Charlottesville and the Effort to Downplay Racism in America | The New Yorker

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This is what happened…and commentary about it.  A GREAT think piece!!


“Over the weekend, Charlottesville became the site of an extended white-supremacist revival meeting. On Friday night, like a nightmarish graduation procession, a few hundred white supremacists marched with torches down the long green lawn that leads to the Rotunda, the University of Virginia’s signature building.

“They chanted Nazi slogans in the open, undisguised, unafraid of being photographed, proud to be seen. They circled a statue of Thomas Jefferson and attacked a group of student counter-protesters who held a banner reading “UVA Students Act Against White Supremacy” at the statue’s base.

“On Saturday morning, flanked by militia men carrying automatic weapons, the white supremacists assembled in McIntire Park, with swastikas and Confederate flags fully visible; David Duke was there, along with other representatives of the Ku Klux Klan.

“The counter-protest had grown. Religious leaders had gathered at dawn to pray, and progressive and anti-fascist groups tracked the demonstration to Emancipation Park, which was once named Lee Park, after the Confederate general. There, the violence implied in a “white pride” protest erupted, and the rally was dispersed.

“As the counter-protesters moved on foot towards the adjacent Downtown Mall, a man who had come to town to show his support for white supremacy drove his car down a wide pedestrian alley, killing one woman and injuring nineteen people; he then backed out of the alley and drove away.

“This wasn’t the first white-supremacist rally held in Charlottesville in 2017, and it likely won’t be the last. On Saturday, the self-promoting white supremacist Richard Spencer, a proponent of oxymorons (“peaceful ethnic cleansing”) who is also a University of Virginia graduate, filmed himself saying, “Your head’s gonna spin, how many times we’re going to be back here . . . We’re going to make Charlottesville the center of the universe.”

“The white supremacists have successfully pushed a narrative that they chose Charlottesville because it represents progressive values. Ostensibly, this is all a protest over the impending removal of a large statue of Robert E. Lee. Jason Kessler, the organizer of Saturday’s rally (and another U.V.A. graduate), calls Charlottesville a “very far left community that has absorbed these cultural Marxist principles advocated in college towns across the country, about blaming white people for everything.”

“In fact, Charlottesville, while it is home to many progressive people, skillfully models the exact sort of coercive propriety and self-exculpation from the legacy of American racism that has allowed white supremacy to publicly re-emerge….”

Source: Charlottesville and the Effort to Downplay Racism in America | The New Yorker

Eyewitness Accounts Really Combat “Fake News” Claims

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https://www.facebook.com/mtschwemin/posts/10155016494531775?from_close_friend=1&notif_t=close_friend_activity&notif_id=1502683096604924

Here is a link that goes to a Face Book Post of an eyewitness account of the weekend’s racist eventsImage may contain: sky, tree, plant, outdoor and nature

The FAQs: What Christians Should Know About the Alt-Right

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Supporters of ttaf:  you do not get to have your own private reality where anything you don’t like or agree with you simply label fake news and say it doesn’t exist.

SHIT IS HAPPENING IN THIS WORLD THAT EXISTS!!!  In Charlottesville VA this weekend a 20 year old Neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd at high speed and injured several while killing one…and those people were COUNTER-PROTESTERS and not of his own ilk.

It was an act of terrorism…committed by a white male (surprise surprise), a person born on the soil of this nation…a person who is not Muslim…

This person would fall under the umbrella term of the alt-right, which this article is about…and you need to read it if you want to maintain even a semblance of relationship with the truth.

The willingness to live in your own fantasy world is onerous at best…but it is heartbreaking and sickening at worst, in that you are openly christian and your stance about this, about getting EVERY LAST SMIDGE OF INFORMATION ABOUT NEW FROM FOX NEWS…is that you are besmirching and blackening the Name of the Saviour you claim!!!

It is in the name of Jesus that you have hated Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, accusing them of being forces to undermine America…while turning a blind eye to how ttaf supports and condones the Alt-Right, and THEY KNOW IT!!  They are right now posting on their message boards that ttaf’s statement about Charlottesville was a smoke screen cover that actually affirms THEM!!

You are quite literally deceived because you choose to be.

Let me ask you a question:  you do believe that it is possible to tailor the news to present a completely fabricated picture of “what’s going on”.  That is a given…otherwise you would not say all things but Fox News are fake news.

So if this is possible to do, is it also possible for Fox to do it?  Surely you see that logic demands your admission this is so…Fox WOULD be capable of this deception.

The next question is this:  why do you believe that Fox News does not shape the news according to their own views?  What evidence do you have that Fox is trustworthy?  Or if your belief is not founded in any evidence, then it must be due to your being entangled in confirmation bias, which means that anything which confirms your view of the world you assume is true…BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE IT!! Not because it IS true.

A third question:  Given that I once identified as conservative, was far better than you at tracking multiple news sites and triangulating to an understanding…Given that I have undergone a deep examination of self, of the world and my views…and given that I now hold different views, derived from intelligent examination and reassessment, would you believe me to be unaware of what Fox claims…and why Fox claims it!!??

Or would I be more qualified to assess these things?  To recognize error and misstatement and lying?

It is heartbreaking that the most deceived people on the planet firmly believe that anyone who disagrees with them is possessed by a demon of deception.

Well…here is a fabulous article to assist you to climb out of the pit of deception if you have the courage to read it.

At the core of the alt-right movement is idolatry—the idol of ‘whiteness.’ In building their identity on shared genetic traits the alt-right divides humanity and leads people away from the only source of true identity: Jesus Christ.

