as tears well
(it’s funny that tears
well most well
when I am not well)
up in my eyes
and they go all limpid
I limp around the room
I see the angles, the planes,
the endless lines
and sharp edges
of your geometry
and I am glad I am going
even though it hurts as much
being gone as it did being there
it’s just that my lines are round
my planes are spheres
and I have no angles
in the softness of my heart
and the glance of the moon
in the forest, thru the mists
under grey clouds on the moor
I wander, wander…I linger
even though my time
here has passed and
so has day become night
and I a woman of the night
in all its mystery and splendour
and thus imbibe its secrets and its wonder
yet do I loiter…here in the forest
near the old house once filled
with glory and light and music
but now just an empty shell
under grey clouds on the moor
in the forests thru the mists
As it unfolds in front of me, that river
that river of green-streaked golden brown
that flow unceasing of time…that goes around
and comes around and goes around again
I can just make out in the flotsam and jetsam
all the refuse there that everyone has refused
to snatch up and drink and make a part
of their own will and way
I can just see those things that we threw
in together, wishing upon twinkles and glints
star-reflections ripply and quick on the river-folds
and they roll in time and show me their bellies to scratch
and I do, with recollections of willow days wandy
and star-nights silver thru the open window
wafting in the cool night breezes
that were the only blankets that we wore…
and the birds, singing songs of light, of times
coming hopeful and bright and all full of promise
and trees reaching, straining to drink the cool peaceful night
and so standing tall as our example, bending graceful
in the wind and standing strong in the rain.
And now, your hope and promise has arrived,
drawn in reed baskets from that river
and denial done, death thwarted
(for some time anyway, a go-round or two)
and I sit for us both, on the high bluffs
that overlook that flow,
that go round of time relentless
but constant and thus of some cold comfort.
it’s that space between
light and darkness
that rare mix
and combination
it’s in shadows I sit
in shades I live
and grey is brilliant color
variated and diverse
it’s the inbetween
that I relate to
that I am
I moved away while you weren’t watching
(it was easier than I thought it would be,
escaping past your X-Ray eyes
that look for flesh and blood and thus
missed my exodus)
I live by the sea, now, high
above the sandy shore and on a bluff
that looks like it leans out
but really tucks back in
and stands in stone throw
to the singing sea-grass.
My house has seven windows
my house has one pure door
thru which no shadow enters
(for you won’t come to visit)
straight from the greenwood do you run
straight past my house without a glance
because the sea has given voice
to great desires, and great hungers
but you fail (as you once remembered)
to grasp the truth…these waters sing of me
my ever fall and rise, my adoration of your eyes
my ever in and out, my weeping heart, my spirit-shout
because I live between the forest and the sea
on a bluff there…I live
I live in that gulf between
you and me.
the cry of the old house crawled out
between the bars and scrabbled
hard up the frozen-bone branches
it wrenched itself from the icy
grip of frosty-crystals and leapt
into the wind
into freedom
but the blood of its escape
remained running everywhere
and that lock still snikked shut
tight against the chain
and those cold long links
that stood arm in arm
against freedom
while the blood of this effort
was left in trails
smeared everywhere
in gory evidence of how
you turn it down over
and over and over
true freedom
my home lies
deep in the forest
near the roots
of the mountains
it is a space
from which eternity
pours effortlessly
right alongside sorrow,
longing and giving
and receiving,
that one unity
of space and going
to and from
that receptive deep
opening within
passing from
this world of woe
to a deep place
that’s not a place
but the echo
of my home
deep in the forest
near the roots
of the mountains
that line?
right there.
the one stretching out
from somewhere to nowhere
i crossed it
but not just stepped across
on dancing feet
i danced across
and caper on its grave
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
and my heart never to be touched
my inmost parts so liquid, so creamy
laying fallow, uninhabited
thinness, membrane thinner than
a butterfly wing, or maybe even
just one molecule thick
but never can be broken thru
never can be jumped across
to stand there with you
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
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.
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.
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
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…
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.
