in the hush, in the still hush
of the dying day, the waning day
see the sun, ohh the setting sun
shining rays, rays trickling
down the winds, on the breeze
to the beach, in the reach
of ocean waves, wild waves crashing
to the sands, the sparkling sands
in the cold, the rush of cold air
all around, and fresh in us
on that quiet, quiet darkling
winter evening.
Tag Archives: Charissa Grace
Lacking Intoxication
your words are like
a frozen lake thawing
in spring not much
and now just
floating there
all burbly ice cubes
clinking against shores
like chips kissing
a cocktail glass
and yet lacking
intoxication
you are undecided
if you will thaw
or just sit there
while fish wait
for you to figure
it out…you out.
You
out
Une Matinee d’Hiver
an afternoon in winter…
the geese above the field…
the field beneath the rainclouds…
so thick and straining full…
the lonesome sounds of wind-song…
the listless rustling branches…
the silhouettes so stark…
the weak grey skies above…
Une matinee d’hiver…
the useless summer stubble…
it lingers on the creek-banks…
I tarry…there…I wait…
And Gold All Underneath
Behold, the darkness thick and lurking, growing
like ennui in my soul, in my heart doomed and waiting
in this long moment, seemingly forever
it will remain, this painted grey, this second…
this minute is an hour is a decade
and I exist here…floating in the nothing, growing-shrinking…
it defines me as some-thing…no…as Some-one
whose breaking renders her unbreakable…
The growing darkness lurking, insubstantial,
The river Ennui flowing out to nowhere, to everywhere
The shocking joy and wonder also shining, in
This painted grey, and gold all underneath.
Born of Bud And Blossom
Amongst the thorns so sharp and bristley-bitter
and nestled in the crackley canes and stems so brittle
I sprang from buds clenched tight with fright and gripping
their green possessive cloaks around their high strung hearts
so pink, so red, so soft and velvet fragrant
The sun pried without mercy, without quarter
and his hot fiery fingers plucked and pulled
and deep inside those shrouding shawls veridian
the pulsing surging petals pushed back hard
and cracked the sticky emerald shells of shame
To blossom in the air renewed by wand’ring winds
and sway and dance, be wooed by every chance, to bend
low to the ground and then high straining for the heavens
releasing me, the fragrance strong, unquenchable
of grace and beauty, peace and love and joy.
Yes. I was born of bud and robust blossom
that fell away and left me hanging here
a kiss upon the cheek of summer memory
a promise in the winter of the spring
a herald of the Love of Heaven’s King.
Absalom At The Bridge
There on that narrow spike-span stretching
between what shall be and what has already been
he stands, my Absalom, hair blowing breezy in the wind…
golden glow and fierce mane shaking itself hard
in anger, pride, in sorrow, ache, in Nine gods’ names
Oh Absalom, Absalom my son, my golden glowing son
standing ‘neath that terebinth in blackness,
without way forward and none behind, no back-ness on the bridge,
and masks(ness) stuck to your face and laying limp there at your feet
I walk to meet you there, on that stark narrow span in air…
Horatius stood in that same place
and felt the things that pulse in you
and waited for the enemy
to show itself, fierce, solid, real
and fear, resolve, thrills did feel
as he a country stood to save
But Absalom? He has no place to go
Forward into what’s not known
but back is not permitted
for there’s nothing to go back to.
You know the pain of what’s been robbed
from you, but you have no idea
the ache that throbs here, deep in me
And rueful choices’ symphony
resounds below you, ‘neath your feet
and make that thin bridge sway
This way, that way, but you just ride,
time’s red-black surfer on time’s tide
and riding staves across the past’s deep cold and unforgiving waves
I take a breath and I step out towards you.
And walk…slow and deliberate
towards your angry broken face
and swollen heated broken heart
my fingers stretched for just one touch
to tell you I forgive all words
and need forgiveness for all loss
and all my failure’s litany
that, written in your eyes of me
and my dull inability, Oh Absalom, my son!
My son! Would to God I died for thee!
To EVERY Male Who Others/Polices Me
In Your Wonder
Here I am
caught up in your wonder
and wondering how
it is that you have
written it all
over me and
around me.
I am here
inscribed by
your eyes, your lips
your hands have
writ large in wonder
upon my soul
Advent Poem: This Waiting Time
Sometimes frost grips limbs
once lean and limber in the wind
now long grown stiff and creaky
and I hear them crack and groan
in those sticky clutching fingers
cold and frosty, fingers
cold and frosty.
Sometimes ennui (cold)
grips my soul (grown old)
and in its grip I groan
(groan old) and my soul
(my waiting soul) runs
around my heart and
around my heart
as the clock’s tail
ticks and twitches, chases
its tail like a cat relentless,
(useless) and that (waiting)
that frosty cold difficulty of waiting
remains there clinging tightly
in the fading day.
But Advent…
Advent
Advent comes again
and gives her gift.
In the cold and dead of winter,
trauma seems to sting much deeper,
and healing for the broken parts
of my life…and the people that I love?
Seems so much harder to obtain…
When it comes to these things
things so staggering and important,
healing, peace and goodness
on the earth, freedom from suffering,
well…waiting is hard, so hard and painful.
But in these moments I’m remembering
I’m troubled in soul and looking
for something transcendent, greater
than the hurt and pain and suffering,
something, someOne warm enough
persistent, faithful, warm enough
to breathe on us
to break the ice
and give us life
Long familiar sweet hymns play
wherever I go, I remember
I am poor, imperfect, waiting for
the God Who comes down,
Comes Down, God With Us
Emmanuel! Hosanna!