Source: The FAQs: What Christians Should Know About the Alt-Right

A Lament, The Day After…The Day Before

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Our culture is infected nigh unto death, and death is walking the planet in the guise of human skin…in pustules of hate that infect the brains of privileged THINGS that are fallen OH SO FALLEN from grace, from their birthright…

drunk on privilege and wasted on hate and mainlining the toxic excitement of hunting and killing, these sorry pitiful lost WRECKS have willingly gone werewolf and become nothing but sentient beasts.

Quite simply, you must. YOU MUST. Effect some change in your life right now this very day…and NO!! GET AWAY FROM ME, asking ME what it is you can/should do…why are you asking this small child, when there is a Slain One who showed us the way in the days of His flesh, and He lives even now and speaks to this world thru Holy Spirit, my Mama, who sheds light into darkness…

and into the darkness of your unknowing She IS SHINING and will speak if you listen…

…and then act. DO. DO WHAT SHE SAYS.
Maybe you should walk to work everyday carrying a sign that says something on it.
Maybe you should go next door, a block away, and reach out to the person that rises in your heart to reach.

MAYBE WE SHOULD CANCEL EVERY FUCKING CHURCH SERVICE TODAY AND WALK THE STREETS IN SACK CLOTH AND ASHES FOR OUR UTTER FAILURE TO LIVE OUT THE GOSPEL!!

We need some kind of antibiotic to kill the strain of bacteria loose in our body politic…well, I think that antibiotic is the Gospel of Jesus Christ (not the gospel of evil so-called preachers and fearful status-quo priests)…and I think that every single one of us who can still see that this is evil and deadly are the white blood cells.

I see a culture that has engaged in self mutilation, has engaged in drugging itself…and I see a people in power who wring their hands and say there is nothing we can do that is a sickening echo of the mantra that was shoved down my throat when I was executed and cut loose from a place that supposedly thought I was something valuable and yet when it came right down to it the man-made thought up written down rules were held more sacred and inviolate than my bleeding torn and tattered heart.

How has there not been a dropping of all things and a rising up?

We need a nation-wide deliverance.
And even within my own circle of acquaintances, I KNOW there are those who blame the BLM protesters rather than the racist, drunk on demonic doctrines of death, hate infused SENTIENT BEASTS who have willingly discarded their Divine Spark…

and this makes me so sick I wanna puke.

To be very vulnerable, I don’t know if I am safe around people today…well, to be more honest, I don’t know if they are safe around me…Because

I WANT to inflict THE WOUND THAT WILL NOT HEAL UNTIL WE SEE OUR SISTERS AND BROTHERS OF ALL RACES AND RELIGIONS HEALED…
I WANT to step on your toe so hard you will limp forever, blessing the name of the Wounded Healer Himself…

I WANT to vent your side, so that you would never again gather possessions to it to feed rapacious greed and instead would gather the least of these to staunch the flow of sorrow and slake their thirst for mercy…

When the prayers of the people go up this morning, and the presiding human says to offer the prayers not yet prayed, how do I not just SCREAM AND SCREAM WITHOUT CEASING…so loud, so offensive, so volatile that NO RELIGIOUS SPIRIT COULD STAND IN THE SUMMONING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD TO HAVE MERCY ON OUR SORRY GREEDY SLUMBERING ASSES?????

How can I not pray for an hour, in vehemence and tears?
And to be quite honest? I TRULY and DEEPLY suspect that the vast majority would call for me to be disciplined and reprimanded, more upset with my disrupting of the expected order of a worship service than the absolute defiling of our culture with the disruption of justice and the flow of mercy.

Yes.  The Cows of Vashon would mill and moo and low and trample…and chase me out the door straightaway…Or WOULD they?

What are the odds that during the night the watchmen have been gathering sack-cloth and fashioning slip on garments, and burning the watch-fires to collect ashes

(why Charissa, you dumb bitch, it is not Ash Wednesday, wtf with the ashes, idjit???)…

What if the leaders are ready, handing EACH person a garment made and saying that unless you don that cloth and take a mark of ash, for THIS SUNDAY, you do not come into the house…for it is a time of repentance and rending garments. It is a time for face falling and weeping aloud and BEGGING for the streams of justice to wash thru the House.

Well. What an…EXTREME..girl you are, Charissa.

Umm…okay. SO I WILL SETTLE FOR THE TRUE HEART ATTITUDE OF SACK CLOTH AND ASHES THIS MORNING!!!

Can you even summon the fucking COURAGE for THAT???  Can you BURN your fucking programs and orders of the day and expected liturgy and smear your own HEART with ashes and let your face be rent with tears on this day??

What the FUCK is there to preach on if not this?
If our dire and needful moment is NOT front and center and a call to repentance not issued then we do indeed serve a false god made from human hands and not the GOD of gods, the One who came and suffered and bled and invited the outcasts first.

Let us go outside the city, bearing His reproach…for there He awaits for us among the outcast. And in returning to the city after, let us draw near to the gates, and to the entrance of the doors, and to the high hill beside the Way where our paths meet…and hear the voice of WISDOM…the voice of Holy Spirit…the voice of MAMA who is SHOUTING SHOUTING SHOUTING to all fools and indolent ones DRAW NEAR!!

Statements by ecclesial bodies are just that, especially when the orthopraxy of said bodies still is exclusionary in so many ways and practical applications.

I don’t know what to do with myself right now. My chest is red and scratched as I claw and claw seeking to tear this pain from my heart.

I am well and truly troubled and do not know the way forward today.

My Fellow White Americans…

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“For the back of the house: no, all Trump voters are not white supremacists. YES, all Trump voters were comfortable electing a white supremacist to the highest office in the nation. This tweet is weak because the President doesn’t want to upset the members of his base because the members of his base are either okay with this or they are the very tiki-torch-lit assholes pictured above. These are guys wearing MAGA hats. These ARE the faces of your base. This IS the same rhetoric that Trump has always espoused. It’s Racism Classic™, now with Extra Tiki.”