When I read that article…the gas-lighting kind, that retells my past in the worst of ways in order to paint the writer as the most burdened most fragile but simultaneously most strong survivor ever…we readers are all supposed to get all hushed and quiet and be in awe that somehow the writer survived such horrors…such horrors…
and me, my Baby, with thousands upon thousands of memories utterly different, totally opposite…
The only thing that gets me thru is what my therapist has taught me, that these things are not actually designed to try to tell the truth about history…
…rather, they are spoken in the desperate attempt to explain the writer’s own experience of the present, and much of that experience produced by brain trauma from the past…not the fabricated events.
I get it…as a person who experienced epic brain trauma from conception…
But it hurts, and is its own form of erasure, of the theft of my agency.
It cracks me up in a way, because 10 years ago the stories painted us as lovey dovey neo hippy refugees from the 70s. That fit the need of that moment.
It is especially heartbreaking that the hour of my becoming is the hour of unbecoming for the writer…and I am powerless to change that, and held by grudges and judgments in those chains in that place, but only inside the writer’s soul. For I have slipped my leash at last, and now run free. And yes…there is a holographic overview of how dysphoria affected those around me, no doubt about it. They just cannot (or won’t) see the battle I fought to keep greater horrors away.
Yes, there are greater horrors.
I pray that someday the Truth can be partaken of together, and the Truth will set us free.
I won’t take clothes that are hand me downs,
I won’t smile cus I wear a frown
Once I get going, you can’t hold me down
Cus once I get started I go to town.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
Cus I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
And I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
Cus I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
Darling, you know that I love you true,
Confess all my sins if you want me to,
But there’s one thing I wanna say to you,
If you want to love me my whole life thru
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else
I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else.
Darling, you know that I love you true,
Confess all my sins if you want me to,
But there’s one thing I wanna say to you,
If you want to love me my whole life thru
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else
I SAY IT!!!!!
I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else).
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
LIKE EVERYBODY ELSEEEEEEEEEEE
…you who wrote vociferously to deny me becoming, deny me growth…
…you who wrote to deprive me of my innate destiny to have a perspective, walk thru life and the years, and then have a new perspective from a new place…
…you who wrote to deny forgiveness by telling me that I was unforgiveable…
…you who wrote in denial of a Grandfather’s wisdom that a wise person changes their mind and a fool never…
…this post is for you.
I am free of your judgments. Take them back to the grave you choose to live in, I want nothing to do with them.
Give me a chance to be responsible and to give and take and live and learn and forgive and be forgiven…give me a chance to be the person I allus was and not this fabricated golem you have created to tell yourself what you think you need to be…give me that chance and I will take it.
But to gas-light me, castigate me and condemn me all the while denying me any means or opportunity to walk forward?
No…Charissa will not play that.
Take it all away and best of luck to you…as for me, I will live in forgiveness, give forgiveness, receive forgiveness, love, laugh, and know that I am perfectly imperfect.
I mourn that you deny me the opportunity to walk a life with you…but from the looks of things you are far more the loser.
You stand there, so distant, so stark.
You glower, outlined in the dark.
Your face the knife, my heart the mark
you leave with your hard stoney glance.
I look for a way around you.
A way beneath, around, not thru.
You standing there like hellish dew
or maybe a wrecking crew dance.
I need the trees, grass, the peaks
of high snow covered mountains and leaks
of stars, birds and wind, they all speak
of the Grace that grows, given a chance.
But you, standing there on one rock.
You on the sand near the clock.
Your words either silent or chalk
and your heart just an empty black manse.
You know that moment
(or is it an era or an eon)
that time in which space expands
(or does it contract)
or rather that space in which time
runs faster or stops all together…
that moment when you must
step up or step back
you must be quick-eyed and instant
not sluggish, slothful, mesmerized
by the glimmer of light on the waves
and the ripples of the sea towards the shore…
you must take your chin from your knees
raise your nose to the stiff water breeze
and let your hair blow free and unafraid
I have heard a lot of empty words
devoid of solid stance and foundation
in that expanding time,
that folding space,
that instant
untimeless
moment.
“Absence.
Absence, hear thou my protestation against thy strength, distance, and length.
Do what thou canst for alteration… For hearts for truest mettle.
Absence doth still and time doth settle.”
Could I leave the bright waves
and take to the blue skies?
Could I leave my cold skin
and sail into your eyes?
