written in the sky with
birds, clouds, blue
spoken by the silence that
cannot help being beautiful
She cannot help being beautiful
and I have learned to love that sculpted
flow of hers–all that’s secretive…
Blue surfaces. Silences.
Now I know the depth of blue, flowing,
that depth of blue, my love, silent.
She cannot help being beautiful
Oh my love my love my love
Suzanne Grossman
via Why I Chose Grace as a Gay Christian.
I love this young woman’s faith, courage, and orientation to grace!
Hang in there Suzanne…there are fellow believers who realize that Faith thru Grace in Love is the winning recipe for connection with Them!
Please…read the article, and then think if you had those obstacles in your faith journey, in addition to the common difficulties we face.
Grace and Peace…
Charissa
I have just been overcome by the sweetness of this moment, this day!
Outburst of devotion concluded (for now, lol)…
We now return to our regular programming!
❤
Charissa
…oh Lord, consider my meditation.
Hearken unto the voice of my cry,
My King and my God.
For unto Thee do I talk each day,
it is my voice You hear in the mornings…
Oh Lady Grace, in the mornings will I direct my prayers
and heartsongs and meditations sweet, unto You, and
I will look up.
For Your lovingkindness is better than life
My heart sings, sweet and silent and ever grateful
so thus I will Bless Thee, and lift up my hands unto Your Goodness.
For it is Your grace that sustains me and Your mercy that
endures forever…
But Your steadfast Love…it never ceases…it never comes to an end.
It is new every morning!! Literally, new every morning!
Oh Mama! Great is the Wonder of it!
THE FREEDOM OF IT!
Great is Your faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
And so accept me this day, my Lovely King and Lord
your daughter true, born of blood, and blooming with love
and receive my life for Your purpose in today.
Those I meet, those I pass by, and those whose hearts are breaking.
In the precious and wonderful Name of Immanuel, God with Us…
The Dare
I always ask too much:
it’s the very least I could do
CGW 1982
Listen
I who have dwelt for a season
at the root of a scream,
I who have read my heart like one
with no hands reading a book
whose pages turn with the wind…
I say Listen, hear me.
When you play at “strife-in-eyes”
and you stare to see which will go
under first–PLEASE PLEASE
be the first to smile.
Do not harden yourself…yourself…
Though it mean surrendering all
Turning yourself out
To Be Known at the world’s mercy
You may lose your name, you may not know
your shape, even the words
you breathe, spoken out so clearly
will loosen and disperse
possibly forever
all given over to the wind crying upon distant seas.
Moment of terror, should the
Moonlight name you a profile
Among Fallen Flowers
Yet you may survive, for many have done so.
You need only to close your eyes…
(Beautiful, Feminine Gesture)
And do not be afraid of the strange woman you find
Lying in the Chamber of your throat
So it will be: Dark. A Long Vigil.
far among splendours of despair…but
everything will be true, pure,
your love most of all.
But now, please, open your eyes.
Have we not said, down with all tyrants–
even our own?
ESPECIALLY OUR OWN!
OPEN YOUR EYES!
They will glitter with knowledge of the other side
of the moon–their light of such
a quiet intensity that smiles and frowns
will fall away like shadows of
wild birds flying over–
Yet a degree of affection remaining, like
when you find an old Bible in an
old cupboard in an
old empty house–so it is.
Freedom and Beauty. Do not be afraid.
Assume the freedom of those
born in captivity
who find the purity of being.
Do not be over-modest.
Wear the delicate beauty of those crippled
at birth who earn the grace
of their maiming.
You must look and you must seek
in the dreamless dark.
But I await you there…
The Dark Light Of My Eyes Burning With Patience
And then, my eyes will answer…
but they will not command a summons.
This poem is by another friend from my spoken word group…I bought his book, and was reading along until I hit this poem like Thelma and Louise hit that cliff…over the edge I went and into the gulf of wonder regarding how someone could write a poem that was about me, but yet had not met me when the poem was written!
I read it over and over…and over again…and cried…yeah, huge surprise! Charissa is crying again! LOL
Seriously, I was soo amazed. So I wrote to Josh to tell him about how the poem was mine! 🙂 In the process of that, though, I recognized a poem in the email that I had composed, so I pried Prose’s fingers off Poetry’s slender ivory throat, and “Deaf Earth’s Denial“ was the result.
I give you now the genesis poem for that one…
Grace dreams in the shapes of clouds
Of the spaces between
Here and highways
Willing to wilt in the sun
On the thirsty river roots of cypress
Whose bows, living between her
And her dreams,
Decide to shade her anyway.
Grace dreams in the movement of dust
Climbing the sun that sneaks through curtain-covered windows
Swirling in ghosts
In dreams she twirls with them.
The mattress beneath her smells of second hand
Like salt-water, grass and motor oil.
Some dust settles over her heart
When it sees she has no blankets.
Grace allows form to the formless.
She calls out the names of shapes
Yet to be invented.
She remembers: Between every space
Is the note that binds spaces,
And behind every cloud is the shadow she casts on the sun
Carried up on sun dust song wings
When she sings.
When she sings.
When you look from the tops and the corners
of your glance at the walkers thru deserts
of this world full of pain-gilded glories…
Use Soft Eyes.
See, they may be on journeys much longer
than the scope of your heart can consider
bearing burdens of mute tongue-tied stories…
Use Soft Eyes.
Under placid and neutral expressions
that deflect any prying mean fingers
lives eternal unending awareness…
Use Soft Eyes.
Let your countenance radiate kindness
like Niagara gushing relentless
with a laughing voice full of compassion…
Use Soft Eyes.
Travelers talk, and the story
will spread of the human oasis
who generously sees, so determined, to
Use Soft Eyes.
…and free they fly, finally…
while with shining earthbound
feet we dance watching
hearts aflame, yearning…
fates alive, turning…
death, forever spurning.
