A Futrospection | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Written long looong ago, when this lil crabbie “Cancer”
was becoming friends with a lil scorpion Scorpio…
a match made in heaven and forged on earth.

It was trying to project into the future,
based on the past and spoken in the (then) present.

I hope you enjoy it.  I know

if you met my beloved you would admire her as I do.


There is a tenderness
in your eyes
in your voice
a trembling

so I can never
tell whose mother
or little girl
you might be

and even I
must believe it
tonite, remembering
in your eyes

such a tenderness…

Source: A Futrospection | Charissa’s Grace Notes

i sit in winds | Charissa’s Grace Notes


i sit in winds
and let my shawl flow
loose around me
and lifted like wings

and as it unfurls
the hard ground exhales
and i become light
as i sit in winds

my heart rises up
when liberty sings
though limbs sit so still
though limbs sit in winds…

Source: i sit in winds | Charissa’s Grace Notes

I Live Inbetween | Charissa’s Grace Notes

look for me, search
in my solid words…
and you will miss me
in their sparkle-spazzle
and solid spunk echoes.

i’m in the spaces
in between my words
shining and shim’ring
in dance-implications…

Source: I Live Inbetween | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Living Origami | Charissa’s Grace Notes

A poem about the fingers of God inside the fears and frailties of a woman.  And yes, I am cognizant of the implications, and wonder why this is not more commonly experienced by others…the touch of God is so very intimate…
I feel your fingers
in my folds and
my fine feathers
ruffling, riffing

sometimes ripping
for your pleasure
folding me and
creasing me

until I do not
recognize
the shape
I’m in.

Turning this way…

Source: Living Origami | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Unfurling From A Set-Free Throat | Charissa’s Grace Notes

I am gunna begin reposting older poetry, here on Grace Notes…because Facebook is a wasteland of the driest thirstiest most stingy desert sand that has ever been. Proverbs would say that Facebook has two sisters:  “Give” and “Give”.

My older work is good…at least, in my own internal scales of what I like and do not like, it weighs out as treasure.  I feel it in my bones…it RINGS of true truth.  But it is unwieldy, this blog, in getting to those older poems…one must make time and space to even find them, let alone to eat them and digest them…

…because my poems are not immediately burnable carb calories…

Anyway…here they are, such as they are.

This particular poem is about finding my voice as symbol of finding myself.  It examines paradigms and presuppositions, and advocates for freedom from old superstitions and lies…and freedom to timeless Truth.
I still struggle to dig it out,
that splinter you shoved into me,
down my throat without so much
as a shot of whiskey or
a shot in the dark.

and you are so certain, sure
of how to walk the world an…

Source: Unfurling From A Set-Free Throat | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Holding It Tight

you’re there
I see you in the
glow, the fierce proud
glow that melts snow and
vaporizes anything in the know

you hold
your bouquet
of blooming hatred
tight, vise-like, clutched
and gathered to your chest

where it
burns everything
it melts anything that
even thinks about getting
close-like, including your fingers

clutched
gripping

so tight
that you cannot
shake it off of them
your fingers and your face
so that your heat could even

get shared.

Pauper-Heart And Paper Mind

And though Your feet find every path
how is it I can see no sign
that You have ever cared to pass
along this trail, travail of mine?

I, pauper-heart and paper mind
bequeathed with Heaven’s own dear Breath
look at this empty road to find
it circles, curls unto my death.

That I stand asking is itself
a rich and bottomless grand gift
and that I scrabble at Your Shelf
and fumble, clumsy drop and sift

Until there’s nothing left to see
while all around me diamonds gleam
Until I take my eyes off me
then shall dust to riches be

The gifts are not in garlands rare
Nor ease nor comfort fading fast
Thy gift is very Breath, it’s Air
With me til I breathe my last.

The Turmoil Of Spring


I am wearing the turmoil of Spring in my hair
I have worn it so young and so old
It’s for you that I wear Spring so zestfully there
For your heart, I am wearing Spring without a care
For your soul, well I wear Spring so bold.

But you rush thru the seasons so fast and so blind
Looking into the future so blurred
It’s for me that you strain your eyes, trying to find
Something different, a lodestone to anchor your mind
Alas, you miss the damage incurred.

