This Knowing In My Heart

Posted on September 23, 2014 by charissagrace

relief…can you see this word is a bottle?
it has a message stuffed inside it
a sprawling message scrawled
by the pen of your heart’s heart
that whispers its ever poem to you.

but…

there is a remove…always a remove
somewhere there
between you
and what you have written.

you there…
your words there…

observed,
watched
spied on

they are constantly observed,
and thus they sit silent
and never sing.

for words to sing, we must
somehow be entered into them,
so that we are not watching them,
we must become the word incarnate
for they are us

our essence

in squiggles and symbols,
and when we have the faith
to possess them bodily
(and be possessed by them)
they become contagious,
we become contagious
beyond the most virulent virus!

our words replicate themselves
in the heart and soul of the hearer
and then…
mutate
into something else
if guided by love something grander
if guided by hate something murderous
if guided by indifference something monstrous.

yes
we are our words, and
whether we are entered in
or not
is purely a matter of awareness
not of essence.

so find your pulsing core
sacred white hot nature
and let your heart be displayed upon
the canvas of your body
and let your soul give utterance
of your primal deepest cry…

…and then find someone you love
and who loves you too
for you
and wrap yourself,
curl around them (and enter in)
like a precious flame protected
in a wind storm punctuated
by the rain lashing from outside
(and thus creating your
“warm within”)

I am glad of this knowing in my heart
that not only can I ask this of you
but that you would be insulted if I didn’t.

this knowing in my heart
so wonderfully banked and tended now
fuel just right, air even righter
trust love

this knowing in my heart
this knowing in my heart

Message In A Bottle

Posted on September 21, 2014 by charissagrace

I found a bottle bobbing in the tides along the shore,
slick with slime and battered by the storms that came before
it found its way to me. The cold wind moaned and nipped my face
as I waded out to snatch it up safe, from that murky place.

It was roughly crusted with a barnacled hard shell
and smelled of desperate furlongs traveled far too close to hell,
and loneliness…for hell is total isolation, stark…
just self forever chained to self in utter endless dark.

I held it up against the muddy skies just tinged with red
and golds as the earth turned and spun and day stood on her head
to mark another moment brief and echo all the days
gone tumbling by since the first sunset sky was set ablaze.

Hidden there, just barely seen thru crusted colored glass
I saw a wispy paper stained and dull like tarnished brass
neglected for some 50 years and put there then by me…
I’d written it to this me now, and cast it in the sea.

My heart, my tears, my blood combined to fall upon that page
and tell of longings, tell of sorrows, tell of that locked cage
of flesh and words and hammer-fists and heartbreak ever more
and tell my future me about the life that I’d abhorred.

My knees grew weak, then buckled. I remembered that hard day
I’d put my heart into that bottle, hurled it far away,
thinking I could rid myself of all my hurt and ache
but knowing not that we can never outrun life’s heartbreak.

My hands shook, fingers fumbling as I freed my desperate cry.
The bottle birthed its message, gave a tiny copper sigh
and then began to sing to me in querulous hopeful song
of future hopes and me made free instead of me born wrong.

I’d written there “Dear Me, please do not tire of our fight
but be courageous in the midst of darkest blackest night.
Rise up inside yourself and let your beauty blooming free
become the joyful woman that we know ourself to be.”

The message trailed off in a scrawl, the letters marred by tears
I’d cried that day I’d cast away my me, then, all those years
I’d lived in sorrow, days passed dead within my mask, my shell…
that scroll was me, a message in a bottle prison cell.

I sat there for awhile until I’d caught back up to me
and let those words become living and vital, strong and free.
And then I blew into the bottle grace to there reside
Forever, then I corked it and returned it to the tide.

I watched the bottle drift away until I had to go
and saw the years marked out thru tides of time, and ebb and flow
How our hearts return back home to whisper secrets from the past
to help us lay our burdens down and find True Rest at last.

Posted on September 16, 2014 by charissagrace

Quartet

One the 1st

there.
back there.
where was it, when was it?

somewhere,
between the ends of the rainbow,
in the middle,
where the gold pushes east
and the gold rushes west,
and leaves green, leaves mossy green
and bowed by light.

my eyes dazzled…there.
gleamed.
your eyes,
soft and intent, hawklike and cowlike
all at once as you took me
in glance and
then in glitter-glance
and then (shiver) in hungry glance and I,
I was still and not moving…
between the legs of the rainbow…

but between my own, I was alive (again),
I was the heart of a star,
my light wet and my gravity heat
pulling you there by your eyes,
to me, and then

there. oh
there. oh
there. oh

After…when you…yes…
your eyes and their leggy light
gone there and then gone out,
I lay wakeful, still in the moonlight streaming
thru gossamer curtains, swaying slowly
‘neath the wind’s caresses.
And my smile,
my endorsement of you
played round the corners of my mouth
and moved in time to sounds,
the symphony of many waters
rustling in me now,
rapid, and rushing runny…
there

and I held my life-your life,
I held our life
there, curled round it
with my galaxy curves
and molten churning spark.
I thrummed, hummed,
taut and unstrung all at once,
and waiting for that java-jolt,
that move, that kickback…
there.

until there was
no there.

and we…here?
Eyes dulled
in pain’s muddy waters dirty,
hearts torn. Just torn.
Nothing fancy,
just brutal grip,
grab, tear, shred, toss
and then I was empty

there

I journey steady now,
come to (that)
grips, come to terms
with that day but
never
come to heal or honor it because,
my heart wanders
there,
it sneaks off from the chain gang
and floats, up,
circling the rainbow’s middle spaces…
never in Oz, never in Kansas,
but always
there, looking
looking there,
for us, come and torn away…
and finding footprints, hearing echoes, touching ashes
of what never happened but should have,
there.

when I walk I get tired.
when I get tired, I sit down,
here, or on the wet grass,
and I remind myself that
there’s a cure for all and
everything, somewhere
there and I content myself
with knowing that,
I trick myself with knowing that,
I choose to know our us-life…
waits…for us

there.

Two the 2nd

stare.
that’s all I could do, waking up
in warm and darkness close and clothed
in the warm velvet of you.

I heard steady “Luv u. Luv u. Luv u,” together
with some sound like wind out in out in
around me, thru me…it felt good to be, swaddled
and surrounded with you

(by you)
(I stare),

I strained, tippy-soul up to surround you back,
around your voice, around your breath, to add to you my “luv u. luv u. luv u.”
back, in octaves high and beyond, but in dark.
I saw blind, inside wonders but I still sang, I still stare.

you held me careful as you sang and told me things without words
(in your colors and shades), remembering yourself (then)…and him…
(and me there, almost, but still here too), you stared at you,
youth and inexperience veiled in optimism and immortality…

you saw, that then time…(the rain, pouring steady
crackling like forest fires, popping like firecrackers,
water splashing and sweat spouting in the dusky light flicker-dash-streaks,)
you told me that you clicked your tongue in time and tempo

your slick and graceful grappling torsos, tissues, tangos,
and on your lips the glorious taste of salty skin like mangos…
and you moved…in time…with him…and you…and him…and you…
stare, dance, that then time…different from this one…now.

you hummed, he thrummed, near bursting in the joyous moment
and incense of recovery from the tragic, fluky lash of death’s
hungry whip o’ nine tongues, til rejoicing, rising, falling safe and one
then me, brewing and becoming, moving future of hope fulfilled.

I was me there, with you inside your song and center
while you gathered courage still to stare unblinking into dark unknowing gaping,
you sang of me…

then silence…

and I was spun afraid and cold and oh the wrenching rain
in the dark dawn hours
of that green field clotted
in stone and searing sorrow.

you keening, fallen on your knees and wordless,
empty agonizing grappling with that monster blind and mute,
that just rolled over, ripping you in two,
ripping every goodness from the heart of greatness,
leaving all creation crying in the center of every bitter moment.

I float over you since then, and now, here in front of you,
your face tattooed forever with the tales of me writ large and hidden there,
and I try to wipe those silent tears and dry them with my hair
and then I stand in that spot, there, the one you focus on to live

the one you wish hard on, will hard in, try hard to go on within…
well I wish too, will and try hard, to get in, become, break out and
to burst in, be born into your world from mine. but there is always that…

shadow and space…

between me here and you there in time.

and so I wait and follow you, learn you and I shout to you
it’s not your fault, I don’t know what or why but it was not!!
your fault…or mine, and like you, I am waiting…mama.
Love you cross the years, as you are loving me, we wait…

we
stare.

Three the 3rd

Sissy!! Dani!!
Where are you?

You walk
(there)
in time
(here)
at pace, keeping place, for them
step steady…
step steady…
step steady…
for them
silent beat…
silent beat…
silent beat…

but oh god bereft of them
(oh! oh! OH!!!)

you walked alone inside (me too)
and haunted, by ghosts of your regrets (me too).
You, bereft of a full womb, and I,
a womb bereft of a full me!

Dani!!
My heart keens, cries, with you
and for you, thru you

But now…
(why we met now, and not before…)
where am i to go?
Where is there now for me that you are not as well,
sister-friend, walker on the paths of the dead
and thru?

questions turn and spin in wonder,
longing to have been
there, then,
and afterwards to be
here, now…
pouring river-deep-consoling,
over pain and empty sorrow
and then break a hundred times
and heal a thousand more!

I could shatter endlessly
(oh please, I can, oh please let me)
shower pieces teary wet
this red heart over you, and then
extinguish grief-fires and wild questions
drowning all conflagrations of
there
and drain that bitter cup of black despair…

Let me take some…sister-grief?
I practiced 50 years for meeting
here and feeling there, my sister,
me a sea-sponge wrung out dry
of love so I can sop up sorrow
mop up gall into this hyssop, I–
made for so many things, I–
made for just this one thing…
by your side, in your shoe,
I will walk with you and dance then walk
with you and sing then walk some more
and cry then walk with you
and then just sit and sigh.

Let me bleed over your feet,
over your way, don’t worry,
ddh, there’s plenty blood enough
for grief and for me both!
When you kneel at graves, me too
When you walk, tears dry and stale
me too with tissues in my glove.
When you sit, remembering? I’ll serve you “Cookies Rissa Roo”
and love-tea…and when you are smiling
I’ll rejoice and shout nonsense,
the world’s best Fool of all.

that’s all I got, sissy…
and Dani…that’s all you need and that’s the truth…
wait…
wait…
that and Mama always…

love, forever,
from your sister
friend devoted me

Charissa Grace

Four the Fourth

My daughter Dani bends low.
Her hair drags feeble thru the scraggly mud.
I watch her there, hands on her knees
and stomach clenchy sick.
My heart breaks resolute and sure
on schedule as I feel her…
sad…grieving…torn…
and empty-numb.

I approach her and she knows,
somehow…she starts and stands up quick,
a gold-brown willow springing up
resilient and released from ill winds blowing…
Her fine hair frayed and flying, she looks
right at Me! Straight into my eyes, but she saw
only the white leaping fox, her tail flickering quick and neat,
the silver hare hopping and skittering
into her warm burrow waiting
and the glinty moon reflecting
frosty on the secret owl-wing gliding,
silent in the still soft ebon night.

I step to her, she feels Me as the Wind in her face,
smells, scents, wafting cleansing arctic hymns
and fragrances following spicy with that joyous island song.
I touch her precious tear torn cheek,
and her eyes close and she smiles low
imagining that holy flakes of ice falling from heaven
bless and beautify her solitary suffering and sorrow.
Then she stills, she lets go and My Love washes her over.

Glancing right I see her sister
(My daughter Charissa Grace)
kneeling in the silent softness,
tears like diamonds in the incandescent moonlight and the snow.
Her crimson garments caked with ice at knees,
but she does not take notice of these, for her heart is fixed on Me,
and her eyes fixed upon her sister.

I nod, Charissa jumps up, ever eager serving vessel
cracked and faithful broken…quick she runs unto her sister
and she wraps her arms around those shattered shoulders
And I watch how Dani flicks her eyes wide open,
pools of night and galaxies of stars therein those touching depths.
Charissa gently touches her dear sister’s cheek and nods,
she deftly touches hand to belly, heart to heart,
and Dani breathes and sighs released and reaches
out to touch Charissa’s back with fluttery grateful hands.

I smile, happy and rise up wings spread,
healing flowing forth.
I am well pleased because My daughters,
sisters of My Heart and in the Sacred Blood,
My Brood is well.

Loving you with my life, for the rest of our days.
Pledged to you as sister, pinkie-swear,
Love and all my gooey heart…

Charissa Grace

Lassos and Lanky Lines

Posted on September 13, 2014 by charissagrace

For too long
lassos and lanky lines
have spun round my neck
and held me to this dirt in time.
I listened, a few words here like grime,
a big fat echo there like slime,
up in the sandstone and
limp mountains like bars
around my world.

