Unmoored in the white expanse
chained by air and frozen flats
white as far as eye can see
and just one speck revealed there…me
red on white, no blue in sight
carmine bold against the night
a blood smear there upon that face
so cold, so neutral…blooming grace
I burn there in this gelid place
and nothing here to burn but ice
that smothers every spark and glow
and so I turn my heat high…slow
and steady, burning every flake
and fleck of frozen haughty glance
I use as fuel your silences
and melt the emptiness of chance
that random stark coincidence
of when you turn and look my way
but lend me not even a branch
to burn, just more cold arctic grey
It matters not, I burn my me
I choose to be a fire hot
and brighter than the silent white
I burn the ice…I burn so free
This Morning’s Purple Fog
this morning’s purple fog
slapped my cheeks hard
when I left the house
they were rosy red and pink
but now?
deep purple–
bluish violet blush–
heliotrope-tinged–
by the purple fog.
it shocked me
with its iridescence
and made me
bite my lip to stifle
exclamation, exhalation
of purple mist breathed in
thru my clenched teeth
and open heart.
and now?
with my mouth so bloody
so torn and pierced,
I seek to write and lips
my pen and paper yes,
I write with
my bloody lips
and scribe with
my bloody mouth
as the bloody breath
of the winter-sotted earth
rises from those
spring-dreaming dirt clotted lungs
and slaps
my cheeks hard…again
with this morning’s purple fog.
Letting Go Today
I’m letting you go now, even though
you don’t want to be let go…
See, the problem for me is that
I cannot live inside this status quo
not any longer…so I’m letting go.
I need someone who wants to talk
and giggle in the live-long night
and make hay while the day is light
and while away the time…
the time…
the time so fleeting
and wasted there on us
in heaping frivolous mounds.
I’m sad because so many asks lay dying
in inboxes and archives
and yet a scream of horror
or sadness or of sorrow
will bring a hurried call
today!! And not tomorrow…
and thus the status quo is kept,
our jailer, not our friend
and my heart languid bleeds red
out and fades away again.
I don’t know what a best friend
is supposed to do…
I only know what I do.
I’m sad and lonely
and letting go today.
Whether Cold Or Hot
when Truth a blanket insufficient is convicted
and self not be well covered over hands so cold
and madness gibbers in your shiv’ring teeth that chatter
and feet exposed to cold night air and bones that feel so old
I say it’s Self that must be altered!
For Truth it is the size that it must be
Seek not to grow the Truth, for it will alter not
But shrink your self to fit beneath…
whether cold or hot.
My Warm Song Ever Out
Grey charcoaly puffs
hurry past my face,
red-rubbed raw
by the same dog-winds
that chase those whinny clouds
over head,
over mountains short,
steep and rocky rumbled
raised up stubborn
not a whit like
those poofy powder puffs
that drop down low and
poof
puff
phooph
over thistles, scrub, leaving
their rainy powder wet and steady
on the sharp and sternish moor.
I cannot tell which I’m like more:
the puffy mists hurried, harried
the stubborn hill ready-rough
the moor, thistle-bound and stark
I walk on, and breathe
the cold air in and blow
my warm song ever out.
I Am Eve
shhh…let your words speak silence
between the worlds I travel in
while holding sacred tension
in my loins, my heart and core
do not knock me into knowing!
I must dance, delicate and light
in order to Unknow and enter
Mysteries Highest, Deepest Delight.
I mustn’t find my way to answers,
rather, forget to remember them
and lose my questions in the
silence spoken silent
and resounding.
I am not ignorant,
I am not naive!
I am not foolish…
my name is Eve
and I am crown
to all creation
and forging trails
unknown into what
he knew and
then discarded and
I must simply
thus Unknow.
Standing on the diamond threshold
at the pearl crossroads
living emerald heart
and pulsing ruby blood
My body is the gateway
and my soul’s forgotten
questions and the music
playing deep within
celestial night.
I am Eve.
