A Triptych Poetical Look At Fathers’ Day

Posted on June 15, 2020 by charissagrace

The Footprints of Ghosts
(commemorating my first Father’s Day as myself)
June 15th 2014

The fire crackles and pops
its diphthongs and phonemes
in that hot and feisty
rapid-snap delivery.

“Dad! Dad! Daddy! Father!”
It says this in living
letters of merry blazing
iterations of what,
repetitions of who,
and smoky, hazy eye-burning
questions of…
how?

I shiver and draw close,
grateful for warmth
this late spring day.
It is still early, and summer
slumbers in the dawn,
as I sit shiva with spring …

and the fire sings, keens,
quests, warms and shows us
the way of all things,
fading natural-like, and
giving up its ghost.

Ashes drift lazily,
footprints of wandering ghosts
free at last from their entombment,
in limbs of wood and sap,
and finally I see ashes
are ghostly release,
are seeds, promises of Phoenix,
gathering, bunching,
heaving and inevitable.

Smoke gets in my eyes,
clears my eyes, blurry and stinging
and stirs my memory pools
as I think back on 31 spectral years,
as a ghost encased in a word,
in a role, entombed
in limbs of alien thick
coarse wooly flesh.

Those long years of walking on water and anxious,
with no idea
what was a daddy
and inherent universal
knowing of love so deep it makes
the shores of the galaxy seem shallow.

Love was my fire,
my ghost, my ash-seeds,
and I my own Phoenix
sleeping, waiting,
looming, wanting.

I gave myself, my blood and sweat,
my upturned nose to fear and downturned face to them…
I threw me on the fire
and I screamed silent,
solitary inside no-one-else-here land.

I popped and hissed
and seethed and whistled
and snapped as I
gave up the ghost each day,
turned to ash each day,
diminished, but growing…
disappearing and becoming

until I walked
free and disembodied
and covered with ashy afterbirth
and filled with knowing
I could do nothing more
than give the love of one called father
even if I could not bear the
name of man.

Summer stirs, and my reverie is snapped
by the sharp chirp of robins
wanting to scritch thru the fire remnants for sowbugs.
Spring has closed her eyes,
her breath has slowed
even as mine has quickened
and I stand to face
my first father’s day of
fully knowing me.

Love calls 4 times.
And I know that somewhere,
somehow, someway
that feisty fire-voice
was naming and liberating
and I have been reborn
from all ash,
a ghost no more
but bodied, present,

and turning in my joy.

**********

The Blossom of Memories of You (Father’s Day 2015)
June 21st 2015

There’s a stone in your body
where heart used to be
there’s a hurt in my heart
where your smile ran so free
there’s an echo of you
deep within, here in me
but your voice trails off
and disappears.

You have wandered so far afield
into the satin night
while I am touching
the circle of golden light
shed by the memories
of what we shared,
what we might share again,
if you’d stayed within sight
and let love be our shield,
let love be our shield…

But I wear your flowers in my tresses, braided
in my hair the scent of your laughter, it lingers
longing for you to return and to claim
those words that you uttered then, sitting so empty,
forlorn, blurred and muttered without clarity
and without true commitment
to something beyond the grave,
waiting to rise again,
new…rise again, new…

I wear
the blossom
of memories
of you…

**********

Beside This Ring Of Ashes One Year Later
June 21st 2015

One year later,
in this year of grace
I sit in stillness
ringside once again
but only with dead ashes,
no flame.

Instead, I warm myself within
with thoughts of fires long ago,
long gone out but flickering
strongly in this quiet night
of lonely memories.

I know it has to happen, yes
this death of me, this death
of who I was, no…
what I was, or rather
what you thought I was
and what I wasn’t too.

You thought me as a god,
and just a little lower than a god.
Your “glorious glorious father”
shining strong and tall,
quick and certain, no one knew
that was but wooly curtains drawn
over a stage making the ready
for a play to become real-life…
finally…at last…
But…what’s a child to do when god betrays?