CGW
7/9/2014
T’was turning slowly in dawn’s breaking light
and shimm’ring whispers silky beyond sight,
the chimes sway beneath hinting soft caress
of yearning summer breeze in ebon dress.
The breeze blows, smelling of exotic birth
from secret womb, beyond far spicy hills
concealed ‘neath velvet star-pricked sable covers
Become substance and presence, become here.
Invisible, not seen, present only
in keening touches tentative, lonely
desiring to stir the sleeping chime,
awaken it to wonders beyond time.
Yet, unknowing chime resists, unhearing,
not smelling jasmine melodies crooned low
by cool voice breezy-breathy, underlayed
with warmth…and longing, sung forever so…
A last push of love, longing…then in sorrow
the breeze blows on by, trilling sad desire
while playing in the always trees of wonder
surrounded in the gleam of new dawn’s fire,
she’s running in her yearning paths again…
But after, when the day is still a rumour
and night is not yet knowing time is up
the chime jingles, clangs, hungry, it remembers
faint sleepy golden dreams of grace-delight
it dances, sways, it craves that feath’ry touch
and nuzzling spicy smell, and then resolves
that it will dance, with open arms and soul
when the longing breeze returns to make it whole.
Love swirled
in browns & variegated greens
under-laced with golden gleams
of thick velvet lush life.
Heat throbbed & raced to kiss the land
Dear Constance…I don’t know if I have told you…I am in a spoken word group in our city that consists of some of the nicest and most accepting people I have ever been privileged to be around. I went there, the first time, as myself. They have known me always as myself, and consequently are a haven and refuge for me when things get rough…not to mention their stellar poetry which feeds my soul.
Anyway, last meet-up, I made food for a lil 4th of July celebration, all based on Red, White, and Blue colors…things like strawberries, blueberries, marinated mozzarella cheese, and sliders with lil flag toothpicks stuck into them.
My baby and I worked 2 days on this! So by the time the event rolled around, I was walking on airs, as cooking fills me with just joy and happiness. I love to take ingredients, and put them together, and then live their change into a yummy dish…I love to create in the kitchen, try new things…I love to have family and close friends over and place before them my labors of love and wriggle with delight at the way that they take such pleasure.
Imagine that…a transgirl taking pleasure in the transition of elements! Giggles…
Anyway, I was dressed very nicely, my hair was just right, I had new earrings and was feeling so congruent and whole and in focus.
I got up to read…and looked out at the group, munching contentedly on the food I had prepared (we had prepared, as my darling had been a huge help together with me)…and I felt so ME, so THERE!
I burst out, before I even knew what I was saying, “Can you see me???” They have seen me since April, and I have seen changes, and I wondered who they saw…or what they saw…I asked some other things that I don’t remember right now, but it just popped out of me, like a check in with some “family”, how am I doing?
Right?
Well, as I was leaving, one guy who is super nice and writes very well, hollered out “Hey Charissa…I see you!”
Awww…how nice, I thought…he wants to bless and encourage me. I felt good about his kindness.
Well, last night the poem below hit my inbox…and I am sharing it here…whattya think, Constance…
…does he see me??? (Hint…I cried for nearly an hour after I read it!)
July Fifth
Can you see me as I stand before you,
in all my beauty in all my array
or are you mistaking outsides for insides
the form for the function.
Can you see the true beat of my heart
the color of my stone
the color I am meant to be
not the one I am expected to be
by family or by society.
Looks can be so deceiving
when we all wear masks.
My mask is slipping
elastic worn out from too much use
from stretching itself for others.
Do you see it falling
revealing the heart dream desires
long suppressed
as I find myself
no longer in the corner where I was painted
but in the center of my universe.
Determinate
Do you see me now.
The sum of all the parts
Past, present and yes even the future.
That unknown space we all grow into
as we drift through time.
Can you hear me now,
when I whisper in your ear the secrets of a life
hidden so well it was more than forty years
before the key was found,
The secrets of the child full of wonder
before the layers of expectation began to form
like a hard crust around the soul
protecting it just as those layers also imprisoned it.
Can you touch me,
reach out in acceptance and love.
Even if you do not understand.
Even if you can not understand.
Allow me the dignity of choice.
Cradle me in your embrace
Keep me safe while I break free
While I am reborn
I stand before you naked.
Do you see me?
(by Vargus Pike)
When feelings take form inside my belly
(conceived by malevolent rape of fear)…
they float inside, tentacles trailing
and dripping venom, stings
and lashes left as their brand
and claim they own my heart.
Ugly jellyfish,
fat glutenous bodies
pulsing in anti-rhythm
that shatters my harmony.
And I know
I am ugly and coarse,
I know I repulse, repel
and am become castaway
Robinson Crusoe marooned with his man Ugly
When feelings gain control
and surge and pound,
tides unleashed from
the Moon’s tender tether
I know I am unlovely
and unlovable, and giant.
Denied position, denied a place, a table
and the seas choke relentlessly
and hope drowns.
When feelings reign supreme, alas!
I am lost, lonely, and never-loved.
Never attractive,
never desired or wanted
of no value, garbage
worthy only of slaughter
and funereal raging flames
of hate to eat the remains.
When feelings are it,
consuming and drowning me
Mama has Her work cut out for Her,
over awful repulsive me,
repugnant and shameful,
head low and eyes
digging dirt for stones
to crawl back under,
to disappear in.
When feelings take control,
I finally find the numb relief
of endurance, and another day
rolls on.
When feelings take control
These days are tricky,
staying in that sweet spot
between futures and pasts.
They want to align
in tricky mutant ways
like my DNA did, matching up
that past with this future,
and presents…well God only knows
how that is determined!
I used to be, in that past,
not present and thus not known or seen.
