Category Archives: Charissa Grace

Your Silence

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The tiny echoes of your
small silence are dwarfed
by the elephant in the room
hiding under the lampshade
of your indifference.

I said it, yes
I said it.

You don’t say anything
even though I wait
every night and endure
every desert day hiding
under the hot sun
of my charade.
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It’s time for bed
and I lay down
and still you don’t break
but instead you take
your silence-cuffs
and chain me
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the nightlight goes out
so you turn on the light
overhead and it bears down
bright
relentless
and sterile

just
like
your
silence.
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On Living The Gospel

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It is not so much our slogans and statements, our creeds and commitments as it is the way we walk them out with our flesh and blood.  Documents are empty hulls of potential…and every single day that we truly live those commitments we give them flesh from our flesh and blood from our blood.
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The challenge posed by staunch commitment to broken people is that you then will have dealings with broken people.
This can be troublesome if you unconsciously expect that broken people will live and act unbroken. If you dribbled a crystal globe, and it shattered, and then when you touched a piece and it cut you or poked you, the challenge you would be facing would be full blown in how you reacted to being cut.
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That is where the reality of creeds, statements and slogans truly emerges…the ones who react in shock or outrage or horror are the ones who thought that globe was a basketball. The ones who recoil in horror or anger or disgust are the ones who believed it was a soccer ball.
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That is the distilled essence of walking out the Gospel: realizing that it is a message that attracts the hungry, the lost, the broken and it is not the creed which transforms but the living Presence of Christ IN that creed that does the work of healing and restoration.
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Which means to live the Gospel is to be inconvenienced, to be confronted with wounds that stink and are infected, to change the emotionally and spiritually incontinent…and to do it in patient joyful tenderness.

Someone can make their point with stern words and terse actions…it is not hard whatsoever to understand a point that has been made…and someone else can walk their love with gentle hands and consistent presence, and then ask for whatever they want as the broken heal, and slings are discarded and casts are cut off and the lame begin to walk.
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And then…deeper…closer…at the pulsing core…the revelation that is couched in those words from the cross “Forgive them Father…they do not know what they are doing.”

Those words have such compassion and understanding in them…they assume that most people would do good things if they REALLY KNEW the impact their troubling actions are having.

It’s such a good thing that we are coming to the place where we can even see that our statements and commitments and creeds have a unique calling to be expressed in our current climate…

it’s an even better thing when we count the cost…

it’s the best thing of all when we keep going and the word(s) become flesh.
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Currents & Tides

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there is a tide, red and rough, a red tide
there is a sea current deep and dark blue
they twist together on Time’s spinning loom
or are they the needles that Fate clacks together
to spin out, to weave our quick times?
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deep in my blood flows a tide and a current
twining in red and in blue and the echos
and rumours of beauty are driftwood in me
remnants from dream islands not yet discovered
but whispering of That Place where All Is Well
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and the ancient and old, the fearful and bold
walk the earth in my blood or sail in the blue currents
to woodlands and hills and to mystery legends
returned in the Hope and the Promise of paradise
tidal and twining insistent in me
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Dancing Double-Time

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the glacier moving blue
and stolid crushing step
inevitableness
occasionally makes noise
as it crushes rock
and crumbles it to dust
it listens to the waterfall
cascading off of granite cliffs
and hurling thru exultant air
and roaring in its falling flight

and does not understand
the tumult ringing loud
and shout of exultation
its liquid sister sings
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and so in all its stolidness
the icy glacier murmurs
that waterfall should fly
but quiet in the night
and careful in the day

and keep her singing heart
concealed within her breast
and hidden in the light
and tumbling down…
sssssllllloooooowwwww…
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as if a waterfall
could not sing, ever sing
in joyous flying freedom
and just gallumph along
like glaciers, crawling over
whatever may be there

glaciers grind all things to dust
but waterfalls can fly
and waterfalls can shine
and waterfalls can sing
and wash the stones so clean
and leave them shining there…
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glaciers…wearing vests
waterfalls…loud, blessed
and dancing double time
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One Week Of Hell

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I am astounded at the absurdity and the letdown of the last 7 days.

I have learned that I am cursed with the notion that words mean things…specific and precise things, and some words can morph, can shape-shift depending on the wind or the light…or the scents in the air…

and so I have collected them…words. I use them like a carpenter uses finish tools, like a furniture maker wields her instruments of creation.
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But I have also learned that others do not…

…others do not know that words mean things (they ass-u-me)
…others do not CARE that words mean things
…others use words carelessly
…others use words lazily
…others use words clumsily
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So the next thing I learned is that other people freak out when I ask what they mean…they get upset, or angry, or worst of all puzzled, as if I speak in a foreign language, as if I am an animal that suddenly went Narnia and began to utter intelligible sounds…but since I am just an animal they need not be considered seriously, it is just a lucky co-incidence.