I guess pacing is part of the problem, my dear
You pull hard, while I toddle along
For whatever our eyes rest on, touch on, hold near
those things take flesh and blood then they stoke up your fear
And they co-opt your voice and your song.

Can we walk thru the seasons together, our hands
Clasped gently yet joined as we wait?
You can see far, rejoice in the coming of that
I can see up close, making the moments grow fat
While the seasons just slip out the gate.

Never Ending Irish Rain

Written for My Father…

“…and then you turn your head
your beautiful estrangéd face
to the other side of midnight
and behold that silky rain
(as if for the first time)

that Never Ending Irish Rain
fell green across the golden waters
and washing down those greying sands,
quiet, themselves ablaze, a-falling
like stars straight thru the night…”

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Source: Never Ending Irish Rain

The Hounds Of Torquemada

sometimes scared I hear
the stink and the hot blood
rushing thru the crowds
like demons on the loose
the hounds of Torquemada

sometimes I see them
all the people in the streets
lost and in a mumble
of pain and crazy jumble
and death in every tumble

and I just wanna lay there
in the streets so dirty
teeming with the garbage
of privileged excrement
and tear my chest wide open

and with my desperate fingers
claw my hurt ribs agape
and reach in for my heart
and rip it from my soul
and hold it over head

and let my blood gush forth
in step with all my tears
and wash it all away
why can’t it wash away
oh Jesus wash, oh Jesus

why is it them not me
i think I’m gunna cry
and cry and cry and cry
while my heart bleeds and bleeds
until it’s bled all dry

Nothing Rhymes Orange

“…and the nuance is gone,
disappeared in the mist
along with soft kisses,
it’s all been dismissed

by orange fading soft
into white then returning
to orange, and orange
and then just more orange

so i sit here, i wait,
i remember another time,
other days full of
sweet music and rhyme…”

Source: Nothing Rhymes Orange

My Offering Of Violent Worship

Born transgender…
concealed…
in rushes, in tulies
wandering deserts
and walking lonesome valleys…

and we walked around the sun
50 times, spinning, circling
while I, spinning and circling
spiraled out of myself

torn in two
or maybe parted
by Solomon’s Silver Blade
my inner me stifled and screaming
“Give Her Away! Give Her Away!”

as he just shrugged and said
“I don’t wanna be here anyway”

but then to come to myself slow
trickling back home
and draining up and in
before coming out

the sun so bright
the wind so fresh
creation dancing

and the stink of hate and horror
and the sting of brutal spittle
and eyes that bruise and stab

and the cries of the powerless
and the silence of the othered
and the dust of death settling

I dance, I sing, I SHOUT!
I whirl and lift that dust to the wind
as my offering of violent worship
of our Liberty God, Our Graceful GOD
our LOVING GOD

and I hear Their loving strong whisper:
“For such a time as this you were created”

and I take my place with Esther
and take Mary of Bethany’s hand

and settle into this truest truth for me:

“My maids and I will fast likewise.
And so I will go to the king, which is against the law;
and if I perish, I perish!”

A Handful of Memory

And again…from Last Year:

it was a village
no longer existing
it was a laugh
that echoed that village
and hung in the air

like smoke from a fire
extinguished in nightfall
and drifting in winds
and lonely midst stars
while crickets and frogs

lament as it faded
and pebbles and diamonds
all heaped up at random
and sticks and steel swords
all jumbled together…

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Source: A Handful of Memory

ever Spring, ever Autumn

My own poem from last year…I do really favor this one.

it looks the same to you
whether you stand
in winter or summer

…the gate of my heart…

The Great Gate

Source: ever Spring, ever Autumn

In Every Dear Breath

in that place…
it only exists
between your lips
when you are sleeping

and I am awake…

it’s the same place
between the dark
freshly plowed field
and the deep night sky…

I live there, quick
in every dear breath,
in between them as well

touching your parted teeth
the way moon touches sea
my love touches you
your want touches me

I am a doorway
eternity dwells
and we enter thru
in every dear breath.

Where The Light Passes In

Do you know the place where the light passes in?
That’s where you’ll find me when darkness is seeping
from crevice and cranny while Spring trudges weeping
I sit in the place where the light passes in.

You’ll find me there singing of beautiful life
and of faith like pure gold burnished shiny with hope
as my tears fall like diamonds so soft in the wind
In that place where the light, where the light passes in.