In the Highest Holy Fire!
and I feel again
the gentle nudge
of a knock deep
at the door
of my small
and icy lonely
heart.
Advent is the time of waiting
waiting for the One (the One)
Who embraced body, embraced sorrow
Came to show us all the fullness
of just being home, present, and real.
And we are long reminded in
our cold dolorous longing
what we’re longing for actually
a Who, Who, Who we long for,
God…always coming nearer to us.
I have found a place
inside (in Advent, inside you)
that place where once
you die, you…
you come Alive…
A place where pain
and pleasure weigh out
just the same
and all that’s left
is only Love,
And every sorrow touched
by the wild gold Promise
that in this very place
(of waiting)
Jesus has been born
(is born)
and will be born
again and again,
and again
breaking thru
that icy grip
thawing out
our longing hearts,
melting all
our sin and deaths
so we can
laugh again.
Amidst My Thoughts Of You
I wake in the morning and wander
through the house in my skin
and in the warmth of thoughts of you
even though you are far away
and across that gulf
you won’t cross, won’t cross
my cross and yours
my coffee warms my mouth
my thoughts of you warm
my heart, flush my skin, touch
my soul with anemone filaments
and fires and goosebump caresses
here in the morning
wandering in the warmth
amidst my thoughts of you
IRISH THANKSGIVING
Reblogged on WordPress.com
Source: IRISH THANKSGIVING
It was a year ago on this day that I read this poem, and I am struck just as strongly today as I was on that day a year ago…by this work of such stunning power and beauty and longing and fulfillment.
Melissa Shaw Smith is a poetess that I respect immensely, and a woman that I aspire to be like. I have never met her, except thru her work, and thru a few emails in which she graciously allowed me to bloviate opinions about her work which in hindsight seems to me a bit like the 2nd grader who can do the times tables up thru her 5s talking to Madam Curie about the wonders of science!!
No matter…Constance, if you think my poetry is any good, just know that it is as if it were a child’s lego creation side by side with El Capitan compared to Melissa’s work.
Mel, if you are reading here…I love this poem with the marrow-bones of my tears.
Much much love…
Charissa
Advent Poem: To Go To Bethlehem
Uncanny, peculiar,
uncomfortably strange,
I tend my fires and tell my story…
the story of
this quirky girl
overly-intelligent
and stuck in time
that is not time, so
unreconciled to time
so bound up in its realm.
I am strapped there
on Your wrist (watch)
a condor in a cage
passing from quick present
to some furious future
and thus so fast becoming
dim, and dark, and past
and wondering if I am
ever? present?
ever a moment?
ever a significant occasion
or an immeasurable quality?
I want real time!
time which breaks through
with a shock of joy
like a leap into Crater Lake
on a snowy New Year’s morning,
time where we are completely
un-self conscious and far more
real in some eternal now
I thirst for a moment jeweled!
a moment
so sweet or magnified
it seems to stop time
but doesn’t because time
becomes a point so limply moot
and thus no longer dirty moat
between me and my true self
And here I sit, beside time’s bonfire
and sparks fly up
and away so quick
to join the stars
and glimmer and
I poke at this fire
hot and tender
and tend it…
with my tinder
and wonder how to be
here in this already
and not yet, between
That Eternal Now
and this one,
and the One
Who There Inhabits?
wonder how to be aware
of life while I am living it?
wonder how to limp courageous
and relinquish all control
of self and self awareness?
wonder how to laugh courageous
and look for glory
in the storied
wonder of the ordinary?
wonder how to live courageous
and be surprised by One
who dares draw near?
wonder how to love courageous
and take off rings and watches?
I burn calendars and open
my heart uncanny,
strange peculiar…
to see eternity in
the midst of time
to go to Bethlehem
today and everyday
in this time and place
where glimpses of the eternal
come quiet, unexpectedly
they come and they upset
our every notion static about time
and all we discover there within.
I open
my Uncanny Peculiar
Uncomfortably Strange Heart
to the story of All and Ever
ending Never
I choose
to live somewhere between
the already and not yet,
caught and held
by the One who
dwells within Outside.
And so the fire burns away the moments
And we must choose our portion:
whether here we tarry or if
we choose to journey
Pregnant by some God
To Go To Bethlehem
My Heart On The Plate
I love to cook.
No, I do not aspire to being a chef. GOD NO! Who in their right mind would want to put up with the awful crap that people who work in restaurants put up with?
*Although, I have to admit…if I were independently wealthy I would indeed found a restaurant and not run it the way everyone else runs theirs. It would be in Charissa-space and time…and customers who didn’t like it would simply be sent on their merry way.*
No…I love to cook, because it is the tangible way that my love becomes incarnate and then consumed by my loved ones.
The greatest gift you can give me is to let me cook for you.
The deepest cut you can slash me with is to reject my food that I made for you.
And the strongest Othering you can extend to me is to deny me the opportunity to cook for you if I love or am in love with you.
This year, I am both happy that I get to cook for 2 of my loved ones, bereft that I cannot for the 4, and truly puzzled and drained that I have been denied the chance to prepare a feast for the angels in my life one and all.
My heart on a plate, carved up for you, and reborn in me as you partake and are renewed.
(No…I didn’t feel like making this into a poem. It’s right there, in plain sight. Have at her if you wish! 🙂 )
Hear Me Screaming (Transgender Remembrance Day 2015)
I am a ghost wandering in the dark
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
Wandering lost and in sorrowful shades
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
I am a wailing voice keening in grief
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
Wrapped in a funeral shroud black and white
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
You walk into the nook, seeing me here
but you don’t even know,
you don’t even see
you don’t even hear me screaming.
