the cold winter snows
of death and separation
fall over the earth
each year, fall over
us all someday.
but look close,
see the nails
in the boards
pried back hard
and away for good
our loved ones
wait on the other
side, where the
grass is truly greener
and He has gone thru
first and waits too
busy building
preparing
a House
a Table
a Feast of Friends
forever
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
I see you there, still
underneath your words
underneath your pain
underneath your masks
deep beneath the strain
of putting every thing that hurts
all that grew from choices made
all that sprung from things not done
all that you have fearful run
from and still found it there within
though the darkness haunt you long
I will hover in the song
that I have sung your whole life long
and love the you I see there, still
I see you still…underneath
I laugh like summer breezes light and airy
at those cloudy fulminators who, like Old Faithful
blow off sulfurous steam every 75 minutes, or every 75 years,
even every 75 decades (yeah, this tired rant is that old)
and froth and belch all bothered about how Faith
is merely an emotional crutch…(can I LOL in a poem?)
They are clouds who promise rain and then
just blow right on by bone dry, unable to accept
life’s difficulties, they, not I, are needing an escape
to another world, an other-world…it almost breaks my heart
in its sad naivety, foolishly blind and blinking hope in nothing.
Almost.
They call me blind, my faith blind? When I am someone marked
by an inability to accept (no, an unwillingness to accept)
the cruelties of this world as status quo…
I have taken my raw courage in hand to declare this life marred
is not the way it is supposed to be! We must live alert, aware we were
created for something so much more, so glad and so beyond!
It is the ones who call nothing something, who insist that life
without God is “freeing” and imbibe the fantasy that life
is of no significance and death is even less, who are blind and will
not see…and so they seek to dwell…where…reassured? With no one
there to hear, to answer, to see injustice done and judge accordingly?
(“Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”)
we attempt to dress such naked poor philosophy
in beautiful robes, but in the end we always find
it was all an act upon a barren storefront-stage.
Well, this Christian(neé) does not make her pilgrimage to new abundant life
by way of ambulance, sounding sirens on its merry way to some lost fantasy!
Quite the contrary! Golden glimpses of new life can be seen even now…
glorious gifts worth searching for as if for treasure prized and buried
or silver wink of coins lost in a house long needing a great sweeping…
We can live as people gloriously transformed by the Humility of Christ
Who, Grizzled Bison on the banks of those stinky threatening geysers,
rolls in those flats sulphurous, then gallops off unstoppable
Across the rolling plains of time, across the Rolling plains of time,
across the rolling Plains of time, across the rolling plains of Time.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
It’ll be
the last thing
you call me
cus I will
just blink
and you will
just disappear
They were laying there on the ground
of my heart, bloody and gore-flecked
and dully glowing with the sheen of life
blood and the thrill of cutting to ribbons
the tenderest places of my heart.
I wrapped them in the ribbons of heart
you left intact, attached at one end
by the tenuous tendrils of flesh that
you either missed, overlooked, or flat out
just didn’t care enough to slash.
I hung those wrapped razors
those razors bloody with me and fading
up on the wall where your picture
used to be, and I straightened them
so they hung just so, and straight…
my mementos remaining of you
and my hopes for a future with you
dripping onto the floor
and then drying out and becoming
a static reminder of a moment
in a dynamic river of our lives.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
I am not a “sometimes” girl
a sometimes thrill or sometimes time.
I am not occasionally
or when you feel like coming round.
I’m not available just now and then
if that’s what you want, well I just grin
and fake it like it’s all the time
but I am gone around the bend.
I am not a kitchen drawer
full of batteries and more
to be wrenched open in your need
and taken from as seed to feed
an image of a self or time
when fullness is a masquerade
for decorating a fat heart
I’m a whole, not just a part.
I guess that means I run the risk
of standing lonely in the dusk
and looking on from the outside
but that’s okay…I turn and ride
knowing I am me and always
all the time an always girl
Me and my Cat-Hair go where we want!
Well, my Cat-hair does, anyway.
I just trail frantically, pulled right along
as it wanders and pries and looks into burrows
and lays in the sun and just licks its soft paws
with no care in the world but those mice!
Sometimes it looks really cool, and just perfect!