I believed them,
I let them choke me
tame and chain me
to plantations of shame
and fields of blame

Well, I am rearing now…
I smell water in the air!
My Mama tells me I am
Her work and She is
Filthy with loving me!
____5894820_orig

Streaked and smeared
with my red clay,
with my white heart,
Her hair standing
glowing, flying as
She works the treadle
and spins me loose
and into my shape yet born
but always known.

The dry skies crackle, and victory rumbles
in my throat like thunder,
in my heart like lightening
and the cowpoke slides sideways
and decides it’s time to go have lunch
and forget to ever come back here

and I will run on winds
my passion-fires will ever burn
in freedom so fine, so full.

The Only Thing Unusual About Ray And Janay Rice Is That Anyone Noticed

Posted on September 13, 2014 by charissagrace

The Only Thing Unusual About Ray And Janay Rice Is That Anyone Noticed.

Good Morning Constance…if you would, please check out this link and read the article it goes to. It is the smartest and most context-giving thing I have read in the latest uproar-media-storm about a high profile case…on something that has been going on so long and so much that probably most of you are not even aware that things like this and worse are happening right under your noses in your very own communities.

It is important to attempt to get a grasp of the scope of this issue…so that you, Constance, can begin to consider and weigh how you yourself think! It is mindblowing, really, when you consider how language and the way you think affect your position on issues, your understanding of them…at least, that is what happens with me, so I assume that it is the same for others.

When you are done reading the article, take it a step further…the rate of the abuse and attack of transgender women as a subset of women happens at a rate so much higher per thousand, that in order to maintain the same ratio of attacks on women compared to attacks on trans-women there would need to be over 2 million assaults on biological women annually that ended up in serious hospitalization and/or death!

Trans-women of color are even at greater risk.

Constance, everyday I am out further and further. I am having wonderful experiences and meeting so many great people…but I actually consider the wisdom of places and events before I go…and avoid places that I am likely to be assaulted!! ME!!! Charissa, the one that is dedicated to Grace and kindness! Why? Because there will be men there, intoxicated, and they will resent me for becoming myself and shunning male roles and all the privileges accorded them for the subservient place and role that women are consigned to…or, they may find themselves attracted to me in some way (though I dress very modest and am quite unassuming in the presence of strangers), and they attraction is likely to be accompanied by feelings of self-loathing, as they will assume that it implies they are gay

(which is foolish on so many levels and indicative of how our binary has stigmatized all orientations but male/female/hetero, and sadly the church has given its seal of approval on this approach and empowered this hate by not realizing the bible’s most basic teaching regarding sexuality is character teaching in areas of fidelity and faithfulness and the true loving and serving of one another).

For instance…my baby and I want to go to our city and attend the Octoberfest celebration…drink a few beers together, share a sausage or two, wallow in bad oompa music, and then walk along the waterfront holding hands and laughing…and if we do? And if there is a drunken belligerent there? And if he decides to “grace me” with his attentions, and then decides to force me into his world view…or worse? No thanks.

Or, Constance…what if you and I were out one night as friends, having dinner, say at a sports pub or someplace where there was nightlife…and we had a grand time and were walking happily back to our car, when 4 or 5 drunks appear who had noticed us…and started to verbally batter us, insult us, sully us…and then worse…

No.

In the same way that I exhort you cis-gender readers to make a way, Abraham Lincoln style for we trans-gender human beings, I am exhorting you men to do the same for women. Flat out fact: until you men cease from viewing we women as “the weaker vessel” and that meaning anything other than finer, more intricate, delicately formed and less robust in the same way that a computer is more delicate than a sawhorse, you will yourself remain an oppressor of women and not even realize it!

Gentleman Reader: when you first read of me being transgender…and leaving the shipwreck of manhood (for me it is just that) for the homeland of womanhood, did you recoil inside? Think it odd? Strange? Feel a sense of derision or something similar? And casting the net broader…have you ever teased or ribbed a male friend or associate by telling him he is “acting like a girl”? Or “you are such a chick!” (use of the word chick, and then even deeper why is that insulting to a man).

These things dehumanize women! They undercut the very love and commitment you profess to wives and daughters! They reveal that at the core, you see us as less than, and thus will without thought manifest ownership and objectify us…your own wives and daughters!

There is a bible verse that says that a good wife is a crown to her husband, and a crown is something that confers royalty, authority, regalness. A crown separates royalty from commonness and is worn on the head…higher than the head!

Well…I once had a dream (when I was still forcing myself to adhere to the role I was consigned to and blind to my own soul) and in the dream I saw a bunch of men from my church dressed in overcoats…they looked like flashers…and they were furtive and surreptitious…in a group like a bunch of adolescents gathered round a porn mag…and then, when I got close enough I could hear the conversation “…Hey, check out the crown I own!” and “Hey, ya wanna see my crown? It’s amazing…” and they would pull open their overcoats and “flash” one another with this crown they had attached to their body and dangling off like a careless canteen half full of water. It was sickening, actually, because they imagined that this was honoring to their crown!

Of course, the symbolism here is men who subjugate women and then call it protection, or covering, or shielding…instead of having the confidence and faith to actually place women in that place that a crown belongs!

I woke up, and that verse was ringing in my ears, and I could see it against the darkened ceiling in flaming letters…and I began to cry…and my baby woke up and asked what was wrong, and I told her…and lamented all the times I had unwittingly done that…she graciously assured me this was not one of my flaws (thank god!), but that she experienced this sort of treatment so regularly it was shocking to her to have this view of the phenomenon!

We have a long way to go, Constance…

I have friends who have loving spouses who are so blind to this that they see my friends as extensions of themself, and thus will not allow them to do or be anything that is threatening to them! Oh, they are blind to it, and that is all the more tragic, it is that deep.

Anyway…read the article…and then, think about it…your language (what you say if you are male, and how you just take it if you are female), your assumptions…the next time you want to compliment a woman and she is “a wonderful little lady” (instead of an intelligent human being) “…such a sweet thing” (rather than committed to servant-living).

This is Charissa…and I want to actually be!

Kind
Generous
Committed
Courageous
Strong
Vulnerable
Visible
Articulate
Tender
Full of grace and mercy
Devoted

May Mama grant it be so, to Their glory forever and the benefit of Their world, Amen.

Your Light Feet

Posted on September 12, 2014 by charissagrace

Did I hear you there, your footsteps near
approaching on the shore?

I’ve held your heart while we, apart
await that open door.

I never knew your spirit true
was keeping me in tact

Until that day, and you away
did go with no glance back.

Was distance great and casual fate
a mountain far too high?

No matter, dear, my spirits cheer
for your light feet step nigh.

Falling Like Snow, Falling Forever

Posted on September 11, 2014 by charissagrace

I remember your fall…silent, turning
skin burning and flakes
falling like snow.

I remember the shaking…plumey ash
(demon of dachau come home here)
and more, falling forever.

the ones who ran forward, ran up churning
to with bodies breach tragic tear
and then hurtle down, falling like snow

and I have watched memories fade
media circus turning and truth burning
and falling forever.

but my tears will come
every year on that minute
falling like snow, falling forever

Across the Aching Blue Sky

Posted on September 8, 2014 by charissagrace

When you see that I have died,
when you look into that place
where my odd, quirky connections
once melded luminous and
found resonant red splendour
in heart…and in hearts too

and you see the ashes, chilled,
overlaying stone cold coals,
become grey overcoats
covering what I finally learned
to be so ashamed of?

Scrape those cinders up
shovel and shoe them,
trowel and trough the grits,
find a yearn to place them in,
decorative and strange,
intricate and engraved
and singing,
like me back then…

and carry that vase back
across the silent square,
and toss my ashes high,
yes toss them in the air

Let them fly across the sky
in one last kiss, then wave goodbye,
and falling, floating, snowing what made
me special and vibey…

I will let go gently…and slip away,
away…

Oh…I’m still over there…
where everyone stands, and sips
hot tea and nods so sagely…
I’m in the roundabouts,
just staying in my lane

and signalling (my intentions clear
finally even to the least
of these), signalling easy…
now that I float across
the sky…and drifting, wispy
and fading into sameness
into just like everyone else
everything everywhere else…
fading…just like that.

what was it, that made me…
made me me? Different? ME?

What? My song? My sing?
My voluminous preludes?
My silly rhymes, word crimes?
My heart that cries at bird wing flashing
or a dove cooing or a dark look
looming long and loutish?

Alas…the sky awaits,
the sky opens, beckons,
but can’t contain and hold, no.
It’s just Stygian canvas for
a murky ash calligraphy
of unique but too too me.

And now I’m seeing traces,
in smoke and empty vapors
of ‘trodes and tendrils, shocks that curb,
that cut back hard, that make all things
not new…but same…
and safe…for others but
not for me.

the glitter of dreams,
the flakes of hope,
and the ashes of a heart…
a heart…what…
dripping?

Fire does belly up,
hungry, focused on eating,
fire does purge, does pardon,
and place me there unseen
in the park, soft on the swings,
the teeter totter tamble,
in the quail and quay and quiet
at last…no scramble, still…
and still.

Spread them, fling them, across the sky…
across the aching blue sky.

On This Shore I Break, We Break

Posted on August 31, 2014 by charissagrace

Listen…
you can hear
my words in waves
breaking on your beach
and celebrating…

lament at long last left limp
in clammy depths
‘neath the surface of seas
of blessed forgetfulness
and chuckling…

midst the shells and sand swirling,
rejoicing surf returning resurrected,
remembered, sanctified by sorrows
faced and sorted…yielding
wholeness certain, sure…

on this shore I break,
we break,
on this shore gently
and joyfully too
we break…

on that shore
that someday shore
we will unbroken break
on that shore and in that circle
by and by…in that circle

by and by…

A Rosetta Stone

Posted on August 29, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, I am going to do something, reluctantly…I am going to pull back the curtain and explain the deeper meanings and levels of one of my poems.

See. I have this friend and she loves my poetry, but I had her read “Her Door, Her Red Door” and she enjoyed the process, but had no idea what it was saying. Well, that presents a dilemma…on the one hand, it is my belief that poetry works in our hearts first, it haunts our guts, right? And then slowly, it bubbles up into our minds, and we make connections with the world via the symbols and metaphors that have fallen like seeds into the dirt, or sand into oysters to become pearls.

But on the other hand, if it is too esoteric and not accessible to the reader, then the poem ultimately is a failure. (I am not counting the cases where a reader is lazy and wants it all on a platter, instead of being let out into the garden, and then given access to the kitchen to gather and create their own understanding).

So for one of the very rare times, I am going to let you inside the form and foundation of the poem…it is gonna be sketchy in places, for I just cannot bear to strip her entirely of her mystery…but if it made you feel something, if it made you have an itch, or feel like you were getting one scratched, then you might want to read more of my things, and most of it is far more accessible, with much lower aspirations than this one.

Her Door, Her Red Door (Analysis)

Okay:

So my therapist is named _______. I wrote a poem for her way early on in our sessions, a wonderful lil ditty, small, cute, a lil skert and testing waters…she loved it as a mom loves a finger-painting of course…lol.

But last session, we were both morose, and we both had on our hearts the sad and beautiful exciting discovery that I was ready to “graduate”, and our times together would come to an end, and we would transition to friendship.

As I said, she was so struck by the changes in me, how I was become myself, and not stuck in between or ashamed of where I began, but was woman. I have very strong symbolic resonances with woman as living creature…for instance in the biblical creation myth, woman is the only being created of living flesh…all else is created from dirt. That, and many similar things have absolutely galvanized me with the truth that woman is the crown glory of all creation and that the patriarchy is so fearful and so jealous it tries to “kill her” (a topic for another day).

We discussed many things in my becoming, which led to discussion about why and what it was that brought me the final release in being able to become becoming…in the talking, ______ shared of her own journey thru womanhood, of being pre-menopausal and how hormonal imbalances are affecting her, how hormones have been so liberating to me as well.

So we come to the title “Her Door, Her Red Door“. First, I am talking about _______, and about how she has brought me to the doorway of being, becoming who I am. This door as I saw it was red…but at a deeper level, it is her heart. ______is all heart, and it is her door, by which she “enters” me, and I “enter” her as well…follow?

But then, and this emerged from the subconscious, I realized that “her” is me, too…my heart, and even more, my own red door “down there”…or for me “in there” (Isaiah 54 speaks to this btw!)…the one we discussed, and she shared so openly with me, woman to woman as mother to daughter, as teacher to student, as woman to prepubescent adolescent girl…

…and as you must certainly know, women have doors, are doors…men simply are not.

Next: in the poem she invites me, commands me, bids me follow her, and she has keys (authority, and conferred authority), the means by which doors are opened, for it is not enough to merely have a door, it must be accessible, traversable…

A woman’s booty is completely unique to women, that shape, that curve, perfect and echoing the curves of galaxies, built on Fibonacci sequences mathematically and the perfect mean geometrically. And she sails…there are only 3 capital letters in the whole poem…about the ship sailing…so picture a woman walking, confident and sure, as a clipper ship sails.