This freaks me out greatly when this happens…being a sufferer of brain trauma, this ambiguity and denial of meaning is like throwing gasoline on a fire and expecting it to go out like water has been applied to those unwanted and despised flames.

So I devised a coping strategy…I decided to ask for clarification.
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“I don’t understand, would you please clarify?
“I am uncertain as to what you mean, would you please explain?”
“I am anxious and scared because the ramifications of what you said shout and gibber at me and I have no hiding place…will you please give me definition and reassurance, or if not then out with the guillotine and lop off my head?”

Sometimes, when I ask this, people deny there is anything to define…the inference is that I am crazy, reading too much into the words, finding things that are not there, and that I just need to mellow out.
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“Take things for face value” they say.

I tried that. It led to betrayal and violation and deeper/horrific trauma and a conflagration that nearly was my end…thank God for God and for Phoenixes.

So that didn’t work so well…or rather, it utterly broke and stained for good that place inside which could (a little) stay still and let go and take something on its face…this is utterly absurd anyway, given the combination of words that are so carelessly used and the mutual exclusivity of those combinations…to take most statements at face value is to accept meaningless absurdity and to bathe in the vile flow emanating forever from the ruins of the tower of Babel.

This led to a different strategy…that of survival.
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Maslow wrote about the hierarchy of needs, ranging from survival to self-actualization, and emphasized that when survival was in question self-actualization was a pipe dream if it was even present in the threatened consciousness.

I learned that words cannot be trusted when they are loose and running wild in packs like rabid dogs. I learned that other people do not want or will not choose to place them on leashes and seek to master them and use them for life rather than death.
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(“The power of life and death is in the tongue” says the sage)

As I survive, I discover people and places where there are indications and implications that I might find sanctuary. I begin to trust, begin to hope…and then comes the dilemma…undefined words, confusing communication contradictory and capricious…

What do I do? Whenever I ask for clarity, that ask is offensive, shocking, puzzling, incomprehensible? But if I don’t ask, then I am doomed by this:

In the lack of clarity, I am compelled (powerless in this, actually) to find the worst possibility and the shade of meaning that places me in the worst place…and that becomes my truth.

Which of course leads others to heap on even more incredulity, and they say to me THEIR truth of me…

…as if I am an idiot for thinking what I think in the face of ambiguity…

which actually drives me deeper into the fires.
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In these last 7 days this has happened to me…and I have happened to it as well, for I sought clarification…in open words, in more words than others consider decorous (because I want to be as sure as I can that I am clear in what I am saying)…in plain pleading plaintive words…begging words with empty cup extended in front of my dirty street urchin face…

and the bottom of lower than the worst has been the result…

The very worst thing, the ultimate blow that anyone can give to me in this place…

…………… is silence……………
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no response
no reply
no nuffin

That silence has a voice. Did you know that? Silence speaks?

In knives
In slashes
In crushing fog weighty and inexorable
Silence gibbers sinister
Silence threatens with burbly graveyard chuckles
Silence goose-steps over my grave in shivery stampings

Silence screams that I am nothing
Silence screams that I am soon going to be eaten
(but only after I have been torn apart)
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Torn apart by words…for it is on the other side of silence that others finally speak words…imprecise, wielded clumsy and ham handed, lacking nuance and deftness…and me, Andromeda without a Perseus caught there by my wrist, chained while the imprecision feeds on my liver in gnawing knife pecking beaks and ripping tearing talon claws…

It is in these moments that I wish it would just stop.

Just.
Stop.
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I have recognized this is also mostly the result of trauma in my life, and of that I have recently written…no, you cannot just “mellow out”, just “relax”, just “let it go and choose different”…thank you very much for your insensitive and ignorant admonitions…give me some credit, and imagine that a being as complex as myself might have tried that a time or trillion…no.

Trauma is with you like your skin, but it is a skin inside your skull and made solely of cockleburrs and foxtails.
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And that is where this poem comes in…”Nothing Rhymes Orange”

It is short, considerably shorter than the ravings of this post (now you see why I love to speak in poem and nuance and layers)

Words
Uncertainty
Anxiety
Fear
Ask for clarity
Silence

That is the road for Charissa that leads to hell.
5 days of hell, and me still here and no one understanding the fortitude or fierce fight that I have been in simply to be here prattling on and on and on and on…

Silence says to me “Just shut up and go away”

Silence is the siren call crooning and never have those sharp rocks looked so inviting, so final, so untroubling in their destructive shadow.

But I? Well, I guess that I am even worse than bad…because in the face of repudiation and rejection shouted so eloquently in that Silence slouching towards this Bethlehem, I don’t even have the good sense to go…the courage to go? The integrity to go? Is that it? Prolly that is it since my integrity is called into question in the imprecision and indefinite miasma that masquerades as communication…

Is it that I am stubborn? Is it that I am curious and want to see how it ends without me breaking character and stepping off the stage in Act 3 of 5?