Purring there, cooing and wanting the touch
of a hand that will smooth its sleek soft furry pelt
and some fingers so friendly with their gentle skritch
skritch skritch and then a flat palm to do obeisance.
But then there are times when my Cat-hair just hisses!
Its eyes glowing green and just brimming with daggers
and it jumps akimbo and arches its back
and it dares me, just dares me to try to address it
with anything less than a rake and a hoe
and better get ready to wrestle a she-devil
scratches for skritches and clawings for pettings!!
My Cat-hair and me are sometimes called names
and sometimes called other and sometimes called mask
and sometimes called liar and sometimes called nothing
and that’s when my Cat-hair sits silent, tail lashing
and eyes focused into the void that is lurking
inside the accusers who say they hate cats
when what they really mean is that they just hate me…
well, Cat-hair is there, and I cannot do anything
to make it dog-hair or human or cow-hair
or sheep-hair or anything else that would walk
off the Ark on that day when the floodwaters drained
and the animals rambled in freedom again.
so I guess I will just go with Cat-hair, just sitting there
being itself, just my Cat-hair and me.
the way Mama fills the void with light
the way Mama inhabits the space in my friend
the way my friend inhabits the holes in me
the way of Love
These musings, these poems…
can I even call them that? Poems?
Do they speak in pregnant words that
once swallowed go into labor
and convulse and contract
until they have birthed a living thing
within you
like a flame
that won’t go out no matter
how the winds blow…
like a wolf, sleek and proud
until it is lassoed by some slaver
and thrown in a cage and starved
and forced to feed on its own howls
instead, and grows ever skinnier,
ever more vital and
there?
But here is another day,
and my head full
of thoughts and fears
and feints and faints
and my heart singular
and immersed in Them,
Their Presence
with me
(this is what is called “faith”, actually
Their Presence everywhere…
faith is not some blind belief
like “it’s all good” or
“everything happens for a reason”
or “things teach you things until you learn things”)
Yeah…They are here
and they are here too,
those thoughts
and those feelings
and more…
these questions
about meaning
and value
and purpose
and significance.
When
I light a
bonfire of
branches and twigs too,
and I see the eager orange
hot tongues released from within
and licking those limbs and glowing
with their pleasure so hot and inviting,
I can hear the pop and crackle
of the disappearing of solidity,
the giving up of structure
in exchange for release
until all that is left
is ashes
and each branch, each twig
is indistinguishable and one at
last in its lost uniqueness.
I hear the pop and crackle all around me
and I feel the heat and tug
of straining release and the
chill of ghostly whispers
that nothing matters,
and I wonder
why I
write,
why I
sing these
notes of Grace?
Swallow, wipe my tears
bind up my bleeding broken heart
and rise to the day
reminding myself
unless a grain of wheat
fall into the ground
and die
it remains
alone
but if it dies
it produces much grain
it brings forth much fruit
I walk the gloaming path,
rain-drips fragrant whispering
to leaves, to rocks and kissing
moss with secret snikkle-nips
of spring flower nectar.
the night rises out
of dusky shadows
grown bold as the sun
shrinks first behind her
cloudy veil and then
sheltered behind hills
she drops her gown
to stand unclothed
hidden and revealed
solid and present (like me)
in the growing dark
and i think about you there
in boulevards of noise and neon
surrounded by staggering solitude,
aloneness in the conflaxity and klaxxon
streets of phony fire.
the ferns bend,
wave in winds
and breathe in
my loneliness
as I pass by,
sort of a
photosynthesis
of the heart, of soul,
of sorrow rebreathed
and transformed
into something
less than
and clean.
what was today?
what are these
days strange and
alien to me,
totally same and
labeled other?
totally different
and called
a mask?
but the path,
fresh and baptised
in the cleansing
of the sky
(become the river)
(become my tears)
(become my steps)
the path beckons
and mirth
tamped, banked
whispers from
under leaves
and rain
and wind
“follow, and be amazed.”
so I walk
in the rain,
in the growing
dark of fading day
and happy night
stars there
behind clouds
waiting to walk
the runways of
my hurty broken heart
gracing each jagged edge
with the light
behind the Rose
behind the sun.
i cry gentle
and I walk on
to the next rising.
