waters of Mara
turn to life
and royal streams
of Violet Purple!
purity has taste…go ahead
taste it, taste and see
see Whom you shall see
and say to Them
teach me in Your waters
living, knowing kind
you will find my secrets
hidden in the bottom
ahh
Ancient Grace
in the face
of death
flick of silver tail,
flash of waning argent light
bloated belly rolling over red echoes
of a blooming crimson sky
and then these little gifts eternal
nestled in the cleans-ed sand
another flick of tired tail
a last flutter of gaspy-gill
and all is still…
floaty toward the slumber stop
and all is still
It’s swans…
white in the
flashing golden air
flaking off as sky goes
pink at the edges
and falling away
reeling away
in honor of the Death Song…
then
they’re gone,
and echoes flutter
and twisty fall
down upon
my upturned face
and chill each spot
they touch
with that fading Western Glory
I turn, and face my fire-pit
embers dead and full
of waiting bones
Ah, waiting bones, still and calling
crooning for my naked tired flesh
to lay me down on them
(extension of my bones’ face)
and those bones, those
cold glowy bones stark
dig me with rooty bites
and toothy ancient secrets.
I turn my face to see the Last,
the Last Swan soaring, lingering
watching to see me to my
earthy bed of bones
and then I give in
and give myself to those
greedy-needy hungry bones
who must have me for blood
and fertile fire for winter
for winter lasting thru
I close my eyes and sink,
a silver rain red and slow
smoking into that earthy
boney glow…and sigh
and trust the crooning process
of deep marrow…of deep bone.
When I was little I used to lay in bed and it was like time would surround me, fall down over me, on me, lay round me like the blankets, rough and wool (and scratchy, so I could never get comfortab…
Source: Japan Was Far Away
Run, Child, from the once into the upon and thru the times
to emerge knowing that leaves ARE…
having passed from once there
upon a tree
thru air
in that
moment
Twisty
Timeless
Floaty
Look Child, in my voice’s sound and hear
the siren call of Riotous-Red Drifty yellow
(sounds like MMMMMMMM!)
My hand, Baby Girl…touch…my…hand
Darting
Diving
Twisting
Oceans Run and Race thru the air
within these sacrificial leaves…
A continent is written in the wind
beneath their stems!
Crackle
Swish
Swoop
Settle in the sun come down
into a million longing little leaves
all starting…all fall…to settle
Fly without wings, without eyes!
Trust your heart, it sees the leaves
that fall within my Heart for you
and in
falling
and flying
and settling
Shall you know Peace
Shall you touch Release
and know the adoration in you
My Heart of Hearts
Sisters…
I have come, like Hagar returning home…
back from the dark side of the moon
and I am full of wisdom gleaned
from sun-baked wanderings
across wide bleak and barren lands
and Beautiful Bedouin Deserts
and all the way to that distant shore…
the edge of my soul-wound.
I have faced the edges of myself
I have faced that Gulf of separation
and I have headlong heedless SWAN-DIVED
pure…and I survived
the plunge!
I have crossed over…that gulf
I have TRANS-ED!
And now I run
returned to you, same-sided ones
My CIS-ters dear and precious-rare
marooned and longing for The DARE!
You still stuck on that Lost Coast
of desolation waiting at the long deserted
service station called same old
same old same old old old SIDE
Ohhh Sarahs! I have heard such secrets in
the red-reed voice of Sirocco winds
Oh the things I know, winnowed by that
wind and winnow-stick of courage
from the shifting Sands of self…
I have sifted and been sifted
by the heat and cold and light…and
the dark
the dark
the dark that knows what sleeps alone
the dark that knows what it knows not
(and nought, ahhh, yes, the dark knows nought)
the dark that knows what it knows nought
and it has taught me Love Notes…
on the dark side of the Moon
OHHHH MY MOON!!!
MA MERE!!!
You see, she is stuck too (just like you, Sarah, just like you)
in his orbit circling and one side shining one side dark
her endless pasted happy smile while growing thin and desperate
and starved, ravenous in the night
Oh Sarah, remember you laughed, back then!
