and now it all melts
under falling skies
skies weeping
bleeding
it’s the shining blood of stars
dropping and everything
spinning and melting
down under just
one touch
one
touch of that stricken star’s
living draining dying
diamond
blood
and I wait
in mourning
hoping against
hope for morning
but know it in my bones
that everything’s sadly
melting, falling so fast
in slow motion away
swirling down to
that tragic
running
ruin
“…now it is hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:42)
Can you feel it
bouncing off steel beams
ricocheting off raw stone,
the sound of gunfire
off in the distance
grim and getting closer
in cold grey shuffling
grave-steps clotted
and rotted
and ruined
it’s the sound
of relationships
already shattered
broken relationships bloody
gutted in the streets
and played out
before our eyes
horrified and haunted
we weep tears of disbelief
to the cold deaf earth
we sweep bodies like trash
into the yearning yawning earth
and yet we still will not
turn or
turn or
turn
in this season
in this time
and Byrds sing
desperately praying
it’s not too late
but we have chosen
rankly, rottedly
we have sung the zombie songs
and joined the charnel choirs
of the living dead because
we lacked the simple courage
to be the dead living…dead living!
we have chosen fear
we are drunk on distrust
we rave raw in revenge
we are sickened because
we ate only anger
and anger
and anger
and no one leads
no one guides
to whom shall we go?
who shall save us
from ourselves?
We shed another’s blood
when we run out of answers.
They shed Their own pure blood
as Their one and only answer.
We kill, buried in despair.
They rise, giving us hope…
but will we open up our hearts
and see Them shining in our brother,
hear Them singing in our sister
irregardless of skin color
or religion, creed, or dolor?
Or will we just sink away
and slink away and dwell behind
those naked fig leaves and all truth
hidden from our eyes?
It is not pretty
It is not comforting
Brace yourself…
for I rub our noses in it,
the hypocrisy
is too much for me
and horror, hate is
all I see this day
Go ahead…
after reading,
go to the parades,
the barbeques, the picnics…
go to family and friends
and fireworks and fun…
but go
with these words
stuck in your craw and
mashed down in your marrow,
and know that this is
the truth of where we are come,
where we have been led because
we will not lead and now we stand
on precipices and drunk upon our past
and deluded in our dreams of futures
that are just not real.
I am glad for our constitution
one of the major leaps
towards true liberty
in world history…
but omg just baby steps
and not a signal that we have
arrived and can stop walking…
we must see how insidious
we have been taught
to play the fiddle
to scenes of horror
that would warm
the cold dead bones
of Nero his ownself.
Extract yourselves
from the trappings
and tentacles that croon
to your swooning soul and seek
to pull you down into an addict’s
wet-dreamy tragic death
and make good your escape
while there is still a crack of time,
a sliver of hope milky moony white
and weakly glowing still
in this crashing night…
for it will break indeed
in tsunamis of terror
not brought here
from foreign lands
but homegrown in
these places we did not
attend to carefully
and mercifully
and compassionately…
and then…
there, tonight
upon your bed,
in trembling,
whisper a prayer
and ask that you be
just delivered of a sliver
of that silver privilege,
slippery that squirms away
and wriggles fierce to live like that
insatiable chest burster of Alien…
oh God
PLEASE DELIVER US TO TRUE LIBERTY
and do not rest until
all can breathe until
all can breathe
We are waltzing in this Danse Macabre,
spinning thru the fogs of night
while day is faltering in light
and our feet cannot stop or halt
but bloodytapping tripping faults
See the fog dense, packed with fear
see odium’s terrain drawn near
and each one drinking bloody cups
raised heedlessly and lifted up
against the screaming skies…
We are now there.
You must not
look away…
Dixie Land
is our Promised
Land…alas!
What is happening here at home?
In “America the Great”? We roam
the “Homeland” in this late
hour dolorous and dangerous
we have been washed away by hate.
What has happened to
“The American Soul!”
What the fuck is that, anyway?
Dancing maniac-ally
at the cliff’s precipitous edge
and the fall is long deadly
but we have no recourse.
We have no recourse
because the only cure
has at long last become a curse
disparaged in our danse macabre
and mocked by all our ringing words
writ long ago as cover for
the drinking cup, the bloody cup
we lifted up in “Freedom”‘s name
and filled with slaveblood’s cursed stain
and now here in this hour dark?