I dunno…I will just go with the end of “Papillon” (those curious can search my blog for that, those not curious, well why are you even still reading…did I not lose you in the Labyrinth of my words?? ‘Ware the Minotaur, sojourner!!).tumblr_nz5hbkmuDM1qahpcmo1_500
I WILL NOT BE SILENT, even though so many will…

but I won’t lie either. These last 5 days have been a living hell inside my skull, and it hurts so bad.

More Hills

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Everybody
wants to be king
of a hill
and that hill
just a pile
of dust
hot and red
and dry
or a dungheap
so silent
and stinking
with malice.
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And yet
with more kings
than hills
and more dirt
than heart
and more dung
than wisdom
we just
collect hurt
and more hurt
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from wounds
and from cuts
and from boots
on small faces
from despairing cries
and from silence
and malice

we just build more hills.
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Poem Of Horror

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I wonder in stars
inverse black against
skies of light why
I wasn’t worth
the fight.

empty my skull
with a spoon thru my eyes
scrape the bone clean
and give me the peace
of an empty mind

worthless
no value
no beauty
just me
in my
traumatized
brain

screaming always
and keening
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The Cruelty Of The Ordinary

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I am at an end of some kind
an end of expecting pink
when the sun arrives and departs
an end of hoping someone
somewhere would get it.
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I am at an end of expecting anyone to
actually understand shooting stars
streaking thru the night and
my words piercing pulsing
pricks of light thru dull
dark and choking
indifference…
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or any yearning
to pay attention
to urgent and plaintive
cries.

I who am
healed in words
am at last wounded
by words and endless
accusations and slander
and the opaque screens of untruth

I have been broken
I have been violated
I shall never
be clean again
I don’t think I will
ever be whole again
or fit for any service
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the light thru the window merely
heightens that separation and
the scraggly fingers waiting
to claw my heart to ribbons
and lick the talons clean

in the moments between
sunrise and sunset
in the cruelty
of the ordinary
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I Am Double

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I am double
I am here and somewhere else
I am in caves of coming futures
staring out at fires casting shadows
of the past that flicker, flounder
and then disappear.
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I am winter and I’m summer
I am autumn with some spring
thrown into my yellow gold veins
surging and pulsing with everlife
straining to throw off apples and pears
and some of that fruit

without a proper name.
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I am true blue trueheart covered in shit-words
I am singing never silent song chained by silence.
you can call me whatever you want to call me
it doesn’t change who I am.
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I am double.
I am here and somewhere else.

The Resurrection of Autumn-Trees

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it was autumn and me bound
tight with scratchy ropes and lies
that could not be easy-parted
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your stricken look
of compassion golden-sharp,
like lightening stooping down
you set me free, and started

a fire in that late autumn land,
so cold, so sluggish in the tepid sun
and languishing towards winter
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given up to
given over to
inevitability
and sliding
down

that
gentle
poison
slope
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my arms free,
my legs burning,
those ropes away
did fall from me
and your eyes,
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heaven’s lightening strike
strike my heart in fire
and my skin burning hot,
glowing passion

radiating out
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and the creeping cold
fleeing backward and the sap
running back up from the earth
and into trees thru the branches
and leaves falling up
and then connecting
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and autumn’s
peacock splendour
blooms from
mono-drabness

and all around us
earth sings in our breath
synchronized together
and your hands
on my skin
like irons in
the fire
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and your eyes
glitter brown and soft
and all at once
my sun and moon

as trees wave
and breathe
and summer rises
from the grave and spring
Sings into the air
in playful winds
and carefree winds
and ceaseless winds
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and we come
and we go
without a
trace
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and after,
you…me…us
laying there
and autumn
sighs and bows
and thankful for
another moment
present and it slides
away, gives up its ghost
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and winter comes, quietly
comes to claim her prey
with tender frosty kiss so cold
concealing unrelenting blade
so unforgiving, bloodless,
without pity and me?
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I, so young then,
and now so old
remembering the resurrection
of the autumn trees so glad
as the flakes
of snow float down
like tears of joy
come to an end
and become still
symphony of sorrow
and now I leave
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forever
on the wind
and free

on the carefree wind
and in the cooling dirt.
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Pain-t-pot

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Terse words…Words muddy
and swirling and steaming
like cream in cold-coffee
like death in soft-nectar
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words lumbering lead-footed
fat flat and hard hulking
fear-shadows are lurking
in other death-words
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words rain down like brain bombs
explode in uncertainty
pregnant with confusion
communion of judas-kiss
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they use words like bullets
to shatter my skull
and blast my brain bloody
and turn my head into
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an urn full of red
a paint-pot of death
that they can drink deep of
and spit on their canvases
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in words and in brush strokes
dipped into the paint-pot
that my brain has become
from traumatic words
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the top of my skull
ripped open by shrapnel
and now just a pain-t-pot
now just a pain-t-pot
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Sorrow Is

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sorrow
is the
most sensitive
of all created
things