I also reference brick house and “back” and when I do that I am intentionally deriding the Commodores’ song “Brick House”…which reduces and sexualizes a woman and her miracle ship…and “Baby Got Back” which is even more blatantly egregious…truth be told? If men knew the half, nay a tenth of a woman’s desire and passion? They would run terrified and screaming in the night!!

And then the repetitive there…here…there…here, and leading into the honky…tonky…(which each start with t and h like here and there)…and that is the connector to the first comment about me directly, as ______has mentored me, drawn me…and so Hank Williams, a singer (building on the Brick house and Baby Got Back reference) moans, and becomes alcoholic, and “sees that end”…meaning Woman’s miracle ship intimidating, and also directly the male role I was imprisoned in is dying fast and is gone…Hank Williams symbolizes my birth name, and socialized role…and his music was wild and despairing as my life was then (not lifestyle wild, but emotionally wild and despairing, and self-destruction was always a siren song.)

Next stanza, it speaks of the new place _____and I were at that day, and had not been there before…she had been far more good and kind mother whom I wanted to be like…and we had at no time discussed sexuality or the deeper spiritual power it channels…it was about recovery and reintegration then…I picked the image of the Columbia river, because women are rivers, have rivers, channel rivers, and oh the power…and all others seek to harness that and benefit, right? Men, turbines in, and women turn them…

The lines about her walk (and remember I am speaking of me as “her” in a very distant sense as well)…and her swishing, ricocheting from gutter to gutter…what a hip swing, across the entire path of being, but also to tie in a pun about balls…”no gutter balls” Picking up a 7-10 split…that is nearly impossible…and becoming myself was to overcome that split in me, between who I am and what I am…see? And no gutter balls…eff yeah!!

Those keys…no sound, bunched…the image of power, seeing keys outlined in tight jeans, and the promise of power and entry granted, authority…also keys are in pianos, so you see the musical theme sowed back around again.

Teena Marie is the next musician, and she is as I recall of Portuguese, Italian, Irish, and Native American heritage…she was a soul singer, and omg was she ever amazing…as good or better than Diana Ross or Beyoncé, and I love them both…well she was also singing a lot about power in sexuality, and I loved her so when I was in my 20s, for reasons I could never articulate then…and I…”half” one thing and half another, and in some ways neither…and she grabbed her keys, her authority, her permission from street corner dudes…(think singers around the barrel fire singing a Capella…)

I also bring her in because Hank is passing, going, going…and Teena, who is dead, is also Marie, Mary, made pregnant by divine fiat…and so me made woman by miracle and Heather, and medicine which is the same as magic and miracle in so many ways…

…and then we come to the door…go read that part again…and you can see a living heart, or a vulva and vagina, and mystery temple of every single human being ever, even the Christ…

her door before us fat, streaks-run-swirls-whorls, depth-breadth flowing
crimson coral flaming, cardinal glowing carmine cerise chestnut cracking
garnet sanguine scarlet and rosy…that door was thick and giving…it blowzed there
full, sprawled (like titian’s venus) and throbbing with certain promise.

…and all the words are all shades and various hues of red…and how is a woman’s heart all that different from her glory? Her temple? Is not every child first conceived there, in her heart, who that child is and shall be?

And then _____gives me a philter, a potion, from her river, from her flow, from her heart, from her glory…

(of course not literally, as you read never allow those elements to do anything but drive the heat and passion of the poem…they are a moan of desire and lusty want…but only that. I assure you of that, but must mention it because I was so honest as to feel it must be there, for it always is there in every woman, if she is blessed enough to know herself, or to be shown like I have been, or strong enough to own herself from the start.)

And at that point we go to Aretha Franklin…natural woman (think of the lyrics, crooned as I drank the philter)…and Respect…

And then the touch of ______’s hand glowing gold (which in alchemic terms was a type and shadow of divine character in medieval times)…and “finger fragrant and savory” is definitely just exactly what it sounds like…but it is a vibrant and intensely earthy form of communion, and also a conferring, an anointing given to me…and I was thinking of ET, and how he had no home, and healed with that glowing finger…but Heather/Woman/Me so much more present and dangerous and contagious…

Me never “phoning home again” (never going back to that cursed male role forced upon me)…and then I swallow the key…(HRT…communion…permission, authority, the key becomes me and I the key…)

And then the door (whom I have been always) is opening and my male biology (the hinges, Hank moaning and dying, my body literally changing, swings open and there I am…being prayed over by the queen (Aretha) and I getting my own locks like _______’s…and Beyoncé with her combination of sexuality and independence, and she like Joan of Arc, divinely appointed to deliver a people (woman)…and then the key moved in me…my own “child conceived”…and then finally my “wad” is no longer this god awful bulge between my legs always haunting me, but instead a wad of keys and my own clipper ship.

OK…so that is the analysis…all of this is in me as I write, but I am not aware of it consciously until after I am done…I just write, and feel my way to it. After, I see it, it starts to emerge, starts to be birthed, and then it is easy to go back and help it.

Nearly every one of my poems operates in similar ways and layers…I invite you to go back and read…think of strange ones like “Spitting Bones” or “A-Maze-In-Me”

I wonder if this counts as a “Found Poem”? Or “Just a Fact”? Giggle…yep, I am still befuddled by that ignorant and intentionally short-cut thinking…oh, I have a poem about that sort of thing: “Bury My Head in the Sky“!!

Constance, if you are inspired to re-read some more inaccessible work, and this helps unlock it, please…let me know?

Thanks forever, and gratitude for reading!!

Charissa

Scorpion Wisdom

Posted on August 29, 2014 by charissagrace

I have tired of deserts,
tired of dry browns
throw-downs and death tangos
of thirst and thorn.
I have watched walkers and
binary Bedouins
beguile one another,
play acting
tea-time niceties,
witnessed them
both turn to look at me,
saucer eyes implacable
and blank

(like deserts)

and then dismiss me
with eyebrow arched or
wrist waved and curled
casual.

Well, screw that.

I followed my teachers,
stepped foot to feet
and print to post to paw,
they taught me
to dwell in sands
silent and still, and thaw
in scorpion wisdoms and knowings
of dry times and seasons.
I gleaned, and
they gave to me
my red and living covering!
They snatched off black cauls and
stingers waiving
all safety warnings
they down and down again
destroyed dark days
and dismal hours.

I am headed
to the edges,
where sea and
sky meet sand, and sing
of Father and Mama and Shepherd
who meld, One,
and become Three
(and They so fond of me)
there, on the horizon’s rim and
at the edges
of dry and wet
and wind.

Sometimes I cover miles
sometimes miles cover me

in the meantime,
I listen to
their skritchy whispers,
(Their whispers too)
and climb high
to what breeze survives,
and face first
I wait content and thrive
filled with love and fire, and
scorpion wisdom

For GK (Gracious and Kind) a.k.a. georgiakevin

Posted on August 28, 2014 by charissagrace

Hi Constance…Ima put a few links here…to some earlier poems buried in the reams of this blog, lol!

(Hey, it’s fascinating to me to read thru the early days, and where I was then, so shattered and so cared for by Them!)

This is for georgiakevin, who said he had not had the chance to read may things yet. Hey GK…please find your way how you most enjoy…here are some links to some of my poem kids that I love and adore. Love, Charissa

A Yarn

The Great and Long Reduction

Summer Snapshots in Haiku

Here ‘Neath Marvel Skies

This one is my bff’s fave: Come Home To Yourself

OK GK…that will be enough ta get you going…then just browse around. I think poetry alone there are like 180 pgs of poems..

Right now, though, my 3 favorites are my two newest babies…and they are right up front still:

Her Door, Her Red Door (for my counselour) and The Chisel’s Hungry Bite…and Phoenix Rising

Thanks again for your courteous gallant wise edifying words!

Charissa

The Chisel’s Hungry Bite

Posted on August 27, 2014 by charissagrace

laying on the workbench, half carved.
clamps grip my “here and there”
there…here…anywhere I move or
slide away to from
under the chisel’s hungry bite.

wood shavings lay strewn about,
results of carvings complete,
curling locks shorn
from a recruit
on the first day of basic…or
from the denizens of Dachau
on the first day of chaos.

the view from here is clear by half…

…half:
done
undone
too smart by
falling short of the other
done with this

but incomplete, in the hole
of halfway.

a rocking horse, there, high up
on the shelf, intricate carved
curves sleek and defined,
It is there.
Safe and knowing its place done.

it is not here, clamped and halfway.

a train taught its shape
with that chisel sharp and knowing,
with that auger licking hungry
and this drill sublime and hole-y…
trained to whistle and to
click-clackity click-clack
down tracks laid by hands
and connected to ground
and come round again
displaying always it was here
but it is now there.

jaunty paint glistens red,
and yellow, and blue with glad
waiting for strings,
and plucking fingers
that move carved arms,
kick knife-hewn legs
and blink eyes saw-made
and staring…
staring at here unseeing,
staring from there.

and parts jumbled
pieces present and
full of purpose yet unfolded
sit still, calm and unclamped

I wait too, in pieces along with parts:

midst dry cedar shaving clouds scented
midst ordered clutter and stilled clamber
midst bunched silver sharp-toothed oily tools
sitting sleek, and sleeping with one yellow eye
open.

the chisel croons its tangy tangled song
in my ear which is indeed there
and waits to taste me…here.
it promises to take me
it promises to pierce me, rend me,
spread here splayed and waiting
to be taken…there.

i dread the coming dawn
and the chisel’s hungry bite
i yearn for it to touch me
and shiver with delight

because it takes me…there.

yes, at dawn,
the chisel’s hungry bite, oh…
the chisel’s hungry bite

Phoenix Rising (For she who knows this is for her)

Posted on August 26, 2014 by charissagrace

She woke, arms reaching to the singing moon
that glimmered in soft velvet star-streaked air.
Her heart lept joyous, woken from death’s swoon
Her face wreathed by her effervescent hair.

She stirred, she rose by trees there, sentinels
of sacred sleep, of metamorphosis
who reached to resurrect her fulsome soul
and clothe her in green boughs and woody kiss

and there she danced, unclothed, absolved, untamed
and kissed the moon with hungry clear desire,
while ardent winds caressed her, unashamed,
and she took wing on tongues of Blazing Fire

Arise my love, leave sorrow’s crucifix
and fly to me, your Resplendent Phoenix

Anxiety’s Thrall

Posted on August 25, 2014 by charissagrace

your eyes yellow and sucking light
from my soul white and drawn
your silent rumble purring tight
has sundered me from dawn

your weight, familiar from long visits
year in, day out, right there
to rip me with dread claws exquisite
and make my mind your lair

your cold breath, fetid, drenched with dark
consumes me in its cloud
and snuffs me, blows out every spark
of hope within its shroud

your claws flex and my heart bleeds
as you inhale my fear
I tremble when you yawn in greed
and dawn is nowhere near

I wait for dawn, it never comes
and I am just your toy
I cannot move, beneath your thumbs
while you live off my joy.

usually my faith is strong
and I can lift my head
but these times drown Her comfort song
I sit amongst the dead

but they are free from horror eyes,
from dreaded weight and breath,
from claws like lightening in night skies
they dance the waltz of death.

Wait for the Lord, Oh my soul
Stand firm, having done all
I wait in terror in dark like coal
just anxiety’s thrall
just anxiety’s thrall
just anxiety’s thrall

I wanted to hear from you

Posted on August 25, 2014 by charissagrace

(I go to see HR today…I am frightened stiff from the unknown. And it is 3 AM, the worst time of all times in every day of times. I wrote this in the attempt to loosen the grip of anxiety that tears inside…alas, it knows the teeth tracks of years and finds them effortlessly. To be honest, I think this poem sucks…it is too much a mirror of me, bound and terrified in this moment. But to be more honest, I think the act of sharing this poor bound baby poem is a stance of courage in the face of fear and my challenge hurled back, that I will never ever drink that hemlock escape.)

When I was sparkly fire and glow, and scintillating with insight
I heard from you.
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was prescient and perfect, precise and plenary
I heard from you.
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was funny and tickling and a madly capering jester
I heard from you.
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was torn and teary inside, and still like lakes at midnite
I didn’t hear from you,
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was thrumming stiff and stark, helpless in fear’s talons
I didn’t hear from you,
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was mute from sorrow and deaf from grief
I didn’t hear from you,
I wanted to hear from you.