My Peculiar Love, Arise!
Look up, arise
my Peculiar Love!
You tumble still
wracking rocks
wrenching ravines
clawing cliffs
and scratching
with nails broken
and bloodied in the plunge.
No…I have not left
your side, your side
(it’s only bruised, Love)
so vulnerable to that lance
and the stinky rough
warhands of that coward
masquerading as a shepherd
covering for a rapist
And on that note remember
He who lays by your side
He who took the lance
He who went all the way
coming to common terms
with loss
blind as wind…
But I float now…see?
You will too soon…
And this is waiting…
there…and so I lay these words of care
upon your lips like mountain blood
white and clear and clean and cold
to slake your thirst with sop
(not hyssop)
of beauty, healing, Promise…
Oh my Love…my Love Peculiar
the day will come to
Arise
and join me in the Liberty
you prophesied when you spied
your baby’s heart eternal.
The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill
“Suicidal behaviors in LGBT populations appear to be related to “minority stress”, which stems from the cultural and social prejudice attached to minority sexual orientation and gender identity.
“This stress includes individual experiences of prejudice or discrimination, such as family rejection, harassment, bullying, violence, and victimization. Increasingly recognized as an aspect of minority stress is “institutional discrimination” resulting from laws and public policies that create inequities or omit LGBT people from benefits and protections afforded others.
“Individual and institutional discrimination have been found to be associated with social isolation, low self-esteem, negative sexual/gender identity, and depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.
“These negative outcomes, rather than minority sexual orientation or gender identity per se, appear to be the key risk factors for LGBT suicidal ideation and behavior.”
Source: The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill
This.
I am sharing this truly scintillating essay, and the pull quote above is the core for me.
I just wanna say that I was raised white…but I was…raised white. Fortunately for me, I was never inculcated with racist bull shit, to the point that in college in the 80s I had a dear friend literally shock me when he told me I was the least racist person he had ever met…and yes, I did hear and note his use of the word “least”…which said volumes to me but in a language that I could not decipher or understand.
Well…since coming to terms with myself and understanding my gender journey, my life has changed in shattering ways, stunning and transcendent ways…but most importantly of all I was delivered from the ocean at last…
and became aware of so much that I never knew, could never see, even as a fish in the sea has no clue that it is in the sea.
I understand the comment of my friend now…”least racist”.
I wish I had the words and ways to let my friends, acquaintances and loved ones who are subject to that which they are subject to for the absolute worst and most insignificant of reasons KNOW that I get it now…
Oh, I will NEVER get it for the reason that they are made subject, anymore than any cis-gender person will ever “get it” in any way other than developing a deep and sincere sympathy and resolute commitment to love and live that love…
But I do get it now, the persecution, the othering, the abuse, the hatred and the fucking demonic unreasoning irrational stupidity of those besotted and drunk on the luck of the draw and the fate of biology.
My friends, and you know who you are…this post is for you…may I always find the joy I have found in solidarity with you and the love of your deep suns of being that shine undefeated and undefeatable! May I always have the heart, the eyes to see and to be inspired time and again with your indomitable spirit, will, but most of all your LOVE which just fucking never quits, CAN never quit.
You have no idea, the moments you have dragged me thru…you bearing the hate directed at you due to skin and me bearing the hate directed at me due to a variation on skin but essentially a common thing we walk in…times I was on the way out, and I would read sumfin, hear sumfin, think of sumfin…and be inspired and lifted up in your heart of hearts.
Now? I can at least have the means to find the remaining privilege I have and divest myself of it intentionally…it doesn’t always go, it is stuck to my skin color…but at last it is not stuck to me.
I regret only that it took as long as it did for my understanding and seeing eyes to catch up to what my heart must have known for my friend to tell me what he told me. We intersect…and for the rest of my days on earth I am expanding that intersection with every ounce of love, faith, hope, grace and mercy that is mine.
To the rest of my friends: please take it in faith that your privilege is there, is stuck to you, and is a legacy that you can use if you will but set your heart in a frame of humility and ask that your eyes be opened…hopefully you will gain insight without experiencing it being ripped away…but if that is what it takes, it is better that this occur rather than go thru your life blind while thinking you see.
On Seas So Grey
What’s it like, on the grey seas
in the silver wind, with sails
so green and full and billowing?
Skimming swift and dangerous, light
on the waters while the crew scrambles
‘neath that Captain loud and bellowing?
Stinging spray by facefuls founting
up from waves slosh-frothing, faithful
and fateful leading cross the edge
to horizons promising much more
of the same and something different,
something different, too.
Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) — Bad Words — Medium
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
Grace Upon Grace
open me to new ways
of looking at old wounds
without examining them.
give me grace to recreate
loving space and mercy great
for childhood, home and family.
nourish me, here, I belong
and have a place to call my home
me…I am my home now…and so is She.
and old familiar fretty ways
so curious and strange
may they grow cold with un-use.
no more shall I be trapped
in ancient fear and panic
a creature of their whims
but asking Them to help,
to break that siege on me
and lend Their power pure.
I know now,
there is another way,
kinder, gentler, simpler.