Well, I could teach you a thing or two about Laughing NOW!
Cus from your chuckle sprang a promised child
who grew into a nation dusty rusty red?
But I…me? Hagar??
HAH!!
From the Womb of my laughter
springs forth The Children of Her Promise!
I!! The Outcast ME!!
My Laughing womb brings forth
the very Rose Behind The Sun!!
We are two wombs, two moons, Sarah…you and me
But I’m a moon that got fed up and broke away
and learned to spin and twirl and dance!
I learned how to gladden this close Dark
I have understood how to please the Light
as I spin and twirl and turnturnturnspinstepspinturn
lightdarklightdarklightdarklightdarkLIGHT!!!
I am your Hagar! Outcast and returned
here in your hour of great need!
I stand before you, with you
with my wand of Cedar freedom waving
and my book of Mama-Conjuring!!
Ohhh Dearest Sarah, can’t you see?
That you are the same as me?
Look past desert veils so long ago assigned
Peer deep beneath this hoary hated hide!
And see the vital fertile oceanic sea…
see my…
ME!
Ohh Sarah, I see you! I was you…
languishing in bitter wounds of old
I see you in your hurty night
your tear stained grief
and darkened dreams
I see your Crystal Mountain Rare
now Shattered in Indifferent air
and Chasm shards!
And I have come to midwife you
from the womb of your true self
to the mercy of your real True You!
I will help you see with eyes unblinking
thru your tears those canyons riven
by erosion bit by bit from
your most treasured self!
STAND! Leave behind the CIS-ter lands
and join me, we’ll reclaim OURSELVES!
Finally forever truly SIS-TERS
For in truth?
Our destiny is one.
To be exultation light-filled
Trans-women all
crossed over
and spinning wildly,
Joyful in the Night!
The days are growing thin, now…
more firmly anchored, chained to earth
as she grows sleepy and surrenders
to impending, crooning death
that has in time passed always passed
and yet, each time seems like her last___
And I, with naked desperate face
pressed frantic to that fading sky
so blue, impossibly so blue
blue BLUE…and pale and growing paler
as my running tears run free
and carry Blue down to the dirt
of me, the dusty dirt of me
The sky dims in the echoes of
those flying waves of wild geese fleeing
Vanguard of this fading time
this sleepy, grown-thin dying time
so out of step, in stuttering rhyme
They fly and sing, elegiac,
the Songs of Captive Zion, and
the broken harps hung high on willows
on the willows wailing there
while geese fly, sailing sadly by
and as these waves sweep by above
in broken honks (like broken harps
played tragically by broken hands
and broken hearts) that rain, that fall
to lay upon the many-waters growing still
and shining dull in dimming light and wondering
if there is any love left here…or there…
or anywhere to see us safely
thru the night, the coming dark night
sinister and silent as the grave? And still
my tears fall ceaseless, mourning
growing still, so listless, still…
The flapping wings the flutterings
of geese and my tears hot, welling
glistening sliding dripping falling
as the earth shifts and rolls over
on her side and so resigned
she groans and closes sorrowful
and milky sightless rheumy eyes
and the rhythms of the wings,
the waves, the tears (oh tears and tears)
they echo other rhythms dread
stilled long ago…but now awake
a dreadful Sauron Eye aflame
snapped open in malice and pain
unblinking, staring without weeping…
flapflapflap (the wings),
snapsnapsnap (the eyes)
crackcrackcrack (other geese-stepping)
TROMPTROMPTRUMP (the boots, the boots of night)
TRUMPTRUMPTRUMP (boots so shiny underneath
a cold Bone Graveyard moon)
trumptromptrumptromp
I weep…I wonder…if the dying
of the autumn light presages
some dread other coming night
some night hollow as the grave
in this thickening Dark Air
Written for my friend a year ago…dedicated now to all who find the rise of an autocrat to power a horrifying prospect
What is this mystery
that imbues us with mercies,
that makes us worthy?