Is the moon high above
just reflecting to me
all the love that you hold
in your heart?
If the leaves on the trees
can turn red, yellow, gold
why can’t I find a heart
that will tenderly hold
my body, my spirit,
my mind and my soul
while the tale of my true
love is told?
Mount up! Mount up!
Take courage on the wind!
Lift the hands of your sails on the waters!
Rise up! Rise up!
Leave the surface behind and let the bow of your ship
carve the clouds on your way!
I will sail all the seas
I will follow the stars
I will listen behind the beauty
beyond what mars
And someday I shall come
to my sea-harbour home
I will finally rest
deep in you.
Yes I will finally rest
deep in you.
But the issue of abuse is more subtle — more invisible — and more than all the above.
Abuse does not arise in a vacuum. A healthy mind does not (need to) abuse. Abuse is created of trauma, and it is the traumatized mind which abuses. Whether to externalize, bury, escape its anger and frustration — the abused mind must purge it’s hurt in some manner, or risk being broken, split apart by it entirely.
But the troubling fact is this.
We have created an abusive society. We have normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse. We are abused at work, by the very rules, norms, and expectations of our jobs, at which we are merely “human resources”, to be utilized, allocated, depleted. We are abused at play, by industries that seek to prey on our innocence and literally “target” our human weaknesses.
And now we are abused at arm’s length, through the lightwaves, by people we will never meet, for things we have barely even said. We live in a society where school shootings are the rule, not the exception, where more people will have taken antidepressants than not…and now one where nearly everyone will have been abused on the web…for a random, off-hand, throwaway comment, an idle thought, something trivial, unremarkable, meaningless.
Source: Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) — Bad Words — Medium
I wanted to press that quote, pulled from a longer article that is fantastic in describing what happens on social media…
…and online in general.
The web is one gigantic megaphone, and one person with a point of view and a platform can do incredible damage to any number of other people with what they write and how they write it.
I myself have experienced this…where an article was written about me, about the most private and personal and painful things in my life and placed on display in the service of a personal point of view.
I didn’t recognize the person that appeared in the article, even while I remembered the things alluded to…and remembered the rich tapestry that surrounded them all…a tapestry comprised of the things that happened and the things I remember and the interpretation that is placed on them by so many players in the tableau…
I was horrified as I read the comments on the article by complete and utter strangers who had now decided that I was a certain way or a certain thing, simply based on these words made public, and while those words are utterly authentic as a representation of the thoughts and judgements of the writer they were abysmally inadequate in giving any genuine insight into the gestalt of the history that had been lived.
I was despairing…thinking of how the place of publication did Zero due diligence in fact checking or vetting or even giving me the common courtesy of a warning that they were going to take a small facet, one side of a terribly complicated issue and wave it in the air like a besotted banner of click-bait and titillation.
I couldn’t help but imagine the consequences should this have happened to any other number of people I know in my situation, and the yawn and blind eye turned to just another transgender suicide…
And more than anything else? I knew that deep down inside I would have done nothing to stop the writing from happening because of the writer’s need to tell the story and tell it the way those eyes, that heart and brain lived it.
The issue is not the telling of the story…the issue is the megaphone and how it is choking itself on its own abusive streams.
Contemplate the things this author points out, and consider your own interactions with social media…and know that there is a better way.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa
so often i find
myself outside of walls
looking intently in
thru the windows and doors
at the tableau inside
i have my strings of lights
at the ready, plugged in
to the moon and the stars
and the songs of the night
and the love of the dawn
but I always find out
I am simply too big
to get inside the walls
with the rest of the ones
who just fit…who just fit
“My baby!
Mom is so sorry.
I am so sorry
to make this decision.
My son!
I hope you to
meet great parents,
and I am very, very sorry .
I don’t deserve to say a word.
Sorry, sorry, and I love you my son.
Mom loves you more
than anything else.
I leave you here
because I don’t know
who your father is.
I used to
think about
something bad,
but I guess
this box is safer
for you.
That’s why
I decided
to leave you here.
My son,
Please forgive me.”