Reason bleeds to death before our eyes.
midst the fiddling of the powerful
and bodies littering the floors
of offices and restaurants
airports, clubs and nursery schools
and still we dance the Danse of Fools
How many families will be shattered
and offered up unholy terrors
on the altars of our dark god
foolishness? And how we lecture
constantly wrapped in our privilege
disguised as Amendment Number Two
(it’s number two alright)
and truth dies screaming in the night
morality and reason run
in terrified time and treason comes
to exterminate the drunken dancers
dead on feet dead to the horror
of the screaming suffering beings
that they dance upon and call it
streets of gold…welcome to hell.
Welcome to Hell.
Nightmares.
That’s how I have been…lately. See, someone asked me “How have you been doing, lately?”
Nightmares.
It was a common question asked in a common way. When I answered that Orlando had really shattered me, she shrugged and said that the world was going to hell in a handbasket and that we just had to deal with it.
Indifference mixed with derision that I was “emotional” and “unprofessional”.
And I flinched under a fresh hail of words which might end up being something else…let me explain.
Here is why I have had these nightmares of being chased, being hunted and slaughtered, being tortured and tormented and left to suffer and die:
Because this man took action in the real world as an avatar of what our culture throws every single day…words.
Every.
Single.
Day.
As you read here…people from all walks of life…you statistically are cis-normative and as such you swim thru the waters of our culture with the current, finding it easy to slip and slide thru waves of words which wash over you and pass downstream without even a scratch.
But that is not the case for me…for millions in the LGTBQIA community…for tens of millions of others who are not privileged…and ultimately, it is not the case for you.
Every day words are slung around by trigger tongues shot from missile silo hearts loaded with radioactive fissionable words and those words destroy over and over and over. But bodies do not drop to the ground right away and we think that there is no effect.
I have read hundreds of so-called christian messages that say God hates LGTBQIA people, that God is punishing us for what we have “sown” (but it is implied that God doesn’t punish a cis-normie cus they are not … what?). I have read people who are celebrating and saying they wish he would have killed more people.
In a strange way, I think this man was more honest about things than the vast majority of haters, because he actually did it: he actually took instruments of death, and looked human beings in the eye, and shot them down in hatred, in horror, in fear.
But you? You who use your words everyday on others and shoot them dead in the heart? You who sit three thousand miles away and use words to hurt and silence and kill? You who cast stoney words? You who use chemical weapons of mass destruction in the name of “hating sin” and call that “loving the sinner”?
You are him. And anytime, anywhere, any of us indulge our evil and hating hearts with our words?
We are making our Our Own Private Orlando. Our own little abattoir of blood and bone and terror.
I read a FB friend who was so eager to decry the so-called terrorists of radical Islam that she momentarily forgot to carry the slaughtered in her heart…a gentle and indirect prompt stirred her, thank God and to her credit she took down the post and remembered the true enemy…but I tell you this:
Every single slur, every single sarcastic remark, every single angry slam, every single troll comment is a bullet.
And I have nightmares because all this man did was precipitate into the physical world the death and destruction and rape and violence and horror and rage that surrounds me, assaults me, overwhelms me every single day.
Yes…I remember the days before I came to myself…and I was like any other typical white privileged christian who thought they did not hate anyone and yet made casual callous jokes and had no awareness of anyone different than me as a hurting human being…and I will always bleed over those years of blindness, for they indeed qualify me as chief of sinners.
But no more…and now I can see how each and every time christians say that God is punishing the LGTBQIA community with actions like this, and that God is angry and pissed off because They feel mocked and thus slap us down, and that we are reaping what we have sown when in fact we had nuffin to do with how we are made…each time this is the attitude? They have made the sacrifice of Love that Jesus made for us on the cross null and void…
…and they nail us up there…and they nail their shadow and sin there…and they are the ones who vent their wrath and fear and loathing…on us there…and they have made Jesus sacrifice to be in vain.
What I am trying to say is this:
Each and every time you speak in insensitivity, unawareness, privilege, hatred, anger, prejudice, and judgement?
You are the Butcher of your Own Private Orlando and the hearers of your words your victim.
I am gonna go out to the world today and walk in that hail of bullets, that storm of bullets flying everyday.
And when I show how they wound me? I am gonna be the one jeered at, the one others recoil from with the forked fingers thrust at me with the christian evil eye ward…
When you stop killing with your words, creatures like that killer will not have nearly the power waiting to channel as an avatar of a culture of hate.
Nightmares.
I am having nightmares.
I am a pincushion of death-words thrust into me…
Let us wake one another up, for the hour is getting late.
