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 of bone
)
I am diamonds in the night.
Tag Archives: Charissa Grace
Boredom
I don’t believe in boredom.
I think it is code for
something else,
and I simply
choose not
boredom.
I laugh when
I see people
cultivate a
“bored look.”
I hope
the only time
I look bored is
when I am laying
in my casket, waiting.
Who has not asked himself at some time or other:
am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?
— Clarice Lispector
That Table Small
sitting around a table small
and caught by the heartstrings,
just a player on that stage, all
the rest again make up this gathering
of those who see the task as fencing
in, fending off, wriggling away
from what this Troubler of Israel is bringing
and defining her place, her place to stay.
I have not once been here…at this table
to be made glad over, to be thanked
or complimented or told I’m able
to do, to be, amazing…it’s to be spanked
that I am called there
to be yanked that I am hauled there
to be flanked by falderal there
sitting around that table
small
Scraps
those words
scribbled, jotted
scrawled across the
face of old envelopes
and dull
hearts
elements
spices sitting
poised to pounce
into a pot of poetry
or an essay or
an abstract
kinda makes
you think, wonder
where the meaning is
in the pot or in
the one who
stirs
Taking Communion At Pride
In the 57 years I have spent on this planet, I have taken communion tens of thousands of times.
The most recent of those times was at Pride in Portland Oregon on June 19th, 2016…served to me by Pat Christiansen while a gypsy troupe danced to insistent almost militant drumming behind us…
I closed my eyes as I took the elements, just as I always do, and looked to Them to see Them, to taste and SEE that the Lord is good…and I saw the Sacred Flaming Heart Icon…pulsing…beating…THROBBING…in time to the militant drums, and I was certain that this is the heart of the Risen Lord who wears the Two Edged Sword and Eyes like Fire…
The Heart was pulsing…pulsing…PULSING…
There was a frame around the Heart, and it was getting bigger…and it was pushing against the frame.
The frame began to splinter…and then at last, the Heart gave a MIGHTY PULSE and burst the frame, shattered it and splintered it, and then grew bigger and bigger until it utterly enveloped me and I knew it was off to the far reaches of everywhere.
The nightclub’s name is Pulse. The city is Orlando…which means “Famous Land, Land of Renown” and lesser meanings of Times of Importance.
I find the entire experience prophetic and insistent…and I wonder…
…are you going to stay inside the frame? The Heart has left, departed…gone outside the city gates.
Are you going to sit and imagine Jesus coming to earth to kick ass on all the people you do not like…yunno, sort of like the Pharisees did and when Messiah showed up and punched them square in the conscience they got so mad they killed Him?
Or are you going to understand that God is stirred in Mercy and Compassion to the point that those things become the consuming fire of Light and Love and each thing they touch responds according to its matrix of being…if it is true it becomes pure and if it is not it simply is consumed.
Stand with The Sacred Pulsing Heart. The time is now.
If you wanna be in the “next move of God”, it isn’t with the so-called prophets and evangelists who seek after gold dust and commit adultery on a mass scale while the crowd has what amounts to a spiritual cluster-fuck.
No…it is in the highways and byways, where Mama compels to come in, and the Heart races to rush out.
A River Is Never The Same
“We will never be the same again.
But here’s a little secret for you—no one is ever the same thing again after anything.
You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are.
Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is.
Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore,
and everything changes once again.”
To Feed You Evergreen (For Lil Mama)
you’ve been running canyons
looking for yourself
that beautiful wild girl
who sat there in the dust
and wrestled with that trike
while others just looked on
(they had forgotten joy)
and cursed you with perspective
above and to the right
that made you second guess
and work hard in the night
to be the perfect one
and get them off your back
for good, for evil too
but it just distanced you
and gave you space to run
in canyons made of bones
along your Sangre River
still looking for yourself
alive and free and wild
well, Baby, you have found her
she thrives though she is short,
and though sun’s rays are slant
they still can peek down deep
to feed you evergreen
I have always seen you
I see you still, here, strong
and still, delicate, fragile
and still indestructible
growing wild and free
I Await Your Sacred Steps
I dashed this off…
well, actually it just
shouldered its way
from my soul
and forced me open
and muscled forth.
No…
it is not polished,
or even much good,
but it is insistent
that it wants to be…
just as it is…
unfettered,
untamed,
unedited…
on fire and fierce.
let its blood
trickle across your tongue,
down your throat to infuse
you with starfire unquenchable,
with the seeds of birth that come
when nebulas collapse
so that new stars
can be born.
Will you let
something new
and unkillable
catch fire
in you today!!??
Will you rise
up unshakeable
though ye tremble,
undefeatable though
ye weep?