Listen…you barely can sound out the echoes
that buzz in the trees and bounce off the crags
and run back and forth from my mouth to my chin
In the place where the light passes in, passes in

It’s tempting to think that I never have lived
a sad day or bad day when dark gathers grim…
But I have…what’s the secret? Outside and In?
Why I let the light pass thru, and out, and then in…

I’m the place where the light, where the light passes in.

Our Sacred Desert Story

We set out on tender feet
and tender hearts to match
and faces become flint as we
determined that we would not faint.

When our sojourn was hip deep in heat
and we were well and away, out to sea
she told me of the heartbreak and the horror
and there how we did rain our tears…

We took turns (while we wiled the desert paths away)
swimming away from the ship of us…naked, vulnerable
and healing in the slick water…further and further
and then return and up and back into our desert ship.

It was in the sunset wrought with haze from distant destinations
that make you think about fire, and about what might have been.
We, perched on that rock solid emanating heat and spitting healing
while the sky, bruised by our advances, turned purple in our song.

It was just Day Umpteen Kazillion in our great traverse of deserts,
we walking, swimming straight by myth and extraterrestrial,
feeding on lizards, trilobites, and our sacred Stories our Communion shared
and we, oh so close to our arriving, our becoming, our sacred Desert Story.

 

The Land That I Haunt

Simple, slow
embodied in sinew
and oiled with sweat
traversing territory
between the heart
and the mind…

this is the song of the strong soaring soul
this is the song of the wind in the night
this is the song of retreat into wholeness
this is the song of those swaying stars swinging

in the midst of the tumult of hurried compassion
dwelling in antipode virtue of soul
mired in distant connection called intimate
sucking the bloated cold teat of efficiency

this is the loss of the soul…

and what of me?

I am not quick, yet
I move like the lightening
singing and zinging and sizzling bright
kissing the stars and empowering earth

this is the land that I haunt with my life

Resurrection In Purple Flow

Sometimes when
I am in the presence
of the royal mountain

I can’t help myself.

I run purple, violet
I feast on fallen blossoms
(somehow the fallen sing more
of loss, of all that comes before

Resurrection
in purple flow

The unlikely Texans fighting anti-trans bill SB6 | Fusion

For all who want to:
A:  Understand transgender issues and origins
B:  Want to be allies in the granting of human rights
C:  Believe that being a christian precludes hateful condemnatory behavior
D:  Have a trans loved one(s) that you wish to support

This article is for you.

I personally have experienced every single thing mentioned in this article.  As a full grown middle aged human…the loss of family connection;  the loss of employment;  the loss of social standing, the hate-filled behavior towards me of literal total strangers; physical violence…

…not to mention the sort of thing that happened when I was little, and my choice of dissociation from myself.  Only God can ever really measure that damage done as a child…damage that was not “intentional” but was fully empowered by the cultural forces of the binary and thus did no less damage.

This mom literally tried all the things that transgender rights opponents espouse…read her story.  A conservative christian family with bona fides that may well make St Paul’s head spin!  The accusation that parents’ poor parenting is responsible for the “mental illness” of the child is revealed as the false belief that it is.

This child is amazingly strong and persistent.  I did not have that strength…I caved…and nearly died for the next 50 years.

All this damage, all this death…all because of clothing, genitalia, and bathrooms.

And trump supporter?  Please pay special attention to the reporting of the trump administration’s specific and deliberate plans to take away transhuman rights!  Just exactly as I told you.  Supporting this absolute fucker taking office is the deliberate empowering of someone who wants to hurt me…

as if you could what…beat the trans out of us?  Pray it off of us?  Be sure and notice in the pull quotes below the full grown relative who vows to send this little kindergarten kid to the hospital on a stretcher if that child was in a restroom that his 22 year old niece was in!!!

That is literally flabbergasting to me!  Really!!???  What is a 5 year old child gunna be able to do to a 22 year old woman??