The Sight Of Naked Branches
on the grey rough ribbon unfolding
and stretching out before us
between lines and lanes and fields
and orchards in a naked bunch
row by row
the green crawled over those naked trunks
as if ashamed of barrenness, but delicate
and all in uniformity, trunk to branch
and branch to tree, and then I felt it
reach toward me
and all my questions fled before
the sight of naked branches, trunks
shrouded green, awaiting Green
no answers did they speak
yet no question remained
remembered, needing answers
and one with myself
we rolled on home.
Afloat In Holy Black
it’s a thousand points of light
stark against the black
reflected in my eyes
refracted in my heart
a thousand thousand times
in gold, in yellow hues
embedded in the sable soft
stuck in molassess skies
amber warm and endless sloe
i feel the tête-à-tête
vibrate around me, in me too
and I begin to know
that I will never fade, burn out
or disappear in black
for I’m a thousand points of light
afloat in Holy Black
Take A Chunk Outta Me
while you draw your hard lines
and box with your words
i struggle in time
with the death-rattle birds
and thoughts like hyenas’
gibbering glee
as those dead zombie jaws
take a chunk outta me
Hopeful In Darkness
Even though you are dieting
even though you have chosen
gluten-free sugar-free vegan
and no-carb no-larb no spice
no me…I cannot help myself
it’s who I am, what I am
hopeful in darkness
so close and so soft
and the quick quiet sounds
like a grey purring cat
shining mutely in black
and eyes glowing with love
as I measure and stir and I dream
of that sure future that maybe comes
but likely will not
yet I bake, and I smile and I love
a lot
Fortress
that’s where you are
ensconced on that point
buttressed by waves
and perched on a rock
merely seeking silence
or mere solitude
cute lil house
rosy red roof
pretty white walls
and everything perfect
and oodles of time
to parcel about
and divvy up, toss
in the air to the gulls
who wheel and who swoop
like rats in the air
to snatch up the scraps
you deign to throw up
for your own green delight.
Merely Tossed On Currents
They brush,
just brush up against,
in currents, drawn close,
and enter inside
my soft tender places
and I think they’ve found
their way there, by choice
and thus become company,
constant companions…
when, well
really they merely
are come here at random…
in currents.
I try
to latch on and hold
what just isn’t there
and then there are thrashings,
and pushings away…
and silences,
which I
despise even more,
with utter abhorrence
and horrified hushéd
held breath and no oxygen.
The lesson must then
be learned once again,
that lesson I’ve learned
again and again
the lesson that it,
it is always again
and never at last,
no, it’s never at last.
Eventually, yes,
I can stick with
the smart strategy
of the open hand
letting goodness just flow
and when
those who float there
on the aimless swift tides
wash in? Simply flow
and when they wash out,
when on waters they go,
well there is nothing else
that happens to currents
and what’s in them…no.
How many
waves have these rocks
been washed in to date?
Each one in shape
and form, like, and yet
different and rolling and
rushing and coming and
then boom!! and boom!!
and thunder and boom!!
And then
shatter-spray…splash!
and then? There’s just water
(no wave), withdraw…and
recede and return…and
remain, waiting wet
for the next…
and the next…
and the next…
til the
rock finally wears down
in ever-come waves
and gives up the ghost
(holy and profane)
and rejoins the sand
(the dust of the heart
of the earth hung in space)
midst the
stars in the dark
and the songs in the spaces
and heaven awaiting.
Dinner And Diversion
the rattle of teacups
against those saucers
laced in time and air
with the lazy lovely
scents of scones
and cardamon
and swaths
of slathered
butter.
and then windows rattle
in their frames, pulsing
and buzzing in steps
as Important Things
stomp to the door
and lean hard on
that bell dongly dinging
incessant insistent
and the back door
opens, swallows me
and I am kicked
to the curb
casually,
casualty
of the business of busyness
and life that excludes
a spot at the table
once set for tea
and me
and now moved on
to dinner and diversion.
Lacking Intoxication
your words are like
a frozen lake thawing
in spring not much
and now just
floating there
all burbly ice cubes
clinking against shores
like chips kissing
a cocktail glass
and yet lacking
intoxication
you are undecided
if you will thaw
or just sit there
while fish wait
for you to figure
it out…you out.
You
out
Up Against It
I’m up against it,
the wall that is,
its smooth surface
featureless and bland
and rough and raspy
all at once.