(aye the
question lingers,
hangs, remains…
who created
sorrow?)
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Sorrow has taught me much
of Holy Ground and tears
and coming times when
people realize that we
know nothing about
life until we know
sorrow and
sanctified
ruddy
dirt.
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Sorrow
is such holy
ground and those
who do not learn to
walk there know nothing
of what living truly means
and that Life’s sacred truths
most precious are drained from
sorrow’s silver cup and learned in sorrow’s
frozen icy grip, so stark, lacey, frosty filigreed
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Sorrow is a
wound that bleeds when
any hand but that of love
touches it and even then
must bleed again,
though not in pain
but finally in
tenderness
and healing
evermore
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A Handful of Memory

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it was a village
no longer existing
it was a laugh
that echoed that village
and hung in the air
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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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useless in the corner
to argue, debate
about fighting or walking
together, together
to some better future…

my hair is a crown
that glows with the past
and shines in the night
as I take my courage
and face what may come.
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a handful of memory
a bucket of love
a torch lit in faith
and standing on hope
my face set like flint

my heart is a mountain
adorned with the night
a beacon, a presence
I swell from the earth
and kiss the soft skies
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ever Spring, ever Autumn

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

…the gate of my heart…

stark and golden and hot
against that steely variegated sky,
all clouds and light run thru God’s Grater
and piled up in slivers and shavings
of glory and stellar glimmers

of more…
The Great Gate

I stand in spring and autumn
my feet in water and my face in fire,
my roots ever fed with freedom
and my branches ever shedding
the ends of growth and fruitful life
blossoming, falling, spilling to earth
in cascades of truth and fevered dreams.
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my angles and lines seem stark to you
and you miss my curves and swaying
limber-love and hurly-heart throbbing
with the promise of harvests coming
and heavy with the presence of harvests here.

walk thru and look…
if you see me you will know
and if you do not see me
step away and scratch your head
with lightening bolts that shimmer
and strike the earth and the sky
and the glittering diamond waves
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and wander,
wander
as you ponder
how I look
the same from
all sides

(to your blind eyes unimaginative)
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or walk in awe
with leaping eyes
and hungry heart
marvelling how vast
is the territory and
how beautiful the land

Beyond the beyond

that you
just entered
into like
a child

with
eyes
opened
wide in
wonder
wriggles
harriet tubman

enters
into this
vast untrammeled life
and running from nothing
to the endless Something
of that great
ever Spring,
ever Autumn.
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Brain Trauma

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Wow…so little known about it, such a huge and impactful issue.

I have brain trauma…and likely have had (very mild) Reactive Attachment Disorder since my inception.  That is not an official diagnosis, for Reactive Attachment Disorder is something very severe…certainly I have Early Trauma.

That makes me something called

“non neurotypical”.
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A neuro-typical person has a brain more like a Four-Square Ball…slap it around and it dohing dohing dohing bouncy bouncy back up to the next player no problem.

A non neuro-typical person has a brain that is like a finely fashioned delicate blown-glass globe. It is scary beautiful, capable of much…except that since most people’s brains resemble said Four-Square Ball, they take the delicate glass globe, call out SERVICE and slap it down to the ground…

…and when it doesn’t just bounce back up?

They get angry and blame the non neuro-typical person.

Whose brain is splattered/shattered on the cement and needs time and space and something…SOMETHING…to reset it, and that thing is never the same and often times never comes and the storm just has to be ridden out…the raging river rapids ridden, bashed from rock to rock and battered until it spits you out at the other side…
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It is awful…because as a non neurotypical I always feel so guilty…and I always feel like no one else receives the reality that I am trapped in. It feels like they think I am copping out and giving an excuse, having a built in alibi and justification…

…when the truth is during those times my brain aches and throbs and hurts and my mind feels like molasses-soaked cotton…and I have to work about a million times harder to just to be in my expected place.

When I was little, I used to walk around the house crying for no apparent reason, and according to the stories when I was asked what was wrong, I would wail “It’s the end of the world”…
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…that is how it feels.

Typical reaction of others is either some form of shaming that I am not “bucking up and coping” and that is accompanied with boasts of how that person bucks up and deals with it, and concluding with castigation to quit feeling sorry for myself and just move on.

just move on. wow. if only.

if only…moving on sounds wonderful.

There is another reaction that follows often as well…someone will get close, someone will feel some twinge of sympathy or compassion and choose to come close, seeing ONLY the outlands of this territory of hellish trauma…and they will say things that lead me to believe they will be present in the nightmare.

Until they get a few leagues into it…and realize this land is like the Marshes of the Dead that abutted Mordor.
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And WHOOSH…they disappear and brush out their tracks fast as they go…and I am accustomed to that and know how to cope with that. Cultivation of hobbies that can be done alone are therapeutic.