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
elaborate
intricate
wrought
invested
imposing
it’s still just
a brutal lock
and my subjugation
your only key
your finger comes at me
like you think
you are God
well, it would
if you actually thought.
but you don’t
think
you just assume
and instead of sparks
you give ice chips of death
yes, that’s it, you throw off
sparks of death and call it life
in your masquerade
we soared high on currents,
uplifts unseen by human eyes
but oh so visible to us,
we dancers in the skies…
ever young and long did we thus fly
until we tired and we had need of
landing, resting, manna sweet to feed our
honking hearts, our silky souls to
take wing once again, in skies…
we thought forever we would fly
until that day the clarion calls they sounded
and the promises of haven-rest resounded
to our ears, our listening ears though with our eyes
we saw nothing but blind…blinds…we just saw blind
and swooping sounds from where?
and so we flew, we glided lower, lower
and so the guns did bloom and boom
and shot us from the keening clenching air
in lead-packed punches to the breast…
that took away our very breath
until we died, and dogs ran at us hard
to carry us triumphantly back into Massa’s yard
we, feathers fouled in blood, in gore, in mud
our necks floppy and broken in that flood…
of death that finally claimed us as its prey.
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
“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.”
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
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.
Everybody
wants to be king
of a hill
and that hill
just a pile
of dust
hot and red
and dry
or a dungheap
so silent
and stinking
with malice.
And yet
with more kings
than hills
and more dirt
than heart
and more dung
than wisdom
we just
collect hurt
and more hurt
from wounds
and from cuts
and from boots
on small faces
from despairing cries
and from silence
and malice
we just build more hills.
I wonder in stars
inverse black against
skies of light why
I wasn’t worth
the fight.
empty my skull
with a spoon thru my eyes
scrape the bone clean
and give me the peace
of an empty mind
worthless
no value
no beauty
just me
in my
traumatized
brain
screaming always
and keening
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
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
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.
Terse words…Words muddy
and swirling and steaming
like cream in cold-coffee
like death in soft-nectar
words lumbering lead-footed
fat flat and hard hulking
fear-shadows are lurking
in other death-words
words rain down like brain bombs
explode in uncertainty
pregnant with confusion
communion of judas-kiss
they use words like bullets
to shatter my skull
and blast my brain bloody
and turn my head into
an urn full of red
a paint-pot of death
that they can drink deep of
and spit on their canvases
in words and in brush strokes
dipped into the paint-pot
that my brain has become
from traumatic words
the top of my skull
ripped open by shrapnel
and now just a pain-t-pot
now just a pain-t-pot
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
“bring me
the horizon”
you said…
as if horizons
were singular,
just some
pearl, some
place to
go.
you show what
you don’t know
when you asked,
you don’t
know
me.
“I am horizons” I said
and rose my sun over
my mountains, casting
crimson crowns in
delicate dewdrops,
hanging pearls on
silk-stranded soft edges
soft, all my edges, all my
vast untrammeled lands
met together, met together
on my skin translucent.
(or, is it in?
in my skin,
transparent,
opalescent, white,
unmarked,
untrammeled?)
translucent skin
trammeled skin
tattooed skin
my skin
(my skins)
unstained and stained
all at once and only
by the shadows of the past
marking me indelible
in shadows playing
hide and seek with shades
(on my hide,
in my hide
so pure and
so unblemished
but only on
the outside)
shades that
lurk and lurch and loom,
arising from some world of
yesterday revolving ever in
my mind, in my
imagination, in
my tears that run
everlasting down my cheeks
in waterfall kisses
of grief…
and that horizon where past
and present and future
meet in shadows,
in kabuki dancers
dancing ever on my skin
(tattooing)
and I feel its pressure deep within,
the coming presence of a moment,
a moment sacred, a pregnant moment,
it feels so light,
it feels so heavy,
it sets me free
and paralyzes
with crippling fear
and aching purpose
in me,
the place
where all
horizons meet.
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
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
I was feeling fine, my day was good, and the sun shone outside.
As I walked the aisles looking for the stuff deemed so necessary
(after all, it HAS to be the Costco brand…cus KIRKLAND)
people smiled and we were soft on one another…
until I got to you, Checker, you with your fear become repulsion
become anger become hatred become revulsion become revenge
and your decision that I was a fraud and committing fraud
you who have let 5 ft tall dark skinned dark haired women
use the card of a nearly 6 ft tall blond norwegian woman
you who let half a dozen people use this common card,
the Holy Grail: the Sacred Costco Card
and yet me, who most coincidentally and closely resembles the card holder
but happens to be trans, me…you choose to police.