Yea, weep
and mourn,
grieve and wail
on the mountains…
and drink this philter
as you pour your tears
like rain upon these bloody
sands so desperately needing
the touch of falling stars to ignite
the birth of light again in this dark night!
Carry this fire inside
you, Prometheus returning
to those gods weak and beaten
and frightened in a pulsing night
cowering before their creatures
unfettered and held hostage
to hate and darkness…
bind it to your forehead
bright diadem of Hope
and going past the fallen
crumbled thrones of old gods
doddering and wetting the bed
of their comfort and ease…
and hail
to the Halls
of the Risen Lamb
slain and shining ever
in Love, our Sun/Son/Lion!!!
We march
on Saturday.
We march
on Sunday.
Friday,
though you be bitter
and seem so final,
you are nuffin to me!
I have fought
thru 5 decades
of Fridays
to get to this
time and place.
And
I see
Abraham shining…
I see
Martin and Martin
there, glim’ring…
I see
Susan and Harriet and Joanna…
Joan and Hildegard,
Thomas and Peter
and John…
I see them,
a sea of those
gone before
who beckon,
exhort…
Yes, weep…
pour it out,
and then
TAKE IT UP,
your tears now
jewels of fire
and precious
and eat them,
living coals
feeding the fires
of new stars
in your souls…
I await you
in the streets of life,
and I shall never
be silent,
I shall never
stop or waver…
forward!!
Onward!!
We have come this far by faith,
and we shall not turn back now.
See the enemy posture…
covering that cowering fear
as we loom, our faces bright
and fair with Love
and Mercy and Justice
our diadems and Mama
and Jesus Avatar of Love Eternal
our Sovereigns…
I await you.
This is your time.
Come out this weekend, ye privileged!
Cast your crowns in the gutters
so they can find purchase and grow
and their roots tear down
the walls of Massa’s farm.
Come.
Out.
Ye.
Shining.
Chosen.
Singing.
Ones.
I await your sacred steps.
Ode For Orlando
I saw the stars fall in the night
it was dark and closing in
as I lay paralysed and still
and shivering in deathly fright.
In waves and showers down they plunged
as sable curtains tore and trembled
in the hand of some great evil
threatening to eat the sky
But somehow, each one shot to me
and landed in my shaking soul
and burned within me fierce and fell
and banished fear and made me whole
Until I burned with stellar fire
and shone in gold galaxy gleams
my heart a starfield bold, untamed
for Mercy’s greater than hate’s schemes!
And so, though Nebulas collapse
let them fall fast to this earth
into your open mouth and heart
Not for destruction, but for birth
Of new stars brilliant, unshakeable
that shine with Justice and with Joy
Children born of grief and ash
Who rise above hate’s cruel slash
This is our birth, our ne’er turn back!
A thousand stars, a million dreams,
A myriad songs and voices shout
We burn bright…our light…
will never…never…burn out
From Provence To Salamanca
We had wine
rosé wine, pink
and blushing with
laughing joy in the midst
of a light crushing.
We were in Provence,
and it was warm and sultry
but not thick or sweaty
in that yellow light seeping
out of the ruddy dirt.
It’s a long time
to where we were
from here in Salamanca,
midst minarets and tall turrets
of sandy stone…
but I can still
pour rosé in glasses,
Provence in glad glissandos
and glory.
Into The Sacred Presence
It is the “Beyond”…that place we all know deep down in our core exists…is there.
To argue it does not exist assumes its existence in order to even have ground to stand on ontologically.
It is what I am striving to touch, pierce, and funnel back here in my poetry…and I call it “Poetry” with a capital P…and it is a place and a state and a thing and a flow all at once.
“In cultivating photography as a contemplative practice, the camera becomes a tool to develop our ability to see more deeply, clearly, and truly, beneath the surface realities of the world around us and into the sacred presence shimmering in the world.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
I Live Inbetween
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,
deep in the rhythms
uneven and steady
rising and falling
walking the edges there
of what is written
and what’s merely spoken
just beyond the words
i sit in winds
i sit in winds
and let my shawl flow
loose around me
and lifted like wings
and as it unfurls
the hard ground exhales
and i become light
as i sit in winds
my heart rises up
when liberty sings
though limbs sit so still
though limbs sit in winds
the wings of my heart
soar high as the sun
and over the moon
there, sitting in winds
Living Origami
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
twisting that way
tossing hither
touching yon
then you show me
origami, I’m your
living origami
here today and
gone tomorrow
Present
“Be. Here. This moment. Now is all there is, don’t go seeking another. Discover the sacred in your artist’s tools; they are the vessels of the altar of your own unfolding.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
A Potent Surrender
Trusting is just such a powerful challenge
to lay down my life without knowing for sure
it will ever get picked up again…by…anyone.
a potent surrender to God (and to others)
that commends my only possession (that’s me)…
to the Hands and the Head and the Heart of all things.
