Tag Archives: Charissa Grace

Like Sunlight, Like Fog | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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I am so enjoying posting old work for a while…
certainly so many things rushed out of me in the trauma flow that
many nuggets got carried further downstream than where people stand to pan for the gold.
I’m often told I’m confident
(like the march of blazing sun
across the hills of night
awakening each day)

I’m told I look like rushing waves
that roll in from the sea
and pounce upon the sand
in joyful swelling sounds

This makes me laugh inside my heart
because I’m more like fog
that silent moves unsure
which way it wants to go

But still committed to the march
inexorable and slow
to be true to myself
in soft embrace sold out

to be completely there
and wrapped around all things
I cherish in the hug
of insubstantial presence

there, and yet untouched.

Source: Like Sunlight, Like Fog | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Singing In My Holy Heart | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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Ahhhh…last year I wrote this to try and express how closely the ecstatic and the erotic dance in me as I connect to poetry and the words enter, flow and exit…

I’m asked sometimes if I write erotic poetry, and I allus laff and ask “Why?”

The question is like asking someone if they are eating McDonald’s french fries during the best feast of their life…

So anyway…this poem is about Poetry, about connection with the Divine, and yes, it can be about connection with the person you love to…connect with.

PS:  this selection is towards the end of the poem…there is a staircase that gets you there, but you have to decide whether you ascend these steps, or descend them…either one is wow!!
…I am buried living-forward
I’m resurrected dying-backward
I am stained forever always after
with that pungent glory,
with Her Glory running down
my chin and from my lips so wet
and thus I shiver deep within
all the way from my down-low throb
to the very roots of my
ecstatic shining hair…

Source: Singing In My Holy Heart | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Across the Aching Blue Sky | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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Three years ago…
Are ashes ever really dead?
Or just a different form of life?

When you see that I have died,
when you look into that place
where my odd, quirky connections
once melded resonant
and found resonant splendour
in heart…and in hearts too

and you see the ashes, chilled,
overlaying stone cold coals,
become grey overcoats
covering what I finally learned
to be so ashamed of?

Scrape those cinders up
shovel and shoe them,
trowel and trough the grits,
find a yearn to place them in,
decorative and strange,
intricate and engraved
and singing,
like me back then…

and carry that vase back
across the silent square,
and toss my ashes high,
yes toss them in the air

Let them fly across the sky
in one last kiss, then wave goodbye,
and falling, floating, snowing what made
me special and vibey…

I will let go gently…and slip away,
away…

Source: Across the Aching Blue Sky | Charissa’s Grace Notes

This Place of Living Bliss | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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a foggy night in late summer
seems like such a strange thing,
seeping up from the ground
like bathwater draining in reverse

we go walking in this cool
clammy oddly warm chill
orange under streetlights…

Source: This Place of Living Bliss | Charissa’s Grace Notes

On This Shore I Break, We Break | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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I wrote this for the first human other than my dearest darling to really see me, Charissa…she has never not seen me.  She has never seen him, even though she knows all about him, and I have told her everything about him that matters and also that she has asked…

I would tell her everything without reservation…but sometimes, she simply is bored by him, because he is an absent caterpillar and she loves the butterfly.

By the way…where do caterpillars go when the enter the chrysalis?

I love you Dani…you are my first friend and my dearest heart of friendship…special and distinct from the many friends and sisters I now have.  ❤

PS:  Pay attention to the line length…just a hint

Listen…
you can hear
my words in waves
breaking on your beach
and celebrating…

lament at long last left limp
in clammy depths
‘neath the surface of seas
of blessed forgetfulness
and chuckling…

midst the shells and sand swirling,
rejoicing surf returning resurrected,
remembered, sanctified by sorrows
faced and sorted…yielding
wholeness certain, sure…

on this shore I break,
we break,
on this shore gently
and joyfully too
we break…

on that shore
that someday shore
we will unbroken break
on that shore and in that circle
by and by…in that circle

by and by…

Source: On This Shore I Break,We Break | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Come, My Love | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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Related image

Come, my love…
walk out in the river with me on waters
still and soft beneath our souls
and slightly giving underneath our feet

the surface dips and we will sink
but never past our ankles, just deep
enough to get our hearts wet, soaked
in mysteries of our journey-dance

and underneath the Moon-Glow Glance…

Source: Come, My Love | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Reflections | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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SO loving this old one…”old”…HAH!  Just a few years, very early on in transition…and a word play via homophone leads the way in this one.