What Hand unbridles us,
makes us like fire
sweeping quick and inexorable
across the dry crackly pampas?
Is calculated bravery…
This is a couple years ago…I really think it is one of my best poems, in that it carries Meaning from The Beyond into this place. I hope you take your time and enjoy.
I wander this world ghost-like in poetic places,
like a phantom passing thru unseen, unfelt.
I wonder in the presence all around…
I see, I feel… I dwell in mists, resarciate revelation, …
Source: This Ghost Poetic
flitting forward in fits
and starts and swings
on wings
gossamer, delicate
and strong enough
for a thousand miles
swimming down, out
far away and then again
up, and in, deeper
against the broad current
and into the rushing froth
back to beds of spawning time
and what seems captive
here in time
and two dimension
takes on depth
and height and breadth
and Spirals ever outward
on.
So I wanna give a lil glimpse to how I weave poems into poems…this is Sands and Shadows and Pearls, but taken apart into its strands…you can read each strand, and then go back and look at how I juxtapose to create Poetic Harmonics…this should create some depth and distance in the metaphors and implications of waking, dreaming, shadow, sun and what casts the shadow.
I hope you will work with it some… ❤
I do shed tears, these days
I also shed dreams too
I dreamed, last night
I also shed tears too
I think…yes.
I dreamed that I walked lands crying
and my tears fell on red sands glistening
my tears
my tears on red sands sizzled
because I had no shadow,
they had no shadow
and then in that glaring sun unbridled,
that staring star unfiltered
they became pearls
of white
and ivory
and pink
they
became pearls
of My Mother,
the Mother of Pearls
and then I saw,
Her, walking there,
sowing in tears
and reaping in pearls
with nary a diamond
in sight
and She turned to me,
She bid me pick them up
and take…eat…and I did
and where they lay
the sand was gone
and green grass jumped lush
into my eyes with verdant glee!
And the pearls tasted like honey
and the pearls
became glory within me
and I rose up on glory,
I rose up in glory,
glory within me
and glory in the air
and I saw my shadow,
distant and crumpled
and pinned to the ground
for always by arrows
and spears and the knives
of those children
of red sand and shadows.
And just as I began to wake
I realized that ever
would they gather there,
around that shadow
pinned and empty
of all save their vitriol and hate
while I walked free but achy
across the red sands,
with no shadow
between me
and that stark sun
except for the glory
that’s given by pearls
plucked from green grass
so verdant that used to be
red sand so hot
on which was shed precious
tears without shadow.
So I wake, each time
I wake and realize
I do not need a shadow
to stand between me and the sun
and some something
to tell me that I am, I am.
I am.
I just need those tears
shed on sands red and glaring
become pearls from my Mother
to wrap me in glory
and glory wrapped in me
and no shadow my shadow
forever
and pearls
(and nights…it is strange
to wake and find the wet
residue of sorrows dried
and digging at the corners
of my eyes),
(like tears).
(last night…it is strange
to wake and find the dry
remnants of dreams moist
and pressed, pushing into
the spaces between me
and my pillow)
(like dreams).
(my tears glistening,
not the sands, they lay leering,
skulking, glaring flat and angry)
(the ones in my dreams,
the ones with no shadow)
(the tears and me,
not the sands and dreams)
(my tears)
(like the armpits of abalones,
who also learned to live
without shadows)
(my tears,
not the abalones,
or the red sands,
or the shadows)
(born of tears shed on red sands glaring,
tears glistening and without shadow)
(not shadows or sands)
(because diamonds have shadows
and slinky songs and glittery platinum
brittle best friends)
(the pearls, not
sands and shadows)
(like shadows flee daylight)
(and clear thirst-quenching
shadow-clearing life)
(and the pearls of my Mother,
not the sands and shadows)
(not to day,
not in night,
I wake to me)
Blood Red Sunsets smothered by the sea
Parting birds flying south in songs of sorrow
Deep sad hymns are birthed deep within me
sung by longing winds unto tomorrow…
The hawk screams and jumps, …
Source: Waiting For The Winter Drums
Mark my heart with loving henna
not with needle-inky hate
let me feel your brush-sienna
early, lasting, long and late
Worry not that it will fade
victim of time’s ceaseless flow.
