…waters, breath, life
time, no time…mingle, ever mingle

oh love, my love
walk out in the river with me on waters
still and soft beneath our souls
and slightly giving underneath our feet

The One Who Waits

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I am the one who waits, the one in love
I cannot help but be the one who loves and waits.

Sometimes I want to be the one
who does not wait, who never hurts

I want to play the part of never waiting.

I try to get there late, busy myself, lose track of time
but I always lose this game and forget my lines.

When I go elsewhere I find myself here,
punctual, always on time
(or even ahead of time)

that’s saying something, being ahead of time

and nothing to do but be who I am,
the lover…the one
who waits

(inspired by Roland Barthes)PersonWalkingAway

 

Bickering On The Bike

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“I’m dead” she said.

“Dead?” asked her honey?
“What do you mean?”

“I am slain at last
in the icy grip of
your death hand glare,
and solo icicle silences!”

She fairly dripped martyr blood
from every precisely chosen word
weighted just so and
freighted with layers…

“Ah” her honey replied, nodding.

They peddled on in silence
each one a universe of laughter
inside the heart they share.tumblr_mlmzwwh6nq1rc8sbto1_1280

So Shocked

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There is a man I know of…very intelligent.  Studies lots of things, but most particularly studies things that can be used as tools to dismantle the faulty thinking or lack of thinking by people who are professed christians but likely are unable to articulate their faith and what it really means to them.

From the heights to the depths and the breadth of what he can conceive of in his mind, he sits, comfortable and relaxed, a man’splainin’ fool.  He can fight off any attack…he can account for anything encountered…

…inside the sphere he grants and allows.

But there is an outside.  And of this place no mind can conceive, and of the Being that inhabits this place that is no place, well…it is gonna be such a shock when we are given eyes to see, and faces to be seen…

It’s a good thing They are benevolent!

Giggles…

I am mindful of The Last Battle and the dwarves inside that dark shed who do not and cannot know of “an outside”.

Hey…I have glimmers only, but really I have NO IDEA what that outside is because the glimmers I have are by definition intelligible to me and thus derivative of my own interior experience.

But it’s there…and the stick fighting approach to encountering Them on That Day will be comically irrelevant.

So Shocked.tumblr_ns4smo9CMS1qg4kx9o1_1280

Down Here

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and down here
in the glimmery dark
and soft among the reeds
and rushes, by the river
i’m surrounded by these
soft and liquid sacks
of living light that float
right by me in the night
and hide behind the day

while i sing the song
of being, everlasting
it thrums deep in my bones
and calls out to them there…

…floating in the air
in the glimmery night
and soft in downy dark

Least Of All The Past

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Mostly, people don’t realize
time is a living thing, a tree
whose roots stretch back
to the beginning (and before?)
whose branches reach high,
broad and all around into
the “what-is-coming-what-may-be”
and we the fruit hanging there
swaying in the breezes
of the breath of Jesus
and Mama at His side
and all creation spinning out
inside this circle dance…

see, the past flows up, into the future
the future slides down, slides deep
sinks into the roots and makes its
transformations silver, shining
or is reclaimed and overcome, choked off
and laid, still born into the red dirt slick and packed.tumblr_mapuluSGB71ruq5t7o1_1280and fruit?  tossed and kissed in space and growing
in the currents from beneath and from above?
fed by rivers subterranean, drinking from
the rain that falls down from the clouds
of all that lies ahead…

we fruit are sweet, or bitter, or savory
in the grip of God and how the past is eaten
does predict the future…

but what the future holds
can quickly change the past
in just an eyelash twinkle
and we all are changed!!tumblr_nsshklpRmr1qat5pio1_500Ahh…I hold to the past
and cling tight to my future
and throw my arms wide to the sides
and hug all “what-may-comes”
into my heart so soft, so strong
and thus shall my heart ever sing
the song of great becoming
and the song of all forgetting

do you get it now?
nothing is “just itself”
nothing at all,
least of all the past. tumblr_nsqbo2iD9x1qafxpco10_1280

Your Tender Thumbs

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take your tender thumbs and softly
brush my rosy tear stained cheeks,
tears tender, like moonlight dripping
silky down the screen of night.