A turning away from the will to possess,
from power and reflex to cling and to clutch
with brazen heart, hard face and bravado whistling…
afraid in the night of the Breaking Day Coming…
the willing embrace of a breaking that gives birth
to wholeness and health…well…trusting is just such
a challenge
These Forgotten Stories Haunting
Hearing
stained wooooh
strained whooosh
rise, fall, push, pull back
quieting and moaning,
crying, sobbing, groaning
creaking and repose
the wind asks…
whyyyyyyy
whoooooo
whhhyyyy
ohhhhhh
sigh
It’s that question
that drives us skimming
across Lake Life edgy
bobbing in the troughs and crests
yet never to the sandy shore
and glowy fires merry.
It’s that rough splinter
in our minds digging
all the time and all around us…
why…
why
You see
Stories are descended from
on High like waterfalls and
we are born too, like
waterfalls flying
from the stars
cascading
down to
here
into this world
starkly unique
and populated
with stories,
pregnant with
multiple meanings
(us and this world/one not one)
Here I am on the edge
of the gleaming twilight
nudging, jostling my life
in waves and I’m still wondering
what it’s all about…
I think it’s about a Splinter from
some Bloody Beam so Ancient…
Our minds are splintered, peppered,
made numb with pressing inquiry
The first thing I remember
about this world
and I pray it
may be the last
is that I am
a stranger
in it,
at once a glory
and a desolation.
That’s the only thread
of consistency I can detect
in my lakey leaky life,
alone before a mind-boggling
array of options and
burdened by both
the responsibility and the authority
to reach some conclusion
that isn’t totally and completely
rooted merely in myself
(where’s the joy in that?)
Life itself is its own exile,
and its own inevitability,
but that does not lessen our grief
or alter the fact of us in the whirring
midst of that sighing windy whyyyyy
Life became history and history
becomes legend and legend
begat myth and myth begets
merging slowly with unknowing
and unknowing bemoans
“it was all forgotten…”
(which infers remembering)
“real but forgotten”
(real and forgotten)
and passed and past…
but the echoes
the echoes
echoes
the echoes of our distant past
and our essential vital nature
still call out to us in wind,
in wind and waves
in dreams.
And They are calling us in wind,
in wind and waves
in…
These Forgotten Stories Haunting
I Want…
I want my poetry to convey the Beauty behind the beauty.
I want to tell you of the Heart behind the core.
I want to show you the Sacred pulsing in all profane.
I want to show you the Meaning midst the random.
It isn’t enough to be pretty.
It isn’t enough to rub noses in ugly.
I want to scratch you…permanently…that you would ever then Bleed Desire and Longing for that Sacred Heart, that eternal Blood of the Diving running thru everything…always.
Beautiful and Meaningful.
Write that on my tombstone…but only if it’s True.
Beams Like Bones Inside
see it standing there
feet in lavender and
head touching the washed
blue sky breathing in
the scents of grapes
and souls
a winery, a church
one and the same
the place of crushing
and filtration,
fermentation
maturation
the small and winding road
leads to the cavernous
inside, beams like
the bones inside Jonah’s Whale
and all swallowed within
who wish to become whole
but only in the crush
the broken shattering
can true wholeness emerge
in scents of lavender
and notes of bloody grapes
Bending Over Backwards
i find myself constantly
bending over backwards
to become the table
the banquet feasting table
that my enemies
come and sit down to
a meal that I serve up
before they rise and run
at me with their sharp spears
Across The Blooming Sky
i stand watching
that train rushing
flying by fast
and furious
ethereal
everyone on it is thin,
transparent and afraid
to just step off and grow
thick and green and
gravitational
spinning across
the blooming sky
and singing in
the solid dirt
The Breathing In Of Every Breath
there are the ones who claw
fierce at the universe
the way an anteater
claws at a log trying
to scratch out beauty in
small ant-squiggle pieces
about Twenty-Four hours
long, each one that long
then there are those who breathe,
who open their eyes and
breathe and blink in wonder
and awe because of what
they see made beautiful
in the seeing, in breathing
in of every breath breathed.
those who seek to consume
beauty and thus embody it
are doomed to dissolution
for flowers fade and wither
and end up burned and gone
but those who simply look
and look again in wonder
will find the Beauty flowing
within their eversouls
made beautiful
made beautiful
Your Gates
open up your gates, gates of old, gates so strong
filigree and delicate gold, interlaced with song
let the daylight in, let it shine, let it in
thru those sacred living gates so old and strong.