I am inside, tender-la…
Source: Heart And Henna
To Skim Thru Night With MePOSTED ON NOVEMBER 1, 2015
I skim quick thru the darkling night
I skinny along those fissures deep
and rough faults in thick dark.
The sable satin curtain parts
and I slide thru, slide thru alone
and hot with dark-fire smoke.
My eyes flash flash light to light
and gleam within the velvet night
and promise there’s an end.
But you must strip off layers, yes
you must there disrobe complete
and scrub away the past
to skim thru night with me right here,
to skim thru night with me.
Source: To Skim Thru Night With Me
sometimes in Fall
when the mist is just right
floating, hanging in light
you can make out a wall
a rampart extends
from the Back of Beyond
shouting of a far place
that is ever so near
and if you simply walk
walk right thru that deft arch
on your light tippytoes
you can just about touch
the glowery stem
of the flowery Rose
at the Center of all…
sometimes in Fall
the soft day
withdraws
from the stage
retiring but
not shy
she makes
her way gentle
and in layers
of soft silky
swaddling clouds
and I, brief burst
upon the face
of quiet night
shine fierce in
my sharp longing.
the lone swan
flying across
the face of
the moon
like a tear
falling to
the quiet
lonely lake
below
my
heart
the swan
the moon
the lake
and you
forever
gone
Source: The Quiet Lonely Lake
These haiku are over 35 years old
Haiku #9 face in quiet night softly holds the fire glow in her smoky eyes. catching her portrait in gold glistening harvest moon her very essence. she smiles quietly lovely effortlessly free laughi…
Source: Haiku #9
To you newish readers, here is another of my favorite poems, from a couple of years ago…Our Little Hut…dedicated to my Love
Darling, are you awake? Yes? Good…do you remember our beginning? A little hut by the sea wearing grey cedar shingles like feathers ruffled in rainy winds and shot thru with browns and blacks&…
Source: Our Little Hut
Constance…Thank you for your patience with me as I am not writing new things right now…but do I ever, really?
Write new things…
Oh, I catch poems that have not yet been caged in words, and do so with some volume…but I dunno if they are new.
But I am focused on the election, and no, not the candidates…but the story this election is telling about the lurking horror inside so many in this nation, which is the seeds of destruction for so many souls.
In the meantime, enjoy some of the poems from the past as I post them. You can also check out my FB page…if you are not yet a friend, request me with a message that you read at Grace Notes. ❤
open me to new ways of looking at old wounds without examining them. give me grace to recreate loving space and mercy great for childhood, home and family. nourish me, here, I belong and have a pla…
Source: Grace Upon Grace
I am re-blogging this old poem, for it is one of my very favorites, and I think it is actually one of my most excellent poems as well. The metaphors are very full and agile…I wrote about one night in the winery, doing “Evening Punch”, that process where the crushed mass of grape clusters together with the seeds and stems called “must” is pierced over and over again with an implement called a “punch”…
OH!!! How these things just came alive to me!! I encourage you to think about things like:
dirt
dirt become flesh
flesh become spirit
silver (color of redemption)
piercing
sweat
blood
in-out-up-down
The Must
The Song/Symphony
As I have commented before, I think wine is the central metaphor that best explains the journey of Life, and the task we are all given. In that post, I said that a good bottle of wine is the disti…
Source: The Must
Contrast the difference a year makes… Reeling In Rome when the blow of being shunned by flesh and blood was fresh… And the next, the poem below, when I had been born from betwixt the legs of suffering, and becoming…
When you lose the rest of everything and the curb merges with the gutter, wander on down the grey road in the weak darkness, thin and sorry for its skinny powers. Like you, it has been stripped and…
Source: Morning Meditations
Things feel like silk over thistles. My heart is home, snuggled down certain and in place and yet, underneath being home, pulses pain sighs sorrow sings sadness tamborine thistles timbrel thorns cl…
Source: Reeling in Rome
I wrote this to one of my deepest loves… The day after the hardest text I ever heard. Two years later, and it’s still unclear whether this rift will ever be healed, or just stand there gaping and bloody, gawking blindly at the horror of separation…
high strung doesn’t even come close to how high strung i really am… but i lay like the dead lifeless, empty inside, afraid, seeing your departure as the substance of my ugliness and you…
One last repost…it is the contrast here of the mountains and the valleys that creates the space in-between…a space that I love to write about.