The last group though…they are the most onerous and dangerous. They are the ones who will not hear me when I ask them to please stop…please stop pushing me, please stop trying to help me in ways that are not helpful but are actually just all about them and their power-play (that they are totally unaware they are engaging in, as they see themselves as the great educator of the poor benighted and incapable person)…to them, they imagine I will fall to my knees sooo grateful that they deign to give me the off-scourings of their greatness.
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That group is the worst, because I know what happens to me…and I beg them to please stop because they push me too far and I snap inside my mind and all my abilities and all my capacities go into defending me from harm…and I am intellectually capable of abstract thought and I am quick to sense and perceive what others are trying to do and I can out-think them and out-argue them.

I go into defense mode, and I cannot stop. Not “I won’t stop”.

I cannot.
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I will observe every contradiction and throw it in their face. I will sense every inconsistency and challenge them about why they are trying to hold me to some things but not hold themselves to the same standard.

And those people? They leave finally, and usually bruised and hateful towards me because I hurt them…

…and I am the bad person, the unpredictable person, the inconsistent person, the unreliable person.

When in reality, my brain lies shattered on the playground pavement.

And then, the easy peasy low hanging fruit begins to beckon and croon…and the gender issue raises, and the tranny-freak thing sneaks in…their minds, my mind…it doesn’t really matter which by this point.

Sometimes I want to take spoons and go in thru my eyes and scoop my brain cavity clean and start fresh.

That, my friends, is what brain trauma does.  And by the way?  It can be traumatized by just about anything, really…the obvious culprit of war or tragedy…but it can be from bullying, it can be from the way our brain chemistry is, it can be from dysphoria…it can be from childhood events that were done without any bad intent but still resulted in trauma…

…and some brains can skate right thru things that traumatize other brains.Residues 2013_ADF
There is nothing to boast of if you are neurotypical…and there is no shame if you are not.

In the meantime, if you have a loved one who has trauma, be aware that PTSD is a real thing…

…for the traumatized person, from a neurological point of view, it is not just a memory.  The traumatized person experiences the events of the moment, but their brain is present in the midst of the actual trauma!

The brain that is traumatized is functioning in the midst of trauma even though the events in that moment may not actually be traumatizing…but soon do become so due to the brain functioning in trauma.  It adds itself to the pot of trauma, to the witches’ brew of horrors.

So that is the story of brain trauma.  For more information, google it.
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Reactive Attachment Disorder Summary

The Pain And The Poetry

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“If your pain sounds pretty,
it doesn’t seem so bad.
If you use beautiful words
to describe your sadness,
people may line up
around the block to read it.
See it. Hear it. Fall in love with it.
If people don’t know better,
they might think they want it.”

— saintly-sinner

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Pressed Hard On The Edge

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the fragrance of a thousand years
the sound of silent flying souls
my heart pressed hard against the edge
the thick and soft edge breathing hard
while loves sings always like the wren
and stars sing always overhead
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I have places that I live
other places that I dwell
and silence rings in golden throng
words idle cannot do their wrong
and I take up your judgment eyes
and try to ride the dashing waves
until I fly, leave earth and try
to nestle soft and comforted
between wings of the butterfly
pearls beautiful drop from my heart
delicate, riding, perfumed red
or is it white, or golden black
and glowing lustre carmel clean?
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but you…still…
heavy with your ego looks
and thick with all your privilege books
and me?  Just ghosting in your world
a banner on the wind unfurled
my body pressed hard on the edge

The Sighing Wind

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it was in the fog
that the pink came out…and left
on the sighing wind

On Ghomeshi, Memory and Trauma

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I simply have to press this…I am the victim of stories that intimate people tell about me that are lies.

Flat out.  They lie, because of many reasons, and I think all of the reasons are understandable:  my transition, their own cognitive dissonance, it’s easier to scapegoat me than accept that their life is the way it is as a consequence of their choices…it doesn’t matter why they lie.

I still love them, because I cannot do otherwise.  I am incapable of not loving them.  But the consequences of that lie are stunningly strong and toxic.

My only hope is that they come to their senses in a way similar to what happened here in this article.

************************************************************************************

Have you ever had a moment when you suddenly realize that your memory of an event is not actually what happened? A few years ago I was talking to someone about a pretty life-altering event that happened…

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Source: On Ghomeshi, Memory and Trauma

A Winter Field

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there is a field, a winter field
surrounded by the pawns of spring
who jump up swift and quick laughing
but turn away at the first sight
of frigid dull brown slanted light

refracted from that frosty grass
and bifurcated by those blades
as sharp as ice cold edges grey
in stalemate stand off with the sky
the crushing pink-stained falling sky
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inevitable in its swift
descent unto the frigid earth
so stark, so separate from all
the rest of the land, trees, the wind
that dances on the distant peaks

but the field, the winter field
holds itself high and falters not
beneath the fuzzy falling skies
within the breathy blasts of wind
and in full view of vernal sun

that field remains that winter field
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The Place Where All Horizons Meet

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“bring me
the horizon”
you said…

as if horizons
were singular,
just some
pearl, some
place to
go.
tumblr_n2rlthrgkx1qb30dwo1_500you show what
you don’t know
when you asked,
you don’t
know
me.
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“I am horizons” I said
and rose my sun over
my mountains, casting
crimson crowns in
delicate dewdrops,
hanging pearls on
silk-stranded soft edges
soft, all my edges, all my
vast untrammeled lands
met together, met together
on my skin translucent.