Sometimes I say the same things to my own children, but there is no answer, nothing but the wind whispering in the trees and memories that stain my heart red.
it was eyes,
everywhere each one
attached to a beak, each beak
trilling so shrilly, chattering
in clakkety chirp-chirruping
in brackish raucous screams
loserloserloserloserloser
this forest was once a place
of wonder and the night
so full of promise but now,
it’s like the stars have fallen
from the sky and become
these birds, these birds with eyes
and beaks and nothing to sing,
just screams in a trackless forest
with a past turned out to be a dream
and a future that’s just a strip mine
yet unzipped, undug, yet torn open
and a present consisting of merely
the sound of these eyes so sharp
and beaks blunt just like red clubs
and no melody down here in sight
This was very early on…I had internally chosen transition, but I was waiting. I wanted to interact with family members and discover what response if any may result from the news of my gender journey.
At the end of that year those discussions occurred and support/affirmation was given, so I embarked on the journey.
Since then much has changed…
I doubt that I would have gone forward had I known then what I know now.
But then again, that’s why God set up time the way it is. Because the truth? In spite of the horror words spoken and the ineffable sadness of those words that used to be spoken not being spoken now, I am better off for the transition.
Fascist Architecture and all that.
It’s hard to know if all the things presented in evidence against me now were there all along and just hidden…or if they are the after-the-fact distortions of individuals who are deep in major cognitive dissonance now…certainly I feel like the email/artifact record presents a dramatically different story…I lived a dramatically different story!
No matter…it is what it is now, and those things are held as axiomatic and reality.
Anyway…this poem was at the very beginning…such naivety, such anticipation!
Sitting in the morning mist today
(it’s 2 AM. The battle started
early in whistle-shrieks of
incoming artillery shot
from fear’s cannons
and terror’s trenches.
They tore me out of dreams
into this nightmare waking and real).
It’s the day of memory, the day of the dead
(and the living who wish they were)
and the day of me, survivor
of this war on us,
waged from mile
3001.
The sound of sad owls
(like haunts) and elderberry blossoms
(fragrant in the dark) and me inside
a Dresden of memory and fire and sound
and the machine gun prattle of stories
twisting back on themselves in your hands
like snakes striking those wrists
so clumsily tattooed in crude ink and fantasy.
I heard the house creak and groan
(maybe it was just my heart’s hurt moan)
and I swore for a moment I thought
you were there, laying in bed and peace
while your chest rose and fell faithfully
and your face, wreathed in blond curls
that smell like Heaven’s very bakeries
still in sacred rest and repose…
I fought my way back
and across the years
to where you lay, then, there
to have but one whiff yet again
of those locks of gold and God
to sustain me in the midst
of this uncanny clumsy conflict,
this war of atrocious inattention
but your room was empty
(my mailbox is empty)
and it turned out the house
was just grieving for its loss,
the house is empty
and my heart is lonely
and the spray of sorrow begins
to anoint the roof from the skies
and soothes the ache of loss,
the lovelorn lack of presence
and the absence of any laughter.
I never dreamed that you were
the kind of person who just sashays in
and then waltzes right out
of my life while I am
making music in 4/4 time
but if I really think about it,
I remember the time you were
last here and as you left you
flashed your eyes dark at me,
filled with orange fire that smelled
like burnt chocolate and you spoke
silently with that glance
straight into my heart, a look that
was a blade slicing thru the music,
(that dissonant dance)
and you said in one glance
that you wished my mother had
had an abortion
instead of me…
In that moment, the tide turned
in this war on us, and I had
a flash of insight that would
make Lorenz so jealous:
I knew who the
Unknown Soldier was
and always would be.
OMG Constance!! Did you hear about the massive protests and riots going on in Philadelphia because of the death of a woman of color???
Yeah…neither did I.
After all…she was only a woman.
A woman of color.
Oh…and she was trans.
Just another piece of trash collected for the patriarchy. http://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/transgender-woman-stabbed-to-death-in-philadelphia?utm_term=.yfzwq8GpK#.pnOnBKk8L 
But while I am on the topic of killing transwomen? If you slur me with your words…if you other me with your actions…if you lie to yourself about who I am…if you call me “engenderer”, “mask”, “monster”, “other” (a literal “othering”)…
…you do not get to call yourself a trans-advocate.
Words hurt, wound irrevokably…but silence slays the heart.