Love was something
I gave to others, but never was
my picnic basket of many-splendored wonders
and that past shoots me,
injects me into a future that
threatens, withholds and starves
my soul with “tolerance”.
I also was, in this other past,
staunchly, substantially present
and accounted for…doing,
saying this thing and that,
and knighted with unconscious
privilege and place.
That history? Well it veers off
to insistence, self-serving demands
for attention and affirmation.
No…as a “there but not there” prisoner,
I have to struggle to keep
the strands straight, to not cross the streams,
and let my me
cry for love
and for acceptance,
and companionship
and intimacy
and affirmation
and for that label: Beautiful…
while my myself
walks firmly in
lands beyond sight,
unseen but lonely
and finding solace
in Her touch
and Her words
and Her cloak.
It is a knife edge,
and my options are few,
and costly:
selfishness, or abnegation,
and the fruits of those indulgent follies
or standing firm,
with sliced up soles
and a branded soul…
From the beginning, I have been born on the edge.
Those years,
early and freshly spinning
out of the Mystery,
or fresh to me,
blessedly unknowing
how ancient, how creaky
the turning sun as he blazed
across the hot and endless skies
of my childhood…
and how mournful and shadow-soft
the moon’s glimmering
elegy to my innocence
as she
with unblinking open silver eye
saw me there,
hidden and trapped
in the maze of myself.
Slowly I woke up…
and found cruel mirrors
making carnival claims,
barkers of snake-oil siren songs
seeking to snow my heart
white and cold with icy lines
written for what I looked like,
not who I was, heart warm
and red and pulsing,
throbbing to know and be known
in connection and union with
that unstoppable yearning,
welling, bubbling, running out
on thirsty ground.
I figured out I didn’t match
the carnival caricatures’
deceptive drifting distortions…
I realized my designated place,
in the shadow of the freak show,
or somewhere far away…
I was forbidden the Deep Well,
but Grandma showed me paths
unknown and long forgotten,
and I peered into the Well,
under soulful moon’s argent gaze,
under different sheltering shadow
of silver comfort and lustrous grey
grace streaming, I saw me there,
shimmering and free, and rising,
and I leaned forward to let my lips
be blessed with the kiss of life,
the kiss of liberty,
and happiness…
That awakening kiss,
it never came then,
for the sun growled,
groaned and poked
and peeked long before
I could rise
from the Deep Well’s depths,
under the moon’s blessing lament,
to find me standing,
yearning in the dry dirt,
and breathe, tremble,
touch, kiss, mingle.
Under his harsh and razor light
I ran ragged and breathing rough
thru tears of salty-sorrow,
racing to beat that searing
pumpkin-threat of outing me.
And just in time
I caught the bus
to school, still dreamy
and mindful always
of that Deep Well
and her starry night
Living Water pool.
Sadly I ran
under sun
those days,
stick in hand
and hoop so simple,
while wistful I watched
myself under moon
those nights,
complex and intricate,
intuitive and knowing
nooks and crannies
of souls and hearts
and minds.
I watched me,
I was blind to myself.
I ran that Labyrinth
lurching longingly
between
Pasiphaë and Theseus,
but really just
the monster in the maze,
and bellowing blind
and wandering.
And no one knew,
and no one saw,
and no one heard,
so on I ran under sun
and waiting for
the moon’s soft voice,
running my fingers
thru her light
and desperately feeling
with my heart
the braille she beamed on me,
so I could find at least
the realms and rims and limits
of the maze of me.
Those years have trudged by,
feet dragging under sun,
but days dance and spin
and whirl beneath
the moon’s soft care
of this lune-enchanted girl.
I have found my hovering place
twixt night and day,
glad in my graceful
gloaming time, my gleaming
gloaming years.
Grandma’s paths were always there,
within me hidden, in that maze
whose secrets are at last revealed
by moon’s insistent pulse and gaze
in me, and I go so unerringly
to that well
Deep and Purple and Silver,
and I see myself
and touch myself
and kiss myself,
at long last
become
amazing me.
A yawn? A sigh?
A snort or hrrumph?
A grunt?
Or is it the roar and fury of towering indifference?
…I remember, sweet fields of red clover,
green stalks soft and new, tops dipped in crimson,
just before being baked by the shimmery sun
but after they’d stripped off their equinox frocks
to lay naked and sunbathe and snooze
… ‘neath verdurous bows I’d lay gentle
to be rustled and stirred by love-winds
strumming intimate, soft rustling flamenco strains
on red bursts and green wands stirring passionate pleas
and my longing heart yearned contrapuntal
…my head cradled by my dearest doggie,
become Jacob’s stone pillow made living,
and her smile was my ladder to heavenly places,
she my only friend, she my constant companion,
Faithful avatar of Lady Grace
…her sides rising and falling she slumbered
and her dog-dreams broadcasting to touch me
with love-notes that ran thru the magic and mystic
and knit her, my heart, and the clouds and the clover
together in one ever-moment
…and I stared at that limitless blue sky
that held up the clouds, and I was certain
I could stand on them, jump from them only to land softly,
safe in the next passing snowy-cloud heart
to be kissed and be kept from all harming
…I would watch them yield to the wind’s wooing
and change shapes and become different things,
one by one as blue held up their heads and they transformed
to tell of my stories, such longing and aching,
the tale of my breaking young spirit
…and then I would strain hard to become one,
so the cloud of myself would grow solid,
and take tangible shape on the outside of who I was
wailing within, keening desperate to be
what my body and deaf earth denied me
…I would concentrate, willing my rough flesh
to go soft, to go secretly supple,
so my dog’s dreaming tides would wash o’er me and mold me
the who I was destined to be, and not what I was,
dark and substantial and wandering
…but it never worked, so tears would find me
and use me as their surf board to ride on
over billows of longing that swept me away,
but not away away, alas never AWAY
just to Jonah’s lost island of longing
…and Millie would wake at my sobbing
and lift her head to mine so tender
and snap out her pink tongue full of wet doggie balm
dripping healing she’d lick out her quick canine psalm
don’t cry, whine-lick, don’t cry dear, Amen.