(or, is it in?
in my skin,
transparent,

opalescent, white,
unmarked,

untrammeled?)
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translucent skin
trammeled skin
tattooed skin
my skin
(my skins)
unstained and stained
all at once and only
by the shadows of the past
marking me indelible
in shadows playing
hide and seek with shades
tumblr_o4q9jrKTyG1trdezwo1_500(on my hide,
in my hide
so pure and
so unblemished
but only on
the outside)

shades that
lurk and lurch and loom,
arising from some world of
yesterday revolving ever in
my mind, in my
imagination, in
my tears that run
everlasting down my cheeks
in waterfall kisses
of grief…
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and that horizon where past
and present and future
meet in shadows,
in kabuki dancers
dancing ever on my skin
(tattooing)
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and I feel its pressure deep within,
the coming presence of a moment,
a moment sacred, a pregnant moment,

it feels so light,
it feels so heavy,
it sets me free
and paralyzes
with crippling fear
and aching purpose

in me,
the place
where all
horizons meet.

 

The Aggregate

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There are blows in life.  Some of them are soft, lil love taps from beyond and they leave a red mark but you know it is gonna fade.  Others…well, they will leave bruises, and yet those mottled tattooes of violence and hurt are temporary too.

Some of them are so bad that they break parts of us off completely, and we have to heal and go on.

But the things I wanna talk about here are the ones that are so small, so tiny by comparison, and so constant.

I am talking about the aggregate effect of blows that come to people who are unable to heal from the last one by the time the next blow lands.
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And in general, this aggregation is not the same for a cis-het person as it is for a transgender person…dysphoria has a tendency to make the blows extra sticky.  In fact, I would say that the slings and arrows and attacks that we face as transgender people more closely resemble concussion syndrome than anything else:

…….each…..

….blow magnifies…..

…..EXPONENTIALLY….

and gets WORSE and WORSE…
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So you can end up pushed absolutely into the red zone, completely pegged out at your absolute capacity to endure the words and looks and spurnings of the majority of people you meet…and one small word lands and shakes things exponentially yet again…and poof…….

you are falling, having been pushed too far and you are over the edge.
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And that is when the desperation sets in…when you literally do not feel like going on anymore…when it doesn’t matter if you go on because no matter what there are always gonna be the ones poised to pounce and hurt…ready to throw your past into your face…ready to out you for their own purposes and without your permission.  And then they reason that “Hey, you are an out trans-woman so what is the big deal?”  Never recognizing that they have robbed you of your voice and your words to tell your own story in your own way.

I will confess that I choke on words when I reach out to someone in desperation, needing to talk with someone who would listen and understand and accept…and then hear their “counsel” back is “Charissa you shouldn’t talk about it so much.”

So…hold it in and die in the aggregated crush of burdens…or talk about it and be rebuked.

In times like these?  It is tough to see any good reason to keep ontumblr_nylx6zqH7U1usjcy3o1_1280

always on the outside

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the dishwasher blasted on, heat and water and sound…white noise and clean water jetting against the dishes until their bones were bleached, picked clean and dry.

in the kitchen, the sound of women laughing, easy-talking and including one another wafted thru the air, and reached back back back to me there, in the dish room…and outside.

outside
always outside

there was one who used to talk to me a lot…but got too naked a view of the broken tumblage within me, the shards and jagged edges of my soul and the way that my emotions (amplified by brain trauma) are at times a runaway train with no options but the wall at the end and the carnage of the full speed collision…and so she pulled back…

way back so that she does not even greet me by name anymore.  just the casual nice-nice.

i brought it on myself, i guess.  i don’t have the cotillion dress manners and savoir faire…i am all “big-girl” hips and belly and shoulders and thighs and voice torn by testosterone and ruined…

they will never really know how outside i am, and how could they?  they have no clue there is a side known as out cus they are in.  always inside.

but i listened, savored, much like a peasant would look on from afar at revelries in the distant high castle, and felt good that there was happiness and joy in the world.

but i missed my quiet and solitary kitchbah turned loud and crowded kitchen…

and then i heard Mama whisper to me…it is the lowest place…the place of least honor…it is the loneliest place that She haunts, and it is there She takes up residence.

and so i embrace it, and hang on.

i give thanks that i am here…and can hear…and can bask in the glow of the bright suns around me.FB_IMG_1447349130732

 

That Never-forgetful Wind

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some say the wind forgets what it touches,
forgets what it tastes, what it pushes
but I say the wind in the branches and rushes
and rippling the water with fingers and tongue
never ever forgets anything.