When god is thus unfaithful and capricious…
that god must become monster,
and vicious harsh taskmaster,
when god must be recast as sick pretender
(your words, love, not mine, those are your words)
as just the “other”, empty, just a mask?

Well, Nietzsche showed the way, now dint he?
He sussed the death of God and birth of crisis…
He understood the very underpinnings
of everything are quivering like liquid,
all foundations kicked asunder
and this hollow edifice
left floating in the shell-pink air.

Nietzsche called for total transformation,
he demanded blood, the death of God,
and also everything He stood for.

I get it…I do…the death of god
No really, I know it’s me, not you…
Problematic in my breathing
and offensive in my joy, well
this aggression will not stand, man!

And so it is that I must die…well,
he must die and be defamed
for every single gripe,
complaint or wound or sling
he must be destroyed
because he wasn’t He
and now it’s clear
that he would never be…
but I will be…me.

Go ahead, beloveds,
it’s true that I must die
so you can be set free
and God at last can finally BE
that God of Wonder
far beyond the Galaxy,
high above and right beside us
bringing life again to you and me.

Use what silver knives you have
(I placed them in your hands so long ago,
carefully planned, bequeathed to you your
weapons of words, of music and of comprehension).
Use the ropes you find inside your packs,
laid lovingly from Lorien in wonder
and in sober long anticipation yes,
that someday your blood be required
of me and on my head as well
(but it’s in my heart forever).

No crucifix for me, how gauche,
how gothic and old fashioned!
No…a shiny scaffold glittery
erected stainless steel there, gleaming
austere, so implacable
and one thin razor wire noose
with my neck’s name writ there

*Charissa Grace*

(except it’s not so plain as all that)
no…the old name that speaks of

blood and
the price and all things made
white as snow again.

I have confidence in you
(this is not stupid or myopic,
this is love, Lovelies).
I see this execution
is but you living out
what I have taught you
that there is no god but God
(not even glorious father)

and all things that you love
descend from His Great Goodness
and Mama’s bag of riches

*beauty of the Leaves of Grass
haunting grace of purity ring
simple joy in eyes of beloved boys
furious flow of men and balls and love*

I wish you all good always
and hope that someday your mouth won’t be cursed
with this burnt aftertaste of death,
and me just acrid curse to you…
if my death expiate your soul
and bring release and freedom to you all
then quick, oh Hangman, let the black bell toll
and pull your lever that I may hard fall

and snap…snuff…poof

and on you live, free
building brave new worlds
but I will still be like those flickering fires
that linger in my mind while I sit here
beside this ring of ashes never warm
and those seats empty in this quiet storm

of memory, of love, of sorrow held so dear
God knows I gladly die and wish you near
and trust that I will rise and know no fear
forever, just Love’s Fires always here.

“The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God,’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I! All of us are his murderers…Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?…Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Sweet Pea Nevermore, Furia Forever

Posted on June 27, 2019 by charissagrace

I doubt you will ever read this, and that is really okay.

However, on the off chance you would see it, I can express my compassion and the depth it takes for me to get to the place that when Cancers get there, it’s all over.

Finis.
Kaput.
SO done.

There is a way back…it is the way of resurrection, and that involves a complete acknowledgement and acceptance that this died because of you and neglect. Your silence killed it, and once it is dead and I have set beside the body longer than Lazarus was in the tomb, I cut if off without looking back.

Miriam…I do take responsibility for this: I so wanted a mama of spirit, a crone to learn from and learn with. I so desired a mentor and partner too…and I thought you were it.

I was wrong. Because someone who mentors me knows me well enough after 2 years to know that neglect and silence and slipping off the direct things I have said is NOT the way. Confronting? Ok…taking responsibility? Yes. Remaining in the fire and dialoguing back and forth, give and take, helping me to see my own blindspots OH YES.