touch my face in quiet splendour
electric under starkissed eyes
and hungry for your sighs, your breath
oh Love, deliver me from death

and wreath me in your smoulder-heart
and cushion me against your breast
and hold me close and safe and sound
oh touch my soul, me, lost but found

and cricket song will fall and rise
and breezes kiss my yearning thighs
so softly, take your tender thumbs
and make time stop, oh, strike me dumb.tumblr_n4sg5dkmYn1ri8ligo1_500

For My Friend

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those pieces you gave me
so jagged, so bitter, so shocking,
and time faithful and patient,
and your heart time’s ally
and washing them in your tears

(those pieces)

until they’ve become worn
and smooth, savory, building blocks
and yeah, badges of honor to a heart
broken and rising?

*those pieces*

see how they fit inside me?
see that place with eyes all around
and ears attached to eyes
and hands cradling, treasuring,
and no mouth in sight?

__no_words__

see my heart welcome them,
those pieces?
they have joined my treasure room.
and written above the door they live in
is this word:

Precious

ima walk beside you
and carry them (you)
and give them back to you (them)
as you need to spend.

sometimes buying forgetfulness
sometimes buying remembrance

im so glad to be your friend
my friendtumblr_mrclidmzMC1s43k2mo1_500

Pressure & Time

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Geology is the study
of pressure and time.
That’s all it takes, really…

pressure and time.

Psychology is the study
of pressure and thought.
That’s all a function, really…of

pressure and time.tumblr_np0l2kYa261qkb10mo1_1280Theology is the study
of pressure and Word.
That’s all it took, really…and

pressure and time.

My heart is the study
of pressure and grace
occurring in space

pressure and time.

flowing thru time
possessed by the Word
thoughts under pressure

pressure and time.

inhabiting Word
Gethsemane sleeps
and diamonds…at last.

Pressure & Time

The Blindness of Unbelief

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when He walked in dust thru the dust,
when He crested that hill, and looked down
and left onto the far side
of the valley in which He grew…

when He started down the slope
all the way to the bottom until
He was sitting in the barrel
of the synagogue to teach…6a00d8346998ff69e201b7c76f23e9970bwhen the common folk were amazed
and the ones who “knew Him when” astonished
and offended that the Jesus they knew
would act the wise man instead of the fool…

when the preachers and leaders felt His stick
and recoiled huffily, sniffing and smelling death
and their own breath breathing threats to cover
as they questioned His authority and mighty works…tumblr_n46wrjRIdA1roemwgo1_1280when the fires banked so low and unbelief rose so high
and Honor moved by hiding Her eyes ashamed
because He was in His own country and blanketed
in their judgements there…across that river…

when Jesus of Nazareth marveled…
and night fell blindly once again.Image 009

oh america

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oh america, alas for me
once blind but now, alas!
I see…what I could not see before
safely ensconced behind my placid doortumblr_nlzzm3QWBV1sq9drqo1_1280of hallels, proverbs, judgements
assumed and (not) asked and answered
while Perry Mason spoke for me
Paul Drake got me off
Della Street hid me safe.

oh america, you hid from me
your bloody dungeons, grisly gore
your carrion teeth hungry for more
I weep in agony, I never saw that side
of you, rapacious, avarice-infected, ravenous

alas for you
alas for metumblr_ns93u6y7WJ1qllucco1_500oh america, alas for me
once deaf but now, alas!
I hear…not pop songs, jingles
and bubble gum ditties
but klaxxons and outrage
and death-dirges arising in cities

writhing in flaming hatred and strife
sirens screaming and bullconner bullhorns
in the tramping of jackboots and protests for freedom
I hear the desperate pleading for life and liberty
their chains rattle like thunder
but america, you hear only dice
rolling on your green table
of gambling and greed and
just be oh so nicetumblr_miy2lmQQy11qb5cdqo1_500I wish I could just rip myself
straight outta me, tear that
born and bred into ease
from my arteries, and my
narcissistic “I’m so vain”
from my veins and be fresh

be free…oh america…alas for you and me
as I watch our best, our brightest
still chained in our simpering
lobs of “be nice, calm down, be polite”
lobotomized and safe in facebook internments
prisoners in consumer kraalstumblr_noeogvQoQI1qas1mto5_1280and poetic deftness flees me
abandons me in this hour of my need
oh grace deliver me from selfish greed!
oh Mama let me run to truth so clean with godspeed
I lose mastery in the horror of this hour

alas, oh america, I lament for me
alas…I lament for thee
and do not know if you will find the courage
to face yourself in the mirror of your victims
the ones you killed and ate and burped
and called it good.