in the air that it pushes are draughts and elixirs
the mineral walls that it scratches and itches
are under its fingernails rakey, ah trickster
wind tasting and touching and saving and twitching
and never forgetting a thing.

and I find in me a wind, echoing that one
that tosses the stars around like they are dust
and my wind finds everyplace, my every cranny done
sparkly or plain or shallow, it simply must
always remember whatever it knows.

some say the wind forgets
but I know different.
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Such A Beautiful Disruptive Moment

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the dam finally broke, and
I just kept smiling, smiling,
smiling like Aphrodite.
and why wouldn’t I?

tornados run across this fruited plain
fires race around these redwood trunks
each one natural, powerful, hungry,
and THOSE things, well…
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I think I would run
I know I would

but a dam? well, pshaw!
a man made that, thinking
to choke out a river?  HAH!
stupid dolt, we just kept pushing

Aphrodite and I.
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I kept smiling because She
gives me Her Nod, Her
quick chin lift and dancing
bright flashing eyes that tell me

every hour is Holy
every sensual second
is Sacred in its quick
butterfly rise and its

sad sinking sunset.
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and that pile of patriarchy
eminent in threat and rattley-death
hard and straight and deaf and dumb
(fee fie foe fum!!)

jammed down Her fertile river-craw,
those dirty fingers down the throat of love
that choking violating deep and rough and raw
in turbine hums exploding in the cries of mourning doves
crosses
well it’s blown now…and on the run
in painful splintery disjointed strides
streaked with dirty water and rust
and ruined careful engineered remains.

and Aphrodite, that river, and me
lick at the bones with our eyes
and our waters and our ululating
triumphal throat-splitting ear-spitting

SCREAMS OF RELEASE!
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We suck, we clean, we set free and tear
the stench of man right out of marrow
and sow Sacred Communion, Holy Power
of Body and Blood anew across the waters,

alive again, alive
those waters once again
alive
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So…keep smiling and just yank
that unruly thread until it comes unfurled
and falls apart, all fall down
in one beautiful disruptive moment

such a beautiful disruptive moment.
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Me Moon

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when you speak of me
you speak of weeds and brambles
thorns, nettles and stoney ground.

when you think of me
it’s craters and dark
and bare landscape stark
and lacking curves.
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I am gardens, moon, roses, sea.
I am me, in bowers and blooms
and labyrinth beds of unusual growth.
I am small trees and tall firs 
fragrance stirs, honey bees

I am Grace in the echo
of the moon’s deep wells
I am tides reaching and running
yearning and aching

I am reflected light
soft yet bright
sometimes yes often no
but always…always…
always aglow
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Please…think of what you know.

the endless ache of bones
the songs sung in your marrow
the shadow in your eyes
the light that holds your heart

think of who you know

vertigo
when gravity gives up
finally worn out
in my grave insistent
persistence at breathing.
tumblr_o46w3ckPYT1s93t2co1_540And why…yes, this is important
the why of me
dancing on desolation
rhyming in respiration
overthrowing tables of treason

and though it is dark,
it is not night, My Love,
no.
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it is the season of silence
that speaks, that sings
sings in me garden
sings in me moon
sings in me roses
sings in me sea
sings in me
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Live Life Laff Love Lift

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I’m awake now, seeing what I see.
I am scared, scarred, and yet unflinching free
you have lined me, scored me,
blew smoke in my face
but though I blink, I do not shirk
my ever choice for grace
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but I am becoming…dangerous, un-dis-eased
at home in my skin
and learning how to harbor deep
my treasure-heart within
my chest, within my me
within this cage of bone and flesh
within my life decree where grace
and Grace and I do mesh
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live live live live live
Life Life Life Life Life
laugh laugh laugh laugh
Love Love Love Love Love
lift lift lift lift lift

A Seascape Moment

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the careless sowing of seaweed
in the currents, in the tides
in and out and out and in and in

the fog clinging melancholy
to its ever love green heart
hills, bristly beneath its touch

the singing needles verdant
joying in the glimmering sun
glancing off the bright dancing waters

the artful accidental masterpiece
of a world random in Intentioned Love
and the soft mercy of knowing eyes

and you, me, a part of everything
apart from everything
and everything in its place
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In The Midst of Ashes

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I would make it again…knowing full well what lay ahead

Sturm Und Dreck

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Do you see it there?
In the sky?

Look up, and let
your heart free fly

That dull boat floating
right at your feet

Is just the mere reflection
of that airy Ship of State

And if you

just

let

go

you can board her decks
and sail away, away, forever
free from sturm und dreck
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The Fog, The Earth

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i think fog unwraps itself
to show what lives beneath
takes off its clothing graceful slow
removes its wispy sheath…

and naked the earth stretches out
languorous and sure
and becomes whole as I look on
my hurt heart’s ever-cure

Crushed In Switzerland

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that illusion is breaking up
like ice squeezed tight and crushed
in the fists of inevitability
and spring

there is no such thing as neutral
in a world pulled tight, pulled taut
between that endless winter
cold and bleak
and ravenous in black
consuming every weak
meek heart and undefended

and the coming
time of harvest
when all things
are marked
paid in full
and the ever-day
dawns without the sun
and sings unto the moon

“olly olly oxen free!!”