And loudly, and publically and angrily, and relentlessly.
whoever you are, you hard hearted shrew, I hope you never feel the way I do
I hope it never happens to you, for it is worse than the underside of dog-vomit
which is about what you thought I was made out of, based on your words and tone.
and then when you called over the henchman to loudly flat out dehumanize
and disappear me into what you want me to be in…boxed in your word SIR
(as if sirs walk with flowers in their hair and flowing jewelry and trinkets and flair)
and everything inside that I was began to melt
it was your western version of acid in the face
thank you, Costco zombie of horror and hate.
you don’t even remember anything but
the spectacle of tears and your own sweet wine
of derision that you drank from my heart become your tragic tranny chalice
but I will never be able to forget, because your acid burns my face yet and still
and I don’t even know if anyone cared enough to hold you accountable
and that diminishes me further, becoming even more of no account or worth
may the Lord restore my heart and give again to me an unscarred face
the sun scurries from the rim
of the far horizon, hurries
up to its important stage above all
things beaming.
it’s gonna have a helluva day
throwing shade at everyone
especially me, this moonchild
that sunshine passes thru.
the sun forgets everything
but its self-important run
to heights to glare down from
imperious, impervious, and naming.
I could look straight at it
but if I did, it would be quenched
in my knowing, darkling gaze,
my look that sees the backside
so I look away as it names me
wrong, other, afterthought
aside, and that old flame would
just as soon burn my ass.
but in just mere moments
when I lower my gaze, the sun
forgets I ever was, except maybe
to laugh and snicker at the moonchild
but the moon remembers
and so do I
the moon, soft, beautiful
receives me
knows my name
my true name
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.
Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!
Barcelona,
oh City of Bones
laying hot and dry in the sun
beating down on streets, on tombs
and tiles so red over white and so hot
and shimmering radiant still,
oh ye bones!
Barcelona, City of Bones
Baking before the gates of the Sun,
I sacrificed my purity for thee, such as it might be
(my purity, not my sacrifice)
Purity…
of thought,
of mind,
of heart and soul,
purity of
song and deed
and strong intention.
Barcelona, my sacrifice
so droll, so dirty is actually
sterility masquerading
as purity and thus is merely
the absence of jazz,
the absence of spice,
the absence of that
jagged noise of exultation
and thus there is no
purity and nothing
quite acceptable
enough.
Gladly do I lay it there
(my sacrifice, not my purity)
on the bony altar of your burning eyes
hung there above the freezing flames
of your sharp haughty sniff and thus
do I seek sanctuary in the fires of
your hunger, games appeased and satiated.
And these words I leave
(my longing words so red, so sharp)
along the edge of your wet teeth,
hard teeth so white and glistening,
and there, blurred,
there they mingle
with your breath,
with the liquid you
and thus become
inflammable and ready
to leap up like the Phoenix
to take their ease in air and be
us, there, us there
be us there in the air.
And this city here,
right in plain sight and swaying
in the salty breeze blowing in stiff
off the racing aching blue seas,
this City of Bones dancing on air
with my words
there in air
like banners in the wind,
like thirsty golden kerchiefs
flying midst meteors, comets,
midst stars in the night
flapping in the solar flares
and furies of the sun and lapping
up the finest purest beams
of silver, argent grey moonlight
And those fires
(of the night)
my words those silver fires
streaking, shooting across
the vast expanse of velvet
black thick nothing, silver flames
curling, licking at the bones
of the City hanging
in the deep dark void
And the music rounding there amidst
those handy banners sounds like owls
talking soft and hooty in the wind-torn branches
and our hearts are slender limber flexing long flagpoles
and we fly our flags of love like maidens flying
tokens for our champions…
Together we all
(words and banners and bones)
shine upon your battlements
Barcelona
City of Bones
I am the bristly nest from which the great blue heron springs.
I am the stones upon which stinging ice-churned runnels ring.
And there, those fires hot from which the Phoenix rare takes wing.
I’m scintillating embers, coals ablaze and life giving.
They named me foul pale heretic and laid me down to rest,
outside the white-washed churchyard walls, outside their ruddy fold.
And there my hot blood flowed rich-red to feed their bloodless grass,
I deep red died upon that emerald sward of murder bold.