I am waiting outside, by the barn, barn so red
under skies of tepid grey deep scriven with true blue
you can come to me, thru the gates, out to me
or I can enter in and come to you
Last Snow
A slow gentle snow
falls on cherry blossoms, falls
to the constant dirt
Close Vests
“play it close to the vest”
came the granite words beating
against my face cascading
on craggy cliffsides or was it
like cannons booming and crashing,
coinvesting indifference and distant
assumption, consumption and
constant presumption?
I couldn’t tell which was true
which one was stronger,
the smug or the deaf or
the dumb, cus they had
no ears, not that they
wanted to hear my voice
or my heart or my soul
desperate, traumatized, hurt…
But they certainly had words, oh yes,
and their unctuous tones quickly
said everything I was supposed to know
and nothing else…nothing else.
Close…play… “it”…vests…
what are vests?
And what does it mean
to play close…to a vest?
The vestiary vague and looming
is that closet where play can
be kept oh so close to the vest
(or costumes donned for cover)
The vestibule tells a different story
than the vestiges of vestiaires
that peek out from under those
fanciful covers…it looks so calm.
Which place is the womb
of a travesty played out, and
which one can make someone
divest a warm heart for stone?
Vests…what are they…hmmm…
There is gravest…that might be worth
playing close to, since crisis might
confront the bravest…in gravest?
But just the naivest? Well,
easy to push, just invest all
your privilege/position in triplicate!
And no one will ever be wiser!
I think vestal virgin
might be the best vest
as they cultivate flames
and harvest the fire
To keep the community
safe and secure well,
that vest I definitely
can play oh so very close…
play…is that a joke?
it…the most common term for me.
close…near, or shut off?
to the vest…I ask again which one?
Vests and me do not really
know about one another
I’m A Why
you do your best
to deny me but when
you can’t, you would rather
use me than see me
you don’t even know
you are not aware
of how much is denied me
already forever
the body, the flesh
the flesh become word
the love of my own kind
her intimate touch, and
what I’ll have never,
well is it offset
by what I do have…
and just what is that?
rejection by children?
gaslighting my past?
shunning me, shutting me
outside my group?
you pigs called “big men”
I am not like you
though cursed with your flesh
my heart never yours
and you princesses, women
my soul…same as yours
but my body a charnel house,
nothing in common
locked out of inside
locked in from outside
why do I linger?
why…I’m a why
Too Much Silence
“I still care about you a lot and I’d be a liar
if I said that I don’t miss you, but I just don’t
know if you’re what I want anymore. Maybe
you still are, but maybe I’m just a sucker that
can’t figure out how to let things go.”
If You Are New Here…
…Welcome! 🙂
“Constance” refers to “Constant Reader.”
Do not take a post or two as emblematic of the entire blog…I post what is in my heart and on my mind, so to get a good understanding you will need to browse around…utilize the calendar feature at the bottom of the page and you can jump back and bounce around.
BLESSINGS!!!
Thanks To The Ones Who Stay
Higher Than Hollywood
it is high above the smoke, the noxious fumes,
stench belched from bulls and bullies, flesh and steel
above the ego faces that still shield
the hearts and empty hovels lurking there
you know, that land of dreams that nightmare breeds
to stalk the streets where zombies walk in peace
that feeding ground of brains not being used
that parched and soulless place of no relief
lead me higher, sit me in the dirt
at least I feel vibrations of real life
in every grain of sand and pebble hard
and hold me, till I know that I’m alright
The Difference Between
the difference between living and dying
can be found in the difference between
the Grand Canyon and the Milky Way
Another way to say it is
mutual dependence
Living Mutual Dependence Dying
We need the solidarity of the reaching skies
in swathes of silk and shades of grey
to close that gap completely
all the way
Solidarity…
Mutual Dependence…
trump cards over torture and unbridled ego…
habits that engulf so many with such ease and lack of effort
Adversity sometimes coaxes out
the best and the most beautiful
in human beings but only if
the sky can partner them
thru the gap
between
that unrelieved thirst
that threatens to engulf
and the utter madness
of misdirected sanity.
Ah…and the skies like banners unfurl
The Difference Between
On Living The Gospel
It is not so much our slogans and statements, our creeds and commitments as it is the way we walk them out with our flesh and blood. Documents are empty hulls of potential…and every single day that we truly live those commitments we give them flesh from our flesh and blood from our blood.
The challenge posed by staunch commitment to broken people is that you then will have dealings with broken people.
This can be troublesome if you unconsciously expect that broken people will live and act unbroken. If you dribbled a crystal globe, and it shattered, and then when you touched a piece and it cut you or poked you, the challenge you would be facing would be full blown in how you reacted to being cut.
That is where the reality of creeds, statements and slogans truly emerges…the ones who react in shock or outrage or horror are the ones who thought that globe was a basketball. The ones who recoil in horror or anger or disgust are the ones who believed it was a soccer ball.