This Gradual Depth
chasms within me yawn toothy
inhale sharply in chuckly hitches
they opened in horror unspeakable
and unknowable at the same time
blockades destroyed by strange forces
of fire fierce hungry and gluttonous,
that devoured every heart untended
my only option for living
it is total surrender to sorrow
embracing these unending trials
that teach spiritual lessons of courage
in the facing of dark deepest fears
in discovering this gradual depth
of my strength of my courage my love
it is horrible challenging painful,
but if it weren’t for all this suffering
I would not know myself near as well
how I’ve lived and I’ve chosen experienced
so I do not give up I have hope
I am grateful for difficult things
that have made me into who I am
Mud-Spittled Eyes On A Rainy Fall Sunday Morning
Mud-Spittled Eyes On A Rainy Fall Sunday Morning
It’s the glory of eyes,
being blessed to be opened
with mud sweat and spit,
blind eyes become other
and seeing What others
insist isn’t there while
It pulses bright-brilliant
and shining with Glory…
the eyes tell the story,
it’s the glory of eyes.
And the glory of hearts,
jumpstarted by Pain
descended from heaven
to bleed on the earth?
It’s the glory of hearts
to demand that blind eyes
become windows of wonder,
pried savagely open to
that fire Burning
Behind the Beyond!
And thus all my ancient
inadequate questions
about life and death
shall be visible now
in my yearning mortality,
here in the midst
of the dark and the light
all surrounded by Light
and glowing with Glory
and glad in the grime.
And the Kingdom come in
looks into my heart-windows
thru mud-spittled eyes
at this Mystery Landscape
this Numinous-Journey
of Startling Story
(we are Their Mystery,
we’re Their Fire Burning,
we’re Their Numinous
Shocking Startling Story!)
That’s the Crux of it!
That’s the Implicative Crossroad
where heaven meets earth
and earth defines heaven
and we’re given eyes
(our very own crossroads)
to see things Beyond us
True things and Real
even though there are
tears in these
Mud-Spittled Eyes
on a Rainy Fall Sunday
Morning
A Necessary Death
The poem I just posted is inspired by a fantastic book I am reading called “Women Who Run With The Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. It is truly a word from Mama for me right now.
As I was reading her take on the Inuit myth of “Skeleton Woman”, it hit me like a ton of bricks…I have been keeping certain relationships alive with heart-blood and it has changed those relationships into parasites…instead I should be feeding them with the tears of true grieving that accompanies a proper death and thus cleanse the heart and free the soul, diminished but restored and purified.
It is clear that these were flawed, defective and tragic relationships. Blame has been laid…and I have none to lay, so therefore I can easily receive all blame for all factors and choices…because then I can get it into one place and just let it die. Skeleton Woman is that force which brings the necessary death of something so that new life can come forth. Jesus Himself said that unless we lose our life we cannot save it, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die it cannot bring forth any fruit but will be alone.
They are dead, and I am not cutting my heart any more…there is no expiation able, or even needed…there is no act that I could perform that would result in restoring what was to what it never was.
The only way forward is to let them die.
Diminished and free…and knowing there is another chapter in this story which can now commence.
What It’s Like To Transition
How about you, Constance? What transitions are you facing in life?
They are worth the suffering.
This Place of Living Bliss
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
and red under starlight
and I sit and watch us walk
away thru the rising mist
and wonder how we got here
to this place of living bliss…
Waterwheels and Wonders
I’m pretty lonely, now
that I am not in
the juggling circle
with all your other eggs
tossing around frantic
and always on the edge
of splatting on the stones.
I just got tired of the suspense.
I got bored with the panic
of will she catch, will she miss
and that somehow miraculous
growing of another arm
there just long enough
not to hold but to toss
back up again spinning
in the cool bracing breeze.
And the worst times
when I hadda catch myself
and then pretend that you did
so you wouldn’t drop you
splatting on stones
and seeing that a huge
quantity of love diluted
by a huger number of recipients
is just about like no love at all.
So…I sit now…watch you juggle
and see the eggs move round
and occasionally I snatch one away
so you can twirl just the most important.
I can’t do that thing anymore,
where I am something to be
managed, parcelled, watered?
I wanna be ground to your feet
soil to your roots, sun to your leaves!
I want you to be breeze neath my blades
and rain on my petals and sun synergistically
all around me and warm.
So go ahead and keep in rhythm,
there is nothing over here, don’t reach.
Eggs hatch, and become real,
and you can quit imitating
a windmill and become instead
a waterwheel and wonder turning you always.
Unplanned Grief #4
Across the ocean, you,
there without drowning
and I don’t know how
that happened, because
I grieve and take on water
in sputter-gulps and gasps,
dog paddle-fighting every wave.
But this your journey you have chosen
alone and must…choose alone.
I regret so deeply that you also choose
to live this life alone as well.
But I have choices too
and I choose Spring
even though my favorite
season is Fall.
I will always be right here
to offer you swimming lessons,
yes, always and forever…
but I will not drown with you
because how could I see Spring
return to claim her crown?
So instead I sit and watch waves
in this unexpected storm, this fat
cloudburst of grief unplanned
and out of budget.
I grieve the living when the living lie
in tattered shadows of what could be.
I wish it were different, but nonetheless,
I am okay, in spite of all these griefs
unplanned.
Othered Once Again
it’s like the instantaneous arrival
the spontaneous appearance
the epiphanous eventuality
in one thunderous moment
of dull leaden light that clashes
and smothers and chokes out
everything else…
that moment when fear
puts on its mask of hate
and joins the ritual circle of death,
eyes wide shut,
and I am othered
once again
Posting A Very Sobering Reflection
All…this is a post from a tumblr blog I follow, not my own writing, but her concluding question echoes many things I have written about, namely that all the “Remember the Dead Trans-girls” rallies change absolutely nothing.
We don’t want to be remembered.
We want to live…be fruitful and share life.