They were laying there on the ground
of my heart, bloody and gore-flecked
and dully glowing with the sheen of life
blood and the thrill of cutting to ribbons
the tenderest places of my heart.
I wrapped them in the ribbons of heart
you left intact, attached at one end
by the tenuous tendrils of flesh that
you either missed, overlooked, or flat out
just didn’t care enough to slash.
I hung those wrapped razors
those razors bloody with me and fading
up on the wall where your picture
used to be, and I straightened them
so they hung just so, and straight…
my mementos remaining of you
and my hopes for a future with you
dripping onto the floor
and then drying out and becoming
a static reminder of a moment
in a dynamic river of our lives.
I heard it, from the deep dark
rank with such fright
and masked in mean menace.
It woke me, from a sound sleep,
straight into stiff silent
screams bouncing off deaf night.
I listened, to the slow gait
shuffle shuffle slip late
and pondered what shade shambled there.
Then I heard, the slap of warm flesh,
bloody feet bare on stone,
cold stone worn slick and smooth
by great passing multitudes,
captives grim and without hope
bound for dungeons black and deep,
the sound of dancing holy feet
holey, bare, stepping light
stomping on a serpent’s head
as they walked down, down, down, down
over every cold hard stone
to the bottom to atone…
throwing open every door
shouting to all captive there
get you up into God’s Air!
And then the shuffle of a host
led forth from captivity
by a King in death alive
heaven inside death’s dark maw
plundering every taken treasure
sowing grace there without measure.
And I rested in this sound,
my heart echoed with each pound
on this day that He is crowned
with my past, successes, fails,
every sorrow past the pale
every shipwreck in the gale,
and I knew that at first light
I would place a tombstone bright
graven names there, writ just right
to show that I am me, not him
and that his life of sorrow grim
is laid to rest, its power dim
And in that grave I’d also place
the hateful words, a three-fold face
of judgement, lies and lack of grace…
and then tomorrow, when the stone
is rolled away with rocky moan
my forward path of grace is shown
and I will walk free without guilt
from that hovel judgment built
and live this life full, to the hilt!
I do not owe God anymore,
I do not owe you in your core,
I don’t owe 1, 2, 3, or 4
Because I am bought by that sound
of bloody feet on hell’s cold ground
So liberty in me abounds…
and thus I walk in grace
I’m free within my place
Delivered from the race.
Amen and Happy Easter tomorrow.
By the dawn’s early light
I see the faint track of passing deer
o’ershadowed by padding soft cougar prints,
and I leave behind what I so proudly hailed,
my back to that last twilight gleaming, my last one
I shall endure, or ever see.
I have conceded the fight fraught with perils
and I have left the path, to follow the trail,
the last trail, flag finally furled forever,
victim of futility and vain imagination.
I think it’s better this way, following the trail
of animals, far off the beaten human track
because that way I will not be found
or ever tracked out, and the last horror
will not be me blasted or bloated or slashed or purple
it will be a simple, puzzling absence.
The morning is blazing, gleams of blue and grey,
the air crisper and cleaner than a gunshot crack
and the beauty rolls from ridge to ridge
and my eyes fill and smudge a smidge
in sorrow and relief.
I’ll never see you again, but that is not a thing
cus hey, I haven’t seen you thru the night
and have no proof you’re even still there,
I don’t even know if I’m still here, truth be told.
The going gets tougher, the trail drops away
and I am bushwhacking thru thick thorny
fierce frolics of Scotch Broom and poison oak.
I won’t be allergic, where I am going.
Finally I find the deep copse dark,
slick with shadows, layers laid lifeless
and freshly dead in morning, and I walk to
the deeps of the bowl and hunker.
Down. Down. Birds dart overhead in sound and glimpse.
Down. Down. And spacious skies descend to gulp.
Down. Down. And ancient hills crouch low and dusty.
and me, in the hollow, growing thin, bleeding out, feeding grasses
copper and salt, tears and surrender, and sorrow on the wind.
Time will pass and my flesh becomes the dust from whence it came
and my bones will still delay, waiting for a spark, waiting for
the Flint of God to strike them, tender tinder with me finally
gone in ghostly ever-swoon,
and there they ever burn, in the night, in memory
of all that we endured, and all we were denied
and all I hope to spare you from
with this bonfire, this bonefire
releasing me in conflagrating furies
in flight to the stars above
and this tragedy stupid, mute, dumb
finally finished.