The scent of our home,
funky quaint and riddled
with books and bikes,
and the long laid scent of family.
The scent of the kitchen,
yesterday’s dinner
and the overlay of croissants
like fierce french washer women
scrubbing away all other scents.

…the scent of our clothes,
and our laundry soap…
the scent of the air cooler,
that of the soft night air
waltzing in,
slow and sleepy
from her night out
amongst the stars,
and carried in drowsy
on cricket wings…

…the scent of popcorn
shared on the couch,
of our wine wafting
from bottles possessed
by only the last 12 drops,
our lil garden outside,
and the auto sprinkler
which has come on to water
in the dark and the cool…

the scent of your currents,
your deep distant observing soul
that hangs back and watches,
even in the midst…

i do go on…

from here…from now…
in the sweltering heat,
where you and I lay,
you sleeping,
me watching you sleeping,
soft face limpid and languid…here…
listening to tides of eternity
race round and round
inside our veins, our universe…

i do go on…

Source: Reflections | Charissa’s Grace Notes

There, Brown And Small

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I am not
the only one
here, brown and small
wearing a mask

so fearsome, fell
created from
conflicted heart
streaked red and blue

colliding with
my resting soul
green on those hills
those tumbled hills

there, brown and small

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
tumblr_mr7ao1YaDq1sw327to1_500

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

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

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

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

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

Burnt Offerings | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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This is an older poem, and I really like its rhythm.  Try reading it aloud, for you will find that the sound of the words shapes how you say the coming ones.

These words are my offerings burnt
singed in fires of pain and hurt
written as gouts of bright blood spurt
from my contrite soul.

I take treasure from my heart
pleasures, pains, my every dart
burn them for a brand new start
the incense of my spirit …

Source: Burnt Offerings | Charissa’s Grace Notes

This Fire Of Fires

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Together
We have nurtured
A small sprout
A sapling
A tiny spring

We fed with time
We watered with tears
Our endless selfish bull shit
Gave food to this living child
Of ours… Our love, Love

This garden of delight
This torrent of life
This fire of fires

A Futrospection | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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Written long looong ago, when this lil crabbie “Cancer”
was becoming friends with a lil scorpion Scorpio…
a match made in heaven and forged on earth.

It was trying to project into the future,
based on the past and spoken in the (then) present.

I hope you enjoy it.  I know

if you met my beloved you would admire her as I do.
❤

There is a tenderness
in your eyes
in your voice
a trembling

so I can never
tell whose mother
or little girl
you might be

and even I
must believe it
tonite, remembering
in your eyes

such a tenderness…

Source: A Futrospection | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Summer Snapshots in Haiku | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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Over the years I have jotted down uncounted numbers of haiku…
because it is a powerful tool in capturing imagery and heart flows…

and recently, I have been trying to focus more
on the process and reason why haiku is that tool,
that “turbo-charger” of the imagination, if you will.

I think it is that deep awareness of the nature of “nothing”
that one finds in the heart of much eastern spiritual thought.

Here are some of my attempts to find
the confluence where east meets west

and the waters mix.


rain-filled ruts reflect
an apple red summer sky
that highlights brown hills

in the wind my skin
revels amidst bitter-sweet
echoes of that day

wind, you will have a
terrible time smothering
my soft clarity…

Source: Summer Snapshots in Haiku | Charissa’s Grace Notes

I Live Inbetween | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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look for me, search
in my solid words…
and you will miss me
in their sparkle-spazzle
and solid spunk echoes.

i’m in the spaces
in between my words
shining and shim’ring
in dance-implications…

Source: I Live Inbetween | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Living Origami | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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A poem about the fingers of God inside the fears and frailties of a woman.  And yes, I am cognizant of the implications, and wonder why this is not more commonly experienced by others…the touch of God is so very intimate…
I feel your fingers
in my folds and
my fine feathers
ruffling, riffing

sometimes ripping
for your pleasure
folding me and
creasing me

until I do not
recognize
the shape
I’m in.

Turning this way…

Source: Living Origami | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Unfurling From A Set-Free Throat | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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I am gunna begin reposting older poetry, here on Grace Notes…because Facebook is a wasteland of the driest thirstiest most stingy desert sand that has ever been. Proverbs would say that Facebook has two sisters:  “Give” and “Give”.

My older work is good…at least, in my own internal scales of what I like and do not like, it weighs out as treasure.  I feel it in my bones…it RINGS of true truth.  But it is unwieldy, this blog, in getting to those older poems…one must make time and space to even find them, let alone to eat them and digest them…

…because my poems are not immediately burnable carb calories…

Anyway…here they are, such as they are.