…I remember sweet fields of red clover
I remember their scent washing over
and I see them still gleaming, but here now, not dreaming
they are blooming within me and beauty is streaming
to carry me there, to the clouds.
When my doggie was bad, she would shiver,
and with eyes she would look sad and wet and long…
her trembling melted me always.
I remember how she would lay her ears back and soft,
how she would gentle her body against me and
beg for mercy.
I am trembling like her now, but not for being bad,
but rather for being, in a way not acknowledged
and frightening to others.
I am trembling like Victor’s abomination did
when the villagers rounded up torches and pitchforks
and came after it(him).
And I lay back my heart, my soul(ears), and
make them soft and earnestly yearn
for Her hand.
May I always quake, be transient, in my own
aspect and circumstance and
sojourn.
But please, may I be strong and forthright
a mountain unmoved on behalf of those lacking
even the resources to tremble.
The fire crackles and pops
its diphthongs and phonemes
in that hot and feisty
rapid-snap delivery.
“Dad! Dad! Daddy! Father!”
It says this in living
letters of merry blazing
iterations of what,
repetitions of who,
and smoky, hazy eye-burning
questions of…
how?
I shiver and draw close,
grateful for warmth
this late spring day.
It is still early, and summer
slumbers in the dawn,
as I sit shiva with spring …
and the fire sings, keens,
quests, warms and shows us
the way of all things,
fading natural-like, and
giving up its ghost.
Ashes drift lazily,
footprints of wandering ghosts
free at last from their entombment,
in limbs of wood and sap,
and finally I see ashes
are ghostly release,
are seeds, promises of Phoenix,
gathering, bunching,
heaving and inevitable.
Smoke gets in my eyes,
clears my eyes, blurry and stinging
and stirs my memory pools
as I think back on 31 spectral years,
as a ghost encased in a word,
in a role, entombed
in limbs of alien thick
coarse wooly flesh.
Those long years of walking on water and anxious,
with no idea
what was a daddy
and inherent universal
knowing of love so deep it makes
the shores of the galaxy seem shallow.
Love was my fire,
my ghost, my ash-seeds,
and I my own Phoenix
sleeping, waiting,
looming, wanting.
I gave myself, my blood and sweat,
my upturned nose to fear and downturned face to them…
I threw me on the fire
and I screamed silent,
solitary inside no-one-else-here land.
I popped and hissed
and seethed and whistled
and snapped as I
gave up the ghost each day,
turned to ash each day,
diminished, but growing…
disappearing and becoming
until I walked
free and disembodied
and covered with ashy afterbirth
and filled with knowing
I could do nothing more
than give the love of one called father
even if I could not bear the
name of man.
Summer stirs, and my reverie is snapped
by the sharp chirp of robins
wanting to scritch thru the fire remnants for sowbugs.
Spring has closed her eyes,
her breath has slowed
even as mine has quickened
and I stand to face
my first father’s day of
fully knowing me.
Love calls 4 times.
And I know that somewhere,
somehow, someway
that feisty fire-voice
was naming and liberating
and I have been reborn
from all ash,
a ghost no more
but bodied, present,
and turning in my joy.
They leave marks, tears. Look.
You can see them if you stand
eyes akimbo and uncrossed from normal.
They don’t show if you look usual-like.
But they shimmer
like living starry
liquid songs of sorrow
They sparkle in sideways-sight,
like limpid diamonds heaped
across the face of the earth.
Sometimes, if you walk around
with your eyes uncrossed
you will bump into people
that are invisible in this land,
the ones who choke their tear-spring
with furious fingers
so they don’t show up seeable.
They don’t glimmer and gleam.
Some sorrows are too deep,
so when this happens, you must
reach into your bag
and sprinkle them
with tear dust.
I’ve been practicing this
diagonal walk, shambling
hither and yon
whispering “Marco”
and straining to hear
the reply.
It’s like my
sonar of sorrow,
I guess,
to navigating
these strange seas
of lambent woe.
And I never wash my face anymore…
I have a theory:
let my tears dry
on my cheeks,
my lips, and they
will end up
tattooing my heart,
marking me Maori-like
as blessed, a
Suffragette of sight.
| — | My Favorite Bedtime Story |
We had just finished our ride,
and we were parched and pressed
to sling a leg off the back of our bikes.
Salt crusted jerseys glared flat and dull
in the sultry sun of High Spring, falling
all shimmery clear and gold, splashing
on the hot black radiant parking lot
like wedding rice.
Across the street
the stilted and dumb
rain-birds spit water
on the swollen
green baseball field,
which was so happy
in the drizzle
it reeked noisily
of lazy drinks at twilight
and kids at play.
We looked on silently,
and then drained our own draughts
and added our tired joyful scent to the melange.
Soon, bikes bunked again in the van
and our 455 air-conditioner at a lazy 45,
we rolled towards dinner and wine,
and the lovely sleep of the dead a bike ride bequeaths.
My soul sang and hummed along
with the soft sibilant tires,
and I knew my favorite pasture
was soon to jump up into me
from across the ditch.
I hung my head out the window,
let my tongue taste the air
and the wind bury wild
sensual fingers in my hair.
And then she was there,
smelling ancient and new
and fresh and fertile and pulsing,
eager like love making on an endless afternoon
sweet and free under plush rustley blue skies.
I heard her song,
I felt her tug in my guts,
I tasted her tang in the wind
and shivered with delight.
She was shorn, fresh-mowed
and relieved, light and lively
and sprawling in mystery,
cloaked in new nakedness
and hidden behind beauty marks revealed.