Source: My fellow white Americans. | I Am Begging My Mother Not To Read This Blog

Julius Goat on Twitter: “Imagine if these people ever faced actual oppression. https://t.co/dhPCbtfEjO”

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Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect 

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There IS no “other hand”.  There IS no “other side” that must be heard.

There is hatred and devotion to satanic ideologies that have slaughtered millions and millions…and there is resisting this.

If you are not against this, and openly against this…then you are for it.

Period.

Any attempt to ameliorate this, to talk it away, to justify it…any attempt to “Fox News” it is in itself evil and enabling.

++++++++++++

From the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect:

MR. PRESIDENT, LEARN THESE WORDS FROM ELIE WIESEL OF BLESSED MEMORY: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Source: (6) Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect – Home

They Are Your Family Now, Not Me

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ttaf supporters…the ones in the background are your family now.

Not me…not anymore…not until you denounce them, and their new avatar of bigotry ttaf.

ttaf is saying to us that there is moral equivalence between the Nazi demonstrators and the counter protesters…

there is not.

If you think there is, then I have no truck with you.  Ever.

I denounce ttaf.  I denounce all of his supporters.  I denounce the hatred and bigotry on display.  I denounce those who claim the name of Jesus who refuse to have their eyes opened by this orgy of hate and racism.

God save us…we are truly entering into hell.

Image may contain: 3 people, people standing and outdoor

White Supremacist Mob Carrying Torches Attacks Anti-Racist Protesters in Charlottesville – UNICORN RIOT

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ttaf supporters…

if you write this off as “fake news” you sign the line that satan offers you…your own piece of mind and security and prosperity in exchange for your soul.


Charlottesville, VA – A group of hundreds of neo-Nazis, KKK members, and other white supremacists in town for Saturday’s ‘Unite The Right’ rally assembled at ‘Nameless Field’ on University of Virginia (UVA) campus Friday night.  The group was marshaled by a security team who instructed them to march in a column bearing lit tiki torches. […]

Source: White Supremacist Mob Carrying Torches Attacks Anti-Racist Protesters in Charlottesville – UNICORN RIOT

Statement About The Slaughter In Charlottesville

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Congratulations supporter of ttaf…

you now know that you would have supported Hitler

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Tweets About Charlottesville Capture The Chaos Of The Protest & How Terrified People Are

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This is what you think of as “again”?  ttaf supporter??  I am asking you…is this your “again”?

You bought this monster’s rhetoric and snake oil because he said “Make America Great Again”…and immediately this erupts when your avatar of hatred takes office.

There are literally thousands of incidents similar to this that have happened since ttaf was elected.  They are easily documented, and if I were to just press them here it would be boring in its droning continual outpouring.

The marchers were shouting “Heil Trump”…

This is your again.  This is what you wanted a return to.  Except that the genie is out of the bottle…people are NEVER going back onto Massa’s plantation…ever.

Their courage and passion carries them forward…

And now there are white supremacists driving vehicles into crowds of people exercising their Constitutional Rights…

The racist answer to this…YOUR answer to this…”Well they should not have been out there protesting.”

And how fascinating that you do not say that the absolute fuckers who are channeling Nazi hatred and rage and want to resurrect the 3rd Reich should not have been out there!!”

Why won’t you rise up and join all decent people and denounce racists and bigots?

Because you know you are wrong…and you will not admit it…and it breaks my heart that you do this in the name of God and the name of America.

I wanna vomit that you have become this…no…that you have not actually been what you pretended to be for so long, and when the opportunity came thru ttaf to dive into the pool of shit you did a triple backflip of joy.


Violence and chaos broke out on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday during a white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally. Tensions were already bound to be high after a Friday night demonstration at the University of Virginia, wherein …

Source: Tweets About Charlottesville Capture The Chaos Of The Protest & How Terrified People Are

Sleeping Skin to Skin | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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Three years old and holding up VERY well!!

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

Source: Sleeping Skin to Skin | Charissa’s Grace Notes

An Eclipse Of Grace

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we are down to it now
here in the land where dragons
have forgotten their names
and deny their children
who loved them

Puff and Jackie are no more
it is now all sturm und drang.

A monster has arisen
and graves quiver and tremble
as fingers long thought dead
scritch scritch scritch
on those coffins so
recently buried

and show that they live
and gibber in glee
with prospects of release

scritch scritch scritch

but the moon has not forgotten
does not forget her beloved
now hot and baking in the
disjointed unhitched sunlight
called not-Puff (Sturm) not-Jackie (Drang)

called alt-
and hate
and patriotism

the moon has made her move
and soon will shed her grace
a respite from unrelenting baking light

An eclipse of Grace is coming
to save from the eclipse of Grace
found in this screaming perpetual
day without softness
without tender coolness
and velvet still…

I hear the moon move
in the dry drumbeat of bramble
as I pass by, smelling their
desperate intense perfume

the canes of thistles move
in the wind like bones
and sing to me

sooon  soooon…
beneath the croon
of probing beams
that are definitely
way more than they seem

the sky will bend and yield
as moon she rides in day
and comes to eat, to take within
her belly all the taint
of poison so-called light

our moment of escape will then present!
a moment, chains can break and curses rent!
in dark while others fall upon their face
we who watch well an eclipse of Grace…

can learn there at her knee, her royal knee
and small eclipses everywhere we’ll be
from our burnt courage burnished bronze in heat
as we the moon and grace together greet
and mercy kisses truth…at last they meet

may things be healed by our eclipsing feet.