I don’t want you to say my name when I am killed…I want to say my own name in the zest of life! Without fear of attack, policing, othering or rejection simply for being born.
I echo Jen’s question: since last weekend’s events, what has changed?
PS: Language alert! If you are offended or defiled by scatalogical language, proceed with caution! F-bombs and other such things are in evidence!
Maybe if…Maybe….maybe if every man who has ever hired a trans escort, if every boy who has ever beat off to trans porn, if all the guys I and thousands of others have hooked up with via Craig’s List, if the millions who fetishize our bodies, who enjoy us on our knees in bathrooms, who press us against hotel windows, who lay with us in our beds, if the men who adore me and my sisters, but only behind closed doors, would STAND THE FUCK UP AND SPEAK OUT…maybe 21 year old women just enjoying an evening out with friends wouldn’t be beat to death.
Maybe if all of you who read this, our allies and friends and colleagues and family, would call out when others make jokes at our expense, even when we’re not around, if you’d tell advertisers and producers and journalists and writers and comics that you’re not okay with them making trans women nothing but the punchline of jokes or tragic tossaways, that you know us, that we’re not disposable….maybe groups of people would stop feeling so free to harass me and my sisters, maybe crowds wouldn’t just laugh when a man spits at me, or just watch when two young men chase me down the street yelling “shemale”…maybe if you ALL stood up and said enough, maybe a young woman just being herself wouldn’t be beat to death in the streets of the supposedly best place on earth to just be yourself.
Maybe if all the gay men who act as if equality means marriage, if all the white feminists who only serve those that look like them, if all the queers who drop “TWOC” like a shibboleth but don’t know or talk to or walk beside any actual trans women of color…maybe if all of you saw what was happening here and how your actions allow it, how every moment of silence, of waiting for people of color to start the conversation about race …maybe this child could have enjoyed a few more years of being beautiful among us.A 21 year old was beat to death in our streets. It happened because she is a woman, and of color, and transgender. It happened because our men won’t admit they love us, because our friends aren’t speaking out against the thousand little dehumanizing actions of others, because our own “LGBT” community isn’t comfortable talking about race and class.
This has to change. Now.
I wrote this two years ago.
What’s changed?
The Ruin and The Wreck
It’s the ruin and the wreck
of what has been, what might have been
that stands so stark, abrupt against
the soft caress of night and in
the harsh daylight that shows the stress
and strain and bite of time…
so cruel, so kind
in dismantling artifice
and taking more to leave it less
and thus confer a grace upon
the mess of pride and prejudice
there…in the gentle wind’s soft kiss,
that which remains and sanctified
by tears from skies so gray and eyes
so blue and thus made holy in
the loss they gain substance
and stretch across
our hearts
our spirits
our souls
that yearn forever,
ah forever
it will burn
there…that fire
and those bones that burn so bright
in the ruin and the wreck
of what has been, what might have been
become what is
If You Insist On Living In My Past? Stay There
If you hear people from my past speak of me.
Keep in mind they are speaking of a person
they don’t even know any more.
Come, My Love
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
and we will carry our essence there
into the river deep and swift
and we upon the surface light
and walking in this river night
upturn your cup! pour you out quick!
and I will do the same with you
and mingle…waters, breath, life
time, no time…mingle, ever mingle
oh love, my love
walk out in the river with me on waters
still and soft beneath our souls
and slightly giving underneath our feet
So Beautiful It Hurts
“A song from another time
survived with me.
It follows me wherever I go.”
survived with me.
It follows me wherever I go.”
| — | Dunya Mikhail, from “Song from Another Time,” The Iraqi Nights (New Directions, 2014) |
“Just A Word”…It Ain’t The Hokey-Pokey!
I wrote a poem recently about an experience I had…a painful one. It was like gravity frozen and pulling me back to a place I had long left behind.
I was misgendered.
Now this, in and of itself, is not an unusual experience. It happens fairly regularly, though not in any way frequently, and usually it happens when strangers are interacting with me and have not had a chance to really interact with me long enough to really get the flavor of who I am. I have learned to not let it bother me, to correct the error, and then move on.
This time though, it was different…vastly different. It was from someone whom I highly esteem, and very much like…someone I am well on the way to loving. It happened from a friend.
Now, it was clear to me that she had simply made a mistake. Hey, let’s be honest…if you look at my profile here at all, or on my Facebook page, you can see the tall order that I have to overcome. Well over 6 ft tall, currently well over 220 lbs, and my forehead well on its way to a 5 or maybe even a 6 head! HRT is kind to my brain, and somewhat more cavalier with the rest of me…progress in important areas is slow. It’s there…but it’s slow.
And then there is my voice, forever altered by testosterone in the same way that every single human being regardless of gender has their voice altered when exposed to that hormone.
So it is easy to be “tricked” by the outward package.
But the insides? The things I talk about? The way I talk? My emotions, my reactions? I was once told by a fairly femme individual that I was “girly-squared!” We both laughed sooo hard over that, because it is true.
So that is why when I was misgendered by a friend it cut me deep…and it destroyed my confidence. Because here are the logical alternatives. Either A: I am doing something that makes everyone think “man”…or B: I am neglecting to do something that makes everyone think “woman”. And that is what just ran at me like water washing away a riverbank. My friend who knows my heart and knows me, who has done great things for me and made a place for me…my friend misgendered and I don’t know why.
Is there a “moment of translation” when people interact with me? Does everyone have that inner “pause” where they have to stop and carefully think things thru in order to “be polite?” Is that all that the correct use of pronouns boils down to? Politeness? I have written before about the onerous statement of “support” that says “If that is how you see it, then I am for it.”