oh america, oh america
God have mercy on thee
and trip you up and toss you down
and take from you that gory crown
of racism, racism racism racism
from sea to shining sea and in betweentumblr_npxxyrZeCO1r38hk2o1_1280may God remove that hood that blinds
you to brotherhood, to good, to kind
give you eyes to see (oh god let me see)
give you ears to hear (oh god let me hear)
give you a heart at last and courage
to look at what you’ve done and left undone

oh america
oh america
oh america
oh america
oh america528483-Depression-1364630455-842-640x480

“I am torn in two but
I will conquer myself.
I will dig up the pride…I will take a crowbar
and pry out the broken
pieces…”
— Anne Sexton – from The Civil War

“Just A Word”…It Ain’t The Hokey-Pokey!

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I wrote a poem recently about an experience I had…a painful one.  It was like gravity frozen and pulling me back to a place I had long left behind.

I was misgendered.

Now this, in and of itself, is not an unusual experience.  It happens fairly regularly, though not in any way frequently, and usually it happens when strangers are interacting with me and have not had a chance to really interact with me long enough to really get the flavor of who I am.  I have learned to not let it bother me, to correct the error, and then move on.tumblr_ns0hojuTZo1qas1mto7_1280This time though, it was different…vastly different.  It was from someone whom I highly esteem, and very much like…someone I am well on the way to loving.  It happened from a friend.

Now, it was clear to me that she had simply made a mistake.  Hey, let’s be honest…if you look at my profile here at all, or on my Facebook page, you can see the tall order that I have to overcome.  Well over 6 ft tall, currently well over 220 lbs, and my forehead well on its way to a 5 or maybe even a 6 head!  HRT is kind to my brain, and somewhat more cavalier with the rest of me…progress in important areas is slow.  It’s there…but it’s slow.

And then there is my voice, forever altered by testosterone in the same way that every single human being regardless of gender has their voice altered when exposed to that hormone.

So it is easy to be “tricked” by the outward package.tumblr_ns0hojuTZo1qas1mto5_1280But the insides?  The things I talk about?  The way I talk?  My emotions, my reactions?  I was once told by a fairly femme individual that I was “girly-squared!”  We both laughed sooo hard over that, because it is true.

So that is why when I was misgendered by a friend it cut me deep…and it destroyed my confidence.  Because here are the logical alternatives.  Either A:  I am doing something that makes everyone think “man”…or B:  I am neglecting to do something that makes everyone think “woman”.  And that is what just ran at me like water washing away a riverbank.  My friend who knows my heart and knows me, who has done great things for me and made a place for me…my friend misgendered and I don’t know why.

Is there a “moment of translation” when people interact with me?  Does everyone have that inner “pause” where they have to stop and carefully think things thru in order to “be polite?”  Is that all that the correct use of pronouns boils down to?  Politeness?  I have written before about the onerous statement of “support” that says “If that is how you see it, then I am for it.”

Grrrr…I hate that statement, because cis-women do not ever have that said about their own gender.  Well, being polite is the same in this case.tumblr_ns0hojuTZo1qas1mto4_1280And it has me wondering…do all my friends have that pause, that polite moment just before they humor me?  Or do they think of me as who I am, a woman who managed to get herself stuck in a dude’s body?

That is what “Just A Word” is about…and how all the internal progress I had made, all the ways I had listened and believed and trusted the words of people around me…and now felt like a fool for it!