She breathed…
deep rhythm
and spin and pulse…
deep.
Silly Samsons thought
she was Delilah returned,
so they came for
assey jawbone revenge,
and left with her full
alfalfa tresses tamed and taken.
I think she just laughed.
Because, blinded by the usual,
they had no clue that my Deborah,
my delight, my paradise
had wonders not touched
or dreamed of save by dreamers
and by trackers and wonder-holics
with the DTs of delectation
who would sell their mama’s souls
for just a whiff, just a taste, just a touch
of beyond the Beyond…
she is there for us always.
Time stood still as we passed her,
and birdsong wove wonder-ways
into her chambers, and there,
in the deep back,
where her leggy tree thatches
came together and merged,
where her center throbbed,
supple gloaming dark,
soft and silky rose
from beneath the wood,
seeped black and creamy
from the edge of field
and trees.
And I knew that I beheld the center,
the wellspring of beauty and
the font of her rivers,
her fertile forever flow,
her temple, her womb.
And I felt her curve
round her children yet born,
even as she reached
and caressed my cheek
as I flew by with kisses
of a queen to me her
handmaiden.
Soon we were passed,
hurtling headfirst towards tomorrow
while she moved and danced
and stayed rooted in her everthere.
Light just so, wind just so,
I knew that door
would never show again.
I sighed, licked my salty lips
and ached fiercely with heart
full of her sweet always song.
All who read here for poetry, and could give a fig about my spiritual writings and ramblings…
…thank you sooo much for having patience with me, and indulging my relating those spiritually oriented thoughts and teachings…
…truth be told, it is who I am and how I am made to contemplate these things…time after time They have arrested me with lil movies in my mind (the fancy dancy term is visions, but that sounds so pretentious and super-spiritual and self aggrandizing!), or lil conversations in my inner heart…
…time after time They have pursued me and manifested such kindness, such mercy and grace and forbearance that I simply cannot but tell of Who They are to me, and what They have done for me and in me.
Here is the literal true takeaway: if They would do this for me? Literally, They would do it for anyone!
Anyway, thanks for your patience…poetry is my second deepest love, and I will be delighted when the next poem is birthed…it is about a field, newly mowed, and the dark and warm shadowy gloaming laying back in the hedgerows and woodsy womb from which the field leapt in joy.
I am never insulted if you skip the spiritual stuff…but just in case you read it? You might be glad you did!
All my love and thankful gratitude,
Charissa
Bobbing in the silver lake like a cork, or maybe a pink bobber trailing a hook for catching fish,
I looked around and saw no sight of land, no brown, no yellow,
no dry tang of sand.
Just water (blue and turquoise, purple and green waves
moving, flowing deep and wide)
…and me, floating.
I heard a voice on the waters, in the waters, so near yet so far
and perhaps from outside the in, and clear…calling me, calling.
Come. Deeper. Calling and beckoning.
I looked down thru the shimmer and saw a dim glimmer of a figure far
below and hanging, floating, and waving Her arms like seaweed become God…
or was God become seaweed?
Adrift and alone, I had no other place to be or way to go, and so
a breath for luck–I dove…and swam…until I was red, was bursting red and
kicking water-doors in, swimming thru that choking and wet desperate desert din,
trying to get to Her, to be found, deep in the waves and whole,
deep in Her sea, Her song and Her smile…alas! Faltering I had to choose…
If I kept on I’d fall short and drown, but if I turned back, I could surface again,
but only to the lonely still, and outside Her in…so I pressed on,
down, having decided if I were to die this day it would be swimming to Her
and never running away.
And then suddenly I was there, or She was here, my choked lungs
burned bursting-black like Chicago and Her Lips ageless and fresh on mine, cool and sizzling…
and Her breath became forevermore my life’s air.
rain-filled ruts reflect
an apple red summer sky
that highlights brown hills
in the wind my skin
revels amidst bitter-sweet
echoes of that day
wind, you will have a
terrible time smothering
my soft clarity
a good poem somehow
makes what’s true a little more
disturbing/profound
Poem within this poem
Grace inhabits this body…
image finds its Source
I love you, but it’s
not the finish, not the end
but the beginning
You say “I love you”
a sound so tender that the
dead could even hear!
There is a tenderness
in your eyes
in your voice
a trembling
so I can never
tell whose mother
or little girl
you might be
and even I
must believe it
tonite, remembering
in your eyes
such a tenderness.
you have such beautiful western legs.
when i see you walk away, i love you.
when i see your back, the curves of
your shoulders…
love is the exact reverse of self-desire.
in the act of love…
…and goes forth
continuous. fluid.
what is tomorrow, that it cannot come
Today?
now and again
here and there
then and then
again and again
more and more
I sit, quiet in morning, in a fuzzy gold dawn of…yet another.
This day, like them all, like none before, stretches out horizontally
(my cramped and sleepy legs), stretches out vertically
(my free unfurling soul), hums with eternity’s pulsing center
and calls my name with its wafting breezy mouth.
My heart pulls, rises with the sleepy sun and warms
to its task of pulling me up to the easy estate of becoming.
Flowers send fragrant potions in answer to beckoning
gestures from cloudy gentle giants floating in graceful skies
bluing up for warmer dances coming when the sun opens its eyes.
There is a space for you here…beside me on this soft and leafy bench.
But you must turn a quarter turn, and step three times to your left and hop,
and fall up out of that dreamy safe sameness and routine slumber.
You must say the words and rub that dull and tinny lamp
that stands beside your desk, your bed, your chair, and then…come here.
The air shimmers, blades and branches sense your approach, your desire.
They lean, beckoning, they sing and lark in this breezy vibrant dawn.