The One Who Knows | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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This poem is the antidote to “The 25 Hour Yesterday”…and it is attempting to write about redemption, and how it is only relational and never NEVER legal.  You want to see changes in this world?  Then change your relational dynamics…with yourself…with others…with the Divine…

“…It is the Valley of Dry Bones,
the charnal parched and bony strand
with bone-dust laying down for sand
that walking comes The One Who Knows
and singing re-creation songs
and the truths we tell make harmonies
to reach the very stars…”

Source: The One Who Knows | Charissa’s Grace Notes

The Twenty-Five Hour Yesterday | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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I wrote this poem in 2015…taking on the topic of privilege, and how it devalues everything it touches…like entropy works…especially erasing the humanity of those who serve privilege to the same degree that they exercise it over their fellow human beings.

Supporters of trump the absolute fucker, I am taking DEAD AIM at YOU.

Some of you ttaf supporters think I am mean…but you are wrong.  If you were to wake up, there will come a day that you will thank me for keeping you from a fate FAR worse than death.

In the poem, there are italicized lines.  They signify to the reader that the reader is to “sing them in their mind” with the tune that corresponds…

“…We stand before God today
even though entropy
deferred yesterday
we stand before God
as Their Potter’s clay

the urgency
of the present moment,
shaped not by nostalgia
for what once was,
but remembrance
for who God was,
and is,
and ever will be.

that fierce urgency of the now
within a world in need
not of more pointing fingers
and dividing speeches, but of
people willing to rise up
and work as if we now already
are God’s people willing
and surrendered.

I deferred entropy yesterday
It was the least I could do.”

Source: The Twenty-Five Hour Yesterday | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Tears Of Grace | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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This poem is from 2015, and a deep immersion in that wonderful book Women Who Run With Wolves…

it was the tale of Bluebeard that chilled me the most.  Indeed, it is the one MOST applicable to a transwoman.

I really like some of the images in this poem, some of the phrases…”shuttering houses and shuddering hearts”…

I hope you enjoy it, and end up being able to flow as your own tears of grace.This time of day…“l’heure bleue.”
I know it as “the gloaming” and was conceived
in it’s glimmer glisten and was born
in its radiant dark glitter-glamouring.

It’s the glamouring that the earth casts
when she hides from the hunters who roam the world
and gobble up the quiet dark and then rough-belch
their choking smothering counterfeit-communion

*non-light*…

Source: Tears Of Grace | Charissa’s Grace Notes

The Poem You Write | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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From a couple of years ago,
the notion is that humans are meaning makers,
whether on purpose or accidentally…we cannot escape being Poets.

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

It’s in the spaces between the words,
in the moments you do not do,
it hides in the silent sound of what you say
*that would be what you utter not*

When I describe it, it twists a bit
and stands akimbo and aloof
and sings of itself above your ears
it’s there…the poem you write yourself.

To set your pen to page and speak
your “Let There Be”, it gives a shape
but that leaves so much shaped behind
*the space your body takes in water*

when you dive in and swim, and the space moves and disappears…
Source: The Poem You Write | Charissa’s Grace Notes

A Hot Summer Day And A Deck | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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Two years ago…a very nice lil poem about the poems walking around in skin…
and it works on the gender dysphoria level too…as a poem to self.

Try it, see if it reads to your you?


a hot summer day and a deck
the sun it glints off of my glass
the sweet-tea ginger peach muddle
the mint wafting from sweaty ice cubes
floating, cooling, melting, disappearing

my peach is sweet, tart, it’s just right
fuzzy-firm against longing loved lips
I turn perfumed pages so eager
the story unfolds right before me
on a hot summer day and a deck

the book of you writes itself page at a time
it expands in my hands and the cover
wanes old/new, it waxes familiar
to my touch then *gasp* “I never knew you”
every turning page snatches my breath

because I’m not sure if the next one
will be there, it could be blank or worse
it might write itself while I am reading
words forming from nowhere, just scrawling
in the high summer light on that deck

I can’t put it down for the life of me
I smell you in air as I fan those thin pages
flipping backwards but not ever reading ahead
(there is no ahead to be read in this book)
I miss you this hot summer day…

Source: A Hot Summer Day And A Deck | Charissa’s Grace Notes

We Lords of Tuscany, We Ladies Of The Meadow | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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This poem is a tender special one to me.
The imagery involves a person who is on the gallows,
and staring off down the valley as the wind whispers thru their hair…
remembering their life.

Anyone who loves poetry will adequately apply the metaphors…and if you are new to poetry, try to remember that so often times the best way to talk about stuff is to talk “beside it” and “around it”…so the real Truth can leap up on you when your heart and soul is ready, and not before…you cannot wrench it up unto yourself without murdering it…it must “tumble” to you easily and all in a moment.

It’s why it is so difficult to talk about it…
breaking it down kills it, and not breaking it down
leaves it too big to describe well.

At last we finally
have come down to it,
perched here on this edge
of sun-bleached splintery white planks
and darkly stained with shadows and blood.

I hear the wind winding
thru the distant trees wistful,
insistent and full of desire for
golden times long past and golden
songs sung oh so long ago.

It saws its way, the wind, it saws.
Forth and back, across again
that one long thin strand fixed just so
to that grey ancient, heavy beam
that I can barely see because

history’s speck embedded
in my eyes and clawing,
scratching them
and clouding my ocular
true blue vision…

Source: We Lords of Tuscany, We Ladies Of The Meadow | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Come Home To Yourself | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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My dearest heart of hearts.  She alone stood steadfast, faithful, amidst her own dealings and sortings and studyings…and she transitioned WITH me!

She NEVER left, shunned, or re-wrote our history to suit her current mood, as a couple have done.