No matter how many…no, even if you slaughtered every single transgender person?  We would be back in the next generation…because we are a function of human reproduction, and not a function of “social engineering”

“…No matter how much punishment this kid got, you couldn’t beat it out of her,” Kimberly said. “You couldn’t pray it out, I couldn’t cast it out.” Indeed, Kai was having none of it. Sometimes she would wait until Kimberly was on the toilet to taunt her from just out of striking range: “You know I’m a girl.” Other times, she began praying within her mother’s earshot that God would “let Joseph” (Kai’s former name) “go home and be with Jesus.”

Kai’s prayer was Kimberly’s breaking point. That, and learning about the sky-high suicide rate for trans kids; according to one study, 41% of trans youth had attempted suicide—a rate almost ten times higher than their cisgender counterparts.

“There are so many trans kids who don’t have her persevering, persistent spirit,” Kimberly said. “And if Kai didn’t have that spirit, I would have succeeded in breaking her, into conforming into what I was trying to make her be. And we would have all been ok with that until she killed herself, at 14, or 13, or 11, or 20, or 50….

“…Still, the social fallout for Kimberly was swift. Trans advocates often say “everyone loses someone” when they transition; Kimberly’s family lost almost everyone. While one of Kai’s uncles helped his niece pick out new outfits, most of her extended family distanced themselves. One aunt threatened to call CPS on Kimberly. Other relatives shared a Facebook post from a Houston-area preacher, proposing a training day where the church would teach children how to spot and report trans kids at their schools. A cousin sent Kimberly a Facebook message warning if he ever saw Kai in a bathroom with his 22-year-old daughter, Kai would “need a stretcher.”

“A best friend from the family’s church, where Kimberly served in ministry for years, stopped their years-long 5 AM prayer phone calls. When Kimberly attended a school board meeting last June to discuss the accommodation of trans students, she said one pastor from her church showed up to speak out against them…”

Source: The unlikely Texans fighting anti-trans bill SB6 | Fusion

A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…

This is talking about my own life, my own family…and yours, too…because all of us have this brokenness.  The evidence is irrefutable.

This poem is all about forgiveness…trying to give it and trying to receive it…and the incredible revelation that it is impossible.

There is no trying…there is only becoming.

“…And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit,
no escape from agony,
pitstop from pain…
all we can do is
exchange suffering’s form
and it’s face, from our own
for the pain of another…”

Source: A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…
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Abandonment

This was my being’s experience for too many years, and the first poetic attempt to deal with the major stronghold of my life…and the gif at the end…brrr…I lived in terror of those footsteps on the stairs, coming towards me with harsh words and blows…

Source: Abandonment

The Very Thing You Hate

It starts small.

Just one word,
connects almost
without effort to
another word

and they twist
together a corkscrew
actually…

and suddenly
that cork slides
so easy so tight so slick

and then
such popping
sudden relief!

the bottle in
a heart so bitter
is open at last
invective is free

but just a sip
then a glug
(one must be
careful you see
to apply bitterness carefully)

just to make a point

just to become
the very thing
you hate

 

Hearing Glimmers

Lately
I have been studying
kittens…

is what they see
determined by
how they sit?

I strain to relax
into the posture
of a cat at the window

and hear glimmers
of the Purr

When Words Are Written Here

there, in clouds and nothing but clouds
above and below as I…walked?  Or did I
swim, or fly, and in the distance
hearing songs of you…and clouds

obscure and yet they also part
and thru the silver mist She came…
Her Heart and Ears and Eyes (the singing)
stilled and still and still She came Singing

and in this cloudy parting is the only knowing needed
that I am Her child, Her emissary
sent to bend what thinks itself straight
and straighten what is broken, bent.

Me the paper, pen and ink
Mama, unsayable, beyond the think,
the clouds, the parting, emerging and wordless
song…and She the emerging and yes

the clouds parting

when words are written here

 

Poison And Placating

It stinks the way that
women will trade in their
very selves for a small sliver
of complementarian pie…made
from fruit of the forbidden tree…

poison and placating.

A Different End To The Story

This is about an event that happened last year…a full grown male human who exercised his power and privilege over other humans who were utterly powerless against him…UTTERLY POWERLESS.

Come to think of it…it fits the absolute fucker, trump, as well.


All full of himself and stiff
gait wobbly, bopping up and down
walk waggly, blipping circley side-side
aggressive lean forward looking
for something to pierce, to rip

pent up all day inside the clothes of decency…

Source: A Different End To The Story

trump is an absolute fucker

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I will never, ever be able to accept that someone thinks that they can support me while not only supporting trump, but condoning and extolling him and what he says and does.