Grrrr…I hate that statement, because cis-women do not ever have that said about their own gender. Well, being polite is the same in this case.
And it has me wondering…do all my friends have that pause, that polite moment just before they humor me? Or do they think of me as who I am, a woman who managed to get herself stuck in a dude’s body?
That is what “Just A Word” is about…and how all the internal progress I had made, all the ways I had listened and believed and trusted the words of people around me…and now felt like a fool for it!
Well…my friend is a spectacular person, and I don’t think for a minute she intended to hurt me or wound me, and I think that our friendship will continue to grow and blossom…but it did hurt. And it did tumble me briskly down that slope and back to my beginnings in the valley of dysphoria.
Which leads me to the quote that prompted this post:
Don’t feel bad if you still wish your body looked different
or if your voice sounded better or if you can’t quite love yourself yet.
Self-acceptance is a journey. You’re not hopeless just because others may be ahead of you.
Appreciate yourself. Appreciate how far you’ve come.
You’re on your way, at your own pace.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what she…or anybody else for that matter, thinks.
I accept me.
I know who I am…I know!
Making Me Airtight
Gold threads thru green fields
lead me on to yonder mountains,
this path beneath my feet
so friendly, so familiar
even though I’ve yet to walk it.
I am finding my pack
rests easier these days
though I still chafe beneath
those goddam toothy straps!
It is full of certainty and truth
but which is which…well,
of that I am uncertain.
No matter, that curtain
of friendly fog’s gently parting,
dancing on the merry winds
that tug, that tousle-tickle
frondy fiddleheads and firs
and I press on towards
those lofty looming heights.
Night approaches and I sleep
I whisper to myself in dreams
of secrets in my unknown heart
so certain and so true…
“Follow! Follow!” I sing to myself.
“Run in trackless wilderness!
Dance in virgin meadow green!
Find Her waiting…beckoning,
drawing out your fecund longing
into solid living flesh!”
I am knowing that when I sleep
I like to go barefoot in my dreams,
I walk without blinders on my knowing feet
so they can see…no boots upon these eyes!
Then I wake and see muddy footprints
glowing brown, leading to the door and then
just disappearing into…When?
Or where…somewhere…like
the pregnant bottom of a well
the throbbing mystery of a cave
the trembly throat of a fresh spring…
somewhere.
Maybe it is in my tears
and in the ocean and the wind
that blows the truth into my face
and from my heart, a living knuckle
where those two worlds join and pivot
in the light and in the dark…
and those muddy footprints are a map that I must follow
but only walking backwards and always loving forwards
and then return the way I came while walking forwards
and my love is flowing back to beautify the things I passed
beneath its tender touch…my love, my touch.
This journey’s making me airtight
even though I seep, bleed love and weep
in the day and thru the night,
thru the blood and in the bread,
with the babies and the bones,
in my tender waiting womb
all my yearning tears and groans…
It’s this heartbreak that atones
and that path shining golden…
and the mountains…
nestling me home.
A Quintessential Quandary
“Don’t take it personal”.
I get told this…believe it or not. Hah. As if you could read here for any number of posts and not figure out that I am passionate and sticky-hearted. And I do.
Take it personal. Everything. Not just when someone says something cruel, but also when someone says something beautiful, or something funny, or something poignant.
I once quipped that how can I take things any other way than personal, since I am a person. How else can I take things?
But what I think, is that people are really saying to me: “Charissa…when you show your emotions and reveal your heart in an unashamed and unabashed way, we get uncomfortable and we don’t want to be uncomfortable. So please have some savoir faire and conceal your emotions behind a bemused and distant facade like the rest of us do.”
I think you would all be somewhat shocked if you knew how often I actually do this very thing…but the cost of this to me? Just everything that makes me uniquely me…such as sensing someone’s pain and sorrow…such as seeing who they are in a glance and processing years of history in one taste…such as having a timely word that is bloody and rich in healing…such as the funny saying and humorous word that releases and sets free…such as the honest and direct pledge of being present whenever called on…
nuffin’ real important…just the freaking bleeding bloody essence of me.
It gets confusing really fast. Because here is one thing that happens regularly: Something happens that is painful, and I do my best Lady Gaga and work on my poker face…and the astute in the area will sense that I am not being genuine and will upbraid me as not having been forthright.
So I go ahead and honestly reveal what has hurt me…and then get told to not take it personally.
See what happened there?
Today is an equilibrium regaining day…events of yesterday were hurtful…no one’s fault, just the way it is in this world…and I wrestled with an admonition that I had said something was okay and sorta tried to pass it off when I was in fact hurt and very confused over why something had happened that happened…and regarding those same things another exhortation to not take things personally. Be authentic and show the hurt…but don’t take it personally…
I confess that I do not know how to do this. I really do not know, and am gonna have to learn what that all means.
But then again, there are a lot of things I don’t know…like why people who knew me for years now think I am totally insane, or possessed, or that I am involved in some sexual practice (HAH! God knows the absurdity of that!)…like why people still misgender me regularly and not knowing if this is due to something I am doing or something I am failing to do…like what to do about a frame and a voice and all that stuff that has literally nothing to do with my true essence and self.
It’s a raw day…and Grace Notes is where I work thru things…writing my heart out…writing my pain out…clarifying to myself what it is I have experienced and what I think. So far, hundreds of you have chosen to come along on the journey…thank you for that…and I give you permission to take the things I say to heart.
If you are an emotional person, that may look like taking it personally…and if you are a calm person it may look like thinking things thru and changing behavior.