She never othered or divorced as so-called friends of three decades did…

This poem is my attempt to express how I felt/feel about her, and her soul and her love.

She is the truest person I know…even when she is searching for that truth…and I love her with my bones.

PS:  It is written in my favorite meter…because I want that rhythm to speak to the central most shining thing about my darling:  her steadiness.

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

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

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

and underneath, the shade of deep dry rot…

Source: Come Home To Yourself | Charissa’s Grace Notes

13 past 13 | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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One of the most important and least favorite things from last year was being faithful and diligent to listen to my muse as She SCREAMED in warning and horror regarding the monster who was approaching power.

I mean, c’mon…I don’t know what is greater:  his sociopathic narcissism, his intention to do harm to less powerful people, or his literal willful stupidity!

ttaf actually said in an interview that Jeff Sessions should NOT have accepted the nomination to the Attorney Generalship of the United States “if he knew he would recuse himself over Russia…”

Constance:  let that sink in.

If you were picking someone for something, and you ended up getting investigated for something…how would the person who you picked have any way to know you would be investigated, especially if you were innocent of all wrong doing?  So why would there even be a need for recusal?

If you were the person picked…would you fill out the papers completely?  If so, there would be full disclosure and thus the person picking could assess ahead of time whether there would be a conflict of interest…but only if they knew ahead of time there was a possibility they WOULD be investigated!!

Except that ttaf insists that this whole thing is made up!  That it is ginned up and is fake…he claims there is no there there…so why would it matter if Sessions felt the need for recusal?  (Which, by the way, is so patently firm and completely established, he likely would have gone to jail if he did not recuse himself).

ttaf insists this is all out of nowhere…and yet he says in the interview with the NYT that Sessions should have told him ahead of time about his need to recuse…which clearly gives away his lie.

ttaf does this kind of shit continuously and consistently…it is the only thing consistent about him:  his utter ruthless commitment to his own survival.

He knows that he is guilty and in deep shit.  HE KNOWS.

And he also knows that you, supporter of ttaf, do not give a shit about any of the crimes, the ways that he has sold YOU out, for his own profit.

You used to be intelligent and thoughtful, parsing lies easily.  But now in your greed, your need to preserve your privilege, you will lay down for him like one of his underage models and beg to be raped by him.

I literally despise him…and I despise and pity anyone who refuses to see that he is the biggest political disaster to hit the USA in history.

He is a mirror to you, ttaf supporter.  Look at him…that is who you are.

the cuckoo clock so pasty white,  so dull
ticktocks its hands to point at the orange cull
and jumps out crazy, chiming, shrieking shrill
the wall is trembling in its echoes still
CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO

Source: 13 past 13 | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Wild And Dangerous

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I swear it’s true when I first
got there they were dancing
moving-spinning wild and
dangerous

but I blinked, I
snapped the shutter
and then I tripped, I
shuddered

in the shocking lurch,
the jolt of planet leaning,
glowing wild and
dancing

they masquerade, faking stillness as they
dance inside & call down storms of stars
and floods and fires wild and
spinning

so I wait, just wait and practice every
moment passing, just keeping my
eyes open to catch them out, and
dancing

wild and dangerous

The Grinding Ache Of Beauty

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It no longer excites us, moves us
for we are glaciers now, melting
much faster than we are moving…

so beauty in a broken
and breaking world
kneels at our feet

to wash them

and gets ground to powder,
and seems to disappear in
this indifferent static minute.

Yet, Beauty has this power
to arrest us just because
the beautiful’s conducive

to stillness,
to pause,
to hushed breath.

Beauty can make us exist,
different, as tho it’s for
just this stillness only

that we exist, persist in, gripped
by brute cold experience…
freezing, thawing, unfreezing,

blooming into longing, warming
splashing into wet participation
leaving us aching, deeply aching

for the power of beauty…for Beauty is

untouched by our involvement
or indifference, for it can
simply leave us with

the empty ache emerging
in deep unique strange moments
or unsuspecting times…

and those moments
when beauty is neither
pleasant nor pretty,

but haunting?
What of this, the
grinding ache of beauty

thawing in the interplay
between its presence
and its absence?

This World Too Much

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It was somehow so moving, so compelling
up from the shaggy earth, looming and shorn
so sleek with steel and concrete ribbons running.

It wrapped around the way
the way entwined with it
and it was wet and smelled of wind forever.

I stood, soaked to bone and fully brindled
against that wind that prodded at the dangle
of knots, of cracks, of edges all atangle.

And yet, somehow it still all glowed in glory
and still my eyes thrilled at the vital touch
of movement, place and people in the crush

perhaps I love this place, this world too much.

The Outer Rim Of Ruin

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I walk around the outer rim of ruin
and ruin walks the inner rim of me
and ivy climbs, caresses every beam
as I surround and caress every bone.

The ravens, hated birds of spite just sit there
and croak in harsh and squawking dark duet
their song of ruin running on the old walls
and dripping down in tears inside of me.

The empty windows stare on desolation
the broken columns gnash the air in sorrow
the floors are jumbled messes of despair lost
lost trying to just get from here to there

But still I walk around the outer rim
and still it walks the inner rim of me
I wait for that return, that restoration
When love comes home, comes true, and I’m set free

I Think It’s Memory | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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A poem about death, and why persist when we are creatures who simply are unable to accept that death is all there is…
A poem about life, and how to find it, how to secure it and most important how to keep it by giving it away…


There’s deep green truth
in the spectral grey heart
of this ghastly pale notion
haunting our desperate minds:
our own truest blue heart
is most deeply discovered
in desperate ragged edges,
jagged, sharp, contrasted,
in tight precipice moments
(both high, and oh so low)…

Source: I Think It’s Memory | Charissa’s Grace Notes

A Spoonful Of Sugar | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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The bitter lil pill…narcissism…this from 2016

ttaf mainlines it

Can
you swallow
the bitter pill?
The pill that’s come
to dull our conscience,
cushion comfort, corners
nipped just so, sides longer
than tops and bottoms,
that exquisite little
emerald coffin-
shaped bitter
little
pill?