That is the distilled essence of walking out the Gospel: realizing that it is a message that attracts the hungry, the lost, the broken and it is not the creed which transforms but the living Presence of Christ IN that creed that does the work of healing and restoration.
Which means to live the Gospel is to be inconvenienced, to be confronted with wounds that stink and are infected, to change the emotionally and spiritually incontinent…and to do it in patient joyful tenderness.
Someone can make their point with stern words and terse actions…it is not hard whatsoever to understand a point that has been made…and someone else can walk their love with gentle hands and consistent presence, and then ask for whatever they want as the broken heal, and slings are discarded and casts are cut off and the lame begin to walk.
And then…deeper…closer…at the pulsing core…the revelation that is couched in those words from the cross “Forgive them Father…they do not know what they are doing.”
Those words have such compassion and understanding in them…they assume that most people would do good things if they REALLY KNEW the impact their troubling actions are having.
It’s such a good thing that we are coming to the place where we can even see that our statements and commitments and creeds have a unique calling to be expressed in our current climate…
it’s an even better thing when we count the cost…
it’s the best thing of all when we keep going and the word(s) become flesh.
Dancing Double-Time
the glacier moving blue
and stolid crushing step
inevitableness
occasionally makes noise
as it crushes rock
and crumbles it to dust
it listens to the waterfall
cascading off of granite cliffs
and hurling thru exultant air
and roaring in its falling flight
and does not understand
the tumult ringing loud
and shout of exultation
its liquid sister sings
and so in all its stolidness
the icy glacier murmurs
that waterfall should fly
but quiet in the night
and careful in the day
and keep her singing heart
concealed within her breast
and hidden in the light
and tumbling down…
sssssllllloooooowwwww…
as if a waterfall
could not sing, ever sing
in joyous flying freedom
and just gallumph along
like glaciers, crawling over
whatever may be there
glaciers grind all things to dust
but waterfalls can fly
and waterfalls can shine
and waterfalls can sing
and wash the stones so clean
and leave them shining there…
glaciers…wearing vests
waterfalls…loud, blessed
and dancing double time
One Week Of Hell
I am astounded at the absurdity and the letdown of the last 7 days.
I have learned that I am cursed with the notion that words mean things…specific and precise things, and some words can morph, can shape-shift depending on the wind or the light…or the scents in the air…
and so I have collected them…words. I use them like a carpenter uses finish tools, like a furniture maker wields her instruments of creation.
But I have also learned that others do not…
…others do not know that words mean things (they ass-u-me)
…others do not CARE that words mean things
…others use words carelessly
…others use words lazily
…others use words clumsily
So the next thing I learned is that other people freak out when I ask what they mean…they get upset, or angry, or worst of all puzzled, as if I speak in a foreign language, as if I am an animal that suddenly went Narnia and began to utter intelligible sounds…but since I am just an animal they need not be considered seriously, it is just a lucky co-incidence.
This freaks me out greatly when this happens…being a sufferer of brain trauma, this ambiguity and denial of meaning is like throwing gasoline on a fire and expecting it to go out like water has been applied to those unwanted and despised flames.
So I devised a coping strategy…I decided to ask for clarification.
“I don’t understand, would you please clarify?
“I am uncertain as to what you mean, would you please explain?”
“I am anxious and scared because the ramifications of what you said shout and gibber at me and I have no hiding place…will you please give me definition and reassurance, or if not then out with the guillotine and lop off my head?”
Sometimes, when I ask this, people deny there is anything to define…the inference is that I am crazy, reading too much into the words, finding things that are not there, and that I just need to mellow out.
“Take things for face value” they say.
I tried that. It led to betrayal and violation and deeper/horrific trauma and a conflagration that nearly was my end…thank God for God and for Phoenixes.
So that didn’t work so well…or rather, it utterly broke and stained for good that place inside which could (a little) stay still and let go and take something on its face…this is utterly absurd anyway, given the combination of words that are so carelessly used and the mutual exclusivity of those combinations…to take most statements at face value is to accept meaningless absurdity and to bathe in the vile flow emanating forever from the ruins of the tower of Babel.
This led to a different strategy…that of survival.
Maslow wrote about the hierarchy of needs, ranging from survival to self-actualization, and emphasized that when survival was in question self-actualization was a pipe dream if it was even present in the threatened consciousness.
I learned that words cannot be trusted when they are loose and running wild in packs like rabid dogs. I learned that other people do not want or will not choose to place them on leashes and seek to master them and use them for life rather than death.