I face unknown guillotines,
strange purveyor of power
whose lifted finger could be life
or the executioner’s twitch.
Does it mean life, or
death to my dreams and me?
Your words uncork my heart
unlocks my jaw
undeafs my ear
pour wine and set table
they calm, gentle me

I wanted to hear from you
I wanted to hear from you

Reflections

Posted on August 24, 2014 by charissagrace

The scent of our home,
funky quaint and riddled
with books and bikes,
and the long laid scent of family.
The scent of the kitchen,
yesterday’s dinner
and the overlay of croissants
like fierce french washer women
scrubbing away all other scents.

…the scent of our clothes,
and our laundry soap…
the scent of the air cooler,
that of the soft night air
waltzing in,
slow and sleepy
from her night out
amongst the stars,
and carried in drowsy
on cricket wings…

…the scent of popcorn
shared on the couch,
of our wine wafting
from bottles possessed
by only the last 12 drops,
our lil garden outside,
and the auto sprinkler
which has come on to water
in the dark and the cool…

the scent of your currents,
your deep distant observing soul
that hangs back and watches,
even in the midst…

i do go on…

from here…from now…
in the sweltering heat,
where you and I lay,
you sleeping,
me watching you sleeping,
soft face limpid and languid…here…
listening to tides of eternity
race round and round
inside our veins, our universe…

i do go on…

…watching our breath mingle unseen
as you sleep, and I
my many rounds to keep,
awake as usual.

in your world,
nothing is what it appears to be.

(i mean that “mirror sentence!”
nothing is what it appears to be and
nothing is what it appears to be and
nothing is what it appears to be and…)

well, as I think about it,
it seems logical
you were drawn here…
maybe I was
the one thing
you were supposed to get,
maybe I am
the one thing
you cannot forget…
or get shut of!

regardless…

you now have me,
writing here
my musings and childlike tears,
my laughs and my cold dark fears,
my forever fat and full
wet joys of today

(as long as it is still called today!)

Alas it will cost you,

(I will cost you)

but at least it will
only cost you
what is yours
to easily pay:
everything.

I am here, but you must
look in unusual places.
not in scents (innocence)
from bottles
and spray jars
and spritzers
and cream pots
or flesh pots.

I may be hiding,
laughing in the most
unexpected spaces.

It is time
to set the last croissants…
I am smiling,
and feeling that
wonderful joy that has
a tinge of sadness to it
because it knows
though joy lives forever,
its moments come and go

like the meals of our lives…
the scents of our home…
reflections of what was
and what is yet to be

Matters of Heart and Bloody Core (for Kat, whom I love)

Posted on August 24, 2014 by charissagrace

She rides today, shotgun
in matters of heart and bloody core,
matters of blood, matters of bone,
her flesh become word and wing
and flight to wider blue skies
and pastures…
…rides shotgun atop
treasure boxes soon emptied
but not until
the very last second…God forbid…
please.

She sits, still shielding
but fingers open
and heart unclenched
in the green ritual of becoming
yet again repeated,
yet again echoing
those who flew before by thousands,
swarms searching for Capistrano
and finding college and career and clouds
gathered…and clouds parted.

She rides shotgun,
she, shotgun,
rides with diamond frozen tears
pinned back callous
behind both barrels
cocked and loaded,
her tender torn eyelids
primed with tearshot

(frozen tears rip as they sit
gathered, bunched, clenched)

Waves, washing by, wistful,
irritated, emotions
mendacious and mirror walking
around that carriage of connection
to futures unseen
swirl and caress her face
with terrible talking fingers.

Her heart is still,
on hold,

(she holds him in her heart)

what was once,
and is, and knows
what will be comes…

(Que Sera, Sera!)

…but not yet.

Because across miles, time,
her blood calls to bone,
her soul and spirit moan
remembering, loving, memorialized
and set in stone
forever.

Miles will pass. Time
will roll by, and that
return of body and bone
will glad at last be known…
and her laugh, her squint,
(shotgun)
her head toss
and still wonder
will echo to her heart
from babies to be born,
but still bone of her bone…

and heart will thaw and
throat unclench
at last and swallow
that diamond lump stark and
glistening with inevitability.

But now…
Across miles, time
she rides…
shotgun

A Dhé le Caitlín Maude – Translation

Posted on August 24, 2014 by charissagrace

A Dhé le Caitlín Maude – Translation

Aistriúchán ar an Dán

(d’Adrian Radu i gCluz na Rómáinne)

A Dhé
le Caitlín Maude

Neither blood nor flesh
God
your conjured image
-the dreary mouthful of soil-
but I clasp it heart-wards
until it fuses into life.

The questioning is no comfort
(nor is the answer).

Why should I adore
the lifeless image
that will not explain away
and you
who felt my deepest pains
the way I do now?

And if it’s not the questioning
(nor the answer)
that’s the problem
(nor is the answer)
Oh no God.
I don’t understand.
I don’t know.
I’m convinced only – so far
Of that.
There or not
I am drawing towards you

and if you are
I call for one enchantment
to be saved
from those
who speak of you as
the cold man of the skies.

God,
my heresy is boundless
but would you not prefer this
to some intriguing lover of the world’s plenty
Who would fail to pay heed to you
from one end of the year to the next?

God,
The answer is far from the solution
There is no new mysterious revelation
You still have to travel the path of the thorns
No respite or homecoming at the bottom of the sea
Better the water on the forehead now
than after
My time has come to sow my blind pattern
on the gaping canvas.

I attack the contentious issues of the day
(body, heart and mind).
The temptation calls me
‘Don’t’.
What good is passing beauty?
What good?
But remember
that the answer is far from the solution
But the unsightly remains –
dead ashes of the night –
dirty dishes in the morning –
signs of my own death
and
constantly cleaning them
(dishes, heart and mind).
Forget for a while, God,
the dreary mouthful of soil.

(Worse is forgetting).
What can I do
but worship this bleak life?
I press towards me the curse.
I cannot say how long it will last.

But God,
I sneak, I comb, I tend to.
I hide in the fragrant cloth the ugly wounds.
Concealment is my specialty,
I smile
I stretch,
I kiss your lovely side.
There is hope in Spring.
I covet its pulse.

My Favorite Poetess

Posted on August 24, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, since I am giving clues this morning, I am going to share with you my favorite poetess…the great Gaelic
Singer/Poetess/Activist Caitlín Maude

She is the person that I named our first daughter after, and I was hoping to somehow confer upon her some of Caitlín’s incredible power and sensitivity.

I learned of Caitlín Maude in 1982, and I used to lay on our floor, in the dead of night, her album on the turntable on repeat…and listen to her speak…and sing…and speak…and I would cry and cry and cry.

Sometimes all night long…longing…for…well, at the time I did not know what

Here is a translation, loose but close:

A Dhé le Caitlín Maude – Translation

Aistriúchán ar an Dán
(d’Adrian Radu i gCluz na Rómáinne)A Dhé
le Caitlín Maude

Neither blood nor flesh
God
your conjured image
-the dreary mouthful of soil-
but I clasp it heart-wards
until it fuses into life.

The questioning is no comfort
(nor is the answer).

Why should I adore
the lifeless image
that will not explain away
and you
who felt my deepest pains
the way I do now?

and if you are
I call for one enchantment
to be saved
from those
who speak of you as
the cold man of the skies.

God,
my heresy is boundless
but would you not prefer this
to some intriguing lover of the world’s plenty
Who would fail to pay heed to you
from one end of the year to the next?

(Worse is forgetting).
What can I do
but worship this bleak life?
I press towards me the curse.
I cannot say how long it will last.

But God,
I sneak, I comb, I tend to.
I hide in the fragrant cloth the ugly wounds.
Concealment is my specialty,
I smile
I stretch,
I kiss your lovely side.
There is hope in Spring.
I covet its pulse.

Clues

Posted on August 24, 2014 by charissagrace

Okay Constance…I am gonna confess a lil indulgence of ego: I really like my new poem “Her Door, Her Red Door“, and frankly I am a little disappointed there have not been very many likes on it…but I am also not surprised for it is inference, symbol, veil, subtly blatant while blatantly subtle…

I actually and for real think it is one of my most skillful poems to date.

But I get that it is not necessarily appealing…but consider, if you would, the poem itself in the context of the work of the poet: I once said “The poet is a desperater man than most. He must get it all down before the ages are up. Which, as any poet will tell you Is A BITCH!” (waaay back in 1982)…

…I was trying to say that there is a “job” in poetry, or perhaps a better word is quest? No matter…if you consider yourself a poet (and I do) then you find this inability to see life as any other thing but a poem and events/circumstances/happenings are all snapshots into the heart of the poem.

Thus, when I write I try to emulate the layers, hidden and revealed, that comprise this Mystery we swim in.

In “Her Door, Her Red Door“, you find me operating on a few very intentional levels…I do not want to just lay it out there. That is a bit too clinical, sort of like the difference between sex education class in Middle School Health class, and the wonder and poignant pain of Love’s First Kiss. But I do want you to have some sense of the structure, the themes and the interplay of them. I can be obtuse…lol.

First of all, consider that it is a poem written by a trans-gender woman who is in the midst of transition. This overall context puts the other elements in perspective and frames the picture.

Secondly, it is a poem dedicated to a person whom I have openly spoken of and the role she has in my life. That role has permutations and multiple facets when considered poetically. What is her “business” with me? What is mine with her? What is our mutual end? And more fundamentally, Constance, what is your position in all this as well? Are you somehow about the same things, in the salient areas of becoming that you face?

Next comes the unfolding of my view of our essential business: becoming. She is a facilitator of mine, and as I participate in her provisions I aid hers as well…and each of you, as you become day to day, may perhaps find touchstones in this poem’s point of view and approach to that becoming. You will, of course, have to make inference and feel your way under the sheet to the true bones of your own transitions in this life as a sentient, conscious being stuck between the macrocosm and the microcosm infinities, and with eyes…

I choose a physical aspect of her and invest that with meaning far other than the expected trope culturally in our pornography laced times…there are only three capital letters used in this poem. That is on purpose.

There are obvious references to musicians…why specific ones? Why them? What are the specific characteristics of those humans? (Remember to ask this inside the “frame” of the picture I mentioned earlier). There are single words that link back to lyrics, and those lyrics in turn echo back the essential business of this magic woman, which echo back to my own quest of becoming.

There are many puns laced throughout, intentionally slanted in relation to the core…that way they can make the connection and then…like leaves in early autumn, gracefully drop away once their purpose for the tree is completed, and reveal the strong and vital branches of the tree beneath that leafy veil…

The door: resist the temptation to skim over this, thinking it is obvious…no? Perhaps, like usual with me, it is a sonar reading on a larger diamond lurking in the dark of unknown knowns…but if you will try, you may very well enjoy letting those things bubble up inside you…from your heart.

Lastly, and remember that I have said before that wine and the process of creating it is for me the central metaphor of the universe, think about the poem again, in entirety (which means you can reinterpret the words on the 4 layers of existential being: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual)…and once you have that palate built? Start to pull elements from one read through, and combine them with elements of the other…sensual elements mixed with sacred elements…becoming and unbecoming mixed with living and dying…

…and always, always: Communion. Bread…Wine…in the presence of knowing knowers broken and shared.

We are given our birth…but we have to achieve our being, and enter in.

I hope these clues assist you into at least understanding why I am so proud of this one. It was “easy hard” to write down and weave, and it tested my limits at this stage of my becoming…as a poetess, as a prophetess, as a woman, and as a lover of God.

In heartfelt passion,

Charissa Grace

Five Fold Blessing

Posted on August 23, 2014 by charissagrace

The poem I just posted…“Her Door, Her Red Door” …

Dedicated to and written for a helpful person who disappeared…

to me
mother teacher
warrior sister
friend

Lady Grace Be Upon You
Lady Grace Ward You
Lady Grace Sustain You
Lady Grace Succor You
Lady Grace Challenge You

Her Door, Her Red Door

Posted on August 23, 2014 by charissagrace

yeah. come with me she said…
she had keys in her jeans that
flexed outlined in tight relief on that
power…shifting, rolling, sailing, barrel housing,

brick house? gawd that is dollhouse up against this Clipper Ship Sailing
and back is just the half of it! forth is there, no–here, no–there, no–here
yeah you get the picture…honky, tonky, honky, tonky rambling roll

(hank williams moaned and climbed into the bottle, seeing that end)

of course i had never seen this, or this place…(who looks at their mom
when they are looking to her power, to tap into her smoulder glow
like bonneville into the columbia thrilling as she turns those turbines?)
…she prolly demurred, magic shawl in place concealing and entrancing…

but now she walked, swished, ricocheted gutter to gutter
picking up every 7-10 split every step without gutter balls and those keys…
…no sound, bunched and squenched tight there, those keys…

(teena marie had keys like these, yanked from the dudes on the corner)

her door before us fat, streaks-run-swirls-whorls, depth-breadth flowing
crimson coral flaming, cardinal glowing carmine cerise chestnut cracking
garnet sanguine scarlet and rosy…that door was thick and giving…it blowzed there
full, sprawled (like titian’s venus) and throbbing with certain promise.

she said (with eyes) drink this and blinked and shook that wild
living crown claret and blooming rufescent from her head
more precious than the curve of Saturn’s iridescent rings

(aretha conferred keys and fierce eyes midst natural woman’s smoky spell)

then her hand glowed gold, she reached and touched my lips with her finger fragrant
and savory with her her.… and cackled wild woman crone songs branding me, said
I’d never phone home again cus I was there, here, there, here, and she dug out a key
and told me to swallow it which i did, and that fulsome door

creaked open with hinges groaning (hank moaning and dying)
and aretha conferring shoutin respect on my own head of wild locks
and beyonce blazed jeanne d’arc and that key moved, and became

(my own wad, key tight against my ass)

Our Tent On 2 Trees

Posted on August 17, 2014 by charissagrace

I’ll tell you a secret, dear.
Let’s make this perfectly clear:
there are no secrets here, this year

Ouroboros
has been asunder rent
here in our own little tent.
Pish posh, we have no need
of eating our own tail,
we already recycle!