Life’s
fragility, life’s
impermanence…

Source: A Spoonful Of Sugar | Charissa’s Grace Notes

It’s The Blood Of Stars | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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This poem hearkens back to the poetry I wrote directly after the Pulse massacre occurred in Florida last year.  I was interested as it emerged…connecting different threads from those immediate poems (you can find those right around the dates in mid-June 2016…use the calendar at the bottom of the page)…up thru the poems of around July 4th…and on to this one (and “Hidden From Your Eyes“)…

It breaks my heart that the foreboding of these poems came true with ttaf…

…but it breaks my heart even further that so few were even aware.
and now it all melts
under falling skies
skies weeping
bleeding

it’s the shining blood of stars
dropping and everything
spinning and melting
down under just
one touch

one

touch of that stricken star’s
living draining dying
diamond
blood

Source: It’s The Blood Of Stars | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Hidden From Our Eyes | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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From last year…a tragically prophetic poem about life in the time of ttaf…


Can you feel it
bouncing off steel beams
ricocheting off raw stone,

the sound of gunfire
off in the distance
grim and getting closer
in cold grey shuffling
grave-steps clotted
and rotted
and ruined…

Source: Hidden From Our Eyes | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Breaking Beans | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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AAHHH!  Wowsa…again with the metaphor choice that I love!!

Green Beans…human “beans”…and again you can launch from there.  I really REALLY like how this one turned out, sitting here a couple of years later.


the snap of those fresh green beans
the smell of fresh linen
infused with lacy scents of
fresh baked bread lingering

the sound like
*past* and *present* and *future*
punctuated with
period.  period.  period.
and my heart the ellipsis that lingers

like the freshly baked bread…

Source: Breaking Beans | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Reaping Waves | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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This was a couple years ago…”viking” is metaphor for “patriarchy”…and the rest should follow naturally…


I’m no Viking, not me!
Charissa Grace?
Pshaw…I do not sail
on waves like crops,
oars for ploughs
and battle lust for seed.
I shudder at the thought!
Of harvest moments
in peaceful lands
and no limits but my lusts
and the certainty of loss
at the end of Ragnarok…

Source: Reaping Waves | Charissa’s Grace Notes

I Lost Time Today | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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PLEASE:  Read this out loud, and zero in on the rhymes as the key to where to place your meter.  Lovely, lovely effort, this.


I lost time today…misplaced it completely
as I sat, wondering how
the lavender takes body and position
in the skies above.

Does it wish its way up there?
Does it woo with song and dance?

Notes so sweet floating on air
to paint and wash and seize its chance
to smear its bloody beauty stain
upon the sky’s face once so plain
just blue…and now in wonder-grains
of beauty brief that won’t remain…

I lost time today…

Source: I Lost Time Today | Charissa’s Grace Notes

I Fly Steady On | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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The only comment I shall make this year during Independence Day…from a couple years ago

 

Past Lady Liberty,
looming silent still
thru slant snow, icy, cold,
frozen feet firmly planted
atop the broken chains
of captives loosed, unbound.

Past her seeming sightless eyes
fixed on an end unseen (as yet)…

Source: I Fly Steady On | Charissa’s Grace Notes

That Perfect Nothing | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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From last year…loving it a year later!!the mountain
swimming in clouds
wreathing grey sheer granite
face, wedding veil lace
shimmering in the distance

and the river
sinewy twisty arrow
shot from austere heights
cataract-ing down
slim and yet so fierce…

Source: That Perfect Nothing | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Poems About Gender Dysphoria From 2014

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Here are a couple of poetic attempts to describe the special hell of Gender Dysphoria.

In the first, I talk about the feelings of guilt and self-loathing…what it is like when they are tyrants inescapable.

In the second poem, pay close attention to homophones…words that sound the same and sometimes are even spelled the same and yet depending on context they have different meanings.  This is extremely important to understand if you wish to get inside this poem to the place where it will give up its honey to you.

I hope you enjoy them…3 year old poems that stand up pretty well.

That Numb Relief

Born On The Edge
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Why “Facts” Don’t Convince People (and what you can do about it)

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Hello all…this post goes out in the hope that you will take time to watch…then reflect…and then do some work in these times.

If, like me, you fear for the survival of democracy and think we are on the border of becoming ruled by autocrats who simply harm those they do not like, then clearly you will consider the time spent well spent…

and if you are a supporter of ttaf, then you will consider me and those like me as deceived and dangerously so…you will sit wringing your hands and exchanging “so sad”s and “so be it”s with like minded people…so would you not also then have GREAT motivation to invest time in this so you could better communicate with those whose minds you wish to change?

PS:  I have watched it…that is why I am posting it.  So be aware of that when you talk to me and employ the shortcut thinking on display here.

Butterfly And Bone | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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And again…aren’t we all?  Butterflies carved in Bone?I’m a butterfly carved of bone
white, bleached, sun-baked bone

my wings are just my lungs
spongy-red and wet but free
inside my chest is open space
soaring chasms awaiting light

butterfly, bone, breath over breadth
I’m a butterfly carved in bone

I am diamonds in the night…

Source: Butterfly And Bone | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Inside Dead Wood And Splinters | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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An older poem about transition and the power of congruency


You woke me
and I didn’t even
know I was sleeping
inside dead wood and
splinters waiting for
a spark or a coal
from Your
altering
Altar

The hate and ignorance
of the petrified forest
is matched…

Source: Inside Dead Wood And Splinters | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Microphone cut after Mormon girl reveals she’s gay at church

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Hey…this heinous and evil action is not unique to this one church, alas.  It is standard operating procedure in evangelical cultures.