It shuts me out
and cuts me off
and defines me
as outside even
though I might
actually be inside.
But really, what
does it matter
since you are not
on the other side
and so this wall
meaningless is just mean?
Here is what hurts the most:
you deny it is there
and it mushes my face
up against it.
Horizon Beckons: Passages From A Journey Painted in Haiku
This morning I feel like reblogging my own poem. I write a lot, and sometimes gems get buried in all the driftwood.
I love this…from the title to the last word it is all in Haiku.
Source: Horizon Beckons: Passages From A Journey Painted in Haiku
Truth And Declaration
Fire races
thru the velde
across my heart,
and our communications,
conversations give way before
those sooty hot and greasy flames.
We run,
we must accept
the invitations we are given
to relinquish our agenda in the burn
and let our swelled importance and our egos
be consumed once and for all, there and finally gone.
Invitations
to strip down and get
to what is most important….
At the river
we see our plans
are not as important
as we think they are, and we?
We are not
as important as
we think we are…are we?
And so
we turn around
and face the hungry flames
and rather than our headlong run
we dance and rise above on fire, on tongues
of fire, on amber tongues of truth and declaration.
Meditations On Suffering
The journey difficult and hard,
black and blue and bitter cold
upon the road thru long days old
and vales of death and darkness.
In hardship and travail we walk
and most of us will quit before
we reach the end, and yet that end
is still a mystery so vast…
It strikes me that of all the ways
to make appeal to human hearts
They chose to magnify the cost
and left rewards as afterthoughts.
What exactly is Their point?
What is promised with this pain
and sacrifice…and…what? Comes next?
More mumble mumbo turbo trouble?
Fatigue and hardship hand in hand
in times of darkness shared in light?
Not the cheery words that humans
think they need and want, but turn from.
Jesus looked at His best friends
and told them that in this hard world
they could be promised suffering
and then He spoke a miracle:
“Have courage, My dearest friends,
faint not! For I have overcome
the world and all that is there in”
And pain’s denied sour last say!
Somehow the Son of God joins us
within it all and thru it all
So what exactly is success?
Is it simply winning? Tell me!
Because something shines beneath!
Something lurks Gold and Beyond!
I smell victory past defeat
and virtue is its own reward.
The Forest Has Swallowed My Name
The forest has swallowed my name, my face
Just like so many things before me
I entered the woods with my heart full of grace
but the forest just gulped and *poof* without a trace
I was lost, deep inside a birch tree.
I like to think it’s the same, just the same
as with so many things, just perhaps…
It mimics when God came to us, Incarnate
and They chained Themself to us both early and late
in the wood of our grim dark collapse.
And so now we wait, here in the wood deep and dark
We share all things in this broken wheel
Them and us and the tree
and what was and will be
Bound together forever we kneel.
Sometimes I come out of the forest, I do.
I walk in the world full and free.
But the wood and the God go with me as I walk
And They soar as I wander like some Divine hawk
Cus the forest, the God, swallowed me.
You Who Accuse…
…you say that I think I can do what I want and pronounce it all forgiven by my belief in my “make-believe god”? You say that I think I can justify whatever I want and call it a “Road to Damascus” experience?
You think wrong.
You will never know the depth of the pain and sorrow for each and every time that I have fallen short…
…and you also will never know the hurt and pain you caused me with your false accusations of abuse and physical harm, your violent anger and threats of murder…your false memories and placing words in my mouth that I never said or even thought…
You will not have a way of knowing that even in your falseness I see that as my own fault because I did not do a good enough job to birth you into wholeness and understanding of truth…and instead, you go on forever about things that are so insane as to be befuddling to me.
No. I am blood guilty of sins of commission, and sins of omission as well.
But I place my faith and my trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and in His Cross…and I ask Him to see me thru.
I trust Mama to Defend me, Advocate for me, Sustain me, Console me, and Comfort me.
I will do so all of my days, no matter how good or bad I was each day, no matter how deeply I fail or how high I fly.
This will never change, though I hope and pray that I will, continually becoming more like Jesus’ Lovely Heart by the Grace of God poured out liberally.