There is quiet at the heart of this singing day, but deeper, within that quiet
burns an ever-flaming core of wonder-song, facets flashing, gleaming, fiery
like some magic carpet woven from Auroras and last night’s wild starry strays…
I wait in the quiet, I wait in the core, I wait ‘neath these plush and pearly-gold skies
swimming before a broadening emboldened sun. I wait for you…
I feel you turn, your first, second, third step, your hop…
I see rose air displace and bulge and nearly tear,
I hear that lamp purring ‘neath your eager hand!
And I join the flowers, blades, branches,
birds to herald your arrival, here ‘neath marvel skies!
My wet red heart beats in time to music
flying in soaring skies and wonder-winds…
it is my womb, my temple and matrix,
at long last no more a stranger to myself.
Contractions, pangs, contraction, pang…
beating out my birthing, my being, my life,
long brownly-buried in dry dirt dusky,
deeper than an ostrich can see on its best blind day!
Strains, arpeggios, wildly dance and swirl
in bluey blasts and exultations and voices lift in high chorus
and wallow in jammy joy, crooning to me, babe in transit
from womb to shiny bearing-burst to tomb.
I, halfling of becoming, in and out of grave ground,
fidget fast and twiddle and twitch, touchy and unleashed
and free soon flying and yet bound, sommat
still in cloddy clutches of dust to dust.
But here…in this middle earth ethereal and having boundaries not yet charted…
I glance with gleaming glad eyes all round and see the ostriches burrowed down
and crammed, obliviate wings futile and folded and settled, serenaded
by secure and intentioned monotone unknowing.
I lift my voice and my words, and they drag dirty distressing fingers
from the tender white curve and arch of my throat
and my song squirms and heaves and lurches forth from fleshy grave
to live again in light and take its place in that Thundrous Sky Music Throng!
Words, familiar and yet never heard or said or sung spring
glad and fresh and ageless from my lips, and my yearning theme flashes brilliant
and dances on voices and notes, sings of birth and never wonders why
but simply shouts resounding “Bury my head in the Sky!”
Doggerel has a certain junk-food appeal to me at times…and other times it just crowds into my head, like the Kool-Aid “Man” in the commercials, busting thru the walls of meaningful metaphors and symphonic similes and aristocratic assertive absurdly abundant alliterations!
“BOOM!! DOGGEREL GIRL ON THE SCENE!” giggles
Here is a poem that was inspired by comments about procrastination…I feel that procrastination is an indulgence of the lazy moment…so here is some doggerel style poetry: Doggerel poetry is the indulgence of the lazy poetic moment!
And yet on that Day when you’ve run
the race, and when your life is done
you’ll think of lazy days and sun
and of last night and that song’s fun.
Essays live but briefly here
and haunt us pre-birth with a fear,
and dread of birthing them is near
when all they are? Pain in our rear!
So lift up laughter as you write
and scribble smart things, neat and tight
and while you create, let your sight
fix on that Day of vast Delight!
(oooohhhh…doggerel is such sweet sorrow!!! LOLOLOL)
🙂
Love, Charissa
As you wandered,
boppin and beboppin
to the buzzy sounds
that breathed into your ears
the codes, the messages and melodies
of the age,
your earbuds
wrapped around you,
wrapped you in snaky coils.
You were royalty,
rich in plumage and
arms full of
your booty plundered
from the aisles and
displays of the latest…
cool, collected and sure.
I smiled and nodded
with sparkle eyes and hope,
and you saw,
flared your nostrils
as you caught
my prole-parole
scent and manner.
You graciously tipped
your china-delicate chin,
white and chisled
and went on your way,
arms full, head full, ears full…
of what? Trinkets? Treasure?
But I followed at a distance,
careful and sideways
so you wouldn’t see,
and when you trembled,
when you sighed,
when your heart
rose unbidden and cried out
“Is this all, is this all”,
I heard your subsonic scream,
and dogs howled.
And then I knew that
what looked like
an armful of wonder
was only
an armful of loneliness.
Sometimes, in the black of night, haunts and ghosts of long ago
return and bite me…in the heart.
Their teeth, no form or body, sound slashy and ugly dull discord
and pierce me, hurt me, haunt me and my soul runs panicked and stampeded.
Their corpusant claws, red wreathed and skin-ister
slash my gut and leave their venom of panic and despair.
I groan, under decades of their torment, and futiley
stopper my ears with torn fingers and tears.
“Miscreant! Blight! Dark Blemish on dark night!
You are nothing! You should die! You are ridiculous and alone!”
And they also say other things much worse.
I writhe, squirm, and cry out in desperate agony,
and have never known anything else but to stand and endure.
Even when it is poison-pitch-black, I remember You Mama,
Your promises and Your comfort, which has preserved me.
And in the morning I rise, exhausted, defeated, and torn
but still, my “no-matter-what” is intact and strong.
Jaws aching from grinding anxiety and heart dripping
the blood of wounds and the sweat of grim life, I tremulously sing
You are my refuge and my strength, and as the troubadour sang
I will follow you…and see Your goodness in the land of the living!
This poem (or is it more just verse?) is attempting to say that if you ever find yourself looking at the outward actions of someone and coming to a conclusion about their motive or heart, it is a dead giveaway that you have unconsciously or consciously begun to trust in your own self as the source of righteousness and goodness, and have poised yourself as the standard of measure…otherwise how would you come to such a conclusion about the person’s heart??
A wise man told me once, “We judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions.”
Wow. So true, right? No, instead, when you are filled with the wonder and majesty of the glorious work Jesus FINISHED when He became our sacrifice and ransom, and when you truly grasp that when you say Yes to Them it is no longer you who live, but Christ in you, and that ALL old things are passed away and you are a brand new never have been creature that is a human being incarnating Very God…well, then…you are free, to simply be Their Ambassador of Love and Mercy and Kindness.