Either way…I am pressing on, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on…
Describing Our Reality
“Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted,” for centuries
by the refutation of our experience and our instincts
in a culture which validates only male experience.
by the refutation of our experience and our instincts
in a culture which validates only male experience.
“The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us.
“We therefore have a primary obligation to each other:
not to undermine each others’ sense of reality
for the sake of expediency;
not to gaslight each other.
“Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience.
Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake,
beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”
| — | Adrienne Rich |
I read this quote this morning, and instantly gravitated to it…because it is shocking to me just how fast my insides shatter and my heart just crumples, with just a word. It scares me when this happens…because then the ripples start, and I begin to question the prior words, deeds, experiences…were they real? Or were they careful camouflage and thus by their very existence invalidation of who I am because they were needed to provide cover?
The mind says they were real…but my unprotected heart recoiling in the shock and pain so unexpected begins to fly so frantic at the bars of its cage. And like a small captive bird it beats itself bloody against those bars that suddenly are there…just like that…because now I know there is that “step of translation” between who people see me to be and who they then speak to me as…truthfully that shreds me inside when it happens, because I have been free in myself and flowing…until with a thunk
this flying bird hits that static glass wall, invisible, unexpected, but no less devastating and seeming inevitable…and I do feel insane when I cleave to the truth of my own experience after I have hit that wall of misgendering.
Adrienne Rich speaks of the undermining of each other’s sense of reality…
…mine is suffering right now.
Oh…not who I know myself to be…but rather who others know me to be. That feeling of insanity that she references above. Because when people are around me for a length of time, they do indeed experience me as female in my brain, my heart, my emotions and expressions, my love and affection, my orientation towards co-operation and collaboration…
…but then that male pronoun just flies out seemingly unbidden, and for the life of my I cannot understand how it can be…except that it must be that the gravity of my body and physical self is too powerful for the evidence of my heart and soul and spirit to overcome and I am chained to that outer shell diminishing…and thus diminished and reduced to mere outward appearance…and doomed to the dirt…yeah, it hurts.
I don’t know what to do about it, because it is beyond my control.
I guess just surrender to this reality but in the Name of Jesus…and let Mama work it to my good and bring me peace.
Just A Word
…and just like that
with just a quick word,
a pea-sized hard pebble
nudged over the edge
and tumbling down
the beckoning slope
and picking up steam
and skittering bouncing
off rocks and off heart
the slide starts unstoppable
the whole slope is sliding
en masse, sorta slithering
and chunking and pouring
and ka-bunking til nothing
can be done but just try
to survive the earth leaving
disappearing ‘neath my feet
and keep my balance
and surfing the wave
of disbelief made of
stones rather than water
then i am that pebble
pea-sized on that mountain
and falling away from
my fellow climbers
as they watch me bounce
on the rocks down below
and tumble so quickly
my white skin scraped red
and my heart cut so raw
on the jagged scree falling
around me like raindrops
of stony and ancient
hot volcanic weeping.
and the bottom is waiting
the same place i left it
and the summit is laughing
so high up the mountain
silhouetted against
the bright blue sky quiet
and gleaming in light
underneath my companions
looking down where I lay
so near, yet so far
untouchable always
and never crossed over
to join them on high
You Can Only Go Forward…
“I am so sorry to all the people I hurt while I was hurting.”
I saw this quote online this morning. It captures my feelings about that long, long past, much of which I am only dimly aware of having lived, but more like an observer than a participant.
Certain parameters have been laid out…and sadly those preclude forgiveness. Apparently, there really is more than one “unforgivable sin” (and really, each human being sorta gets to decide what sin is forgivable and what sin is not, no?).
But the truly fine thing about being a human being? The power of understanding embodied in choice and become action.
And I am…so sorrowful that the hurt that I was in…that I was in my “not-being” resulted in hurt to others. And yet there is nothing to be done about the then, and the to come has not yet arrived.
There is just the now…finally and at last the now…and I am in it.
Glad, Grateful and Free…
Charissa Grace
Check Out My Hair
I lead face forward, my hair trails behind me,
smelling of all of the longings and seas
that evaporate in the hot sun of the rest
who think playing in shallows is safest and best.
My face is my sunscreen protecting my heart
in the winds and the rays of a place where it seems
that people don’t care and are not really there
and call daily connection dumb fairy-tale dreams.
It lets me go out and look normal and fine,
it lets me get by in a style called “all mine”
and it holds my eyes steady, they’re seeing and seen,
but my hair’s smell hides my secret “what I really mean”.
My hair holds my longing, it carries my ache,
my hair holds my grief over those who just take
and it doubts those who promise that they’re truly there
when it reaches to touch their face, but just gets air.
It’s perfumed with desire, and fear, and some hope.
It is curly and flies around, feels like a dope
because it tries to cross chasms on that taut tightrope
of belief in belief or some other dumb trope…
but that feeling of authentic being…that strength
of choosing a style that is me come what may,
when my hair is undone and is free in the wind
but still anchored to me, well my hair is my friend!
I am anchored to it! I think my hair is me!
It’s my soul’s silver banner unfurled by this sea
of humanity streaming and nose to the ground,
my hair pops in the wind and brings heaven around!
So be circumspect when I walk by you today.
If you wanna know anything about the way
I think or I feel…or I purpose to be?
Jus check out my hair…if you wanna know me.
Singing To The Bones
Speak to me gently…
I am listening with my bones,
instruments of hearing
my companions…
I listen by the fire.
Speak into my soul with touch and glance
while I walk to and fro and spread a feast
that’s fit for angels to consume and dance
under stars and with the silky moon.