This particular poem is about finding my voice as symbol of finding myself.  It examines paradigms and presuppositions, and advocates for freedom from old superstitions and lies…and freedom to timeless Truth.
I still struggle to dig it out,
that splinter you shoved into me,
down my throat without so much
as a shot of whiskey or
a shot in the dark.

and you are so certain, sure
of how to walk the world an…

Source: Unfurling From A Set-Free Throat | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Holding It Tight

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you’re there
I see you in the
glow, the fierce proud
glow that melts snow and
vaporizes anything in the know

you hold
your bouquet
of blooming hatred
tight, vise-like, clutched
and gathered to your chest

where it
burns everything
it melts anything that
even thinks about getting
close-like, including your fingers

clutched
gripping

so tight
that you cannot
shake it off of them
your fingers and your face
so that your heat could even

get shared.

The Turmoil Of Spring

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I am wearing the turmoil of Spring in my hair
I have worn it so young and so old
It’s for you that I wear Spring so zestfully there
For your heart, I am wearing Spring without a care
For your soul, well I wear Spring so bold.

But you rush thru the seasons so fast and so blind
Looking into the future so blurred
It’s for me that you strain your eyes, trying to find
Something different, a lodestone to anchor your mind
Alas, you miss the damage incurred.

I guess pacing is part of the problem, my dear
You pull hard, while I toddle along
For whatever our eyes rest on, touch on, hold near
those things take flesh and blood then they stoke up your fear
And they co-opt your voice and your song.

Can we walk thru the seasons together, our hands
Clasped gently yet joined as we wait?
You can see far, rejoice in the coming of that
I can see up close, making the moments grow fat
While the seasons just slip out the gate.

Never Ending Irish Rain

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Written for My Father…

“…and then you turn your head
your beautiful estrangéd face
to the other side of midnight
and behold that silky rain
(as if for the first time)

that Never Ending Irish Rain
fell green across the golden waters
and washing down those greying sands,
quiet, themselves ablaze, a-falling
like stars straight thru the night…”

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Source: Never Ending Irish Rain

CHECK THE SCIENCE: BEING TRANS IS NOT A ‘CHOICE’

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I am posting this for those readers who still may not understand the complex physiological and psychological factors that work together to form our gender orientations.

In light of the fact that the Bible is utterly silent regarding the so-called “morality” of gender, this article could be especially helpful for those of you who claim you love Jesus and yet treat transgender humans like Hell.

May God spare you the kind of treatment that you have handed out to others in the name of Jesus…but that is not how it works, is it?  The fact of the matter is that the exact standard that you employ to show your rejection and hate of transgender humans is the one that Jesus will hold up for you on your day of dawning…

http://www.ozy.com/pov/check-the-science-being-trans-is-not-a-choice/69726?utm_source=aah1&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=pp&utm_content=inf_17_92_2&tse_id=INF_0b1151f026b511e7ab1b4bd69f1788b7

My Offering Of Violent Worship

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Born transgender…
concealed…
in rushes, in tulies
wandering deserts
and walking lonesome valleys…

and we walked around the sun
50 times, spinning, circling
while I, spinning and circling
spiraled out of myself

torn in two
or maybe parted
by Solomon’s Silver Blade
my inner me stifled and screaming
“Give Her Away! Give Her Away!”

as he just shrugged and said
“I don’t wanna be here anyway”

but then to come to myself slow
trickling back home
and draining up and in
before coming out

the sun so bright
the wind so fresh
creation dancing

and the stink of hate and horror
and the sting of brutal spittle
and eyes that bruise and stab

and the cries of the powerless
and the silence of the othered
and the dust of death settling

I dance, I sing, I SHOUT!
I whirl and lift that dust to the wind
as my offering of violent worship
of our Liberty God, Our Graceful GOD
our LOVING GOD

and I hear Their loving strong whisper:
“For such a time as this you were created”

and I take my place with Ester
and take Mary of Bethany’s hand

and settle into this truest truth for me:

“My maids and I will fast likewise.
And so I will go to the king, which is against the law;
and if I perish, I perish!”

A Handful of Memory

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And again…from Last Year:

it was a village
no longer existing
it was a laugh
that echoed that village
and hung in the air

like smoke from a fire
extinguished in nightfall
and drifting in winds
and lonely midst stars
while crickets and frogs

lament as it faded
and pebbles and diamonds
all heaped up at random
and sticks and steel swords
all jumbled together…

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Source: A Handful of Memory

ever Spring, ever Autumn

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My own poem from last year…I do really favor this one.

it looks the same to you
whether you stand
in winter or summer

…the gate of my heart…

The Great Gate

Source: ever Spring, ever Autumn

In Every Dear Breath

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in that place…
it only exists
between your lips
when you are sleeping

and I am awake…

it’s the same place
between the dark
freshly plowed field
and the deep night sky…

I live there, quick
in every dear breath,
in between them as well

touching your parted teeth
the way moon touches sea
my love touches you
your want touches me

I am a doorway
eternity dwells
and we enter thru
in every dear breath.