But not mocking about my baby steps, doing that in writing and then in front of others…not telling me that my gender status is not important to you…even though you thought you were saying something freeing you actually denied me…drinking DEEPLY from that Mama Care I just DO for those I love, and my unexpected emails and texts that know things I cannot know and speak to things I cannot speak to…such as in Greece 2018 and the work of the fucker with clay feet…

…the hand written lil book I gave you of my bone poems, cus you were so into bones then and not a WORD of thank you for it…even my willingness to SLICE FROM MY BOOK the pages you craved like Rapunzel’s mother craved greens…GAWD I almost did that. I had PLANS to excise them and frame them with glass on both sides and you would have had “Bones“, and “Of Women and Wolves” and “We Lords Of Tuscany, We Ladies Of The Meadow“…they would hang in mid air, slowly turning and displaying their faces…just as I do.

Hang. In mid air.
Slowly turning.
Displaying my faces.

THAT is where I was with you…and you?

DRINKING ALL THAT and then turning around and making fun of me for my silly girlish joy in dressing in costumes for a celebration…eating the food and then shitting on a ceremony because it wasn’t “proper” (according to what YOU want, and yet it was not about what YOU want, was it? It was about a celebration and making a new way…)

I was in circle recently…and it was revealed that every single person there had deep issues with previous experiences, things said, boasts made of how money could be made elsewhere, and rebukes issued in the name of leadership which left wounds…control issues.

Control.

Something you pay lip service to being confronted about but when the nitty gets gritty your talons come out and grip even harder and the only way to get free is to get free with a ripping and tearing that leaves flesh on your claws.
I want to thank you though. Because without those things it would not have been abundantly clear the WHAT and the WHO and the WAY of the circle…and not the way of your circle or the way of other circles…the way of US. Cus we knew then, what we wanted and what we did not want…and without the first one, the last one could not be.

And thank you also for other things too…I learned so much…and mostly I learned that I wanted something more that you just weren’t feeling or giving.

And now I am done.

Unless of course the work of the dead is done and the thing unearthed…but why, really, is what I think you are thinking, cus that Charissa is such a bitch and such a pain with her wordy over the top flow and bugging all the time…

well…I discovered something…I discovered there are people who CRAVE that, who WANT that…and who give it back too, received as something precious and given back.

The first person who used “Sweet Pea” for me eventually just disappeared from my life. Literally. Just up and was gone, and I cannot find her anymore.

You are the other person who did…and when you mocked me for “buying a stick” and then accused me of expectations I didn’t have and shit on a ceremony you did not partake in creating even though you were explicitly invited to do so, and you said behind my back to someone else comments indicating that you considered parts of the ceremony stupid…and when you received my long and difficult email of confrontation and your reply was part apology and part shift the issue from hurt to anger and part turning it back on me with dreams that I did not and do not receive as “about me” and then when I replied to THAT email you never ever even had another word…and I waited and waited…and there was MUCH that needed to be addressed but you COULD have addressed how I called you out about trying to shift the issue from hurt to anger…

…you could have even probed DEEPER there…

but you just…gave…silence. And not GOOD silence, but the silence with the shark fin threat…that left me hanging…and finally abandoned…

and at last our “we” was dead.

Things are revealed in Circle time…and this year I realized that I don’t want you in the circle, and I also don’t think it bothers you a whit.

If it DOES bother you, then there are some things…things to be addressed…and reparations that must be discussed.

And why would you do that? It is hard and feels yucky and it is the REAL death work that gets into the shit and the rot and pulls out the diamonds…why would you do that when you can just jet off other places where you flow so much better?

So, there it is…I am writing to ghosts as I already do with my poetry, writing to the ghosts waiting to be born when the audience that sees me will wonder why nobody knew her…and I am writing to the ghost of us who perhaps needs dismissal to pass on and perhaps wishes re-embodiment and resurrection (which depends on the living).