Bone-music vibrates
from my bone-core deep,
emanates from my sternum,
surrounds me in its sticky grasp
and to its gentle bosom I am clasped…
in drum, in harp, in whistle call and
in that dance on puffy clouds in fall.
Hear its cry in my heart’s every pulse
and I must answer or I will remain
bereft and longing, agitated, always
and seeking in snows aslant and serious
and in ocean floors murky mysterious
and in that desert deep and in the forest strong
and beneath the breath of emerald wind’s ever-song
Finally, I simply rest
sitting in the shifting sands
and singing over long-dead bones,
my song arising, flying here and there
and hear the song of mountains and
the thrum of reefs against the waves
insistent, fresh and ancient
in the days, these days
that I am
Singing to the bones
Miracles of Modern Medicine
This used to be me…it isn’t anymore.
HRT works. My brain is soo much happier.
Constance, it is something so simple, and yet so profound.
I am glad I made it, and I am thankful to those who valued and recognized the essential me regardless of container/package.
And those of you who didn’t…wow. I don’t know whether I should pity you more, or those in your life who are similarly falsely assessed. That must really suck.
I am free…and oh God the flying!
Precious Time
All the places of the world
that call and beckon me,
the wander lust and longing heart
to travel there and be.
Be rooted in such rare terroir
and taste of precious life
unfurling right before my eyes…
but Time…that silver knife
has cut me off from my own heart
you there, and me out here
I’d trade the world and all its wonder
just to have you near.
Present and Uncontained
It feels so fiercely good
to be free, to be found
in the reds and swirls
and sweats of my sisters
wise and strong
and wild and welded together
in the midst of bare trees
and empty pots
and dusty dirt.
We are living flesh,
we are alive and well!
We send the puppets of clay
back to the pile
from which they fell,
and now so impotently they yell.
My sisters strong
receive me, brood over me,
warm me, inspire and inform me,
challenge, elevate me!
Here
in the dust
in the wind
present and uncontained
by anything
except living flesh.
We Are Come At Last
Marshal your forces, you protectors of the crown,
send your dogs running, your dogs of dreams,
your dogs howling, full noses of my fur, my pelt!
Bring on your hunt, your horses in full gallop
and chase for all you’re worth, your lust and fear
of free blood running red, and full, liberty’s blood!
Your coats, scarlet! Your smirks, affixed with tax,
and become terrible twisted rictus in your sweaty efforts
to hunt this free fox leaping, yipping, dancing on the dawn!
They shall come to me, your dogs, and wriggle ‘neath my touch!
They shall hear my dog-whistle words, too high for your dull ears
but so keenly attuned and pitched to their own straining hearts!
And they shall call to their comrades, your horses, who will alert and thrill
and leap into the air to gallop freely there…and you unhorsed…you laying there
upon the blood-stained grass of yesteryear…
Your time is up, for we are come to hunt you down
and tear that red coat straight away right off your back
and tossed into the sky, our banner free unfurled and our war cry…
No Longer! Not Anymore!
The Wine of Joy
“I have drunken deep of joy
and I will taste no other wine tonight.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Woman Under The Smiling Moon
I finally did it,
worked my hungry nails
underneath that hidden edge
along the ridges of my heart
and got a grip
on the flesh of my face
and ripped it clean off
and heedless of the cost
though I had counted carefully
as I knew how to count.
Everyone says I wore a mask,
I was a mask, and I just shake my head
and laugh, because they live out there
and they know nothing (what a pit to know).
That face? It was me so not me
and it held me in its grip so fiercely
and so furious in its keening hunger
to fit me to itself and find its being finally in me
But when I tore it from me
and snapped its parasitic drain
I saw the moon above me
and knew its secret then and there:
there is no man in the moon!
I am woman and I am free…
the moon is gentle in the night,
swimming ever above me.
Shadows and Silences
you consign me to shadows and silences
when you look away from wonder
when you sit and ignore joy
when you know what you don’t know
you put me behind panes
separate even though somewhat visible
I can see them there in front of me
by the dew of the morning fresh
you will always think you have measured me
but you have never really bothered
you dodge every questing tentative hello
and your twisting just says goodbye
but light is a funny thing, it changes
when you think it’s rays, it is drops
and when you see drops it is beams
light is never shining as it seems
you know i will sit here, still
because I do not go away
but I hunger in shadows and silences
just stuck here by your faint halfway
Intention
“People show their true colors,
unintentionally. Pay attention”
*Quote found online*
in what they do?
in what they don’t do?
in what they speak?
in the spaces between those words?
in what they do not say?
what are colors, true?
what are these intentions?
I think people mostly don’t,
intention
gosh it’s lonely sometimes
A Hot Summer Day And A Deck
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, 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 quite 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,
flip backwards but not ever reading ahead
(there is no ahead to be read in this book)
I miss you this hot summer day…
I Shocked The Snow
When it fell certain,
so sure in icy curtain
that always found its weighty bosom
enough to smother any flame
and quench any taper burning,
it was shocked to touch my coal,
it recoiled from those embers
and gathered in itself
and gained in substance frozen
and thus renewed its fall.
But when it touched my petals
(those tulips in the snow)
with icy graspy fingers
around my petal’s throat
to choke out warmth and heat?
It found itself diminishing!
It found itself becoming flowery
losing all its crystal majesty
and melting into cool waters
that I drank to slake my thirst
And thus I knew myself, and sure
that I could withstand cold and ice
and still bloom in winter, hang the price!
My roots go deep in fire and joy
amidst the snows so white.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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