(“The power of life and death is in the tongue” says the sage)
As I survive, I discover people and places where there are indications and implications that I might find sanctuary. I begin to trust, begin to hope…and then comes the dilemma…undefined words, confusing communication contradictory and capricious…
What do I do? Whenever I ask for clarity, that ask is offensive, shocking, puzzling, incomprehensible? But if I don’t ask, then I am doomed by this:
In the lack of clarity, I am compelled (powerless in this, actually) to find the worst possibility and the shade of meaning that places me in the worst place…and that becomes my truth.
Which of course leads others to heap on even more incredulity, and they say to me THEIR truth of me…
…as if I am an idiot for thinking what I think in the face of ambiguity…
which actually drives me deeper into the fires.
In these last 7 days this has happened to me…and I have happened to it as well, for I sought clarification…in open words, in more words than others consider decorous (because I want to be as sure as I can that I am clear in what I am saying)…in plain pleading plaintive words…begging words with empty cup extended in front of my dirty street urchin face…
and the bottom of lower than the worst has been the result…
The very worst thing, the ultimate blow that anyone can give to me in this place…
…………… is silence……………
no response
no reply
no nuffin
That silence has a voice. Did you know that? Silence speaks?
In knives
In slashes
In crushing fog weighty and inexorable
Silence gibbers sinister
Silence threatens with burbly graveyard chuckles
Silence goose-steps over my grave in shivery stampings
Silence screams that I am nothing
Silence screams that I am soon going to be eaten
(but only after I have been torn apart)
Torn apart by words…for it is on the other side of silence that others finally speak words…imprecise, wielded clumsy and ham handed, lacking nuance and deftness…and me, Andromeda without a Perseus caught there by my wrist, chained while the imprecision feeds on my liver in gnawing knife pecking beaks and ripping tearing talon claws…
It is in these moments that I wish it would just stop.
Just.
Stop.
I have recognized this is also mostly the result of trauma in my life, and of that I have recently written…no, you cannot just “mellow out”, just “relax”, just “let it go and choose different”…thank you very much for your insensitive and ignorant admonitions…give me some credit, and imagine that a being as complex as myself might have tried that a time or trillion…no.
Trauma is with you like your skin, but it is a skin inside your skull and made solely of cockleburrs and foxtails.
And that is where this poem comes in…”Nothing Rhymes Orange”
It is short, considerably shorter than the ravings of this post (now you see why I love to speak in poem and nuance and layers)
Words
Uncertainty
Anxiety
Fear
Ask for clarity
Silence
That is the road for Charissa that leads to hell.
5 days of hell, and me still here and no one understanding the fortitude or fierce fight that I have been in simply to be here prattling on and on and on and on…
Silence says to me “Just shut up and go away”
Silence is the siren call crooning and never have those sharp rocks looked so inviting, so final, so untroubling in their destructive shadow.
But I? Well, I guess that I am even worse than bad…because in the face of repudiation and rejection shouted so eloquently in that Silence slouching towards this Bethlehem, I don’t even have the good sense to go…the courage to go? The integrity to go? Is that it? Prolly that is it since my integrity is called into question in the imprecision and indefinite miasma that masquerades as communication…
Is it that I am stubborn? Is it that I am curious and want to see how it ends without me breaking character and stepping off the stage in Act 3 of 5?
I dunno…I will just go with the end of “Papillon” (those curious can search my blog for that, those not curious, well why are you even still reading…did I not lose you in the Labyrinth of my words?? ‘Ware the Minotaur, sojourner!!).
I WILL NOT BE SILENT, even though so many will…
but I won’t lie either. These last 5 days have been a living hell inside my skull, and it hurts so bad.
The Cruelty Of The Ordinary
I am at an end of some kind
an end of expecting pink
when the sun arrives and departs
an end of hoping someone
somewhere would get it.
I am at an end of expecting anyone to
actually understand shooting stars
streaking thru the night and
my words piercing pulsing
pricks of light thru dull
dark and choking
indifference…
or any yearning
to pay attention
to urgent and plaintive
cries.
I who am
healed in words
am at last wounded
by words and endless
accusations and slander
and the opaque screens of untruth
I have been broken
I have been violated
I shall never
be clean again
I don’t think I will
ever be whole again
or fit for any service
the light thru the window merely
heightens that separation and
the scraggly fingers waiting
to claw my heart to ribbons
and lick the talons clean
in the moments between
sunrise and sunset
in the cruelty
of the ordinary
I Am Double
I am double
I am here and somewhere else
I am in caves of coming futures
staring out at fires casting shadows
of the past that flicker, flounder
and then disappear.
I am winter and I’m summer
I am autumn with some spring
thrown into my yellow gold veins
surging and pulsing with everlife
straining to throw off apples and pears
and some of that fruit
without a proper name.
I am true blue trueheart covered in shit-words
I am singing never silent song chained by silence.
you can call me whatever you want to call me
it doesn’t change who I am.
I am double.