But notice something particular…read the article and notice:  she was not doing any sin.  She was not sexually sinning, she was not defaming anyone else…she was simply being authentic and vulnerable.

That list in 1 Corinthians 6 which is used to rape, pillory, and execute LGTBQIA humans “In the Name of Jesus” is a list that refers to actions taken which flow from an unredeemed heart…here they all are:

sexually immoral
idolaters
adulterers
thieves
greedy
drunkards
slanderers
swindlers

…and of course the infamous supposed ban on same sex relationships which was actually speaking to the unequal and evil power dynamic practiced in those days by men of power over young and exploitable boys…very similar to how today’s Rape Culture looks.

Sexual immorality is a perversion of sex
Idolatry is a perversion of worship
Adultery is a perversion of relationship
Theft is a perversion of property rights
Greed is a perversion of desire
Drunkenness is a perversion of pleasure
Slander is a perversion of truth telling
Swindling is a perversion of relationship

…and the practice that was mistranslated by the KVJ translators is simply a perversion of sex no different than sexual immorality…

Not one of the root things is in itself an evil!!
This list is by no means exhaustive…but what is exhausting is the evil idolatrous, slanderous, swindling undertaken by millions of so-called Christians EVERY SINGLE DAY who carry it out in Jesus Name…and ignore all the other things in the list.

You’re merely a sinner in need of God…unless you are a homasexshul.

Truthfully?  It is your own guilt and shame which you scapegoat onto LGTBQIA people as a sop to your own guilty conscience.

This girl is far closer to the kingdom of God than the rest of them put together…because she is authentic!!

I suggest you try some…you may end up having a few less “Lord Lord when did we see You’s” to answer for…
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A video of a young Mormon girl revealing to her congregation that she is lesbian and still loved by God — before her microphone is turned off by local…

Source: Microphone cut after Mormon girl reveals she’s gay at church

Deaf Earth’s Denial | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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This is my favorite poem of mine…it is old, actually, comparatively speaking, having mewled and clawed its way thru my inelastic soul still soaking in oil to be made pliable and flexy…

This poem is explicitly about gender dysphoria, and specifically my own experience of that as a child…a child newly divorced from herself and dedicated to performance to be sure I remained loved and accepted…after all, I was the girl who wandered woefully, tearfully with no words to describe the pain and horror within and so my litany was “it’s the end of the world…to which the response from adults around me was to mock me with sarcasm telling me that “nobody loves you”…

…which most certainly was not intended to destroy me but which poison was no less destructive given the intent.  It was into that pool I dove headlong and knowing that performance had to be utterly perfect to avoid harm from shark and wave.

This poem is historically accurate, and related poetically.

When you read this, do try reading it aloud, as the rhythm and meter are very intentional and seek perfect repetition one with the other from stanza to stanza, so as to mimic the flow of the clouds overhead in the wind.

…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…

Source: Deaf Earth’s Denial | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Refresh My Thirsty Roots

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It’s the wind, fresh splashed
with wild rain and then dashed
across slate and sand and then

strained thru my window
thrown open and grasping
for beyond and beyond and…

then scent simply there
and all around me sent,
in my hair and nose and lungs,
as if I were the tree
and that old gnarly oak
out there was me…

except that I am
sitting beside you dear,
laying there in your
innocence and cheer
still fresh from so far
away before you came

Before you were
sent so near to me,
oh my lovey,
lovely, my girl…

I sit, and drink of you
as you refresh my thirsty roots
forever until Forever.

After More Than 20 Years as Conservative Leader, Paul Williams Comes Out as Transwoman

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This story is very parallel to my own.
I encourage reading it, especially for the understanding
of a Gospel of Incarnation rather than a Gospel of Law.
“Transgender teens with unsupportive parents have a suicide rate 13 times higher than their peers. They are the most at risk group in the nation. Most of those unsupportive parents are Evangelicals.

“I have been in personal contact with thousands of LGBTQ individuals and their families from seven countries on four continents. Almost without exception these souls are Christians who have been ostracized from their churches and/or families. They always ask the same painful question, ‘What do I do now?’ I feel the weight of the responsibility.

“In my previous work, I hoped to save people from spiritual suffering. In my current work, I hope to save people from dying.”

Paula went on to state: “I do not care about their (evangelicals’) brand of orthodoxy.””I have no interest in debating it. It is of little interest to me.

However, I do care about their orthopraxy, how they practice the Christian faith. I find it lacking. I find any religion lacking that leads with judgment instead of leading with acceptance and love.”

Source: After More Than 20 Years as Conservative Leader, Paul Williams Comes Out as Transwoman

Father’s Day: An Illusory Mourning

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If you read here regularly, you know enough about me to know why “Father’s Day” is a very problematic day to me…for I was in the situation that a woman gets thrust into when she for whatever reason is required to be “father” to her children, whether it is due to death or divorce, or the joining of two women, and each of them trade off time in that role.

As I was not out to anyone, least of all myself, there was the expectation by everyone that I would simply “know” what being a father meant…but really the best I could do was follow the example of my own father, watch what males did, and try as hard as I could to be present in the lives of our children.

Alas, there was the unfortunate cultural baggage to deal with as well…something each generation discovers when their children grow up and become all-knowing teenagers and rip you to shreds with their withering rejection and depths of knowledge that “obviously” exceed your own!!