Don’t tell me I should have sent this directly to you: I already hit the ball over the net to you back in February and you have not replied…again and again not replied. So fuck that.

I congratulate you, for you got it, finally…what you accused was there that was not, but now it is and burning bright and clear as a consuming fire and not a dirty heat

Anger.

Yes. I am angry. I am angry with myself for not being more careful and for not listening to the niggles that THIS is not a person in your world, for she lives in the jets and the places and stratas that you will never go because you have not the money nor the time available…this is not a person in your world for she buys and acquires things that SHE considers approved and yanks the rug out whenever you do…this is not a person in your world because she wants to be paid for teaching and you walk by a different creed…

And I am angry with you for not replying…for remaining silent…for not even resuming a typical conversation on ANY of the other things we “shared” (I should say I shared and assumed you shared too)…for hurting people in the circle and giving a different story than the hurting ones experienced…for NOT seeing me…the true surefooted winged horse I am…but instead seeing the old nag.

I now take a name for myself, and by this shall ever I be known to you if you attempt a return (there IS a path, it is the paths of the dead which you can walk):

Furia

07 | February | 2016 | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on February 7, 2019 by charissagrace

This is from 2016, and I think it is very relevant to right now, because there is so much here you have missed.

I really do not know how to interpret your “gifts”, quotations used because you have often used money to obligate, to create hierarchies, to…gawd, who can ever really know?

The heck of it is that I have zero trust to ever really find out, because I don’t think deep down that you are really prepared to understand that this is an existential path instead of a moral one.

Regardless…this day from 2016 is a really good day to take a look at, in that it records several really fine poems and a couple essays that are palpable…this one being the most salient.

…you say that I think I can do what I want and pronounce it all forgiven by my belief in my “make-believe god”? You say that I think I can justify whatever I want and call it a “Road to Damascus” experience?

You think wrong.

You will never know the depth of the pain and sorrow for each and every time that I have fallen short…

…and you also will never know the hurt and pain you caused me with your false accusations of abuse and physical harm, your violent anger and threats of murder…your false memories and placing words in my mouth that I never said or even thought…

You will not have a way of knowing that even in your falseness I see that as my own fault because I did not do a good enough job to birth you into wholeness and understanding of truth…and instead, you go on forever about things that are so insane as to be befuddling to me.

No. I am blood guilty of sins of commission, and sins of omission as well.

But I place my faith and my trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and in His Cross…and I ask Him to see me thru.
I trust Mama to Defend me, Advocate for me, Sustain me, Console me, and Comfort me.
I will do so all of my days, no matter how good or bad I was each day, no matter how deeply I fail or how high I fly.

This will never change, though I hope and pray that I will, continually becoming more like Jesus’ Lovely Heart by the Grace of God poured out liberally.

And there are others too…who read here like Nicodemus…you from the past, who used to come out into my working environment so you could criticise me, call me unsubmitted, tell me how I had no rule over my soul, and basically oppose every thing I attempted…I know you read here and think me tragically deceived, fallen away, or (one dude, you think this) in the clutches of “sexual sin”…

you think that being transgender is an act of sexual fulfillment, which absolutely cracks me up…like, I guffaw when I consider your ignorance and assumption.

You all have missed me in the midst of your judgement.

Here is me: this song forever, along with the other ones I have posted this morning.

If you want to understand me and be in my heart, you must understand and accept these songs. Whether or not you adhere to the songs is not my concern…that is up to you and your own convictions and choices. I seek to love and accept you regardless, from you who say you dreamed of murdering me for years to you who shake your head and waggle your beard because you have judged me outcast and shunned.

Sometimes I need to make these declarations.

Today is one of those days…and I am still here…like Papillon…I am still here…clinging to the precious Bleeding Side of Jesus.