I am here and somewhere else.
The Resurrection of Autumn-Trees
it was autumn and me bound
tight with scratchy ropes and lies
that could not be easy-parted
your stricken look
of compassion golden-sharp,
like lightening stooping down
you set me free, and started
a fire in that late autumn land,
so cold, so sluggish in the tepid sun
and languishing towards winter
given up to
given over to
inevitability
and sliding
down
that
gentle
poison
slope
my arms free,
my legs burning,
those ropes away
did fall from me
and your eyes,
heaven’s lightening strike
strike my heart in fire
and my skin burning hot,
glowing passion
radiating out
and the creeping cold
fleeing backward and the sap
running back up from the earth
and into trees thru the branches
and leaves falling up
and then connecting
and autumn’s
peacock splendour
blooms from
mono-drabness
and all around us
earth sings in our breath
synchronized together
and your hands
on my skin
like irons in
the fire
and your eyes
glitter brown and soft
and all at once
my sun and moon
as trees wave
and breathe
and summer rises
from the grave and spring
Sings into the air
in playful winds
and carefree winds
and ceaseless winds
and we come
and we go
without a
trace
and after,
you…me…us
laying there
and autumn
sighs and bows
and thankful for
another moment
present and it slides
away, gives up its ghost
and winter comes, quietly
comes to claim her prey
with tender frosty kiss so cold
concealing unrelenting blade
so unforgiving, bloodless,
without pity and me?
I, so young then,
and now so old
remembering the resurrection
of the autumn trees so glad
as the flakes
of snow float down
like tears of joy
come to an end
and become still
symphony of sorrow
and now I leave
forever
on the wind
and free
on the carefree wind
and in the cooling dirt.
A Handful of Memory
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
useless in the corner
to argue, debate
about fighting or walking
together, together
to some better future…
my hair is a crown
that glows with the past
and shines in the night
as I take my courage
and face what may come.
a handful of memory
a bucket of love
a torch lit in faith
and standing on hope
my face set like flint
my heart is a mountain
adorned with the night
a beacon, a presence
I swell from the earth
and kiss the soft skies
ever Spring, ever Autumn
it looks the same to you
whether you stand
in winter or summer
…the gate of my heart…
stark and golden and hot
against that steely variegated sky,
all clouds and light run thru God’s Grater
and piled up in slivers and shavings
of glory and stellar glimmers
of more…
I stand in spring and autumn
my feet in water and my face in fire,
my roots ever fed with freedom
and my branches ever shedding
the ends of growth and fruitful life
blossoming, falling, spilling to earth
in cascades of truth and fevered dreams.
my angles and lines seem stark to you
and you miss my curves and swaying
limber-love and hurly-heart throbbing
with the promise of harvests coming
and heavy with the presence of harvests here.
walk thru and look…
if you see me you will know
and if you do not see me
step away and scratch your head
with lightening bolts that shimmer
and strike the earth and the sky
and the glittering diamond waves
and wander,
wander
as you ponder
how I look
the same from
all sides
(to your blind eyes unimaginative)
or walk in awe
with leaping eyes
and hungry heart
marvelling how vast
is the territory and
how beautiful the land
Beyond the beyond
that you
just entered
into like
a child
with
eyes
opened
wide in
wonder
wriggles
enters
into this
vast untrammeled life
and running from nothing
to the endless Something
of that great
ever Spring,
ever Autumn.
On Ghomeshi, Memory and Trauma
I simply have to press this…I am the victim of stories that intimate people tell about me that are lies.
Flat out. They lie, because of many reasons, and I think all of the reasons are understandable: my transition, their own cognitive dissonance, it’s easier to scapegoat me than accept that their life is the way it is as a consequence of their choices…it doesn’t matter why they lie.
I still love them, because I cannot do otherwise. I am incapable of not loving them. But the consequences of that lie are stunningly strong and toxic.
My only hope is that they come to their senses in a way similar to what happened here in this article.
************************************************************************************
Have you ever had a moment when you suddenly realize that your memory of an event is not actually what happened? A few years ago I was talking to someone about a pretty life-altering event that happened…
Source: On Ghomeshi, Memory and Trauma
“The Art of Blessing the Day” by Marge Piercy
The Art of Blessing the Day
This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.
This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.
This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.
This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.
This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let’s not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.
The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends’
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.
But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.
Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.
Me Moon
when you speak of me
you speak of weeds and brambles
thorns, nettles and stoney ground.
when you think of me
it’s craters and dark
and bare landscape stark
and lacking curves.
I am gardens, moon, roses, sea.
I am me, in bowers and blooms
and labyrinth beds of unusual growth.