Why is someone who is considered an adult, or mature…
…now called “grown-ass”?
I am genuinely flummoxed by this, and absolutely have no idea what that slang even means…
…grown ass???
Are you serious? What does it mean?
Oh, what it signifies is clear…a lot of language now days is mere emoting and signifying, and I decry that, it grieves me.
But I just heard someone who should know better refer to themselves as “grown-ass”.
*the effort to conceal derisive laughter was significant*
could figure out this riddle
could dissolve this mystery
of your love for me
not his slouchy raincoats
not his glass eye glinting
not his nasty cigar waving
(that wet wad wandering
don’t they all??)
there’s joy in them there hills
and gold in that there heart
that hides from every searcher
except for me
it’s there so certain
so obviously
and no one else
can find it
not even Columbo
i am burning
the insides, today…
for you i am
burning my cleansings
the insides of my veins
the insides of my organs
the hidden, the deepest,
the most secret
places i burn for you,
for your face
you are core inside core
inside me and the day
i chose to be
tattooed inside
by you inside
with you
was the day
my life was ever
set on high
and rendered ever
always
you see
you remember,
rags of past
times torn asunder
from their loom
where they were
so careful woven
to lay precious
ones under
well i have
made a fire of me
my insides (you)
and see the smoke,
how it cleanses
your self-recriminations
from your lungs
and replaces
them with us
my insides
which are you
pulsing thru me
coursing thru me
like wild horses
in spain
(see their flying manes)
under that rainy thunder sky
while torrents plunge
pelt pungent
onto the plains
so dry
and the smell
of hot rock
so dry
of heated flint
so dry
and flying dust
so dry
struck from sky
by fierce waters fallen
from on high
in our house
in us
we are made
clean in our love
forever.
the best decision
i ever made was you
in all your icy-fire ways
fiery-ice inside and me
ever entranced and held
ever committed to hold
both nurtured
i’d do it over again,
all again
longer than karma
(see her?
cruel imitation
with her puny wheel)
I am sleeping easier these days
though haunted still by each day’s fading light
and dread foreboding in the dead of night
that clutched my bones and left me in a daze,
I’m detoxing from terror’s ghosty ways.
The fear of sleep walks hand in glove with death.
The fear of not being awake is like
that cloying fear, the fear of not-being…
and who can really ever fathom that!
Because to not-be is to not know breath
or fragrance of red roses on the wind
or deep contented sighs at journeys end
or hearts melded forever with a friend.
I used to lie awake at night,
too scared to go to sleep
for sleep was so indifferent,
and yet so sinister, so threatening
cus sleep seemed to be no different than death,
you know? You’re there, awake, aware
and then you’re gone…not there…
Not moving, not talking,
not thinking.
Not aware.
Not aware
(but there were nightmares in the air
and battles with the most horrific enemy
the world has ever known
as I lay there in my bed….
so still and so unable to move
while trying to fight death
and trying to wake up at last
for good)
Sleep is that disquieting reminder
of that which we try to deny each day.
For how much of our lives and livelihoods
aim at outrunning death’s finality?
We stock pile emails, push for more
make productivity our shield
against the wrinkles, against time itself,
against the aging
against dying
But now I know that sleep is the reminder
that we all need to remember our beauty
and revere life in its brief brevity…
Sleep can wake us up to what comes after
we fall fast into its steadfast grasp
and death uncoils and slithers like an asp
to sting us with its fearsome fang and clasp
us to its chilling breast and putrid rasp
of its reedy voice doing its duty…
and there, buried in slumber’s cotton arms
we wake forever more to heaven’s charms
and smell the fragrance precious in the air
of dreams more real than this harsh life’s cold cares
of riches more true than the wealth of worlds
and these magnificent words at death hurled:
“I Am the Resurrection and the Life
and all who trust in Me, believe in Me
shall live, though that bell toll for thee”
Someday I’ll sleep for my very last time
I’ll drift into the dark and dread unknowing
and be wrapped in the horror of not knowing
but from this slumber I will finally stir
and death will finally be forced to concur
that I am dancing, finally awake
and yes, the Good Lord came, my soul to take…
See…I am sleeping easier these days
Yes, I am sleeping easier these days.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Those
broken shards,
*scream*
those brittle,
bright blasted shards
jagged and hungry and
so shockingly absent.