Instead, meet me here,
just big enough for us to sit
(but not stand, we learned
to eschew that when
we learned to not chew
our own tails).

Do you recall this place our tent is pitched…
on the bodies of two trees that were cut
from the nearby mountain and brought
in and stood up planted here?

Holding us on our platform so high
we must climb ladders, exhilarated by
heights unfolded, to sit serene
in settings spiritual and high
above the dirt and drama?

So many in our times
are bored with themselves
infected with the disease of self…
they look for things to fill
their inner emptiness
and it’s just over and
over more and more
again and again

Ouroboros

But we pray we are haunted
by moon-drenched thoughts
reflecting that Elsewhere,
filthy with light and love!

We have the sound of rivers
running in our veins
and the smell of wind
in our lungs and
in our flying hair
soaring on the wings
of our wild and precious life!

We pray in flutes and strings
and we wait answers
like fanfares blown
on trumpets of light
that sound like becoming,
like arriving…

For now though,
in our tent pitched
in the air on 2 trees
we take our tea and listen

to fragrant roses blooming,
to seaweed swaying,
to fish flashing
round rose pink ears
of shells (and always singing
the song of the sea),
to leaves stretching
luxuriously into
autumn splendour,

to singing silence
soft and low and
we finally understand why
Ouroboros so mistaken
is so named…

my mouth at your tail,
your mouth at mine,
and at last we are
our Our, our Us,
with no boredom
in the middles
and swelling reborn
again, here in
our tent on 2 trees.

at 4:20

Posted on August 17, 2014 by charissagrace

it’s ironic,
what the clock says
shouting and inexorable
without words.
the dazed and hazed
love that time…4:20.
i don’t know why,
the stuff they love
is just substance of illusions
in smoky vaporous air.

I’ve been up since 2:40,
and all I can think of is
how shuffling numbers
is so easy, and
everyone calls it different…

but that seltzer?
the one on the table,
left from last nite’s
waiting out the number changes
until it was time
to lay in bed awhile and
exercise my blinking muscles?
well, it’s still there,
and flat.

in the back hall i discovered
that my bike’s rear tire
was flat too,
so i repaired it,
examining inner tube,
looking for holes and patching
in that rough and sticky moment
of sandpaper and glue.

i think about you.

and i think about
the patches on my soul,
it’s unwieldy surface
littered with those bumps
and orange edges and
scratched surfaces from
the methods needed to
make the fix stick…

and it’s still serviceable,
i guess, but i will need
a new one soon.
easy enough, just
buy one with money…
right?
this one is still inflatable,
still pushes out tread
and fills sidewalls and
rolls on the road miles and miles
over rocks and nails
and miles…

but rides,
exhilarating or sweaty
eventually end up
in the back hall,
in the moment called 4:20

(or 2:40, or anything, pick a number
it’ll flip over and come up illusion)

and like that seltzer half finished,
set aside because
(it couldn’t touch that thirst)
it’s flat.

i edited my blog some,
worked on some drafts of
poems that were bumpy and rough,
and found their song in the midst
and that made me cry,
seeing them unknot and unknit
and breathe again, no holes
save that one which they sing out of.

god, what if
life was a great
wordpress
platform,
what if we
could open up
our editor and go back,
rewrite those
lines that went awry
unknot those
songs that choked,
patch those
rash tires flat,
share those
seltzers half drunk,
toasting ennui til every
drop was drained
and finished.

what if we could.

did i forget to mention
how i ran my fingers
round the inside of that tire
worn and used to be sure
what pierced it
was gone or removed?

(if you don’t do this you will just die on the same nail over and over)

anyway, i snagged them
bloody on glass
and screaming silent at 4:20.
but I got the culprit,
at least that one will
do none harm ever again,
that one will not
trouble the rough and bumpy
old patched tube.

so i got that going for me.

i hear those numbers
changing in the deafness
set upon us by the great sunder.
i think about my fingers
torn inside the tire
by the glass
and I think about my life,
a tire pierced and worn
over and again by glass,
by wire, by nail
and branch and bramble
and haunted by this
old and rough bumpy
tube patched and patched
and patched and…
yeah.

i got blood on my keyboard
from that glass that
cut me.

i think it got onto this poem, too.

i think it stains, it colors
all things, i think
i view the world thru blood-stained glasses.

and then i think about
you again
and I blink my
eyes wet again
and i wait for
another day,
another ride,
another changing of the
numbers that all might as well be

4:20

I Do Not Believe…

Posted on August 16, 2014 by charissagrace

…in random acts of kindness! Nope.

There isn’t such a thing.

For kindness takes a choosing,
a mind awake, considering
the plight of those around it
upon their sainted journeys,
and then decisive offerings
of grace and mercy precious
and brilliant in this vale.

Acts of kindness? YES!

These things are so becoming!

You can bestow a rare feast
and let the hungry knabble
or ravenously eat
partaking in the bounty
of heaven’s fruitful shores.

So jargle not the issue,
conflating act and ego
and thus smearing the message
and fumbling the missive…
but rather, look, intently!
And choose that timely moment
and single out the person
who’s glowing in that night
and then in joy, and generous
in heart and mind and spirit
let practice become habit,
and habit become purpose
and purpose become presence
of love unending there.

Companion Updated

Posted on August 16, 2014 by charissagrace

Sorry Constance…she shook off her afterbirth and mewled loud and vigorous…

…so I bathed her, fed her, and she rests gentle now

and soft upon my breast

her sweet breath on my cheek

and fragrant in the air.

Companion Of The Wind

Posted on August 16, 2014 by charissagrace

When you listen to the wind
you hear the tales she tells you
and feel her history…
fragments of long ago,
of forests vast and tangled
and so you will rest,
lulled by her ebb and flow,
her soft and steady rise
and fall.

Earth breathes in winds, in gales,
ruddy scirocco blood-breaths,
wracking chinook coughs,
and mistrals making ways
and sprouting wings arising,
and gliding over gulfs
to delve in yester-caves…
and always Breezy Boras
exploring mountain-faces,
and touching them with fumbly
longing frantic fingers
like a bleak blind beauty
touching her own face
in pining sad mute envy
of such solid certain
there-ness, standing jagged
and heartbreaking in relief
against the yawning sky
and in the eye of Beauty’s
glad and graceful smile.

Wind is tinged, and tainted
in trees and ocean billows,
transformed by desert passage
and fired in blasts blazing
unmerciful and hot,
cured in baking, still fat
wallowing inferno
so ruthless in the sun,

the sun,
the always hot unblinking eye…and

she is tattooed there, fated
to carry always, always
those marks within her soul
that her song seeks to hide.

But in the night, tentative,
she will give up her tales,
if you listen…just, listen…
and let her story blow,
be patient with her trembling,
her clumsy-fumbly fingers
so frantic to form signals
in suestado signing sighs.

If…if you tarry…
give up the tempting refuge
of the wind’s soft thereness,
If you listen deep…
and hold your divine breath,
and taste the territories
of time and tears and turf
without correcting her
or limiting her longings,
without defining stories
and diminishing her witness
with the gentle vapors
of your long accustomed
familiar exhalations…

You’ll hear what she has touched
and has been touched by too,
you’ll taste currents of history
in what her eyes have seen
and what she has endured
in not ever being seen.
Then you will rise, graceful
and humble on her song,
her symphony of sorrow
and swelling sure salvation,
to dance unfettered in her
shamals and silver sharavs
of resignation gentle…
to move in mercy with her
side by side, companion
amidst that mummer’s trudge
in tracks worn, set in stone
and you will tarry with her

there…

All know her, but few find her,
and those who taste her philters
fewer still, and rare…

(for to taste is sacred,
to take the cup of knowing
no harbour and no home)

…but walking with the wind
well, that’s a very different
pilgrimage of presence…to
become her moving tether,
her undaunted deliverer…
If with her you walk,
you will find her voice speaking
things shared ever only
in the wind within
the wind and breath behind
her birth, her wander here…

and you will feature flowers
cascading midst your hair,
and find your cozy locks
flicked and feathered there
and stroked, caressed so tender
in her whisper-wander sighs
as her sign, her settled sigil
to affirm your place and presence
in the bosom of her deepest
precious longing breath

The Purpose of Poetry

Posted on August 15, 2014 by charissagrace

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”

Czesław Miłosz

When You Weren’t Looking

Posted on August 14, 2014 by charissagrace

I pulled a funny rubberface, and played waggle-ears and goggli-eye
when you weren’t looking.
The birds saw, and hopped, skipped and ran to tell the king
but I shushed them, cuz you were looking.
After you turned, I cheeky smiled and pointed behind my palm at you
and then they rained upwards to water a hungry blue sky and
fill the empty air with the symphonic sound of wings with secrets

and I watched, waved and sighed, and wanted to go
when you weren’t looking

When you weren’t looking, I checked out your legs, slim and faithful
steady, temple gates and castle pillars, twins of presence and joy.
I saw them move (oh!), saw them work faithful on the outside
and put Joffrey to shame with simple knee bends and prayers

and I raised my hands in ecstasy
when you weren’t looking.

Your plate was like a wagon-train unguarded, and french fries were the cattle lowing
so I snuck up slow and careful and snagged a handful
when you weren’t looking.
they tasted like the grapes of Pericles! Like sheep roasting in Plato’s cave
and I moaned in delight when you could hear me, but only
when you weren’t looking.

I would have despaired, this life being what it is and me being what I’m not
and turned aside, to cliffs and pits and gnashing jagged teeth upon which
to founder, but that would require you to be asleep,
I would have to
find that moment
when you weren’t looking…

but it never came.
and it never will.

So I will content myself with french fries and wagon trains, and birds a wing
with messages of wonder, with legs and swaying hips
and pulling one of my most amazing and useless comic faces
(or maybe even two)
and fit myself into spaces benevolent and overwatched
by you…

when you weren’t looking

Mama’s Clothes

Posted on August 12, 2014 by charissagrace

Mama’s clothes are alive, like meadows over dirt,
like dew over meadows, like sun kissing dew,
like sky holding sun, like night holding stars,
and then there She is, outside the inside and
with me too.

Mama’s clothes move, like wind thru the trees,
like waves on the sea, like swans in the air,
like fish thru the water, like boats on a voyage,
like banners in the wind, like mercy over sin,
like gratitude in me.

Mama’s clothes rustle, swirl, and make my way
to snuggle close, tussle that soft edge to my face,
curl, close and hear the breath She takes, the
breath She gives, the song She croons, as She
sings over me.

Mama’s clothes glow, like rainbows in sun,
like silver in the clouds, like diamonds in my eyes,
like peacocks in their glory, like a single color story,
Refracted in Her eyes and a living quick surprise
to delight me.

Mama’s clothes, my refuge in the storm,
my anchor to the norm, my banquet in the fear,
invitation to draw near, so I do, I snuggle closer,
inhale Her strength, Her Kindness, Her Grace that
pours over me.

Mama. Strong…Soft…There, not “there”.
Deep, serene, intent, inquisitive, powerful
Grace Incarnate. Wisdom manifested,
Means of Creation, Healer and Nurturer of
Her daughter, me.

Mama. Charissa Grace.
A match made in heaven, designed from
the beginning, a leap within Her Heart to
spark in me and bloom, alive and growing free
my Mama and me.

Mama, can I wear Your clothes?
I wanna be
just like You.

Depression

Posted on August 12, 2014 by charissagrace

Still, unseen but felt, lurking, looming
pressing against my bubble pushing hard
against my present center fading spinning wobbly.

You off balance me with your certainty, your finality
and you insinuate your monstrous purr vibrating
into my mindful choice to be…

…as you wait there, blacker on black, darker in dark,
shadow become substance as you steal essence and draw form
from eating my tentative, furtive choice to chance it

and be.