And I do let my bones peek from the curtain of my skin
and thus do I me nourish every living thing herein
with my authentic self and my unconquerable song,
my passion unquenchable and my me a sacred throng
of birth from death and life leapt up in winds, in rain and dew
I am nest, stone and embers singing always clear for you.
and thus it is unholy ground is cleaned, hallowed once more,
and every living thing’s communion, ever opened door
when your history is called lies by liars…
“The saddest thing that can happen to a person is to find out their memories are lies.”
— Juan Gabriel Vásquez
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.
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
I’m on fire,
burning in words
burning in images
burning in thoughts
and torched again
by the why why why
why? Why do they say,
do, laugh, eye roll?
I honestly do not know
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.
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.
I can stay right here,
no passport, no visa
no access to that fairytale
land of opportunity and liberty
I don’t need to go to Paris
to find those willing
to gun me down, blow me up,
kill me in the name
of their bloodthirsty god
called gender.
Those terrorists
walk the streets
of my world behind
white faces, middle class manners
and smirks to rival the Riddler’s.
Paris comes to me
everyday.
“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.
Be yourself only
different now
somehow
with all
that
grief.
In case you ever
thought that
you were just
a being, just
a humble
presence
you are not just
anything, you
mean something,
more than that
you mean
everything,
because everything that
means something
beats inside
of you.
Blood Red Sunsets smothered by the sea
Parting birds flying south in songs of sorrow
Deep sad hymns are birthed deep within me
sung by longing winds unto tomorrow…
The hawk screams and jumps,
grabs clawfuls of fading blue sky,
rips them loose from the fabric
of the dimming day…and then
away….jpg)
While the red alder sees and sheds tears
in gold showers of dry rustly leaves
that spin and sigh and softly sing
a falling lament, a longing ode
to summer past and gone…
All is falling upon the cooling soil
waiting for the winter drums
waiting for the winter drums…
that moment when I am walking
no, floating, no…that moment
when I am flowing down
no, up, no…along the river
no, stream, no…torrent of
life and you decide
that you can just touch me
without permission or permission
no, consent, no…yes permission
and I stiffen in horror, in fear
no, terror, no…in anger because
you make me into nothing with your touch
but i mask it with my smile
no, grin, no…with my grimace
that you miss, you absolute oaf
because you think I am an otter
sleek and preening when I am
actually a hedgehog all quilly
no, thistly, no…all covered with razors
and shattered glass and broken promises
and splintered insults and shredded judgements
no, no—no—no, no
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.
time is the greatest distance
between two distant places…
me then. me now.
Today I am grateful
for that excruciating
powerlessness I felt
over and over
again and again
as a young child
and I would just cry
and cry and just cry
and I would just try
and try and just try
to summon some presence
in the midst of such absence.
Today, I know how to
think differently, how to
give up, how to
lose hope without (how to)
losing Hope.
Then I was empty,
and full of a void
inside the abyss.
Today I am flexible
dynamic, resilient,
I am a willow
and never an oak
and my golden harps
which were hung
on my branches
forgotten and rusty
are now soft being
strummed by Hands
not yet seen playing
songs of resilience.
Today I feel grateful
for knowing incredible
unutterable sadness,
washing in ocean waves
of the world’s sorrow
and my growing awareness,
of dissolving, surrender,
of letting go over
and over again.
All my jagged pieces
pulled out and untangled
untwisted unwrapped
washed clean of the muck
so healing can commence
I always thought vultures
slept at night, devil-red heads
bulbous on scrawny leather necks
tucked under fetid wing and pinion.
I was wrong.
They never sleep
but circle
endlessly
always
gliding around the dying
the rotten and discarded
waiting for that last quick breath
and then they land nearby
and hop like feather frogs
to their last supper never ending
I stick my head
out in the night
and cannot see them
but I know they are there
by the way
the rustling of those wings
echoes in my heart
If you seek to extend grace and love to cover over a multitude of sins, the worst thing you can do is undercut that extension by talking about it and pointing it out. Right?
This weekend has been excruciating, because the long-awaited and much dreaded article outing me to the entire world was published. And I am letting it stand uncommented on, because the person who wrote it apparently needs this as they deal, process, and move forward in becoming.
But it is awful having my voice stolen from me…it is awful being portrayed as a cruel caricature of who I am and who I was…it is tragic to see the consequences of what I chose and lived twisted so tragically as life spins on by and the gravity of the Fall pulls everything to that fierce collision with nothingness…and it is heartbreaking to see the person that I literally would instantly die for, right now this moment, if it would restore them to wholeness, flail around trying to recover their bearings and watch as they grapple with emotions and choices and basically just suffer a sort of death process.