I have no fellowship with him, in any way, shape, or form.

trump and his kind wish to not only hurt me, but also eradicate me, as if they can make it so that “there is no such thing” as transgender people.

And there are people who refuse to see this.

It blows my mind.

To list the ways, the deeds and the decisions that add the substance to the statement would take a month…but it is all easily found, at least it is easily found by anybody who uses other media sources than FOX and the so-called “Christian” Broadcasting Network (or some variant thereof).

Truthfully, I have such a sinking feeling that were it ever to become “illegal” to be transgender (as if that twisting of words could somehow ever define me), said individuals would think they were doing a work of God when they joined the Roman soldiers who killed all boys under two years old in the time of Jesus’s birth…and I would be dead.

trump is an absolute fucker.
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My Vibrant Words

Another work from last year…I really like this poem!


it’s strange, how my words
are vibrant now, and safe…

my words are safe in themselves

they used to need your eyes
like vines need their trellis
eyes constant and seeing
and singing in the wind…

Source: My Vibrant Words

My Exodus

Reposting a poem from last year…any good poem applies at a number of different levels, some known and some unknown and waiting to be discovered…

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I moved away while you weren’t watching
(it was easier than I thought it would be,
escaping past your X-Ray eyes
that look for flesh and blood
and thus missed my exodus)

I live by the sea, now…

Source: My Exodus

Blue There Living

The recent poems I published are my first since my surgery.
I find them quite informative to my rambunctious mind.

They jumped up, arms raised, excited small children
who wish the teacher would call on them, thus
sort of birthing them into the soft pure
air of truth, astonished at the blue
blue blue there,
living
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The Edge Of Truth And Wonder

when I happened
upon this floating
basket run
aground there, on
the edge of water

and land, the edge
of full and empty
the edge full
of sky and space

I wondered
about who had
taken the child
who laid there in

the basket, in
that place and in
the edge between
those flowers gathered

in the edge
of truth and wonder

Boats Of Beauty

Some people think
these boats aren’t real,
are just conjured up
from mid air and
the rare taste
of my desire,
pungent, raw
and sweeter than
pure honey dripping
off the velvet
waters of time

but conjured boats,
the only boats
that float in dream time,
real Behind Time
on the surface
of the waters
in all places,
and all times

in every ever,
every where

the conjured
boats of beauty

Night Air

like the blossoms
soft and pink
and tender reaching

branches gentle
tracing tender
secrets of the

night and edges
on the glowy
downy silky

milky moon
so limerent, high,
so beautiful…

my fingers crawl
across your cheek
(your sleepy cheek)

kissing
caressing
blessing

in
the still
night air

 

Roses out of Ruins


She walked, head held high
like a servant who pilfered a sweetcake
from the grouchy old cook
(who ruled her kingdom with iron,
a slave who fancied herself sovereign).

She took their glances, their …

Source: Roses out of Ruins

Under The Ice

it’s a dark desert to be endured
it’s some kind of bleak mountain
to be climbed, it’s boring and grey
and monotonous but it’s equal parts
beautiful and devastating too
1-3or_1c2iwiwjvwsori6jvgit sees the sorrow in everyday occurrences.

it’s a man drunk at a party because
he doesn’t know anybody and plays the fool.

it’s a woman who tries on a dreamy
dress at a boutique and feels bad for
wanting something nice for herself.
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these snapshots of despair
seem so trivial in isolation
but they are oh so meaningful
these moments of weariness

they tell us we’re not alone
they let us feel sad while
they rip our souls to pieces

they are so gorgeously wrought
and exacting at the same time.
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this hurts me

I’m not sure if this
is a recommendation
or a confession.

I adore deeply
I have changed my life,
been cut to my core

but these moments
they are bleak
these moments
they hurt
the-gray-tree-1911-jpgblog
their painful penumbra glows
with sharp, precise clarity
and everything else
before and after
feels like
a fuzzy
dream
8e9c027e6c3af7d6e42a49dc643dcf4e
it skulks along a snowy New England lane
so beautiful that you hardly even notice
the despair lurking there under the ice

you’ll see what I’m talking about
under the ice and sinking down
into the forever bony grip
of a moment

a moment
of weariness.
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Miriam’s Song

A poem from 3 years ago…seems appropriate in light of the marches!