They yawn with full belly
and ravenous soul for more
death, more hurt, more
*unlife*
but I have them
in my sights, now.
I shall throw me down
on my sister’s wounds
I shall bleed my heart dry
with balm from Gilead and
I shall cry out
in constant consolation
from her inward parts
while our
Strong Soldier Sisters Stand
round about us outside and ringed
in winged-woman-might
and tender hearts
so knit,
so tight.
And in
your death place
I find
life transcendent
And in
my own
your laugh rings
so resplendent
we will survive
our screams,
our tears,
our grief
and rest together
in Mama’s Sweet Relief.
“dark is the forest and full of grace”
I read this line and it made me pause
as I recalled spanish moss lace
concealing all the oak tree’s flaws
and how the path did twist and flit
around the thickets dark and deep
to clearings where light does acquit
the night as my soul’s love will keep
you, in the brambles, in the brush
and lost in deepest forest glen
and blind to dusky quiet hush
or if not lost, well……wandering, then.
Full of grace…oh grace so sweet
and falling soft as snow on leaf
to wash and bless your tired feet
and lead you home healed of all grief,
this is the cry of my soft heart
cut from the velvet cloth of night
and covering every broken part
with grace like stars dancing so bright.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Hush, Angel…
what? Oh, that…
yes, you are my angel
and always with that stardust
brushed on your heart’s eyelids
like Heaven’s mascara decorative and blessed.
I know you
built the walls
(you used my flesh
and blood as brick and
board and stone and mortar)
and your hands are covered in the stain and effort.
Never mind,
do not try to tear
it down, or dismantle
what you did not see you built.
I HAVE A PLAN! See, Ima grow
up and down and in my Lady’s Chambers
and cling
to divisive bricks
and cursing stones
and hangman boards
and bloody bones, in beauty
and covering all with fragrance
the fragrance of forgiveness
and love forevermore.
I will never not believe,
my dearest one, who, sitting there
in lashings out and shifting blames
and broken memory
and cursed names…
you hate me for most everything
and hate the things I hold most dear,
the only Things that kept me here,
for that you hate the most, I fear
for I did by Them to Life cling
and midst death’s horrors tune and sing.
There is nothing I can say
I have no avenue or road
though if I could I would,
and time thus slowed
to return to each and every time
to lay me down and pray the Lord
my soul to take in payment there
to give you wholeness now, my dear.
but to not believe? Never…
it’s not that I would not give you
the gift you think you need, I would
but I cannot, because They can
in “my life”, this dead woeful run.
No matter what is said or sung,
no matter every fist that shakes
or heated voice above the fray
I always wait for coming day
to shatter this long “marish night”
oh this is me, Childe of the Light
and I ever will believe
that Jesus will my pain relieve
and heal the wrongness of my hands
and gather all the scattered sands
and run them back into the glass
and help you regain memories
of glad joy, life, of you-and-me’s…
I will never not believe
I will ever just believe
while ravens pull my innards out
may this restore something in you
if there is anything called grace
may it give you back your face
and everything that got ripped off
restoring everything to you…
mostly I wish you had your history true
and shared together with us but
I will never not believe.
Never
Give me Ayin Tovah!
Please oh LORD!
I need that “good eye bright”
to see clearly in that glad light
the world and all that lives therein
more clearly than my dull blind sin!
I choose that which is most dear,
that which is higher than the rest,
that which is pregnant with the best of best,
OH! Give me river sight like waters
that rive out canyons deep and great
and beautiful in what has quick
been seen and then removed!
yeah, I admit it’s true, that siege
of heart and soul by warring sides
with all opinion to the south
and every thought discordant lurking
dead north in sly quick ambush!
But it’s okay, I’ll use this pain
to myself remind to keep my eyes
wide open, kind and wider still
than the mouth of Jonah’s whale
and my heart here open wider in this gale.
This is the key to our city on the dungheap
our city of ruins and all about is strewn
our cut off-ness from rich gold transcendence!