Love Mercy
Do Justly
Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa Grace
Judge me not by the deeds I do, e’en if they tower tall
Or if they glower and echo failure and show all the ways that I fall
Judge me not by my actions, for actions only tell a part,
Judge instead the Deeds of Them whose works show the True Heart.
The True Heart gives, in lavish ways, compassion, joy, and grace,
It knows our frame, that we are dust, and knows we lost our face,
It responsibility takes for every step astray
And makes a way for us lost sheep to run from night to day.
When actions you look only at, you show the god you trust,
Your own soul’s will and naming good, your own judgement…your lust
To at the core be your own captain, commanding your own soul
And God’s Name becomes vanity as you crash on ego’s shoals.
So judge me not, for I will fall beneath your scrutiny
But look instead at Lady Grace, at Jesus, at the sea
Of Love unceasing, perfect and fulfilling all the law
Indwelling life in me…judge Them…and then kneel down in awe.
Sometimes, when the ache of the world
conspires with my own, and twines with terrible tedium,
my faith is stomped into a mudhole and kicked dry
and left for dead.
I lay, limp and without vigor,
dull and without sparkle
and I watch the forest denizens draw near hopefully,
wanting to drink of clear and glittery waters sweet and cold
But something smells off…me…fetid wounds and sores clotted and festered
smelling of fever and sorrow…and death?
So they slide away as if to not be seen, nor ever to have known
this well once so lively that is struggling and ambushed by thieves.
But I see them go, having crossed the road first
to avoid being sullied by the silly and sick well
that is failing to provide accustomed sustenance.
And I wish for just a drop…of water from another well?
My Samaritan? Are you out there? Can you follow your nose,
endure the stench of sweat and sorrow and despair?
Can you take me to That Inn, and pour oil in,
Just a kind word, when the well runs dry…
Dirty with me,
dirty with Your love for me,
You plunge Your tender hands
into the messy miry clay I am.
You grip,
grab,
grapple, and
pedal,
whirling me,
spinning and scattered
becoming
moving from
Your heart to me.
…becoming…
Becoming?
Mama,
with pain pulsing, and
Ache throbbing and
that void crying within?
Becoming?
Mama, with
the spin and
the pull…
And WET! Ugh!
You drench me, and
drown my
Objections
(which meander forth like mewling kitty-cries)
in floods of word,
of blood-sacred and red,
of water alive…
Til I am soft and tender too,
and moldable by You.
I cannot but trust You,
Mama, Faithful Potter,
busy and intricate,
tender and tough,
Teacher and Creator.
Yet Fire awaits, I fear…
no, I know.
Fire to dry,
to bake,
to cure,
prepare…
And then use,
filling and pouring,
and all the while
Feeling
Your hand on me, and
Your life in me,
and seeing flowers
bloom and blossom…
so my Mama,
take me in hand,
and redeem my days
in Your Becoming.
I woke today,
again,
and sad.
Fingers clenched,
toes curled, and
palms scarred
by my fingernails’
cruciform
crescent tattoos.
Another day of longing…
wash, rinse, repeat.
I had hoped
that someone
would notice my pain,
feel my heartache,
care for my sorrow.
But no one did,
lost in their own
worlds of hurt.
I was glad and sad
when I declared in faith
and many liked that.
To encourage others is good.
But when I was open,
transparent,
silence held court and
there was nothing…
no words,
mute embarrassment at
my open vulnerable mewlings?
Distaste for naked cries?
No hand to take,
no smile to receive…
My Daddy told me,
when I was little,
and mourning
“Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep, and you weep alone.”
I always hoped
he was mistaken,
but I think
he must have
been right.
I’m gonna press on,
give my smiles,
my words,
my hands,
such as they are…
I’m stubborn that way,
I guess.
(this was written in 1979…and I just found it, and I was struck that it might well have been written to myself, hidden and lonely and imprisoned in all the things that I was bound by…shame, loneliness, distrust, abandonment, alienation…and all that in the midst of a life that appeared to be vital and outgoing and faithful and fruitful!
remember Constance…be kind to every single person you meet! You never know what burdens they carry, and what the pebble of one word might do, with eternal effect.)
Song of You
I see you
not with my eyes
but with my heart
a face no darkness can consume,
no light can outshine,
with me always through-out time.
I hear you
not with my ears
but with my eyes.
I hear what lies behind the syllables
I see them, feel them deep inside
words you could never speak or hide.
I am touched
not by your hands
but by your thoughts,
feelings caution can’t erase
nor careless caprice…
you give me peace.
In the midst of pain, lonely ache and terror,
in the midst of the grasping clingy gloom and
thistley despair raining in cold fire around me,
I choose to lift my eyes up, lift up my heart,
lift my lips up and again resolve to sing and give my
pearls of praise in offerings of trust…and faith…and standing.
Resolved: to stand, weeping though I may be, but not to turn back,
not to be silent, stand and wait. Wait. wait.
For the Goodness of the Lord to rise again, and again.
I recall the old song:
“We’ve come this far by faith! Leaning on the Lord, trusting in His Holy Word,
He hasn’t failed us yet! Oh, we won’t turn back, we’ve come this far by faith!”
This is my boast…that They are faithful, and will work and will and do
in me to Their Good Pleasure, and I shall not be left bereft
come what may.
Amen.
You say “You there! I’ve caught you at it AGAIN! BREATHING!”
so I try to hold my breath
but that too has its own punishment
Like any
ACT OF SILENCE
Hold me close, I beg Thee.
Never let me go,
though I pull like wild horses at Your tether.
Wrap me in Your love please!
Tender, tough, and total
as it presses me and puts me back together.
Father, You have reached me!
Taken me back home, into
Your house that is the essence of Your Heart.
Jesus, You have breached me!
Leapt the walls and plumbed the gory
depths of death and caused shame to depart.
Oh Mama, my Help and comfort,
You are healing, changing,
breathing in me Hope and Joy and Grace on Grace,
So hold me close, I beg Thee!