You snarl, silent, unheard except for those who cannot sleep
and you creep, forward-sideways-higher until your breath
fetid and cold punches my face with the death of stars and galaxies

and little creatures too, like me.

I turn away, and think of Her, and remind myself that
you choked one time…once…and took a beating, a hiding
as He tattooed you inside and out with His victory dance

you got greedy, thought you could swallow a god,
having dined on Their image like river runnings.
Your razor teeth ugly and crooning are close

but no cigar.

I slide my hand in Hers and pull me close
nose pressed firmly into Her garments of
sandalwood sashes and cedar cloaks jet blue and brilliant warm…

and turn away again from your awful there-ness

To “You know who you are”:

Posted on August 12, 2014 by charissagrace

Love, your Charissa

Sleeping Skin to Skin

Posted on August 11, 2014 by charissagrace

Somewhere in the dark,
in the warmth of black-red
before we woke up swimming,
surfing sultry heartbeats and
waves of new bones growing
green and rooty-fibrous,
we navigated bold our
seas secure and buoyant,
our universe and listened…

to…things beyond…a world…
somewhere? Out there.

Sounds moving and flowing,
deep, high, in-between
and all things came to us,
there, turning in the tides
of the primeval pools
of ancient new beginnings…

and so we safely rested…sleeping skin to skin.

As time stood still, there always,
and we went rushing, tossing
thru cataracts and canyons
across the woolly wild-land
of years that tug us forward,
and push hard from behind,
we came thru like otters
in our wedded frolic,
our hurtling thru history,
unseen and secrets heard…
our buoyant whispers crossing

a…vast gulf…a schism…
something? Out there.

Thru skin so thin, translucent
like milk or bridal veils,
we felt, we knew for certain,
beneath the crystal cataracts
that cloaked our singing souls,
we ate at tables there,
delighted and so dizzy
from seeing with hands only
and feeling with hearts lonely
and then, content and answered,
and with our bright eyes open…

we lay together, mingled…sleeping skin to skin.

Now, in this shining dark-red
of knowing and becoming,
tethered strong and vital
to That shore over there,
to That bright land “Before”,
our food and drink comes foreign
and yet familiar, tasting
of places ever ancient yet
forever fresh and reeking
with incense always burning
from when the Song and Singer
ignited flames of union.
Our hands reach, grope, entwine
to mirror hearts and lives
that grappled with this grief
and grasped instead the Grace of
that birth, that dissolution
of two lives into one life.

We lay each night and cast away,
in practice for that Voyage
Last and Final, beckoning,
echoing births transcended,
our hearts become a heart,

and it is well here…sleeping skin to skin

Sleeping skin to skin

Oops…I did it again!

Posted on August 5, 2014 by charissagrace

Edited The Mist some more…giggles!! It woke up colicky this morning, complaining of inconsistent rhyming patterns and cluttered meters…

So I walked the floors with it and crooned soothing ministrations…and I think it might be okay.

This time, no rash promises though…lol The Mist

In capering silliness,

Charissa Grace

Update Alert: The Mist and adjustments

Posted on August 4, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, while we were doing our cycling, The Mist kept complaining in my gut that it was out of step and awkward, and needed some help and ministration.

I listened…and adjusted it a bit. Whew!

It breathes now, and carries a punch in its bowels.

If you liked the poem, please take a fresh look…I am liking the end result very much!

Thank you so for the kind words over it. Love,

Charissa

The Mist

Posted on August 4, 2014 by charissagrace

Mist floats and clings in vaporous veils,
tenuous, drapes itself in sails,
cross hillsides twined thru twig and tree,
ravines and over streams…and me…
arrives in sheets to swath dim swales.

I cling to dull rocks anxiously,
hands stiff and aching longingly
and stinky ‘neath that clutching throb
my fingers seeking comfort’s swab
with baking torn nails tipped bloody,

…but finding only edges, and
comfort none, not now, not here….

Does it conceal, overtake and choke, tenebrous,
sly in brumous cloak…and conquer with its murky stroke?
Does it linger and embrace, its hovering hazy slinking shrouds
arisen from graves of earth in clouds to blur, obscure,
entwine and coil in its seductive writhing smoke?

Or does it flee instead, heart torn and rent
by trees, peaks, light from heaven sent
to pierce and tear death’s veils away
and shatter dark with argent day
that slashes, straightening all that’s bent?

In mist I wait…in mist, I wait to see…
and coming or going, I am becoming me

“Haunted By a Lovely God”: Final Update, and keys to the rhythms

Posted on July 31, 2014 by charissagrace

Sooo…”final update”…lol

I don’t typically do a ton of revising of poems. Generally I will post them up, and then notice just minor things here or there, and tighten them up…or a word that was too feisty and slippery for my muse’s grasp will be caught unawares and I catch it, lickety split and toss it in the poem-quarium for it to swim in, fed by it’s fellow words and nurtured by the kind attentions of you, Constance.

But “Haunted By a Lovely God” is different…it is dead serious. In its recounting of the stories that I lived thru, and in its telling to you of how I feel when I hear others relate their tales of woe and disappointment and abandonment.

Those events that happened…sometimes I wish they hadn’t! I wish that I was “normal”, and life was ordered and tame, even though dreary, cus then I would be maybe more received by others? Maybe not looked at with…oh god, I don’t know how to even interpret it sometimes…pity maybe? Pity that I “cling to the old legends and superstitious beliefs about some great skyfather…” I really don’t know…no. Really.

But that is not my life…nothing about my life has ever been “normal.” The body I am in, or if you prefer, the mind that I have in this body…the fact that the world is always all shimmery and sharp-glinty thrusts and tears of jagged brilliant eternity piercing and poking and pushing its way thru any weak spot in this semi-permeable sphere of atoms and molecules become a living and sentient world.

I am one of those weak spots…and it pounds in me, til it breaks forth, rends me and roars out rushing to chase darkness back into nothingness. It is not like it sounds…sometimes it feels like what I watched when my dearest darling became a living engine of life and brought forth to this world our children, our union and oneness made manifest. I was in awe at her concentration and bold resolute embrace of the pain for the sake of eternal gain!

Oh Constance…I dearly wish that each of you could experience living in a haunted world, one that is alive and laughing behind every tree and lurking in every flower to jump out and surprise you, one that is looming, impending in every sunset and mountain vista with its sharp razor Beauty to slash your heart to shreds and ruin you forever to anything ordinary ever again!

This poem is the best capture of me that I have birthed, at least up until now…as to the future, only They know.

When you read it…it is best read out loud, for I wrote it as a performance piece. The rhythm of the poem is the absolute key to it, and I have worked and re-worked it to make it as best I can carry a rhythm depicted such: “One two three, One two three” and so on…oh sure, there are the few lil carriers of the beat that are called for…but to apply the rhythm correctly, in nearly every case the first sound of the line is toe “downbeat” of “One”

If you get off-rhythm…it falls apart on you.

It is supposed to!

Because, it is just like allowing yourself to be haunted…you have to keep the rhythm, you must step in time, as They call the tune and change the tempo, and then everything is so heartbreakingly beautiful and precise in its place, so much so that words are trite and useless sounds far too small to carry such weight and loaded significance! But this is a balancing act, and it is easy to get distracted, discouraged, or simply grow dull in your attention…and the rhythm is lost and the “poem of your life” starts to stutter, and skip, and eventually, as some poet somewhere said: “…the center cannot hold…” (Yeah, I know, Yeats! Lol…great poem btw!)

But yeah…that was one of the things I have been working on…making the poem come into focus as rhythm is kept paramount in mind, and fall apart if it is neglected and some other part is allowed prominence.

It’s complex…and yet I am striving for a simplicity in the overall thrust, the summary effect it has, once you have read it, uttered the words aloud and birthed it into your understanding and heart…

I don’t know it it is any good. I really never do, with anything I write…I just know how I feel, how I felt before and how I feel once it is written, and then how I feel as I read it back to my heart. I dearly hope that you will be patient and perservere to the end with this one, Constance…it is long, for to shorten it is to give short shrift to the travails and trials and griefs of any human who has suffered abandonment in the hour of their greatest need, and it is to cheat Them of Their due in recounting and remembering the ways that They have apprehended me…

It is my fervent prayer and wish that you too would have opportunity to be

Haunted By a Lovely God.

With much love and heartfelt desire for blessings towering and overflowing unto you…

Charissa Grace

Perhaps I Qualify on Both Counts

Posted on July 31, 2014 by charissagrace

“Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.”

Anne Sexton

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

Good Lord!! Could it be?

Am I indeed a poet, a saint?

God knows I have been called “exuberant” many times

and damned with the faint praise of being labeled “enthusiastic” as well…

these words were not used kindly, nor with tender touch.

But then I looked up

“enthusiastic”

and decided

“I’ll take that!”

Hmmph! I am still Charissa Grace…

bark peeling back in the hot sun,

open face, love and grace

shining thru.

UPDATE: Haunted by “Haunted By a Lovely God”

Posted on July 25, 2014 by charissagrace

G’morning Constance…if you like the poem, please periodically review “Haunted By a Lovely God“, as I am revising it and honing it, and it has changed a lot…mucho thank yous to Dani for her nudges and illuminating questions…keep it up Sis! I think you might like the revisions…

Constance, this poem has gripped my heart in its clutches of eternity…

Listen, this is maybe the truest raw expression of my self and who I am and was and becoming…my baby says it is the most powerful thing I have ever written so far…she may well be right.

My Sister told me a few days ago that she didn’t like it…and I rejoiced, for this is not a tale to tickle ears, it is to make confession of the question that has literally tortured me inside since the first time I asked Them…why me? Why me for good, and not evil?

(Recall I chose the name Charissa Grace!!!!!)

If you, having read of my life written here openly on this blog, find yourself with the same question…”Why her Lord?”…then start talking to Them, with Them…

and perhaps you too will become Haunted…

Grace to you…

Charissa

Editorial Comments on “Haunted By A Lovely God”

Posted on July 24, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance…I can tell from some of your emails and contacts that you are feeling good about this poem, as an awesome and metaphorical take on life, a means by which I am communicating my point of view regarding spiritual things…

…thank you for the kind words…

…BUT…

This really happened.

Every. Single. Word.

I really am, Haunted by a Lovely God…

I really do…feel such guilt that They have haunted me, and I am always so torn at why they singled out this fickle girl when there are so many so much more deserving than I.

It is an absolute fact that when I hear someone speak of how God wasn’t there, I grieve sorrowfully and sit, silent and still.

I am also going to be editing a lot…for rhythm. There is a thrum and pulse in this poem, and it wanders in and out of it, and when I read it aloud more of it comes into focus for me…so check on it a lot, if you enjoy it…it is going to be changing faster than Charissa Grace on her miracle HRT!

Love, lots of love and great puzzled thankfulness for being haunted,

Charissa Grace

Haunted by a Lovely God

Posted on July 23, 2014 by charissagrace

(NOTE: If you wish, you can click here and be taken to a page where I emboldened certain words to try to convey the rhythm and meter of this poem, which is literally essential to it. But: if you wish to just wade in, first time thru and let the rhythms and meters rise and fall, fade and disappear and then come back, well that is ideal because that is literally written into the work as its own “poem of rhythm”. In either case, I hope you are able to read thru it…the things in this poem literally happened to me, with me).

Okay.

I get it. I do…in spite of what you might think, maybe
several of you, maybe dozens of you, maybe
hundreds, or thousands or millions of you
have endured deserts and mirage oasises
vanished in life when it comes to the subject of God.

I hear your stories, the bitter rants of some, the tired futility
of many others, I have taken venom, been covered in acid,
as I lead face first and I listen to tales of one
thing held in desolate common.

“God’s not here”.
“God wasn’t there”.
“God isn’t real”.
“God doesn’t care”.

I bleed when you cry in anguish, and weep as I
hear your recitals, and then in dark rage, and then
finally in grief, that pools on the dark other
side of the desert, in that null empty kingdom of
Ozymandias the great ruler of Vanity.

You might think I weep sanctimonious, sorrowful
supplicant of righteous standing, who’s crying for
those destitute and benighted, the distant, the stranger and
other, from my tower of ignorant pie in the sky…

You’d be wrong.

I weep in guilt.

Yeah…guilt.

For my tale of dark woe is so anti-tragic,
a Mysterium Tremendum, of a wretch so
shattered and shipwrecked in this desert island

…my body…

My story is different, and I feel so guilty,
confused as to why even in existential
despair I am still on the outside of
the common narrative swirling around me?

Contrary to you, in your longing and noble long
struggle to live, and to surmount desertion and
lost lonely silence by God in Their Heaven above…
I have always been

Haunted by a Lovely God.

When I was little and in my first dawning awareness,
and ageless, I recall that I always heard This Voice,
and at first I thought it outside me, I thought the wind had a
voice, or perhaps it was Trees, but it
never was dirt under my feet, no,
dirt is a tongue-tied dull mute.