And there are others too…who read here like Nicodemus…you from the past, who used to come out into my working environment so you could criticise me, call me unsubmitted, tell me how I had no rule over my soul, and basically oppose every thing I attempted…I know you read here and think me tragically deceived, fallen away, or (one dude, you think this) in the clutches of “sexual sin”…
you think that being transgender is an act of sexual fulfillment, which absolutely cracks me up…like, I guffaw when I consider your ignorance and assumption.
You all have missed me in the midst of your judgement.
Here is me: this song forever, along with the other ones I have posted this morning.
If you want to understand me and be in my heart, you must understand and accept these songs. Whether or not you adhere to the songs is not my concern…that is up to you and your own convictions and choices. I seek to love and accept you regardless, from you who say you dreamed of murdering me for years to you who shake your head and waggle your beard because you have judged me outcast and shunned.
Sometimes I need to make these declarations.
Today is one of those days…and I am still here…like Papillon…I am still here…clinging to the precious Bleeding Side of Jesus.
Doubling Down
This Is My Eversong
There are lots of people who hate me…sounds maudlin and self-pitying, doesn’t it?
It’s true though.
Some hate me because I am transgender.
Some hate me because I stand for stuff.
And some hate me because I love God…
Let it be known: once and for all and forever: I love God, and I always will.
Always. I love Jesus Christ with my whole entire heart, and the distance between His lovely heart and my own broken and evil heart is covered in the sweet Grace of Holy Spirit whom I call Mama…and between the two of Them They take me to the Father in Heaven whom I love too…and They make me Righteous and Clean.
I will never ever quail or turn away.
That is not a boast that I will never deny Them or turn away…oh God no…if given half a chance, I am certain I would fail Them just as I allus have failed everyone whom I love. I am frail, I am but dust. But see…They have shown me Their love…and I cannot go anywhere else…I will not go anywhere else, for They have said “Whosoever will…”
and I will.
You who mock me, who jeer and ask “Where is your god?” You who abandon, who flee me because I am now anathema and unclean, guilty of capital crimes of gender variance…this is my song and will ever be.
Beauty Will Break My Heart
Jane Siberry – Love Is Everything (Harmony Version)
Maybe it was to learn how to love
Maybe it was to learn how to leave
Maybe it was for the games we played
Maybe it was to learn how to choose
Maybe it was to learn how to lose
Or maybe it was for the love we made
Oh, love is everything they said it would be
And love made sweet and sad the same
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out, aren’t you?
You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving
Maybe it was to learn how to fight
Maybe it was for the lesson in pride
Maybe it was for the cowboys’ ways
Or maybe it was to learn not to lie
Or maybe it was to learn how to cry
Or maybe it was for the love we made
Oh, love is everything they said it would be
And love did not hold back the reins
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out, aren’t you?
You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving
First he turns to you, then he turns to her
So you try to hurt him back
But it breaks your body down
So you try to love bigger, bigger still
But it, it’s too late
So take a lesson from the strangeness you feel
And know you’ll never be the same
And find it in your heart to kneel down and say
I gave my love, didn’t I?
And I gave it big sometimes
And I gave it in my own sweet time
I am just leaving
I am just leaving
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Museum Pieces
They aren’t the same
without your eyes.
My poems, I mean.
They sit like museum pieces
once living and lustrous
but now flat and lifeless
and pinned to the wall
by the absence of eyes
your eyes
in particular.
but they
(your eyes and my words)
miss each other
like ships in the night
calling to each other
but passing slow blind
and I miss you terribly
in our existence
of presence
so absent
and me on the outside
with only
my words
Words Like Poetry
sometimes words,
in and of their
individual selves
ring like poems
of the highest order
in the dark night
and language broad
stretches, blanket-like
across the heart
so those words
can shine and sing
in their entirety
words like
“Glasgow Cloisters”
or “Cairnsmore Horizon”
and “Autumn Blood Mist”
or maybe even
“Loch Deep Still Water”
Each word a poem
in its complete
voice ever ringing
Lavender Singing Borealis Heart
I sat down in lavender fields last summer.
I sat in the sun in the southlands of France.