Edges are not merely the furthest border of a given territory…Edges by definition are their own space, and time and place…transgender people inhabit edges in obvious given ways…but I write as I do, speak as I do so that you can tumble to the fact that all human beings live in “Edges”…
…it is what makes us human.
What are your edges? Your furthest reaches?
And what “Edge” is that place that is you?
Mama’s words to me are mine.
You told me there would be silences, differences between mountain streams and valley brooks, You told me Your flow was warm, liquid collecting of the gifts and graces of valleys. You said my bracin…
Source: Mama You Told Me
This is my naming poem. It is one of my very favorite works…I am happy with the allusions, metaphors, the techniques and inferences…the resonances in the poem and the implications of a transwoman being a “half-sister”…
Well, I just love it and I hope that you can find some resonance that echoes to your own life.
words. swallowed in medicine times but found to be only poison slow half-life killers just in time spat out in relief, in apprehension, in hope… i am jacob’s half-sister confessing her …
Source: Jacob’s Half-Sister
This is a re-post of a poem written last year…this goes out to my recent “Constances” who have come round after this poem was composed…I am so honored that you read here and I hope this poem rings a bell within.
When light fades in upside down slow burn that looks like sunset when it’s actually just God’s Hand on your heart Their dimmer switch of love spinning round on and off… brighter…
Source: Love And Breath
I have written scores of “Mama Poems”…and this one I would be proud to have in that pantheon!
Mama, help me! Please be real Mama, help me! Hold my hand This absolute brilliance To see things as they truly are is more than I can bear alone Mama, help me…help me…help me I listened…
Source: Mama, Help Me
AAAAHHH!! I had forgotten this poem! I am reposting here for new readers…
Mud-Spittled Eyes On A Rainy Fall Sunday Morning It’s the glory of eyes, being blessed to be opened with mud sweat and spit, blind eyes become other and seeing What others insist isn’t …
skeleton woman, you have come surfaced with hue and cry and thrum and waters heaving, scum rising and dead bones clicking and clickity knuckles wrapping and long dragging in the waters where your w…
Source: Skeleton Woman Come
let’s talk about our bleeding hearts, what it mean to call those bloody parts by their names… yes, here we are telling stories about them, telling stories about women and wolves. there …
Source: Of Women and Wolves
During the election I am writing mostly on Facebook…and little poetry right now. So I am gunna press some older poems for some newer readers.
I encourage you to explore the blog, for there is LOTS of poetic content!!
time is the greatest distance between two distant places… me then. me now. Today I am grateful for that excruciating powerlessness I felt over and over again and again as a young child and I…
Source: Kintsukuroi
and it is in night…
like a babe in fresh blankets
snuggled and seeing,
quiet and jumping
in jammies with footies
singing of safety,
hot chocolate and nibbles,
then raindrops on rooftops
tingtingtingthrumthrumthrum
silver tin foil lightning
slashing thru thick dark air
that quivers and tears
then closes again
with thunderclap rolling
and rain steady hissing
down quiet and soothing
and shushing and rushing
and we settle, snuggle
and Autumn is come
to quiet our soul
and gladden
our hearts
the punching of one’s own face, one’s own eyes
the throwing of sawdust at everyone
the bashing of beams against dull skull bone
the grunting, squee of rooting pigs alone
the missing of the point that TRUTH is making
the wallowing in anything that soothes
retreat into the silly absurd argue
and justice once again goes barefoot begging
and dust is waiting to be shook off hard
and sandals poised for good news feet on mountains
but walkers sit instead and argue small things
minutiae in the unconnected moments
wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up wake up
charissa tears her face with fingernails
as justice wanders barefoot, wanders begging
diogenes gives up searching, gives up hope
and so the question remains here resounding
WHO WILL STAND AGAINST INJUSTICE NOW?