I am small trees and tall firs
fragrance stirs, honey bees
I am Grace in the echo
of the moon’s deep wells
I am tides reaching and running
yearning and aching
I am reflected light
soft yet bright
sometimes yes often no
but always…always…
always aglow
Please…think of what you know.
the endless ache of bones
the songs sung in your marrow
the shadow in your eyes
the light that holds your heart
think of who you know
vertigo
when gravity gives up
finally worn out
in my grave insistent
persistence at breathing.
And why…yes, this is important
the why of me
dancing on desolation
rhyming in respiration
overthrowing tables of treason
and though it is dark,
it is not night, My Love,
no.
it is the season of silence
that speaks, that sings
sings in me garden
sings in me moon
sings in me roses
sings in me sea
sings in me
In The Midst of Ashes
I would make it again…knowing full well what lay ahead
Crushed In Switzerland
that illusion is breaking up
like ice squeezed tight and crushed
in the fists of inevitability
and spring
there is no such thing as neutral
in a world pulled tight, pulled taut
between that endless winter
cold and bleak
and ravenous in black
consuming every weak
meek heart and undefended
and the coming
time of harvest
when all things
are marked
paid in full
and the ever-day
dawns without the sun
and sings unto the moon
“olly olly oxen free!!”
But you, like the ice
must be broken up
must choose to become
either water, or air
or forever frozen
in evil’s horrid grip
You must become
crushed in Switzerland
and thus set free forever
Your Silence As Well
Abandonment
This poem is one year old…I wrote it last year trying to deal with my worst enemy in this world.
I wanted to repost it, because frankly right now there is a great deal of uncertainty in my life…forces vie and swirl around me. People are easily inconsistent and squirt out in weak places…some vie for power, and some seek to judge from outside observation and have no clue about inside motivations…to give up power in deference to one who seeks it, only to have another assume that I am shirking my duties hurts me immensely.
I think most of those feelings are exacerbated by my old enemy:
Abandonment
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 la…
Source: Abandonment
Such A Gradual, Sudden Thing
“It is a lonely feeling
when someone you care about
becomes a stranger.”
Lemony Snicket
A Different End To The Story
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
but out now, unleashed now from the world of men
and striding like Colossus thru the realm
of women and children and all that rage
and self loathing his ticket to intoxication…
just looking for a reason, a place
to vent…and vent that place, tear it
to shreds and bloody ruination plunging
his vicious teeth deep into soft innocent
flesh not yet on the planet 5 years.
He wore his privilege like porcupine quills.
And then his tongue, bullwhip cracking
his pig eyes squinty and squealy and sweaty
and his anger was only surpassed
by his sanctimonious self righteousness
and utter unawareness of anything but himself.
And I? Constrained by bonds of love and consternation
responsible for hearts and souls, and yes his own as well
I bit my fucking lip until it bled, and imagined
my nails raking his face to shreds
the way his words tore the heart
from my precious precious angels
and here I sit, impotent work
with keyboard and words and tears
of sorrow, of ruination, of rage
and longing for the day when a man
won’t be such a dick.
I sit longing for a different end to the story.
We must protect rights of society’s marginalized | The News Tribune
We all have a responsibility to end sexual assault. Denying transgender people their civil rights is not the way to do that.
Source: We must protect rights of society’s marginalized | The News Tribune
A truly stunning well reasoned defense of my right to be.
Do you know that in most places transgender people are not recognized as who they are unless they have surgery…and at the same time the surgery is classified as “elective” and thus not covered by insurance…AND is also denied unless the person who needs the surgery obtains the permission and affirmation of 2 separate psychiatrists and surgeons?
Can you see that double bind?
“You are not a person unless you are committed enough to have surgeries…but we are gonna make you pay for them with your own money and they cost in the mid to high 5 figures…AND we are gonna make you prove yourself to at least 4 separate people…only then are you allowed to be a real person.
“Oh…and before you can even start this process, or get hormones or anything else, we are gonna require that you live as your claimed gender identity at least 2 years, after which we MIGHT give you hormones…
“What’s that you say? By requiring you to live as your claimed gender while denying you the means by which you can physically fit in we are endangering your life from transphobic transmisogynistic men? Well, you are wrong. WE are not doing that…YOU are…with your damn stupid insistence upon being a person who is differently bodied than you are gendered.”
You see the double bind?
It reminds me of how amateurism was created in sports to try and keep POC out of the leagues, because only the rich and privileged can live and train full time and not need to be paid, because they already have their money.
In the gender area…only the gender-rich and privileged can make the rules that shut us out.
And then we are told that our life matters, that we have worth, etc…just not enough worth to be made whole. Just not enough
another way of saying not enough is
worthless
And that is why it is important to let us go peepee like any other human…that is why it is important to speak of us as subjects (you/I/we/she/her) and not objects (it/that/he-she).
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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