Roll back stormy waters, roiling steely dark and deep.
Roll back clinging finger-waves and the icy grip they keep.
Make a way thru waters where there isn’t any way
And lead me laughing, walki…

Source: Miriam’s Song

In Arpeggio Miles

Ohhh CONSTANCE!!  I have been transcribing this poem for a friend, the lovely Michelle Terry (Hi Grl!!)…and I fell in love with it again.  Aaauuggghh!!  I LOVE THIS POEM.

It’s about an evening that plays out between two hearts, two souls…it plays out between The Earth and Space…it plays out between waters and land, and heart and bodies…it plays out between Love and Lover and back again…it plays out between the carnal and the ineffable…desire and Desire…

it plays out between where it happens and where It Happens…

And Subjects…The Divine and Human, Self and Self, Self and Subject…

I like my metaphors and use of them…I like the references and hints dropped.  I like the movements, from Prelude to Finale.  It is sensual and spiritual all at once, and it still feels really good.

Some critics have told me it is too long…perhaps they are right…but I allus ask them what do they expect me to do about that?? For I have about as much say over how long it is as I do how tall you are!

If you’re a new reader and dabbling, I hope you will take a run…   ❤

In Arpeggio Miles

Prelude:
There is an indigo bunting
outside my window singing
in the moonlight streaming by
a million miles an hour.
But it is not the window
on my mind tonight…
I keep returning to that door…

Source: In Arpeggio Miles

Dread and Presences

I am reblogging this poem from 2 years ago…here is the key passage:

“I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog
thick and lingering,
but 2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it
I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more
than a dream.

It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew
or if it even could…”

charissagrace's avatarCharissa's Grace Notes

Dread.

I feel it still.
Laying at the base of my throat and throbbing
dully, quietly slumbering with one leering eye
cocked open always and leaning towards my heart.

My heart…
chipped and worked, touched and chilled
by the frozen fingers of dread

and shards of it lay scattered at my feet
clear, jagged glimmering
broken.tumblr_nf01s3Hemc1sjr8bdo1_1280

I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog thick and lingering,
but 2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more than a dream.

It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew or if it even could.

It was a year without windows
but many doors
and ladies
and tigers.

There is more to life than meets the eye,
more than can be measured by the senses or a census
but this morning there is just the fog behind
and…

View original post 115 more words

Champagne Kisses


I long for champagne kisses
to be given to me
your mouth the open bottle
me goblet gaping, me

so thirsty for an altar
and vows once said renewed
and toasts in night air ringing
and union Reunioned …

Source: Champagne Kisses

This Brilliant Indifference


I am a childe of dark, a childe of light.
I was born beneath the shining moon but just outside it’s golden touch there, on dim green meadows blanketing the warm red earth
in comfort midst the…

Source: This Brilliant Indifference

Between the Lines

I need to repost this poem from a couple years ago a day early…and I don’t even want a SHADOW of eyes on this that aren’t willing to LABOR today to birth understanding of what I am writing about…

it’s so fucking obvious what I am writing about…

I am writing about what we are all mealy mouthing by blaming it on a specific year (as if the year were a shambling zombie…as if the year were different than any other year, as if WE were not the shining difference every goddam SECOND)…

but every single person SHOULD labor with this poem, and labor HARD…

cus it’s the liturgy you will need as you’re pulled inexorably to your end…

if you DO decide to click on this…then really get your hands into it, and don’t go looking for pretty words and cutesy lil poetic kuans…cus this aint it.

This is the blood of a Poetess…

this is the stuff of poetry, however poorly executed it is in my fumbly arthritic heart whose joints ACHE and SEETHE with rage at death and grief at the ways we pull our snugglies around us and pretend…

“…and there I walk, alone between the lines,
my feet upon the ties, the ties that bind
and my heart ponders lines, and ties and spaces
in between the lines, the ones inside of me and what is hidden
there to see by those who stop and look and listen

…and take the time to read between the lines…”


Tree-lines mark the end of alpine meadow-frolics green
and the start of stone relief against the ever-constant skies
stretched out in steely greys and stellar silver blue sky-lines,
and space between the lines…

Source: Between the Lines

Just

tumblr_njvutgPhdF1qdunk8o1_500I just strive so hard just to remember,
just remember what I just now said,
just remember what I’m gunna say
and just said and just say and just said (and just say).

and your mind just strains hard to recall
what you’ve said, what you just mean to say
and then just reaches forward so quickly
to grab onto what you’ll just say next.