The wind tossed my hair playfully in its tenderness
made it lift, gleeful delightedly laugh and dance
with fragile soft petals of swift amethyst
and quick to return to the baking brown earth.
I stood in the icefields surrounded by cold trees
and singing to stars in the High Northland woods.
The wind threw the lavender into the skies above,
dancing on stars and singing in the spaces that
stretch between stars in eternity there and here
just before it fell back into my heart.
My heart,
my lavender singing
Borealis Heart
Into The Forest
follow me into the forest
and tarry with me in this deep vale
open your eyes to the wonder
and watch in the shadow of night
look for the figure of darkness
so pale against those deep green souls
it floats like a thief in the market
purloining the diamonds and pearls
watch how it throws them up so high
and see them become stars above
but you cannot see this from your house
so follow me…into the forest.
Une Matinée d’Hiver
an afternoon in winter…
the geese above the field…
the field beneath the rainclouds…
so thick and straining full…
the lonesome sounds of wind-song…
the listless rustling branches…
the silhouettes so stark…
the weak grey skies above…
Une matinée d’hiver…
the useless summer stubble…
it lingers on the creek-banks…
I tarry…there…I wait…
And Gold All Underneath
Behold, the darkness thick and lurking, growing
like ennui in my soul, in my heart doomed and waiting
in this long moment, seemingly forever
it will remain, this painted grey, this second…
this minute is an hour is a decade
and I exist here…floating in the nothing, growing-shrinking…
it defines me as some-thing…no…as Some-one
whose breaking renders her unbreakable…
The growing darkness lurking, insubstantial,
The river Ennui flowing out to nowhere, to everywhere
The shocking joy and wonder also shining, in
This painted grey, and gold all underneath.
A Poem By Susan Spileki
I like this poetess so much. This poem touched me in a deep core…I am posting the poem, and then linking to her original post as well.
Shyly, X. Tries Her Hand at Poetry the Morning After
Four hundred nights I must have watched you sleep,
The dying fire catching the gold in your hair.
Your sweet breath rose and fell and rose again
With the rhythm of your dreams I was not in.
I did not see you clearly, not at first.
Experience makes innocence seem weak.
Not until you fought beside me did I see
That you had steel in you and your own light.You were a secret I felt I had to keep.
I could not ever let you catch me stare
When you, eager, scratched the parchment with your pen
Or dutifully cut our dinner, gill from fin.
But it was the long spring nights that were the worst,
As I lay by the fire, cold and bleak,
Knowing my desire could never be
More than a whispered dream of warm delight.I could not know how time would make you weep.
The violence of my life you chose to share
Would take your light and heart and try to rend
Them apart, a battle you could not win.
Your pain, my fault; because of my past, cursed.
What changed it all was tragedy. We are Greeks.
We never take life easy. You and he
Married, deflowered, widowed: one day, one night.The poets say that what we sow, we reap.
I had to make it right. I could not bear
To see you in such pain, my more than friend.
My vengeance had little glory, was messy, thin,
A deed I had to do, although perverse.
And after, it was hard for us to speak
Of any of it. The silence between you and me
Crashed through the trees behind us like a kite.It took a few more months for you to steep
In your grief, to face the morning air
Without mourning his reaching of life’s end,
His power over you and its long romance.
You threw large stones into the watercourse.
You say you did not dream. Tears on your cheek
Kept my hand from touching your knee
To “comfort,” a self-deception I had to fight.Then, one evening I heard you moaning in your sleep,
Crying out my name, demanding more!
You were tearing at your clothes and then
Reaching for me. I felt my whole world spin.
I touched your face. I thought my heart would burst
As your eyes flew open, blushing that I could see
All of you now seeing all of meFinally! At last! And then, all night…
by Susan Spilecki 2015
Burning Thru Revelation And Gold
somewhere beyond
‘life as usual’
somewhere…
fish may be learning
to see the very water
in which they are submersed…
it’s a gift they seek
to give themselves,
a gift fleetingly
consuming time
and space like
ravenous gilled
furnaces burning
through revelation
and gold…
a scaly examen
looking backwards
into a future
coming hard
round the bend
and thus having
open eyes in this
lurking present
Bloody Loving Fingers
My heart always
beats thunderstorm surges
instead of blood
circling round and round
from ground to air to ground
I am splintered by great waves.