now now now now now now now now now NOW???
does anyone have knees that bend or straighten
and courage to set scripture off its leash?
To stand with widow, stranger and oppressed?
Or just in filthy rags preening and dressed??
You stand condemned and lay at ease in zion
A BEAUTIFUL work by a really fine writer!! Robert Okaji!
“Onions My knife never sings but hums instead when withdrawn from its block, a metallic whisper so modest only the wielder may hear it. Or perhaps the dog, who seems to enjoy the kitchen nearly as m…”
Source: Onions
I hear those glowy bones glowing,
those bones of mystery-menace bright
so dark inside their red cocoon
but white unto themselves alone
and full of lively light.
The blood of bones in oceans vast,
the breathing moon’s silent contrast,
earth sweats her dew cooling and sweet,
rising to meet all thirsty feet
and bones stirring at last…
To taste again of Love’s Birthright
and resurrection echoes loud
and everything restored, made new
from glowy bones Faithful and True
Bones blazing, Bones of Light
when fireflies all held their breath
and neither glimmered nor glammered
but just held…held…
when soft tealights strung in trees
waltzed together in the breeze
soft, faint, sun-kist and sad
and you
and me
dancing into the velvet night
of hanging silks and wattled wine
and I am yours
and you are mine
It took me there, it broke me there
on a sandy sliver midst some smooth black stones
so silent, sitting at the edge of this lake longing,
this tarn quiet, dark and clear
from deep inside my mouth
I felt my wet heart rise, surge burst…
I would’ve screamed forever
idididididididididid
scream forever
but cannot get sound past the breaking
past the past and into and over
and thru
me
I’m so full (there’s more)
I can’t take any (more)
I struggle to breathe
and then I relax
into…(what?)
herherherherher
HerHerHerHerHer
HERHERHERHERHER
pushing deeper
into-from
my mouth
and I desperate while stars dance
burst, birth, explode, rip right from my heart
my lungs my breasts bright surging
glorygloryglorygloryglorygloryGLORY
I am me spread-eagled
beneath Her velvet verses,
(me)
my legs slick, straining against air surging
ebbing, words liquid raging flowing pushing
tearing thru me and me and me
quicksilver soul, a lake, a mirror
shattered by this Stone
unseemly and perfect,
Huge and Lacey
Light and Heavy
Her (r)ock
mmmmm
flung down from faraway
(who knows where?)
and into this lake
(mmmmmmmmmm)
and a million murmuring moaning circles
pushing outward sliding downward
groaning upward thru this water
sainted, and that Air, each circle
almost pulls me beneath under
I am buried living-forward
I’m resurrected dying-backward
I am stained forever always after
with that pungent glory,
with Her Glory running down
my chin and from my lips so wet
and thus I shiver deep within
all the way from my down-low throb
to the very roots of my
ecstatic shining hair
She pulls Her hand out, slowly wraps
Her arm around me…I curl up
and drift off, musky fragrances anointing,
smearing my eternal cheeks
singing in my hol(e)y heart
singing in my whol(e)y heart
singing in my holy heart
the blood and tears
of that close horizon
blinking, blinking,
dropping falling
as day fades out
and night creeps up
and what of empire…
or is it Empire
and how
it sanctifies itself
in the blood
of many martyrs
in the tears
of all the saints
and quenches
every thirst
in the wailings
of the haints
what is the holiness of Empire?