Because there is always persistence
of good, of beauty, and truth shines bright
and its pure light is all around us!
All I have to do is rest my naked eyes
on the most mundane things and not
blindly ignore that jarring exhibition
of our propensity for estrangement!
If I can manage to keep my eyes stripped
of fear and fig leaves, then I can manage
the gentle gifts and unveiled grace implied
in every true glimpse of beauty and wisdom!
“All human nature vigorously resists
grace because grace changes us
and the change is painful,”
wrote Flannery O’Connor, lost
in one of those times when God woos
slowly with beauty, grace, and grandeur, woes
like seeing evulsive rivers woe and woo
the earth, moving in a manner
that is missed so easily by busy lives
or critical lives so readily distracted
in a focused pointing elsewhere
(or any other where, for that matter).
In those mad times we are the mere
commuters between here and there
in Metro stations oblivious
to the works of Art before us, and
our estranged stony faces
miss the manifold displays
of a many-splendored God’s great graces
in such singular eternal entirety!
But other times, alas
it is we who find ourselves
moved nearly to blindness,
as we labor to take in
the glory of this God
in every startling moment,
like Moses or Isaiah lost
in deserts or in visions…
…Give me Ayin Tovah!
Please oh LORD!
I need that “good eye bright”
to see clearly in that glad light
the world and all that lives therein
more clearly than my dull blind sin!
this old stone house,
so grey and brown,
rough in texture,
tough in time,
shingled by
moments.
I finally got
the electricity on inside,
I finally see
from room to room
and everything
between,
and just when I found
the windows and
the verdant greens beyond and
the aqua blue beneath
it all went orange and then
began to change to red.
All red, all around
and blue beneath my feet.
The doors are locked (for now)
and windows blocked
and I am trapped inside
the stone and brown
beneath the shingles scratchy
and surrounded by the red
that fades to brown
and then to nothing
But it flows,
that blue stream
alive and cool and sweet
and whispers to me
of a place where all is true
a place where all is blue
blue beneath my feet
I Cannot Do This Alone
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you;
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me….
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before men.
Lord whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised.
Amen
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
here…coffee and cats, warm and sweet
and the window thin and clear
between me and out there
clouds close and quiet
and laying soft, snuggling over rainy earth
and you, thoughts of your life
snuggling in the base of my throat
sweet and thick, hurty-hearty present
and I morosely serene…staring
out the window at this grey new
spring morning.
thinking of beach bright you,
spring grey me
Kánte Dikaiosýni̱s. Agápi̱ Éleos. Perpatí̱ste Tapeiná.
Charissa
it has long been rumored
there was a night, that night
when Juliek, on brink of death
played Beethoven so hauntingly
in the dark for dying men, starved,
doomed to meet dark doom so soon
but regaled in that lurking dark
with beauty’s fire unquenchable…
I heard he played his violin
as if his very life was song
and offered as sacred lament
for each life draining there,
for each life straining there
on every holy note eternal,
every sacred note, sublime…
I heard the guards were sullen
and secretly afraid,
I heard they occupied that purgatory place
between beauty and brokenness
untouched by either one
and thus forever damned
until time finally ends…
But some of them were haunted
then, always ever after
by beauty’s power to stop them
from ever being blind again
to human hearts and faces
to human agony,
to God’s beauty unstoppable
and to the aching horror of
the absence of plain beauty…
That common ache within us?
that longing inexplicable,
seemingly accidental
seemingly mere abstraction
but pregnant hot inside us
for such great transformation
that we can rest assured forever
that beauty is not accidental
beauty is not random,
but Divinely Transcendent
Transcendent and Eternal
Oh Beauty, Haunting Beauty.
and now, here in
these modern spaces
defined by “beholder’s eye”
and beauty tenuous and lost
somewhere in between
there and nowhere
we only feel the loss
of that ancient place,
that ancient ideal
equally abstract
but oh so much more real!
The place of Beauty
in a broken, breaking world,
how to recognize it
rather than define it,
those moments that stop us
dead in our fatal tracks.
Do you know beauty
is conducive to stillness?
It isn’t that which excites
or makes us want to replicate it.