I am a window fixed
comprised of coloured glass
gathered from manifest-storms
of destiny manifest.
Sometimes I wonder what building
I should be hung in to let the light
shine thru formerly shattered me
now fixed, now gathered, now baptised
with those Bloody Loving Fingers dipping deep.
Just Like Medusa But Before
My hair luxuriant
breezy-blowsey and dancing
on the insistent playful zephyr wind
and combed and tangled all at once…
My hair heavy, shiny
and pregnant with dreams
not yet birthed and dreamt
my hair free, unkempt
Like Medusa before me
(before she was betrayed, before
she was raped and blamed and
cursed by that collaborator Athena)
my hair ravishing and alive like palm fronds,
like banners sparking and unfurled, unfettered,
undreamt and spread out into
endless ever-eager skies,
it wraps itself around dreamseeds
that float like stars, like fire-flies
and in its net they find a home,
a heart, and courage to lay down disguise
and take up residence in every
dreamer’s hopeful diamond-sleep
and blossom, unfold without care
those dream eggs held in my thick hair
“Oh, you’re trans? But you look so good!”
What Cis People Say To Trans People Vs. What We Hear
“Oh, you’re trans? But you look so good!”
Rory Midhani for BuzzFeed News
Meredith Talusan is an LGBT Staff Writer for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Meredith Talusan at meredith.talusan@buzzfeed.com.
Illustrator: Contact Rory Midhani at info@rorymidhani.com.
Her and Me and Your Futility
When you shattered my heart
delicate globe shot thru with
tunnels and annals
and columns and canals…
when you stormed at me
on me in me with your
stoney snow of bitter black
granite and jagged icy nuggets
of frozen flecks so broken
She reached with fingers eager
to bleed upon the bloodless drained
edges of my torn and shattered soul,
fingers white and tender to the slash
and picked each cutty-edgy razor piece
up off the quick-sand floor
and put them all together, jumbly
but Her pattern knowing, more
than what I was before
And then She made a hole thru which
the eye can see, the heart can hear
kaleidoscope music and dance
of Her and me and your futility
and so I spin now, caught in moments
stark, or velvet, or even gentle fuzzy
and simply refract light from the
million shattered pieces reassembled
in mosaic magic, kaleidoscopic and supreme.
Agent Carter: My Fave Show
“Your line of work requires support. People who care about your wellbeing, who will be there to stitch up your wounds […] There is not a man or woman, no matter how fit he or she may be, who is capable of carrying the entire world on their shoulders.”
Can we talk about how we’re living an age where we can get an action tv show with a female protagonist and her male sidekick and they’re not in love and he’s a nurturing figure for her and she means adventures for him????
BLESS
I Am A Cello
I am a cello
alone in my beauty
inhabiting curves
like mountains inhabit
the space all around
so bright, luminous
and longing for hands
and legs all around
and the touch of fingers
on my strings tuned just so
like winds on the faces
of those shining ramparts
of stone, ice and lichen
that fall to the earth
in splashes of granite
and music like lava
slowed down by indifference
but still singing loudly
under the rainbow
across those tuned strings
and across my heart
for I am a cello
Every Avenue
Your words were thicker than
The Black Forest
and thicker than blood
(by a long chalk)
you treated blood like water,
no, like stone, like brick
made without straw
(your house took all that)
and there, around that house
so flimsy a hufflepuffer could
poofty it away with ballooned cheeks
(and a sharp swift exhalation, just one)
you built with words a fortress
with walls thick and battlements
that do not gleam in sunsets
(like moonlight dancing with the sun on many-waters)
but brood and loom grey and flat
absorbing light and cutting off
every avenue.