In Your wonders and Your Love,
so someday I will look upon Your Wondrous Face.
The shell is brittle…
like dry bones fallen like leaves
from the table of bone.
It clasps,
grasps, and
feeds on my
gristly gasps
with my every breath,
every sob…
…and I can’t cry hard enough.
They must be pierced,
these bone-shield
prison walls that comfort
and secure me safe.
She is knocking…
knocking over my defenses
and my usual.
But it hurts so…
…and I can’t cry hard enough.
Discovery’s pain is surpassed
only by the pain of hiding,
and what terror there is
as She sees,
and knows.
She reaches,
and grows,
and tears me
out of myself
into Life…
…and I can’t cry hard enough.
“Today’s tears are tomorrow’s treasured triumphs, ‘Rissa!”
shouts my Mama,
Lady Grace,
Queen of Grace,
Heart of God
to God & man.
She promises victory,
and being,
and glad Joy…
…and I can’t cry hard enough.
I heard the moon today,
amidst the clamour
inside my face,
behind my heart.
It was spinning,
spinning, lost
and dark, flashing
between earth and sun,
baking, freezing,
baking freezing.
She had no green, no gold.
She had no food…but
worst of all…she had
no voice.
No voice,
to tell of
endless sojourn
hours, of blazing
hot and ever-cold
and only moments
in between, on the cusp
of congruence
and…
and…
and,
well,
she had
no way
to tell
what the
and is.
But I heard her,
the moon, today,
in my bones’ ache
and in my throat’s clench.
I heard her in my teeth grinding
and biting my lip bloody
to stifle my own
absurd and
desperate
groan.
Like the moon,
I circle, spin, and
move from pole to pole,
and find moments when I am
on the cusp of congruence.
My pain
her voice…
I heard the moon today.
Today dawned golden, blue.
Birds sang up the sun and
grass gracefully beckoned time
to snuggle in
for the day.
But inside me
Dawn hid
her apple cheeks
and a wind
howled thru the hollows
of my sad soul and my
heart ached like hungry teeth
gnawing on glass,
and rock
and foil.
And time?
Stomped in,
laid down
and settled over me,
raptor
piercing air
in screaming dive
to lay claim
on me
its prey.
I am aching and
stuck among these ruins,
and yet
I must press on.
sitting in firelight
your face
a shadow
the little
gold glint of
your ring
fingers of a hand
that whispers softly
at my nape’s hair
smoke blowing
in the winds
of wind
I was noticing
the rows, the order,
pretty enough…
splashes of
purple and pink
and blue and red
and yellow…
but the order
made me dizzy!
My mind
tried to smear,
to blur,
to mix them
again
ordered
but not in
order
rank and file.
Yet her furious
digging and stabbing
at everything that was
“not order”
distracted me,
clods flying
as if from between
a gopher’s brown legs!
Her mouth
grim as Patton’s
as he intently
urged Rommel
to the grinder,
she stalked
and tracked weeds,
rocks and sticks.
I scurried by
with my head low
and eyes straight,
lest she start
on me next!
Around the corner
I was back
to my yard,
a sprawl of
Western Oregon tangle
and blackberries,
wild strawberries
and everywhere
ferns ferns
FERNS…
The tweeties
flit and dart,
the robins rule
with bright wakefulness
and the stray cats
wallow in daubles and
puddles of warm
golden light
(seemingly somnambulant
but staring steely
thru slitted eyes)…
and beds here,
tousled and frumpy made,
and beds there,
letting any rooted thing declare
if it be flower or weed
(this bed knew
that “weed”
was a label made
by “Dictator Order”)
and tall oaks
gathered round
the fire ring
to watch their
cast-offs become
the wine and bread
of many a bonfire.
I know
she hates my yard.
She tries to
shame with sarcasm
and damn
with faint praise.
I get it…I do.
She gets unsettled
when control frays.
But I love it.
It comforts me
in its balance,
in its flavour
and in its eversong of liberty.
This is a song I wrote years and years ago…the girls were young, and in our family Christmas is a big deal…intentionally so. In fact, I think that any of you would love Christmas if you ever were to celebrate it with us. But that is a post for the holiday season. I ran across this song in my files I am slowly combing thru, and it made me remember when my girls and I were skipping thru the mall, in Nordstroms, I think! And we were singing it at the top of our lungs!
lololol!!
They were wearing Christmassy things, and I was doing my best with what I was allowed, in a velvet crimson vest with silver buttons embellished with lion’s heads. People stopped and stared, and then we heard applause in our wake…but us? We didn’t care, and skipped along caught up in the joy and wonder and excitement of The Hope of Glory making His appearance at last, in the flesh!
It is in waltz time, uptempo and rolls along like angels’ songs raining down! And if I recall correctly, I believe that the text I used was the wonderful Isaiah 9 passage, with some helper verses thrown in!
All the angels are singing,
They’re singing a heavenly song!
For unto us a Child is born,
Emmanuel is His Name!
Those who suffer in darkness
Shall walk in His marvelous light,
For He has shattered the covenant with death
Emmanuel is His Name!
Chorus:
Singing Glory to God
And on earth, peace, goodwill to men!
Glory, Glory to God in the Highest!
Glory to God in the Highest!
Glory to God in the Highest,
Glory to God!
The government rests on His shoulders
For He is Almighty God!
Wonderful Counselour, Prince of Peace
Emmanuel is His Name!
He’s the Everlasting Father,
The Dayspring from on High!
Arise, shine, for your Light is come,
Emmanuel is His Name!
Chorus:
kites
again
kissing
it
goodbye…
standing
still
in
it
Buttered rolls
are the Whole
of the morning
porcelain chairs
glare at noon
My tea is Water and Wine,
she is mine
in the morning, noon, and nite
She is my delight
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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