No, it simply makes us exist,
makes us be, as though this being
is our deep quest and meaning
to exist for just this moment
and always just this moment
in longing, in fulfilment
in full participation
together with the aching
the longing for another taste
the needing just another glimpse…
another glimpse
of haunted, haunting
Beauty.
much deeper than what’s pleasant
far starker than the pretty,
the common ache of beauty!
the common wound of beauty!
It’s beauty that transforms us,
it’s beauty so divine, like God.
For God’s beauty is such a beauty
able to embrace life as well as coming death,
a beauty both heart-breakingly
entwined with our sad brokenness
and offering us something more
transforming, more ne’er broken.
My precious dear, draw close
and listen with your heart:
wounds are meant to heal us,
broken parts of life are not okay, no
wholeness is our stubborn longing
and a most profound brave calling.
We were made for wholeness, dear
and beauty with us, in us near
Oh Beauty, Precious Beauty.
You still look cold.
You should probably
come closer
to the fire before
it burns out.
I know you don’t remember,
no, you can’t remember,
can you?
But you love this
Never Ending Irish Rain
pouring down so green
and soft all cloaked around us
no matter where we are
in all of the whole earth
or time from the beginning blue…
you have jamais vu, my darling:
not remembering something
you always see each day, but
you forget as soon as
it is out of sight,
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
your eyes glow with delight
your heart goes green with grace
and all time is this moment
on your estrangéd face so wet
til you forget again
this sweet and spicy curtain
this velvet mist refreshing
…this cry of your true Celtic Heart…
Never Ending Irish Rain…
your Never Ending Irish Rain
Our Friendship Sea (for my ddh)
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
they’re visible, don’t worry, it’s now clear.
you’ve made them known to us, you’ve brought them near.
you’ve parted the black night to show their flurry
you’ve pierced the darkness with them, they are here
in front of me, swinging in violent sphere
and they connected judgement with rank fear.
those hard bones writhe, they crawl beneath your skin,
those bones now brittle with the pain within
and become sharp-edged, cutting thru the din
with angles, planes, indictments of old sin
imagined, perceived lurking deep within
and cloaked beneath your tattooed skin so thin…
and seeing those determined self wounds glare,
those prison house tattoos inflicted…where?
haha! where not is more the likely question!
those long years harboring the things you think
and living with that historical stink
to birth your athenaeum of hot ink.
I see them hanging, disconnected fists
I see the ritual mutilating notes
written on you, canvas once so soft
and now a record of your fists aloft
and shaking clenched, like Charon’s fated boats
attempting to defeat the smothering mists…
I beg you…let your hands let go of you
and let the ink run backwards up your arms
and let forgiveness work her healing charms
and let your face be wet with grace’s dew
whatever…regardless, I love you
…I want to invite you to look back thru the months to dip into prior posts. There is a plethora of plenty there! Poetry, posts about a wide range of the issues faced in life that are poignantly illustrated by gender orientation, theological musings and spiritual experiences recounted.
You can discover who “Constance” is…and you are invited to join her if you wish.
You can definitely see growth and development in me, as I live and breathe in transition from a not-out but self-aware very dysphoric transgender woman who is perceived as a white male of power, position, and privilege to a more congruent and out transgender woman who is now regularly othered, policed, and yes occasionally even perceived as who I actually am and received in joy.
You will see the journey of nearly every transgender person who endures the loss of so many things, so many people, in the desperate quest to gain themselves. You will witness how this quest is defined by the defenders of the paradigm as selfish and self-centered…when it is far more about finding a fort of safety from suicidal ideation and death.
But above all…hopefully…you will find a person who is making the transition that every single human being must find a way to make: that transition from death to life…from works to grace…from self-centered ego-oriented pursuits to other-oriented sacrificial service.
And maybe, just maybe? That life motto of mine can at the end of it all be found true:
Yielded Vessel Yielding Blessing
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Much Love,
Charissa Grace
PS: The best way to investigate the archives of Grace Notes is to use the calendar at the bottom of the blog page…or utilize the search function in the right hand margin.
Tonite the rain
seeps from the sky
in windy swells
and shower sighs,
oozing sideways
thru the grey
and slowly
watering this day
and watering me,
here, watching.
you, sitting there,
on that strange bus
going…where?