You, long my nemesis and hater of my soul.
You’ve chilled my days and frozen all my long night’s coal
in hours of stark terror and silent desperate screams
on razor blades I’ve laid my stricken threatened head
thanks to your dark malevolent deadly ways…
abandonment.
You poisoner of my rivers flowing pure and oh so sweet,
you making dry my innocent new merry bubbling spring
and striking terror in my tender childlike heart
with zombie screams so savage, oh so hungry shrill,
and yet so silent and so baleful still
you emanate such evil dread and blackness toward me
and I am melted in my soul aghast,
abandoned.
Long have I searched and sought an exit, for the way
that leads me from your cruel torture chambers dark
un-swaddles me from all your reeking death clothes stark
and dank and damp and dripping with death’s poisonous remark,
slowly I turn my shivering and jittery back on you
while terror talks and walks straight up my frigid spine
and every vertebrae recoils in mortal fear
you creep pernicious up my frame like poison vine
but I am resolute because I want to gain
my freedom from your bottomless black empty jailer eyes
and rows of terrible sharp executioner teeth
and so it’s me, at last, it’s me that does you right…
I
abandon
you.
you horror,
you absolute
horror.
words are all I have left,
soft and furious
like ocean waves
breaking on themselves
far out to sea
and lonely
because there are no rocks
to dash themselves on
sometimes those words
get frozen inside my mouth
because everything around me
is cold and static
but the words are insistent
and well up inside me
soft and furious
What I know is what I don’t know.
What I don’t know is what I know.
I am looking for an exit.
…I was called this today. It wasn’t malicious in intent…but it was vicious in result. Apparently this person had referred to me that way behind my back and felt guilty about it. So they confessed to me today…
The reason given? Apparently they say that they “see Jesus in me so much that I am a “he” to the person.
Hmmmmm. I wonder if she calls Beth Moore a he/she? Or any other woman leader in church? There are a ton of cis-women far more full of Jesus than I.
But even more, I wonder: why even say that? Like it is so deadening, so numbing. And I feel empty inside already.
Thanks, person. You really must be lightened in your conscience, confession made straight to my face and words used 3 times in explaining why it’s okay.
But hey why should I care? I am dead so big deal.
Honestly, sometimes I wish I were. So many lives would have so much less to deal with.
Here, at this late and early shore
in clammy mist and silent roar
shriven and stripped, scoured to my core
and needy midst this weather-war.
I wait for you with my torn heart
Clutched in cruel claws and pulled apart
by lonely memories sweet and tart
in loss I’m given this fresh start.
Remembering fire in this rain
Remembering sweet in suffering
Remembering roots thrust deep in pain
and incense smoke removes my stain.
Old wood, dead wood and debris
and underbrush, flammable me
has fed the flames’ raw hungry plea
Consumed, renewed and set me free.
Sky and sea and wind and time
wash me clean of my past’s thought crime
And scrub away my grief and grime
I’m born again in Love sublime
what am I,
here in this current so swift,
here in this flow so crystal,
the color of none, of nothing
seeping from hearts of high mountains
whose tops are jagged and sharp,
sharp enough to shred endless blue skies
into ripped bloody red torn pink remnants
purple while day fades to black?
what am I,
feeling the kick inside me,
the writhing insistence and roll,
the knock knock inside my forehead
that sounds in nebula bursts
and sings in galaxy galas
inside my conductor heart
waving my rhythmic baton thoughts
emerging and piling up useless?
what am I,
feeling such guilt when I think
about all that I want you to know
all I feel and I long to feel with you
and I hear the desperate tremor
in your voice, I fear deeply that I am…what?
a burdensome ball that needs juggling,
a silly dead thing that needs managed,
another condition to cope with?
what am I,
in the dark heart of lean hungry hours
when nightmares slink bold and unwary
and sing in such sibilant hissing
that I’m not a what or a who,
that my sorrow and sharp disappointment
is hollow, is nothing so when
I shout “Marco! Marco! Marco! Marco! Marco!” over and over again
my desperate cry is gutted and added to indigo night?
what am I,
when I feel such life in my thoughts
and my insights streak thru my dark fear
like diamond-tailed powerful comets
fierce and unstoppable birthed, but
black holes of indifference they simply
yawn, stretch, and swallow them whole
and then check their watch sweetly ticking
for the truly important things?