I have watched, read…and mourned as my life and history has disappeared before my eyes as it is recounted for others thru the pen of writers who leave me agog in the distance between their claims and what I have lived.  I hold in my hands letters, cards, and other mementos that say one thing and links that cross the transom leading to “myth-making” and demythologizing that seem to suit the maker’s whim and need while utterly ignoring whoever might have been present, however unaccounted for…

…and certainly there is great territory that I now see which I could not see then…mourning and grieving is hard work, but real transformation/metamorphosis is even harder because it demands first and foremost accountability to some truth outside one’s self…and it is slow…3 steps forward and 2 back so often…

…believe me, you have not known horror until you devote yourself in the midst of deep pain and sorrow over the course of years to this transformation only to find it entirely dismissed because of the presence of a two step back moment!!

But this is the lot of a transperson…dissociated in childhood, high functioning and intelligent enough to hide it from everyone including herself, only to find everything shifts dizzyingly in middle age and a brand new person who was always there emerges to the surface offering life to everyone but bringing so much death in the process.

One is forced to know one’s self…or die.
One is forced to live one’s life…whether accompanied or abandoned.
And one is at last glad to find moments of authenticity stretching into entire days, becoming weeks and promising a solidness that may last for the few years left on this stage called life before my candle is blown out.

And that brings me full circle to “Father’s Day”…and an interesting unfolding of meaning and history and experience as writ in the poems from that day in 2014 and 2015…

…I will never write another one.

Never.

Any further writing on that subject is more than adequately covered by the ones whose memoirs cover the gamut from memory to gaslighting, to myth making and destruction…and telling the stories that make sense to them not only their past but their present…for what a joyous role it is to be present scapegoat for those unhappy and not realizing that many independent choices have led them to the place they are in and that of their own volition and doing…as long as I am there, that result can be shunted off onto me…and thus provide some measure of relief and comfort, and maybe even some space to grow and grow up…

for certainly this is the role of a parent if not a father…

I love no less than ever I loved…perhaps even more now than then…but I am far less invested in measuring my own self based on the things that are said to others about me…because I know myself now, better than I have ever known, and I accept the successes, the failures, all rolled into one and called “a life lived”.

I think that I get to some of these feelings, emotions, conclusions in the poems on this subject.

At any rate, it is clear to me that there are new puppies who eagerly drink, and a multitude of souls who have begun to call me mother, or spiritual parent…and my job is to be who I am, in joy and full participation…if those from the highways and byways come willingly to the table, I shall serve them what goods I have, and continue in my quest to be utterly emptied of anything left to give on my final breath’s exhalation.

I suspect there is much to be gleaned in these poems for any parent of adult children…but I cannot be the judge of that…only embrace the process of being a parent to those given to me…and rejoice as I see the tools I diligently sought to impart put to use…even if it is for my flaying, dissection, and repudiation.

God knows I love them…miss them…and wish that I could know and be known by them.  But that option is not mine to know or even demand, for it is wrapped and concealed in the illusions and fogs of times future…

but maybe Christmas principles, lessons…perhaps Christmas visitations will give all Mr. Scrooges that reprieve we all wish for, but so few will embrace due to the fires of taking responsibility for being a chooser of free will in a determinative world…

And so to the poems…oh, I’ve many poems written to my children individually and collectively…but these three specifically concern the horrid day known as “Father’s Day”, and they are my only answer I shall ever make to the long horror show letter received on this day, or the articles about me that so deeply and mortally wounded my heart…I await with longing the day of resurrection that shall come.

Here are the links…if you are still here to click:

The Footprints Of Ghosts

The Blossom of Memories of You (Father’s Day 2015)

Beside This Ring Of Ashes One Year Later

In Arpeggio Miles | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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Ahhhh…omg how I LOVE this poem!!

I wanted to talk about gaps, about distances…
those that exist on a vast continuum of connection,
and yet no matter how close you get,
you never really can connect…

the gap between two people, regardless of closeness…
the gap between the earth and moon in spite of gravitational pull…
the gap between us and ourselves…
the gap between stars…

and I wanted to also talk about connections, too…

and of course, it is a simple love poem at heart.

I encourage you to spend some time with it,
and perhaps even linger with some of these
metaphors and layers of meaning…

it’s a rich poem and I am quite happy with it.
❤


Prelude:
There is an indigo bunting
outside my window singing
in the moonlight streaming by
a million miles an hour.

But it is not the window
on my mind tonight…
I keep returning to that door
the one between you and me.…

Source: In Arpeggio Miles | Charissa’s Grace Notes

A Gulf So Imperceptible

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tumblr_n5sylkhqX91qe9z54o1_1280
the distance between you and i
is the same as that distance
between myself and me

a gulf so imperceptible
two souls that intertwine
and yet a smokescreen intervenes…

Source: A Gulf So Imperceptible

I Am A broken girl And I Am | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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I am a broken girl and I am

not so easy to love like
carefree normal confident girls
next door in cotton and flannel and lace.

I live inside a fortress and I hide

inside shields and my soul
lives centuries in seconds
I am a survivor of wars
that break the strongest
men so flimsy.

Source: I Am A broken girl And I Am | Charissa’s Grace Notes

A Good Poetry Day 2 Years Ago

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A couple of years ago I decided to post everything I had written that day.

I think you may enjoy reading these offerings…I sure did as I looked back.

https://charissagrace.com/2015/06/17/

The Footprints of Ghosts (commemorating my first Father’s Day as myself) | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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From the first “Father’s Day” passing since I entered transition…wow was I naive then.  Since then, the hell-words and deeper hell-silences have scarred deeply.

I will never ever celebrate or participate in this day again.

But this poem…ahhh, I was ringing the bell on this day.


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 …

Source: The Footprints of Ghosts (commemorating my first Father’s Day as myself) | Charissa’s Grace Notes