Where The Light Passes In

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Do you know the place where the light passes in?
That’s where you’ll find me when darkness is seeping
from crevice and cranny while Spring trudges weeping
I sit in the place where the light passes in.

You’ll find me there singing of beautiful life
and of faith like pure gold burnished shiny with hope
as my tears fall like diamonds so soft in the wind
In that place where the light, where the light passes in.

Listen…you barely can sound out the echoes
that buzz in the trees and bounce off the crags
and run back and forth from my mouth to my chin
In the place where the light passes in, passes in

It’s tempting to think that I never have lived
a sad day or bad day when dark gathers grim…
But I have…what’s the secret? Outside and In?
Why I let the light pass thru, and out, and then in…

I’m the place where the light, where the light passes in.

Our Sacred Desert Story

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We set out on tender feet
and tender hearts to match
and faces become flint as we
determined that we would not faint.

When our sojourn was hip deep in heat
and we were well and away, out to sea
she told me of the heartbreak and the horror
and there how we did rain our tears…

We took turns (while we wiled the desert paths away)
swimming away from the ship of us…naked, vulnerable
and healing in the slick water…further and further
and then return and up and back into our desert ship.

It was in the sunset wrought with haze from distant destinations
that make you think about fire, and about what might have been.
We, perched on that rock solid emanating heat and spitting healing
while the sky, bruised by our advances, turned purple in our song.

It was just Day Umpteen Kazillion in our great traverse of deserts,
we walking, swimming straight by myth and extraterrestrial,
feeding on lizards, trilobites, and our sacred Stories our Communion shared
and we, oh so close to our arriving, our becoming, our sacred Desert Story.

 

The Land That I Haunt

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Simple, slow
embodied in sinew
and oiled with sweat
traversing territory
between the heart
and the mind…

this is the song of the strong soaring soul
this is the song of the wind in the night
this is the song of retreat into wholeness
this is the song of those swaying stars swinging

in the midst of the tumult of hurried compassion
dwelling in antipode virtue of soul
mired in distant connection called intimate
sucking the bloated cold teat of efficiency

this is the loss of the soul…

and what of me?

I am not quick, yet
I move like the lightening
singing and zinging and sizzling bright
kissing the stars and empowering earth

this is the land that I haunt with my life

The Very Thing You Hate

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It starts small.

Just one word,
connects almost
without effort to
another word

and they twist
together a corkscrew
actually…

and suddenly
that cork slides
so easy so tight so slick

and then
such popping
sudden relief!

the bottle in
a heart so bitter
is open at last
invective is free

but just a sip
then a glug
(one must be
careful you see
to apply bitterness carefully)

just to make a point

just to become
the very thing
you hate

 

When Words Are Written Here

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there, in clouds and nothing but clouds
above and below as I…walked?  Or did I
swim, or fly, and in the distance
hearing songs of you…and clouds

obscure and yet they also part
and thru the silver mist She came…
Her Heart and Ears and Eyes (the singing)
stilled and still and still She came Singing

and in this cloudy parting is the only knowing needed
that I am Her child, Her emissary
sent to bend what thinks itself straight
and straighten what is broken, bent.

Me the paper, pen and ink
Mama, unsayable, beyond the think,
the clouds, the parting, emerging and wordless
song…and She the emerging and yes

the clouds parting

when words are written here

 

In The Slanted Dust

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Language straining paralytic,
thrashing around in a kerfuffle
of dust and cant and sorrow…

exhausting itself and
still and side by desperate
side with Experience…

As Melody
eludes the lack
of knowing hands
delicate and stands
free and unfettered
and still a Mystery
to Language, to
Experience

Ears made for melodies
run to dance and spin
in the Slanted Dust.

A Different End To The Story

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This is about an event that happened last year…a full grown male human who exercised his power and privilege over other humans who were utterly powerless against him…UTTERLY POWERLESS.

Come to think of it…it fits the absolute fucker, trump, as well.


All full of himself and stiff
gait wobbly, bopping up and down
walk waggly, blipping circley side-side
aggressive lean forward looking
for something to pierce, to rip

pent up all day inside the clothes of decency…

Source: A Different End To The Story