In The Ups and Downs
I’m so glad I found You
(or did You find me)
here in the ups and the downs
The stairs are the same
the doors lead the same
in heat, in the dust and the brown
You carry those weights
responsibilities
like water jugs, like tambourines
but still find Your way
to find where I am
and give me Your heart, Your heart clean
A Woman’s Full Truth
This is a truth for me…there are a bunch of people who I think have missed out…they think they know me, and yet they have never ever really met me! “…caught in the easy shadows and then bails out…”
It is not only men who are in this class…some women too. Some children too…
There are very few honors greater than to be allowed to witness a woman’s full truth, full radiance, full depth. Any man who gets caught in the easy shallows and then bails not only misses a taste of the infinite … but remains incomplete – having missed out on an opportunity to reclaim a piece of his own soul.— Randall Alfred
There’s An Outside Waiting
Watch the kingfisher hunting in slow motion
Burying The Dead
“I want to care, but I don’t. I look at you and all I feel is tired.”
— Elizabeth Scott
Born of Bud And Blossom
Amongst the thorns so sharp and bristley-bitter
and nestled in the crackley canes and stems so brittle
I sprang from buds clenched tight with fright and gripping
their green possessive cloaks around their high strung hearts
so pink, so red, so soft and velvet fragrant
The sun pried without mercy, without quarter
and his hot fiery fingers plucked and pulled
and deep inside those shrouding shawls veridian
the pulsing surging petals pushed back hard
and cracked the sticky emerald shells of shame
To blossom in the air renewed by wand’ring winds
and sway and dance, be wooed by every chance, to bend
low to the ground and then high straining for the heavens
releasing me, the fragrance strong, unquenchable
of grace and beauty, peace and love and joy.
Yes. I was born of bud and robust blossom
that fell away and left me hanging here
a kiss upon the cheek of summer memory
a promise in the winter of the spring
a herald of the Love of Heaven’s King.
On Mountain’s Face
Across its face the river ran
all liquid grey and velvet-slate,
fell down the cheek of hanging cliff,
around the lakey eyes of blue…
And out the other end it flew,
soft down on downy breasts of green,
thru meadows and thru softest thatch…
The river gathered fertile force
and ran down legs, insistent as
the wind that pushes clouds around
the world in days, it poured out fast,
it ran down mountain shins…at last
it reached the heart of deepest seas.
It reached the inmost core of me.
It fed me with its journey-feast
and quenched my thirst to be set free…
And then I my me offered up
beneath the summons of the sun
to become clouds pushed round the world…
And then, on mountains, me unfurled…
To fall and feed with heaven’s grace
And run again on mountain’s face.
Is It Worth It?
Smokers…is it worth it?
A Performance Lecture on the Theology of Gender
I have seen this wonderful man in person and very much enjoyed his presentation.
I am posting this for anyone curious about a theological perspective about matters of gender, presented in dramatic performance and gentle words.
Like A Runaway Train
Sometimes I think about the future.
I think about the time coming, roaring
down on us like a runaway train
in the silent frozen landscape
of history not yet born.
In that time, perhaps these halls
these empty rooms occupied by
the outpourings of my wakeful soul
and bright quick mind and visions of eyes
that see beyond around the bend
will be wandered by real people with hands
hungry to touch, and know, and join with
my desperate lonely shouts and dances,
my perhaps pas de deux with Vincent and
his swirly starry nights hidden for years
Because right now? The halls are empty, the rooms
cold and dusty, and the cover-sheets of familiarity
and current contempt so casual drape
masterpieces and treasures and living
songspaintingspoemssculpturesintheair
I refuse to give in to the abandonment
thrown at me in glances that brush, stare
and walk by an embarrassment of riches
and I console myself with the comfort
of delusion and daydream that time
will finally thunder thru this station
brakes blazing sparks flying
iron rails red hot with inertia interrupted
and smoking with steamy melty insistence
that here there be dragons and dreams
and worthy immortal thoughts
of forever and forever
higher up
and
deeper in
Lonely Shouting Silence
The staves and the staff
the words and the notes
and signs of quick runs,
of slurs and sly rhythms
syncopations jazzy
and slinky and languorous.
The paintings in stippled
sharp actiony thrusts
and swirly quick strokes
and brushed side to side,
side-side and side-side
and circular motion.
My words here, my song,
art in living sound
and loud color on
display for a world…
and yet it is not
anything alive,
not thriving and wild
because your eyes knowing
are never touching…no
and so they hang still
they hide in dull vinyl
in grooves and in ridges
and gather bored dust
in lonely tumultuous
shouting soft silence
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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