But you, like the ice
must be broken up
must choose to become
either water, or air
or forever frozen
in evil’s horrid grip

You must become
crushed in Switzerland
and thus set free forever

Your Silence As Well

Your Silence As Well

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Miss You

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I miss you…I miss you so, in tears
I miss you with nerves frayed
nerves ‘fraid
and nerves numb
but never quiet
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I miss you in rainbows and winds
and the stir of the leaves
amidst the plum blossoms
and wild cherry petals
streaming down
like the tears I cry
in my longing for your
presence.
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Abandonment

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This poem is one year old…I wrote it last year trying to deal with my worst enemy in this world.

I wanted to repost it, because frankly right now there is a great deal of uncertainty in my life…forces vie and swirl around me. People are easily inconsistent and squirt out in weak places…some vie for power, and some seek to judge from outside observation and have no clue about inside motivations…to give up power in deference to one who seeks it, only to have another assume that I am shirking my duties hurts me immensely.

I think most of those feelings are exacerbated by my old enemy:

Abandonment

You, long my nemesis and hater of my soul. You’ve chilled my days and frozen all my long night’s coal in hours of stark terror and silent desperate screams on razor blades I’ve la…

Source: Abandonment

Marking Time

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i’ve been marking time since day one
day by day by day by day by day
and for each spin around the sun
i carve a line within

i haven’t figured it all out,
not quite, not yet, not all
whether those lines mark the way
out of these bars or just pass the days

but now they are my act of faith,
my memorials stark and blue
and some day i’ll slip between them
or simply pass thru to you

i am marking time, my countdown to you

Like Blossoms

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I fall in love with
you, like cherry blossoms fall
utterly to earth
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in the wind my kiss
wanders, floats, and my desire
aches to find its home
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in your arms always
if not, I will fade away
hoping in the dark

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“I don’t just want to take your breath away.
I want to rip it from your mouth and keep it locked away between my teeth.
You can only have it back if you kiss me again.”
— Meggie Royer, Literary Sexts

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In The Heart Of My Heart

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there is a small living fluttery thing,
inside me, inside my heart.
in the heart of my heart it dwells turbulently
colored yellow and red and green tufted wings
all hidden in browns and lonesome strange things.

it pummels against the bars of its cage
inside me, inside my heart.
in the heart of my heart it aches and it bleeds
from its rushes and thrashings at bars that won’t break
all the loneliest ache of my soul.
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if i could discover a lost sacred knife
and cut my way into my heart
in the heart of my heart i would slice, i would gash
a bloody doorway rent with one razor slash
so that bird could take wing at long last.

crystal slim blade and dark russet wings
inside me, inside my heart.
in the bosom of my heart twine two holy things
the one who beats at me, the one that cuts free
in the heart of my heart of my heart.
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Insomnia

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i sit at the window
in my rosy chair
wrapped inside my blankets
missing cosy sleep

i stare into darkness
and try to lift the night
with an act of my sheer will
I try to light the sun

but the dark is heavy
it resists my grasp
claims that it has kismet
over my soft heart

everyday the sun comes up
and the dark recedes
but my captive heart’s still torn
and the wound still bleeds
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Between Shadow and Reality

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Your cannon eyes thunder without a sound
and the incoming scintillating round
whistles to me, till I look just in time
to get knocked backwards
into Kingdom come

you know, that tenuous tenebrous
gold-lined twilight of the soul.
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It’s not nearly so glamorous
(or as agonizing) as that place
St John got so cross about.

This is the place that sits
on the dusty outskirts
of that land he called
the Dark Night of the Soul.
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The wind blows across the mouth
of those cannon eyes and I swear
that in the mindless cheeping
of the springtime frogs I can hear
John Wayne out-shouting
John of the cross, declaring

“there’s a new sheriff in town, pilgrim!”
© Collection Feu Follet
The laws and logic of this place
hang in that suspension of being,
where soul and body swim
and are different and liquid.

Sometimes you eat the temporal
and sometimes the temporal eats you
while eternity is always hard to bear.
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Shell-shocked and alone, I remind myself
that the logic of God is so different
to the logic of humanity.

Yet I still chase after shadows
a haunting enticement of so much
substance without being and
the substance of myself.

where reality lies
and where shadows seduce.
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In The Quiet Rain

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here
here quiet
here quiet in the rain
in the dancing rain

the water
washes clean
the water washes all things
clean in the rain

and so
and so my clothes
and so my clothes no longer fit
at all in the shrinking rain

so I
will clothe myself
in veils and showers
of rain fresher than
the brand new spring

and older than my skin
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