As I grew I realized that the voice was inside me…in my heart, and I came to
treasure its company and the glad beauty of thoughts, and of musings. Then
I told my parents what it had told me, and,
flabbergasted, they asked where did I hear that?
And I told them “God. God told me”
(for that is Who the voice told me They were
and …Jesus like a Shepherd led me).

They laughed! LAUGHED! And while they were
not mocking, they merely thought
I was mistaken, had fantasized wonders.
So I cried then, and thought that
maybe my parents were right.

And then came the break, the thirsty sword stroke
that cut me to ribbons, my soft girly heart left in shreds…
then the slavery started with harsh words resounding, those
prison door words…and God was still there, holding
me in my tears, wrapped
around my hurt heart…and I longed for death, wanted to
jump in the river from that tall steel bridge I crossed
over each day but God asked me “please”, and…

well…

who can say no to God when They ask “Please?”

Then They would give me a joy for that day…and They
gave me a dog! Oh! How she and I bonded!
But you have already heard some of the tales of Millie…”Good Old Dog!” No…
this is the story of me being Haunted…

Haunted By a Lovely God.

One time, I was alone outside our house

(the one in the Pear Orchards down
near the cold creek where my Millie and me chased those
skimmer bugs and slippery pollywogs all live-long day…)

and it was warm in the soft early evening and dusky and glowing ethereal gloaming,
the good dusk…and wind softly rustling thru fruit trees so
heavy with life and the sounds of the living earth echoed around me…

…and then all was silent…

Suddenly, and it caught all my attention immediately! Slowly I
walked to the pear trees and stood, just to listen…and I heard it…something!
The call of a Mourning Dove

(or is it Morning Dove? I can’t distinguish the
One from the other, it seems to shift
back and forth always and ever).

It cooed and it called, and it seemed to me as if it spoke to me,
saying…”Come out to Me, Baby… Come out to Me. Come home to Me.”

(Lady Grace, She calls me Baby now, here today)

I was so skert! I thought it was a ghost! And this ghost it was longing for
my tender spirit and if I went out there, it would get inside me and
I would belong to it, always and be its flesh, its living body for
it to inhabit, its dwelling place then and forever.

I wasn’t far from the truth… I look back, I think it was Her, Lady Grace,
Dove come down, Her Voice was calling me, claiming me even then as Her own…
I wonder what would have happened, my life had I heeded Her,
gone to Her, run to Her heedlessly on that first day?

It’s not coincidence that our trees now, all around our house are filled with
Morning Doves (Mourning Doves too), calling, cooing…and pestering people in
our neighborhood, but so comforting to me as totems and emblems,
reminders of Mama’s first call to my hurt lonely soul and my soft tender heart.

Then: it was Veteran’s Day, fall, 1969.
We went to town several miles from home for the parade…I insisted that
Millie come with us, and after the music and marching had ended, we
went to the movies: “The Love Bug”. But Millie was left in our Volkswagen van.

(the one that was faded red
with canvas roll back top
and that relentless bamboo pole that
Dad used to poke us and hit us with
when we were clear in the
back and too rowdy and rude.)

and when we came back to the van…
she was gone.

I cannot tell you what that was like. I nearly fainted. I ran in the
street screaming her name, as cars screeched stop and Dad chased
me hollering “Get Back Here!”

We drove the streets hours and hours, me, head out the window, her name become
my tongue protruding and flapping and desperate in the cold wind.
I screamed that name loud, again and again until I was hoarse, and I kept
screaming, my grief-expiation for killing my dog with my stubborn insistence that she come along.

I tried to bargain with Them…in the sibilant cold and the darkness, I lifted my face:

“I will scream her name until I pass out and can never talk ever again, and then
You will receive my burnt offerings of me and give me what I earned with
desperate grief, what I bought with my service…my heart, Millie come back safe home.”

They remained silent, aloof (and I wonder if this is where They were in your tale of sorrow…).
Finally Dad said “she’s gone”…so we had to go home, in that cold rainy dark night of loss
on that day that we remember and honor the valor of
those who faced their fears and endured for me.

I threw up. I do that when I get distraught…I always have done…I cried, and
cried and I cried, and when I had no tears I groaned and keened, inconsolably moaning…
crying til dust poured from my eyes in place of the tears long drained empty by
grief so stark it was a terror strong, threatening to crush me forever.

My folks were hurting for me, so they used what they always had carved me with,
thought was the best for me, raw in my towering emotions and gaugeless deep passions…
words, stern and cruel, words so full of dark violence, and those words’ incarnated beast,
gawd…the spanking…well…yeah, the Red Raving and Hungry Beast.

I was forced to eat my dinner, and I threw it up…on the table, on all the food
laid there for others to eat. Then I got spanked and sent straight up to bed…
where God was silent and no where to be found… but hey, Ima talker, right?
So I cried out to Them into the darkness thick…

(now get this, and understand that I’d been thru the
wringer of Sunday School, Hellfire Sermons,
Damnation Devotions, and I knew enough to be good or the
devil would get me. I once was told: “I will not spank you…
I’m just gonna let satan get you”…and I roamed behind my mom
hours, and wailed agonizing in fear and stark terror, and
begged her to spank me, deliver me from evil on the cross
of my butt, and her hard paddle the hungry
propitiation for my sins and my wrongs…and
I knew that so many times I had done things,
hell-things like say “shit” or steal cookies, or
sneak out the window to sleep with my Millie and
her wriggly puppies though I was forbidden to,
or watch cartoons on a Saturday morning so
early and low before anyone woke up and caught me at it…and I’d
never been sent to hell…God had not bothered to notice or
even to thunder at me, or make trouble over me, and I
knew lots of people thought God was a fairy tale, which, frankly,
mystified me cus They talked to me so much when I was so little.)

That nite…I cried in a jagged blood whisper, my voice bleeding raw, and the
words, still they linger there, seared deep in me to this very day, now, here with you.

(and now, in this moment… I feel so damn guilty!
Why me??? Why did They talk to me of all people?)

I cried out “God…if You’re really there, real…bring my doggie home…PLEASE!” Then…
somewhere, somehow, I moved past bargains, and buy-offs and bribes…I had cried my way
thru the stark castle of filthy rags and entered into the place of no exit, the
inner sanctorums of grace, where there’s nothing to buy there with money, and
there is no bargaining, no supplicating, no pleas, there is just the
beginnings of Mercy Free…

and crying out the word please in that dark night, eyes
gummed shut with sorrow and tacky tears I at last faded off into sleep
dreamless as I grieved and wished I was dead, like I did every night, and at
last I knew nothing, released and insensate and absent within the lost
shoals of sleep’s gift of respite from my agony, sorrow and grief.

Until I woke, instant and on point, into an electrical dark of night
black glowing bright-black that cast light and filled the still air with a
presence, thick, substantive knowing, and threatening to
rend plain reality like the quick ripping of shrouds in the
hands of the dread faced and tall grim deliverers….

…and I heard scritching, and

(oh oh oh)

her whine (that lil ki-yiy-yiy she always used to call me heart to heart)
and I jumped from the top bunk with a thunderous thud loud enough to wake
even the dead and I got up and ran thru our house in that miracle moment:
“GOD BROUGHT BACK MY DOG!”
“GOD BROUGHT BACK MY DOG!!”

Babbling over and over again like a babe, Bartimaeus had nothing on me!
Shattering slumbering sundering darkness and giving voice
to that One Thing that I am:

Haunted by a Lovely God

Fumbling feverishly I rolled the gravestone away in my heart and threw
open the back door where she called me eagerly whining in joyous returning at sunrise…
she’d jumped a 6 foot fence out of obedience so she could come in thru the
Eye of the Needle: the back yard garage door. She limped and jumped on me
and I went down to the ground, I was crying and kissing her and she was
kissing me too and I ran my hands over her, scarcely believing that she was real,
she was returned, she was home and alive, and my heart was restored unto me.

Then she rolled over, so I could scritch her tummy like she loved
and when I ran my hands over her precious side, my fingers slipped inside
her skin and I drew them back from her side which was pierced and torn open…

(I swear!
I know, the metaphor seems so damn cheesy, right? It really
happened this way! That’s the kind of thing I feel so
guilty for… it’s like They shouted it from the Bright Heavens that
I was not ever escaping Their Undying Love never ceasing and
new every morning. I’m telling you that I have always been
Haunted by a Lovely God).

She had torn open her side, and I’d thrust my hand in just like Thomas and drawn it back,
bloody and warm and changed and I collapsed,

(cus I can’t handle blood, even though it has
handled me, covered me, branded me,
marked and commanded me
forever Under the Mercy)

I murmured brokenly “God hear my prayers, God heard my prayers, God hear my prayers,
God heard my prayers”.

Later, my parents made sure I knew that this was highly unusual, God has more
pressing concerns than my dear dog, or listening to me scream and demand…
yeah, there are all kinds of other prayers over the years, that went up and bounced off…

you know the kind…yeah, those

…and life went on…went on…until

Puberty hit and then hell came home hard to stay…in hair and voice and a
horror-beard (and oh god oh god, oh god down there, oh god please no).
And life required again its cruel ransom, and I wanted, longed to lay me on the gears and cogs
that turned in schools and the church groups that seemed to me incomprehensible
strangers, in their innate knowing of how to move and how to laugh and to be… again
I longed, desired to do away with me…this gender-joke…absurd and ugly mistake, just an
ironic blight on “There” and “Here” because I was neither…here or there, just a null thing

…and then…

…I had another time, deep in the darkness of night and numb tears and dumb talking to Them…

…Them…

1973…14 and awkward and lonely and numb from the bashing I gave me to
un-know who I was and was not supposed to be, allowed to be, allowed…
On that nite, cold and alone in the darkness I told Them that I was not going to follow Them.
I was resigning from being a christian and that I was leaving Them once and for all.

“No offense”, I said. “It’s not you, it’s me”

(I’d yet to discover how this trope is used when we
want to abandon an unwanted suitor or
how its thrown out…to hurt and to wound a familiar dull
lover become coarse and rank and too shrill)

“You have done nothing wrong, You have not failed me, no it’s I who’ve failed You, and
what’s worse, I cannot BUT fail You…always, because I’m a

“horrible boy, I’m an
absent mute girl, I am
nothing, and I count for
nothing and I live on
nothing and I mean more
nothing, just more black
horrible, lost empty nothing.

“I am not going to church anymore,”

(for in those days I, like others around me, assumed that if
you went outside and climbed into the
chicken coop then such a fat happy bird you’d become.)

“…when school starts up again, I’m going to say yes instead of
no thanks when they offer me pot, and offer me drinking, and
offer me bodies and no clothes and company there in the darkness and then I’ll be
numb and feel wanted at least…

“I cannot do it, walk blameless and upright, for
I am a constant habitual wallower in my sin
all the time in my heart, in my mind as I fail ceaseless,
besides, I don’t even desire to be in on this world full of Leavenworth walls…

“I will not fake it! I refuse to be like them, sitting in their pews…

“with hallelujah on their lips and wanna screw ya in their hearts!

“I’ll stay alive, take my medicine straight and deserved and so bitter…and
maybe if I try I will even manage to conjure up a hearty yummy while
I drain the draughts of despair bone-dry…

“I know You’ll send me to hell…I deserve that, and even more so…I don’t
hold that against You, for You are and You always have been so Beautiful…
no, it is me, blight and curse, it’s just me, a disease in this world and pure poison.”

Fountains of sorrow again welled up, even as I wondered why they could
never be fountains of joy? And I cried and cried…softly so no one could hear me…
my brother sleeping…as always in these cut-off times…and

Millie was newly dead, gone to run free in the fields of her dreams, yet another cruel
tribute collected by Usurper death…that left me so empty,
so cold, so cut-off and bereft.

Until I heard it…the Voice!

Calling me gently (as always), so I held my breath, listened to be sure it was Them, then
I heard a soft quiet question asked so plaintively…

“What would it take?” (Ummm…whaaa? I didn’t get it)

“What would it take, Precious One? Child, what would it take for you to not check out,
not go away, but to come here and spend time with Us everyday?
Talk to Us, listen and just be for Us… just be Ours always,
just as your dog, Good Old Millie was your friend, and she belonged
only to you?”