Mem’ry just pulls against expectation
twin sisters just trapped within time
like quick pagan twin versions just jumping
just like virgins, or just like Three Graces…
ruthnaomi
they just melt in our faint grasp completely
fleeing ere we can touch them, just gone
in that moment just blooming, becoming
we just clinging tight to a mere echo,

to a faint rumor lurking, just lingering
an arroyo called ‘Just Vanished Self’
and that rumor just leads me to moments
of kindness, just unmeasured time

elemental unfettered just kindness
that settles, in just quiet knowing
just a knowing so gentle and tender
of my heart’s every deep just desire
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and a time of just tears just like rivers
rushes just to the ocean of being
just to wash mem’ry, anticipation
(they’re just one and the same all the time)

I just witness my fiery capacity
to just love but it just strains its tethers
to long splintery docks, just grey time
that prevents me from leaving, just sailing

on that lake singing just of the ocean
of just being…being..just in time
just unbound, just free in my just joyful
Beginnings…just joyful…become
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Turning Inside Out


my skin is stained by your lips
stained red, stained wine, crushed grapes
delicious between your white teeth.

my skin is blue from your touch so cold,
so hot within ice cold choice austere,
your lo…

Source: Turning Inside Out

After The Fire And Fury

Image result for hearth and ashes

After the Fire and Fury,
after the lies were consumed
there on the hearth in the ashes
just loose teeth, the only thing left…

…those teeth without jawbone to ride on
no power to bite my soft skin
and no way to grit and to grind
and I stare, there is nothing to mind
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my life changed…the nights became darker
and yet somehow more restful too
days took on a crystalline quality
I realized that I had begun

to view my entire life’s history
past/present/future all at once
as mere memories ashy and cold
in the ashes there, deep in the hearth

What’s the precise time, the moment,
in the life of a country of one,
a country where Samson’s been blinded
by his lust and his own hot despair

and self-tyranny takes hold in terror?
It rarely happens in an instant;
it arrives imperceptible, slow
and, at first, the eyes of the hopeful
Image result for hearth and ashes
adjust…and pretend all is well…
I was drifting in one endless present
(the present, pray tell what that is?)
line of vapor, invisible instant…

But now I see clearly, no filter,
the connection of past and the future,
between motion and rest, it just lurks there
as if it’s in no time at all…

and what is it, lying there useless?
It’s just us (justice), it’s simply us.
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Her Own Vampire

She was divided, rent
and torn to pieces
clinging to night
in the brunt
of day

she swirled
and melted down
outside

lying in coffins,
in caskets

(her heart her soul)


so black, beneath the dirt
so red inside desire
so bright and filled
with longing

she was her own grave
and when night fell
the earth moved
and trembled

and her brown-streaked
and desperate hand curled
into a claw carrying
crescent moons of dirt
deep beneath haunted
and hungry nails

as she undead
to her ownself
rose from the grave
to wander in
the night
reaches

she was her own vampire
diminishing, growing all
at once becoming
and draining

herself into

Herself

Hiding With Grace

tumblr_ohymmxps4l1spkvv8o1_1280
a quiet roaring
carries me
into the
arms

of
deep
forest
mystery

a
silent
snarl at
everything
that injures,
that horror harms

rises up thru jade velvet
moss dark and pungent and drawing
me down
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I
sit
running
my fingers
thru silent silver
fog

creeping
around
tree trunks
and caressing
their yearning
tops

with
misty
lips
foggy_woods_by_noirerora-d9rzoga
and
I
sit
I
see

that
fog
enters
me

and
instructs
with

kisses
and
tickly
fingers
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and
teaches
me

how
to
hide
with

Grace
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In Your Wonder

Here I am
caught up in your wonder

and wondering how
it is that you have written it

all over me
and around me.

I am here inscribed
by your eyes, your lips

your hands have writ large
in wonder upon …

Source: In Your Wonder