Well…my friend is a spectacular person, and I don’t think for a minute she intended to hurt me or wound me, and I think that our friendship will continue to grow and blossom…but it did hurt.  And it did tumble me briskly down that slope and back to my beginnings in the valley of dysphoria.tumblr_ns0hojuTZo1qas1mto2_1280

Which leads me to the quote that prompted this post:

Don’t feel bad if you still wish your body looked different
or if your voice sounded better or if you can’t quite love yourself yet.
Self-acceptance is a journey. You’re not hopeless just because others may be ahead of you.
Appreciate yourself. Appreciate how far you’ve come.
You’re on your way, at your own pace.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what she…or anybody else for that matter, thinks.

I accept me.

I know who I am…I know!tumblr_ns0hojuTZo1qas1mto3_1280

Making Me Airtight

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Gold threads thru green fields
lead me on to yonder mountains,
this path beneath my feet
so friendly, so familiar
even though I’ve yet to walk it.tumblr_nsevvhl7sz1thfeewo1_500I am finding my pack
rests easier these days
though I still chafe beneath
those goddam toothy straps!

It is full of certainty and truth
but which is which…well,
of that I am uncertain.tumblr_n1h7bjMfIv1rcw6xko1_500No matter, that curtain
of friendly fog’s gently parting,
dancing on the merry winds
that tug, that tousle-tickle
frondy fiddleheads and firs
and I press on towards
those lofty looming heights.

Night approaches and I sleep
I whisper to myself in dreams
of secrets in my unknown heart
so certain and so true…

“Follow! Follow!” I sing to myself.
“Run in trackless wilderness!
Dance in virgin meadow green!
Find Her waiting…beckoning,
drawing out your fecund longing
into solid living flesh!”tumblr_ns2yd3nlx81u3uzjzo1_1280I am knowing that when I sleep
I like to go barefoot in my dreams,
I walk without blinders on my knowing feet
so they can see…no boots upon these eyes!

Then I wake and see muddy footprints
glowing brown, leading to the door and then
just disappearing into…When?
Or where…somewhere…like
the pregnant bottom of a well
the throbbing mystery of a cave
the trembly throat of a fresh spring…
somewhere.tumblr_ns6zneQsD91rr74i9o1_1280Maybe it is in my tears
and in the ocean and the wind
that blows the truth into my face
and from my heart, a living knuckle
where those two worlds join and pivot
in the light and in the dark…

and those muddy footprints are a map that I must follow
but only walking backwards and always loving forwards
and then return the way I came while walking forwards
and my love is flowing back to beautify the things I passed

beneath its tender touch…my love, my touch.Clare-17This journey’s making me airtight
even though I seep, bleed love and weep
in the day and thru the night,
thru the blood and in the bread,
with the babies and the bones,
in my tender waiting womb
all my yearning tears and groans…
It’s this heartbreak that atones

and that path shining golden…
and the mountains…
nestling me home.tumblr_ns1nl2rq0i1szrg39o1_1280

A Quintessential Quandary

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“Don’t take it personal”.

I get told this…believe it or not.  Hah.  As if you could read here for any number of posts and not figure out that I am passionate and sticky-hearted.  And I do.

Take it personal.  Everything.  Not just when someone says something cruel, but also when someone says something beautiful, or something funny, or something poignant.tumblr_nsmq0xJbLN1qat5pio1_500I once quipped that how can I take things any other way than personal, since I am a person.  How else can I take things?

But what I think, is that people are really saying to me:  “Charissa…when you show your emotions and reveal your heart in an unashamed and unabashed way, we get uncomfortable and we don’t want to be uncomfortable.  So please have some savoir faire and conceal your emotions behind a bemused and distant facade like the rest of us do.”

I think you would all be somewhat shocked if you knew how often I actually do this very thing…but the cost of this to me? Just everything that makes me uniquely me…such as sensing someone’s pain and sorrow…such as seeing who they are in a glance and processing years of history in one taste…such as having a timely word that is bloody and rich in healing…such as the funny saying and humorous word that releases and sets free…such as the honest and direct pledge of being present whenever called on…

nuffin’ real important…just the freaking bleeding bloody essence of me.tumblr_nsmxkyabc41qat5pio1_500It gets confusing really fast.  Because here is one thing that happens regularly:  Something happens that is painful, and I do my best Lady Gaga and work on my poker face…and the astute in the area will sense that I am not being genuine and will upbraid me as not having been forthright.