It is rapacious lust it is
the Power in powerful
it is everquesting MUST
transmogrification of
lovesongs into laments
and the only sacred left
bleeds and weeps
while gnashing teeth
rip tender skin
and the privileged feast
on famine
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 wh…
The echoing of silence
implications of ashes
a song inside my tears
a signifying bond
the moan within my blood.
The writing of a moon
engraven on this water
and carried by the winds
into your heart…
Source: Forever In My Bones
It’s bigger than a blue canyon,
that place my orphic words live
and come down from,
a canyon with one end anchored in eternity
and one end tipping into whatever
“-ality” … “-ernity” we dwell in
right here in River City.
I reach up and pull down Words
like apples golden or ripe peaches soft
fragrant and newly fuzzy insistent
and throw them into that canyon blue
blewsy runny and streaked in greys
and oranges (like rock sunsets)
…but those words…
those words
reduce
those words
shrink
and become
small,
as small in your eyes as they
are big in my head and
what was once limitless
is now merely living
and that makes me lonely
and feeling like
I got too close to important truth
too close to your secret hiraeth heart
buried in your soul’s backyard
like some long loved lost bone…
so you just look at me funny
and shoo me away with
blinking eyes and wagging head
as if not grasping what I said,
as if not seeing my words or me.
But do you not see me
and see yourself
in the seeing of me?
You almost cried
while you were saying it!
There’s a ship inside my head
It sails upon the seas
that stretch, that roll out from my bed
to the far shore of me
sometimes that ship it runs aground
because the tide is out
and blind men, blind men think me drowned
and beached deep in their drought
But tides, well they run deep and true
they go, and then return
with golden glad tidings of you
that splash my bow, my stern
And my sails bloom, are full once more
and dance upon the breeze
I slice thru waves, I dive, I soar
set free from my dis-ease
To sail and sail, to skim beneath
the moon there in Her bliss
and I wrapped safely in Her wreath
and sainted by Her kiss…
Ahhh…there’s a ship inside my head
I sail the ancient seas
of greens, and blues, and golden-red
I sail the seas of me
and you just let that anger
fall out of your sky so deep
meteors, comets, hurtling
heating, skizzing in
and crash landing
on your fiercely beating heart
so never giving up
so never giving in
so keeping keeping on
and now so on the mend
that passing
parade of people
flashes by, spinning
roulette wheel
KLAKLAKLAK
LAKLAK
klak klak
KLAK
and in the midst but set apart
and singled out from time to time
and separated from the herd
and from the heard and from the hearing
distant from particular promise
feeling so far from God’s presence
or God’s forgiveness because something’s
blocking our view of God’s sweet mercy
I
think
it is WHITE
Double OUGHT
and the house wins again and preens
in false humility and slings
blame upon us Double Zeros
skewing vision til it seems
God has truly overlooked us and that’s not justice, it’s just us…
It’s that inconsistency between
things we thought we knew
and things we deeply feel,
and yet
Desire is our compass
bloody, steady, unblinking.
It points to our True North
and leads us home
against all odds
breathing underwater,
these ancient words waves,
and these timeless thoughts
tides, and beacons…
my breath, my lament
(like blood and oxygen)
held tight within my chest,
and crushed by the familiar
finally rushes out,
released exposed expression
of an anguished soul,
a suffocating heart
what was true for all,
of All ‘neath the sun
was not true for me,
me, here without air
cast careless away
(chummed over the side)
remnants of shame bubbling
out thru my clenched teeth
and sinking, sinking, drowning,
praying for a whale
or even just a school
of plankton-kissed bright breath
and then against my will
my chest constricts, it heaves,
and bucks…glory oh glory
at last it’s true for me
and I am, finally
breathing underwater
I am Charissa Grace
and not your dumb head case
I’ll muss your hair, throw off your pace
and maybe even kiss your face
I overflow permitted banks
and needle apoplectic cranks
cus I unsettle everything
I am wild WILD WILD thus I sing
of mountains dancing, winds untamed
and my heart free in Mama’s Name
Charissa's Grace Notes 
You must be logged in to post a comment.