Oh why’d you ride
that carriage dark,
Ah, why’d you treat
it like a lark
to ride that sterile
Mystery Train
of darkling Truth,
forgetting lessons
learned in youth…
and me, stood there,
near, watching?
Your brother ran
that show, so full
of twisted fairy
tales for fools
who should know better,
don’t know worse
so they make sow’s ears
from silk purse,
intricate, smoke,
his modern show
of life and leisure,
ending bound up
in truth-mal-seizure
and me, in agony,
there,
watching.
But then you turned,
you saw me there
and your face crumpled
as you stared,
and understanding
bum-rushed you
and carried you
from Timbuktu
into the truth
of you and me
and what our hearts
had knit together,
free and flesh
of flesh, and bone
of bone, you saw
me, stood,
there crying.
and then your face
turned inside out
and I saw your heart
all heliotrope
and bloodstone it
did drain back towards
the skies and then
it pushed out of
your eyes, and violet
tears ran down
your cheeks as your soul
broke in both
our grief while I was
there,
there, waiting.
And you ran fast
towards the door
and it did open
then, what’s more
you knelt and fell
down to your knees
and wept so bitter
in your lees
and I ran to you,
there, crying.
and you on that step,
wracked with sobbing
to beat the band
and me on that
hot pavement sharp
and biting, crying
harmonic to
you sighing, and
your face covered
in tears of violet
flow somewhere
between red, blue,
purple, and grey,
like your eyes,
of velvet, violet
grey…
and then I woke
before we could speak
the words our hearts
broke to say
and never cease to say
and you were gone
midst tears…
midst tears of violet flow
and me left,
there, crying
I decry the use of the word “transgenderism” as an unthinking usage that grants entrance into othering trans-humans at best and actually slurs and polices us at worst…and having disclaimed that:
Constance…PLEASE hurry over and read this article! It is a powerful examination of the issue of gender orientation.
One of the things I like about it is that it highlights how the intersex condition of so many human beings by definition illustrates that the location of gender orientation is NOT in the presence or absence of any body part! Because why? Because lots of intersex people have both sets of body parts present, and yet identify themselves still as male or female!
This observation is a basic one, and is not exclusive of others who identify even more fluidly, but they illustrate the point as well: awareness of the incredibly complex and intricate issue of gender orientation is growing, is expanding, and as with so many things in history, is changing as our medical technology has the ability to reveal the previously hidden realities of humanity, who is fearfully and wonderfully made!
You might find yourself very comfortable with Flores’ simplistic and presumptive thinking…until you finish the article, and if your mind is even a bit open, you will have much to chew on.
Constance, I know you to be open minded, thoughtful, and committed to understanding, so I am confident you will be enriched by the experience…Reader? You? Well, you still show up here, don’t you? For whatever reason, you are still making tracks to Grace Notes! So buckle up, take your courage in hand! Mindsets are far more elastic than you previously knew, and God is far bigger than the box you built for Them! You too…press into this article, and let the truth continue to set you free!
Much love and bountiful Grace be unto you,
Charissa
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Mama today I bend my heart
to yield before Your love
I bow my conscious self to you
and give You all I am.
And all that I don’t know?
That too, in deep and darkened nooks,
in pits and crevices and cracks
in each unopened book…
I am Yours, Holy Mama,
Spirit of God so Clean,
Spirit of Wisdom, Comforter,
Giver of Peace Serene
And a lil mirror clear
I long to become
so here I am, my Mama dear
for You my heart does thrum!
gawd, that sharp glinty knife
coming at me quick (again)
that edge, sliding softly and then
slipping in past that tender push back
and then into me, and the skin splits
and the layers melt side-side
like butter giving way easy and quick
before that silver edge honed true.
and the top of me falls away
and there below gapes the rest of me
me, of the rest, prickly and pokey
and all artichokey…and another stroke
of the blade downward-sweeping
and turning, graceful curving
to scrape my sides and scour them
of all those chokes, every mis-spoke…
and then into hot water, steamy
scourging, softening, sweetening…
and edible at last…
a tender Heart-not-choked
this lil artichoke
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
PS: This was post 1500…an auspicious choice of Psalm, one I didn’t ken at the time!