So I go ahead and honestly reveal what has hurt me…and then get told to not take it personally.

See what happened there?

Today is an equilibrium regaining day…events of yesterday were hurtful…no one’s fault, just the way it is in this world…and I wrestled with an admonition that I had said something was okay and sorta tried to pass it off when I was in fact hurt and very confused over why something had happened that happened…and regarding those same things another exhortation to not take things personally.  Be authentic and show the hurt…but don’t take it personally…

I confess that I do not know how to do this.  I really do not know, and am gonna have to learn what that all means.tumblr_mtqvyyw8oN1qe0lqqo1_1280But then again, there are a lot of things I don’t know…like why people who knew me for years now think I am totally insane, or possessed, or that I am involved in some sexual practice (HAH!  God knows the absurdity of that!)…like why people still misgender me regularly and not knowing if this is due to something I am doing or something I am failing to do…like what to do about a frame and a voice and all that stuff that has literally nothing to do with my true essence and self.

It’s a raw day…and Grace Notes is where I work thru things…writing my heart out…writing my pain out…clarifying to myself what it is I have experienced and what I think.  So far, hundreds of you have chosen to come along on the journey…thank you for that…and I give you permission to take the things I say to heart.

If you are an emotional person, that may look like taking it personally…and if you are a calm person it may look like thinking things thru and changing behavior.

Either way…I am pressing on, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on…tumblr_lwastw716F1qmtc74o1_500

Describing Our Reality

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“Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted,” for centuries
by the refutation of our experience and our instincts
in a culture which validates only male experience.

“The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us.

“We therefore have a primary obligation to each other:
not to undermine each others’ sense of reality
for the sake of expediency;
not to gaslight each other.

“Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience.
Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake,
beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”

— Adrienne Rich

tumblr_nh3hebZlLQ1ts7x8eo1_1280I read this quote this morning, and instantly gravitated to it…because it is shocking to me just how fast my insides shatter and my heart just crumples, with just a word.  It scares me when this happens…because then the ripples start, and I begin to question the prior words, deeds, experiences…were they real?  Or were they careful camouflage and thus by their very existence invalidation of who I am because they were needed to provide cover?tumblr_nsr37bWK4G1qat5pio1_500The mind says they were real…but my unprotected heart recoiling in the shock and pain so unexpected begins to fly so frantic at the bars of its cage.  And like a small captive bird it beats itself bloody against those bars that suddenly are there…just like that…because now I know there is that “step of translation” between who people see me to be and who they then speak to me as…truthfully that shreds me inside when it happens, because I have been free in myself and flowing…until with a thunktumblr_nh1c03OrOL1qzif7oo1_1280this flying bird hits that static glass wall, invisible, unexpected, but no less devastating and seeming inevitable…and I do feel insane when I cleave to the truth of my own experience after I have hit that wall of misgendering.

Adrienne Rich speaks of the undermining of each other’s sense of reality…

…mine is suffering right now.tumblr_lu09df5BDy1qadujfo1_1280Oh…not who I know myself to be…but rather who others know me to be.  That feeling of insanity that she references above.  Because when people are around me for a length of time, they do indeed experience me as female in my brain, my heart, my emotions and expressions, my love and affection, my orientation towards co-operation and collaboration…tumblr_nkhj1rFi2Y1s8tx41o1_500…but then that male pronoun just flies out seemingly unbidden, and for the life of my I cannot understand how it can be…except that it must be that the gravity of my body and physical self is too powerful for the evidence of my heart and soul and spirit to overcome and I am chained to that outer shell diminishing…and thus diminished and reduced to mere outward appearance…and doomed to the dirt…yeah, it hurts.

I don’t know what to do about it, because it is beyond my control.

I guess just surrender to this reality but in the Name of Jesus…and let Mama work it to my good and bring me peace.tumblr_nlzzm3QWBV1sq9drqo1_1280