Source: 07 | February | 2016 | Charissa’s Grace Notes

The Wreck Of The New Charissa

Posted on January 27, 2019 by charissagrace

I’ve been fingering the tears
again, the rents and runs and ruins,
where earth convulsed and absence ruled,
raw abandonment carved away
all solid ground for good and gone.

I have no earthly idea why
the silence swung its hammer blow
and shattered what I thought solid
showing me that it was shells
surrounding nothing but a hollow
lurk that waited mocking there
and empty.

Three months (a trimester) time,
and edges that were razor sharp,
that sliced my gentle fingertips
(the same ones that speak spirit braille
and dole healing for blackest ail…)
to bloody shreds and ribbons red
has birthed…just rain, the steady drizzle

constant, velvet soft it falls
eroding bleak bewildered grief
answering frantic questions asked
(but never spoken) just rainfall
that whispers just because…

Smoothing cliffside, washing clean
rinsing scouring the mean
and low and petty dissipated,
rivulets until my fingers
felt, felt, just moss, fresh grass

and fog mingled in sassafras
and orchids peeking from the ruin
The fearsome Wreck of the New Charissa
(on a reef she never saw
and doesn’t understand) has even
still again become redeemed
in absence. In abandonment.

Once again,
the Majesty of Absence
is Present
and Beauty
walks again

Students in ‘MAGA’ hats mock Native American after rally

Posted on January 19, 2019 by charissagrace

Somehow, I learned that this is wrong and evil, this is bullying and hateful. You can rejoice that you managed to raise a child that learned this lesson…

and you can also rest assured that your child grieves literally every single day that you support ttaf and are blind to the heinous effect this evil monster has had on the spiritual climate of our nation…and you do it in the name of God, twisting things around, skewing them…because your skin color and economic status provide you with the position to do it.

It is one of the truly great wounds in my life that you are deceived by this thing and all of its shills, and that you have allowed your most holy faith to be dragged into the shit in the name of ttaf…you have placed your politic in the highest place and moved your faith aside.

The Apostle James would tell you to weep and howl.

In the meantime, if your children were here…doing this…would you be proud? I know for a fact that one you loved would not be proud… and that way back then neither would you.

The sad thing is, now I think you would be proud.

And what of it when these young misguided terrors gathers together in a group and begins to go to town on me, others like me?

Evil never ever stops on its own. It must be resisted!!! And this thing will not be exorcised until those like you begin to resist…before it is too late and your join your forebears the Nazi sympathizers of the 30s-40s.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A diocese in Kentucky apologized Saturday after videos emerged showing students from a Catholic boys’ high school mocking Native Americans outside the Lincoln Memorial after a rally in Washington. The Indigenous Peoples March in Washington on Friday coincided with the March for Life, which drew thousands of anti-abortion protesters, including a group from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills.

Source: Students in ‘MAGA’ hats mock Native American after rally

john pavlovitz -Selling the Souls of American Evangelicals

Posted on January 6, 2019 by charissagrace

As do you, ttaf supporter…though ye be old, ye waste the time of your life when you are MOST free to live by the true core of your faith, suffering no loss…yet ye value your gruel as if it is the very Lamb’s Wedding Feast.

Woe to you.

“…They can’t see from the inside, what is so apparent from a distance.

“Moment by moment, choice by choice, they begin to drift from their calling, and no one close to them ever tells them while they’re still humble and amenable enough to listen. The power they accrue begins to gradually silence dissent or to remove it from view altogether.

“These men end up spending their entire lives breathing solely in the intoxicating air of sycophant’s praises; never protected from their own hubris, never cautioned against their recklessness, never alerted to the ways they’ve lost the plot or begun leasing off large sections of their credibility for temporary rewards.

“Surrounded on all sides by genuflecting yes-men and women lacking the intestinal fortitude to push back against the toxic sludge pouring from their lips, they begin to feel more and more comfortable and even emboldened in it.

“As they do, the teachings and the words of Jesus become less and less useful, because those things begin to testify loudly against them, they start to clearly voice their opposition—and so they begin to silence them too.