This was a careful and startling question and it was quick,
coming at me curving sideways! So I had to really think!
Something absurd, something so damned unusual, that there was no way it
ever could happen, I mean, don’t get me wrong…I still wanted to be with Them,
wanted to share in Their sweet soft communion, cus I LOVED my Jesus, my Shepherd who
I always dreamed someday would leave the 99 and come to rescue me, I dreamed that
He was my Jester to make me laugh joyously, dreamed that He was my best Friend

…I just wasn’t…His best friend…and I couldn’t fake it. Nope.
So it was crucial I create conditions that even the Almighty God couldn’t meet

…you know…

God cannot make a rock so big that They cannot lift it, but They can do anything
so They can make this rock so big that even They cannot lift it…wait…

I was searching for that Rock that God couldn’t lift… right? So

I said to Them “If, when I wake this morning, and my dad says ‘Kids we are moving’…
if there’s a strange town so distant where nobody knows me, and no one has
seen me, and I can start over, start fresh and anew, then I’ll choose you forever and
give my heart freely…lock, stock, and barrel, completely to You… I’ll be Your Millie,
all of my days till I die and my sentence is over.”

Silence gave answer…then after a bit…I drifted away breathing
deeply again as my tears crooned soft lullabies
to my hot cheeks, they ran down in such ancient deep
canyons of sorrow…down my face, down my heart,
down my soul to end up glistening in sorrowful streamers.

When I got up the next morning, things didn’t sparkle or gleam, and I didn’t
remember the Voice, the Epiphany…I was just staring at breakfast my mom used to
“cook” me in those days…Shredded Wheat with skim milk…and feeling
…that gulf, that dark feeling. That feeling. Yeah… The relentless sharp
razor slash cutting inside my soul, forever aching and Constant.

I wasn’t list’ning, as Dad droned on talking of somethingorruther… until I heard
him say the word…“moving”…something about that word…
why did it stick out?

Then in a quicksilver windstorm of memory-shredded, each piece was
hitting me, sticking, unripping its way to become one
coherent experience, and I recalled my reply to Their inquiry…
so I turned quickly and asked my dear father what did he just say…and he
said it again! He confirmed it! Just as I’d laid forth, to a T!

Haunted by a Lovely God.

(I feel so guilty… why am I treated thus?
Why me? Why not the prayers of parents
whose children suffer and die in horrible pain for
nothing that they ever did?
Why not the prayers of wives for soldiers
Cain has already marked for death’s dark
gaping foul maw, prayers supplicating
deliverance, protection, but
they go unheeded and
Death eats again?)

And of course, we moved, and I did…commit myself to Them…
once all for always…yep, I was in…And I’ve hated it sometimes, and loved it at others.
I’ve grown and I’ve changed, seen Them change before my eyes as they were
opened and I could see other than my own idolatrous self and that
small god I fashioned, so stunted, blind, deaf and so mute in the
vanity of my self worship when my box, my image of Them I had
made was so gloriously broken!

I’ve sorrowed and railed… I’ve been outcast by mean so called
spiritual family, been stunned by the towering cruelty of those who should
know better, done blindly in the Most Wonderful Name of Them…

Lovely God to me, and so ugly and coarse, buffoonish in their mocking mouths.

I met my darling, and we had our babies…
she/they are amazing miracles…I watch the
lives of my college acquaintances shipwreck, their
marriages foundering on the black jagged rocks of their alluring
careers and blood money…and I watch the children of
hard working salts, such dear people around me, more worthy than I, better
people than I, quaff drugs like their hearts are on fire, and join themselves
numbly to anyone there in those earthquakes of loneliness,
wreckages strewn in their wake and their orphans tossed
careless like litter abandoned.

And I have prayed with these people, so passionate, supplications far more
suitable than my own bumbling tongue-tied petitions and tall ebenezers…
and seen them bounce off, with dust poofing, dry-cloudy in
dull drifting mockery…

…and I feel so guilty.

Such. Guilt.

Because They have haunted me… They’ve apprehended me… taken me…
They have not let me go, not let me drift… and I,
transgender woman held in such derision by
most of the offspring of the Blood of the Lamb…
The Holy Spirit has even shown me Her Name and Herself, Lady Grace,
and She’s drawn so near to me, to be ma Mère…my Mama, and teach me
my secret heart and my self, so young and emerging.

And yet still I ask myself why am I haunted?

I could go on, forever recounting the
stories of Their faithful presence and meddling hands…of

Yosemite Sacred, cathedrals where mountains became the
Triune God, and I fell asunder to claw at the dirt in despairing blood-guiltness and
crying for mercy… and wonder of wonders!
El Capitan: Papa…Half Dome, cut asunder became My Friend Jesus…
Yosemite Falls: my Lady Grace, flowing and washing forever until I am pure…
Bridal Veil Falls was me, shifting emotions and prevarications blown
lacey and wandring across rocky faces but always to Them…
rising up from the ground, clean and unsullied as
Waterdeep sang for me They have been nothing but
Good in my life!

Each time I hear someone’s tale of woe filled with despair or with cynical bitterness flowing,
or just fatigue and futility…I am worse than any teller, and merit less than the askers, more
toxic than anyone else whose had issue with God, or
issue with Their present absence, or make issue with Them because

“there is this construct God which has come
out of nowhere, seemingly and thus doesn’t exist
(unlike anything else which its knowing of testifies to its being)…”

I have not told you this tale to shame you… I who am shame incarnate for so long.
Nor to claim privilege or power, position… I do not have an iota of that.

…I have not told you to lobby, convince you… or
proselytize, or evangelize you. God No!
I have made my expiation to you, my confessors…
The sin I am guilty of? Of this I Charissa Grace stand blood guilty:

Being

Haunted by a Lovely God.

Repudiation

Posted on July 23, 2014 by charissagrace

I finally see you there, perched on what you take as my shoulder.
Your raucous cries, your crooning insinuations snaking and slithering
Slyly, twixt my uncertainties and my joys…

I know what you do, laying your eggs to hatch, infest
my heart, consume my soul’s supper and crawl back to you
black minions vomiting into your gaping gulf
what was to be my fortifying fire.

I am on to you, foul lurker! I have looked directly
and cast your vorpal brood from my strong heart!
Your wormy litter is turned against yourself!
Be gone you creep! Your doom is to be bound, alone!
I spit upon your atrimental bones!

The Work of Night’s Soft Hands

Posted on July 23, 2014 by charissagrace

Night has Her reasons for pulling plush sloe shades around our borders.
Searing sun scorches, scours sharp gimlet hot relentless purging.
(He cannot but shine in piercing prying shafts into our corners.)

But Night, silent Singer of Mercies creamy and thick,
harbor of ships in shattered turmoil, nestles and hovers
and grants sanctuary to all who would pause and gather.

Take stock, in yourself. Weigh, scrutinize those rugged rocks
you took on as “ballast”, your hedge against the smothering dust of fear.
Cast off that one (or two) by means of which you inveigle you.

And rise, treasure sure, to float free, to drift amongst swimming stars,
ice-fire diamonds brilliant and glitt’ry in the tenebrous skies
with face open and pumping vital heart well emptied and smooth.

And Night, She shall lift you dark, hold you high and smoky
until you catch the sun’s arc long before weary earth wakes
and abundant you shine, displayed and cultivated

as the work of Night’s Soft Hands.

Come Home To Yourself

Posted on July 21, 2014 by charissagrace

It all seems like a dream…like I woke up
into Real life and there you were, grinning,
that crooked lil smile and that small dimple
at your mouth’s corner, honey cupid bow.

It was as if we happy-laughed forever!
And cried for ever too, both all at once.
It was as if my torrid fever broke!
Things clear now to me, I’m in on the joke

regarding the us that we were…we are.
How I must have puzzled you, my dear!
Befuddled you and discouraged you too,
for you saw my real red and pulsing heart,

and underneath, the shade of deep dry rot.
From that mad carnival my wistfulness
and longing that you would be double blessed
sprang up to cover over my despair

and make a castle for you in the air
(I long for naught but glad good things for you!
Blessing and health, and most important Love.)
Capital L Love, vital and alive.

Thus my recoil from your beguiling ways,
from that slight space you harbor to survive
and aloofness you must have to thrive.
But passion, fire for you…remained and bloomed.

I give you those things, slight space, aloofness,
so crucial to your sense of who you are
and how you are…BUT…you… you must cast off
the boredom of the same old peccadilloes!

Soon you will find your true-north self again,
your way again, to walk the sacred spaces,
and haunts of ancient peace, familiar places,
to draw comfort from them, at rest within.

God placed such presences in this bright world
and lets them flourish, glad and glorious.
God’s threatened not by great manifestation
of beauty taken to be gods unknown…

God simply is not threatened. Pure and simple.

God’s given us Beauty, and this is Truth…
…God gives Truth, and this is our Beauty…
Alas! It’s we who fracture and dismember
with reason’s rule we drown out Beauty’s ember.

So…Walk those roads, the trails, the barren beauty
verdant with its own color and life…and way.
Hear the sea, she’s ever-always singing
her ever ancient, ever new swan song.

And let yourself come back home to yourself,
as torn, defiled places are knit together.
Cleanse all the places pain has hollowed out
with haunts of ancient peace…and grace throughout.

To treasure your words, modulate my own,
…“return to that self I have never been,
and yet I always was in breath and being”…
The trust to simply talk to you about

anything gone awry in innocence,
and you will hear my heart as clear as day,
and I will hear your heart as well…the warmth,
connecting, friends who’ve gone thru thick and thin.

So…we dive now into our sleep together,
and when I wake with terrors in the night
you’re there…and when I get up because sleep
avoids me like I haven’t washed for weeks,

You slumber on, and I pass time until
at last I sleepy get, and gently slink
back to our bed and you in graceful slumber
still know that I am there and slide your arm

under my head and pull me oh so close.
I fall asleep my cheek upon your chest,
hearing your breath unguarded, raw and new,
your heart, steady, flutt’ring on so different

than my erratic anxious dark contrast…
And you, temple of Love so tender-fine
comfort me…and I lose myself at last,
to be found…yours…and you forever mine.

It’s Not Insomnia by Josh Gaines (Published Gloom Cupboard Jan 2012)

Posted on July 21, 2014 by charissagrace

Good morning Constance. I am posting a poem of my friend Josh from poetry group. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met, and a fantastic poet too. I really admire his work. For those of you with me, he is the author of that poem Grace and the Space Between…the one that I had such a strong affinity for that he said it is now belonging to ME! lol!

Anyway, he read this one a few months back…it stayed with me, and I post it here for your pleasure. Somehow, it captures that strange moment when someone who knew me previously discovers that things are transitioning with me…

Grace and Peace, Charissa

It’s Not Insomnia (Published Gloom Cupboard Jan 2012)

“It’s not insomnia
That’s keeping you awake.”
Shaking his head
With two fingers
On the pulse wrist.
“You’re just dead
And didn’t know it.
There’s nothing we can do.”
The doctor wrote down
A time of death.
He rounded up
Like it didn’t matter.
“You’re dead,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But I just feel tired!” I said.
“Give it time,” he said
“You’ll come around.”

I walked away
With a certificate of death
And a prescription
I couldn’t read.
I wondered what it was.
At home, my dog
And my wife were missing,
Like somehow everyone knew
I had died.
People apologized to me
Or cried, or drank to my memory,
But the bar wouldn’t serve me.
“Look I can pay you in two days!” I said.
“You’re dead,” they said
“Your credit is no good here.”
When I slept,
I dreamed of being alive.

I had to move some place
Where no one knew me,
Where no one could tell.
I started wearing all warm colors
Even in winter.
I started picking dead people
Out of crowds.
I found where all the dead people
Go to hang out;
I can’t tell you where it is.
If you were dead
You’d just know.

I filled the prescription,
But the pills didn’t seem to do anything.
I called my doctor
And he refused to talk to me.
They said he’d taken it real hard,
Gave me a number to call
For an embalmer,
Who was also dead.
The doctor’s office sent a refill script
In the mail—
The note with it said, “We’re sorry for your loss.”

Final Day

Posted on July 13, 2014 by charissagrace

My children,
we shall not turn back!
Until the DAY.
Even we in this night
Shall know and see
Who we are and
Where we go

In the Oak Grove

Posted on July 13, 2014 by charissagrace

All existence seems qualified
By your smile–
or a dubious look in your eyes
All existence becomes distinct, ~~(distinct)~~

crystalline and substantial
(succinct)
by the grace that flows
from a movement
of your hand that confers
forgiveness for words spoken
without reflection

All existence is turning here, now,
About a fragment moment. OH!
You must know that only you
Bring me health and a
Cooling breeze from heaven.

On the Beach

Posted on July 13, 2014 by charissagrace

it is true
i’ve always loved the daring ones
like the young black man
who tried

to crash all
barriers at once

wanted to swim
at a white beach

(in Alabama)

Nude

Do You Dare?

Communication (1984)

Posted on July 13, 2014 by charissagrace

now we’ve been sitting up all nite
waiting to find out
what the story is

I watch your patient beautiful face
it’s as if you didn’t know
all that you know

Teach me my shallowness
Teach me my message
only you know

only

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Quartet

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A Dhé le Caitlín Maude – Translation

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A Dhé le Caitlín Maude – Translation

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