I guess I am this at the least: the sum of all of my fears.
Those things are real, at least they must be, right?
The way they tear, the way they bite,
the way they drink my blood at night,
the way they croon that they will take me, wrap around me, never leave me
they’ll accept me, treasure my heart’s living blood so spurty salty
gushy red blooms from the cuts the jagged mountains made when I fell
from the sky upon them and discovered that I was not
made to fly, or be a worthy bird, or even just a little pretty butterfly.
what am i?
when did it happen,
that twizzle dazzle
Rochambeau during which
you twinkled and tap-danced
from our wordy
hot tub merry
and full of laughing waters
to the river swift,
grey and roiling
thru the locks
and around the island
on the way
to the stormy seas
so vast and voiceless?
you used to
babble like brooks
and I used to
bathe in that
Ponce de Leon flow
eternal and new
(did you not know this?)
and drink of the wine everlasting,
drink of the young perfect you…
today I was down there,
at that creekbed
and it was just
full of dead leaves
that were dank
in stagnant pools
and crackly disappearing
whisps where that
bed was bone dry
and empty of water
and of music
and of laughter.
i miss you so bad…
so bad.
and in these times
it’s impossible
to keep hope alive
without a sop
to my thirst for you
and your fresh vibrant
open and happy face.
I sit here, like my robin there,
watching the geese overhead
in their socially aware V
pointing all together and chattering
in honking gasps of glory and gathering.
My robin looks up,
head cocked and eye a-glitter
and wonders what the hub bub is all about…
and also wonders why she sits,
alone and remaining
as the wind grows chill
and the sky grows grey
and the air grows still
as the more social birds
gather up and leave together
on soft grey southern wings.
Didn’t we used to all trill and honk
and tweet and cheep together?
And I came everyday eager to the yard,
to flit and look for bugs and worms and seeds…
but now? As the leaves have left
and the geese are leaving
and the cats still lurk in black slashes
of slink and dash and calico camouflage
patterns against the browning grass?
I really don’t understand
this community thing
when I show up
everyday in the yard,
but worms taste
wriggly and gritty
without any company.
Maybe the high rock raptors
had it right all along,
maybe solitary unconfinement
was better than that
surface social refinement?
And then the robin
swells her breast with breath,
quivers behind her black bright eye,
and takes wing to fly,
and make her moves
around the growing absence
in the winter neighborhood waiting
until the spring once again
brings those members in the moment
noisy and social, and hell bent
on the seeds and bugs of the verdant yard.
I woke today,
again,
and sad.
Fingers clenched,
toes curled, and
palms scarred
by my fingernails’
cruciform
crescent tattoos.
Another day of longing…
wash, rinse, repeat.
I had hoped
that someone
would notice my pain,
feel my heartache,
care for my sorrow.
But no one did,
lost in their own
worlds of hurt.
I was glad and sad
when I declared in faith
and many liked that.
To encourage others is good.
But when I was open,
transparent,
silence held court and
there was nothing…
no words,
mute embarrassment at
my open vulnerable mewlings?
Distaste for naked cries?
No hand to take,
no smile to receive…
My Daddy told me,
when I was little,
and mourning
“Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep, and you weep alone.”
I always hoped
he was mistaken,
but I think
he must have
been right.
I’m gonna press on,
give my smiles,
my words,
my hands,
such as they are…
I’m stubborn that way,
I guess.
In gusts and
tear-pulling rakes at my cheeks
the wind leans against me
like a drunk on the train.
Her fingers rake my hair
and glean out chaff from
useless yesterdays,
empty hulls with purpose served.
Her fists though…shock me
with blindside blows and
I watch vital branches of my life
ripped away and gone gone gone
Wind blows do leave bruises
on my tender gushy heart
holes in my too strong cover
and bleak determined knowing
that I must go on
resolute and face
into the wind.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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