The place this article was published did not contact me (though if they had, I would have said to go ahead…my loved one needs to speak unfettered)…the things that were written, well let’s just say that one person’s account sounds right until another person in a situation gives their lived experience, and then things are usually a lot more complicated and delicate in determining “what happened”.
Mostly what happened? The binary. The binary punished me from the beginning of my life, it trapped my parents into seeing me as someone I wasn’t…it tore my soul in half and left the only option forward for me a dissociation from self and adopting performance as my currency and agency in the world…it left a bloody gaping void within me that never ever could heal, and in which the Love of God was sufficient, but only just…it led to the birth of children who deserved more and got less in spite of me trying to give them everything…
What happened was a flawed imperfect person full of hope and love and wanting only to have kids and love them and raise them up into life did her best in the skin and role of a man…and is now vilified and excoriated for this…what happened is that I was born in a time and place and culture, and practiced the things that I thought were right and true and proper, and those so at odds with what I know now, what I matured into, grew into, and yet how does that undo things that happened 30 years ago?
And what happened was so much pain in my decision to transition that an entire narrative had to shift to account for the horror and the loss of a father…and I read of things, and am painted in ways that just do not match up with what I lived, what I remember, what emails and letters say to me, what other people who knew us and were around us a lot recall…
What happened was my dysphoria and depression and despair did indeed affect my heart and soul, and that affected everyone around me, and likely was the metaphorical equivalent to belts and abuse so does it really even matter if I never did the actual things I am accused of doing? Actually no…it doesn’t matter that I never did them, because it is clear to me that I was them…poisonous, toxic, radioactive, damned for being absent and cursed for being present and above all accountable for every last ill in those lives so precious to me.
I never really understood before why God’s answer to the horror of the Fall was to come as Jesus to this world, and suffer and die…I do now though. Because there are no words that I can say that would explain it, justify it, make it right, make it better, disappear it…all I could do would be to simply die in their place…
…and if I could do that, I would want it to happen hidden, without anyone knowing, and the provision of that death simply being wholeness and happiness for my hearts…
I love you, hearts…I will grieve until the day grief itself is satisfied and all things are made new. Say on. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you must.
I only ask Mama, please hold me close and sustain me in Your Love.
what do I
do with all
the loss?
I never knew
the absence
of things
could weigh
so heavy,
could loom
so large.
Truly the Pearl
of Great Price
does indeed
cost everything
it was eyes,
everywhere each one
attached to a beak, each beak
trilling so shrilly, chattering
in clakkety chirp-chirruping
in brackish raucous screams
loserloserloserloserloser
this forest was once a place
of wonder and the night
so full of promise but now,
it’s like the stars have fallen
from the sky and become
these birds, these birds with eyes
and beaks and nothing to sing,
just screams in a trackless forest
with a past turned out to be a dream
and a future that’s just a strip mine
yet unzipped, undug, yet torn open
and a present consisting of merely
the sound of these eyes so sharp
and beaks blunt just like red clubs
and no melody down here in sight
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?
how they spring from waves
like weasels going *POP*
slamming the waves
like children splashing in *puddles*
and then how they beach themselves
like angry sad *prophets*
telling us something
in suicide swims
onto the wet beach
and gravity’s grave
How many is it gonna take to push you to the place where you yourselves will step up? One a day? Would that do it?
Mostly, people don’t realize
time is a living thing, a tree
whose roots stretch back
to the beginning (and before?)
whose branches reach high,
broad and all around into
the “what-is-coming-what-may-be”
and we the fruit hanging there
swaying in the breezes
of the breath of Jesus
and Mama at His side
and all creation spinning out
inside this circle dance…
see, the past flows up, into the future
the future slides down, slides deep
sinks into the roots and makes its
transformations silver, shining
or is reclaimed and overcome, choked off
and laid, still born into the red dirt slick and packed.
and fruit? tossed and kissed in space and growing
in the currents from beneath and from above?
fed by rivers subterranean, drinking from
the rain that falls down from the clouds
of all that lies ahead…
we fruit are sweet, or bitter, or savory
in the grip of God and how the past is eaten
does predict the future…
but what the future holds
can quickly change the past
in just an eyelash twinkle
and we all are changed!!
Ahh…I hold to the past
and cling tight to my future
and throw my arms wide to the sides
and hug all “what-may-comes”
into my heart so soft, so strong
and thus shall my heart ever sing
the song of great becoming
and the song of all forgetting
do you get it now?
nothing is “just itself”
nothing at all,
least of all the past. 
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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