❤
Here…these waters.
How did I end up here?
Off-shore, un-moored
and docks all far away
behind me in the mists
above me in the air
above the waters
I traverse?
And guppies become barracudas
goldfish become sharks,
how did that happen?
Something in the water?
Something that doesn’t belong?
I guess that would be me,
heavy metals and radioactives
tainting all I touch.
I was always chained to edges,
I was always tossed by tides,
back and forth
up the beach
and down to seas relentless,
in the running of the tides of time,
in the running from the tides of time.
But now I swim unmoored
in unfamiliar deeps
surrounded by voracious
cruel cold creatures sleek
and fit for fit survival
by merciless sharp teeth
and furious assaults
of shredding ruthless words
and I’ve no idea whatsoever
how leaving the docks
marooned me here unmoored in deeps
surrounded by cold sharks
**yes, I am cognizant of the litanies writ, spoke, imagined, nursed and harbored…I know the recitations red and rough, I have my own remembrance, written in blood and sweat and tears, and silent visits in the night to sweetly sleeping angels soft, and exhalations beautiful and smelling so of life…and hair, scented like bread fresh from some heavenly oven and broken for me and put in hair…pulling me thru the valley of death…
…and discovering that my grateful declarations were in fact resented and received as guilt trips laid, it crushes me to my core…and something is defeated there, something there has died, in my core…
this is the unmooring of which I speak, the unknowing in which I am marooned…
and worst of all is the finding of complete strangers in places I knew every inch and wrinkle, and it is this that unnerves the deepest, for now every word spoken, every question asked, every thing created, I have no idea if what I think about it is real, is actually real…my truth meter pegs and then it seems all others call that up “down”, that north “south”…
…and I send up SOS flares, ask trusted hearts to read and to consider offerings of soul and heart, attempts to understand…and silence towers, and life looms and busy threatens…
that is what this poem is about. Swimming in strange waters in a strange land with strange sights and fearful creatures so hungry for my blood and so uncaring of the carcass left behind and so disinterested in the living heart that fiercely cries out “we are here we are here”, hoping Horton is out there, somewhere, a faithful elephant who never forgets…
Long ago the Psalmist asked “Whom have I but You? Though the mountains fall into the sea, though the colored dawns turn to shades of grey, I am learning to see the beauty of the greys and the glories of the canyons whose majesty is manifested in the things that were removed…
I do have Father, and I do have my Good Shepherd and Great High Priest who passed thru the heavens themselves and not a veil of cloth and skins…and I do have Great Holy Spirit, whom my heart cries to again and again “Mama”, She of wisdom and tender mercy, She who was there at the Lord’s beginnings, She by whom all was made that the Lord made…
…I have Them, and being unmoored with Them is like taking my homeland with me regardless of where I roam**
You’ve shown up…well, your true colors have
in wild-thrash-hurled, paint-vile-ent words,
sword-tongue-rash-cut strokes pretend to be brushes,
on this present canvas fouled in yesterday’s deathstyle…
fevers, phantoms, ghosts (the spectacles on your nose)
distorting memory, warping past-tents days
with present-tense poison wounds.
And you! Pretender!
Tragic-noble-hero-little-guy,
you sit on that shipwreck with hemlock twig narratives illusory
and call them olive branches, story-straighteners, record-revealers!
You almost had me,
until I noticed those web feet and knew
you were just a garbage scow gull and not
the promised dove of rest, release, redemption.
Your raucous cries rapacious echo wildly,
and you wheel and spin so hungry and flap so furious
over those bones there, that ship run aground at last
and you eager to get at that dead garbage and feed,
you so careful to sing when doves cry (you imagine)
but just managing a greedy gull’s squawk (or parrot).
I am over here…floating…under this graceful sail
full of fresh wind, faint, feathery, but substantial
(at last, transubstantiated and become living flesh),
and I see them…those webbed feet, those clay feet
dirty with aggression, aggrandizement, anguish…
and I wish I could fall at them,
those webbed feet, sobbing, and wash them
with my tears and dry them with my hair.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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