“They learn instead, to bask in the applause of the salivating multitude, who gladly amen their every bitter word, no matter how reckless or incendiary—when they should be teaching them how to love more expansively.

“As the hateful choir cheers their ramblings, they grow more and more delusional, more and more comfortable bowing before the golden idols of their ego and ambition. With each day they slide further down the slope…”

Source: john pavlovitz – Stuff That Needs To Be Said

Opinion | Why Trump Reigns as King Cyrus – The New York Times

Posted on January 3, 2019 by charissagrace

ttaf supporter: it is not true that God will be displeased with you if you oppose ttaf on the basis of Jesus’s words. You live in the New Covenant, and not the old. The old is completely fulfilled…and thus the idea that some Cyrus “king” is what God wants is utter bullshit.

What God wants is what God has always wanted…and what is that? If you have to ask, what kind of Christian do you really think you are?

Ask James…he will tell you.

“I have attended dozens of Christian nationalist conferences and events over the past two years. And while I have heard plenty of comments casting doubt on the more questionable aspects of Mr. Trump’s character, the gist of the proceedings almost always comes down to the belief that he is a miracle sent straight from heaven to bring the nation back to the Lord.

I have also learned that resistance to Mr. Trump is tantamount to resistance to God.This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

They want it all. And in Mr. Trump, they have found a man who does not merely serve their cause, but also satisfies their craving for a certain kind of political leadership.”

Trump rants while ‘all alone’ in White House on Christmas Eve – CNNPolitics

Posted on December 25, 2018 by charissagrace

Supporter of ttaf: this is what you committed idolatry for. You will find me waiting at the gates of redemption for you…if you are even able to see it, for did not the Lord say that even the elect would be deceived?

The most offensive thing about this deception though is how easy it is to see thru this absolute fucker. He is not even tricky…and that is what brings so much grief: the realization that this shit was inside you all along, concealed…and just waiting for a pretext to out itself.

It’s Christmas in America: The President is home alone in the White House, ranting at his foes inside and outside; an administration lurching deeper into crisis; stock markets are in free fall and the government is paralyzed by a partial shutdown.

Source: Trump rants while ‘all alone’ in White House on Christmas Eve – CNNPolitics

In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death

Posted on November 20, 2018 by charissagrace

Night has gnawed grey brittle bones
clean, bare and thin as grave clothes, shriv’n
of warmth, sheer worm-worn sheets like stones
as cold as mercy never given

and weary…in the fires and flame
of time’s compressing screeching keen
as red heart slows, constricts in shame,
wings tangled in the chancel screen

In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death

Feel Her presence there in echoes
of bones nigh breaking, at least kneeling
to the moment’s cadence, throes,
within the Delphic Sanctum reeling

For a breath without drinking smoke
and thirsting throat, a coal black caul,
a scarf of soot round necks to choke
a masquerade, a pallor, pall

In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death

The loss of life and stone stilled tongues
and this is real, is bitter tart
It’s in a face, laces the lungs
It’s breaking in and on the heart

that continues rustling rough beneath
those sheets, and fearful to the touch
that long slow wet grief’s glistening sheath
and trembly tears the only crutch

In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death

Whoever dares to come, show up
with tears impudent, bold, absurd
and brave enough to take her cup,
enough to quench flames shaken, stirred

and break her crumbly mouldy bread
and eat and drink the Overwhelm
in numb mute witness, slow soft dread,
in courage, waiting in this realm

In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death

Yet…beneath the brown and chuckly dark
a river runs, it’s clear and deep
like liquid stars, a crystal spark
flowing, a fount in this stark keep

Yet…all who partake of her sup
can find their certain path to drink
of living waters springing up
and resonating in the ink

In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death

A tide lived backwards in the crush
A tide rolled forward far and wide
A resonance of life-blood gush
Love’s unstoppable great glad tide

The crisis of this time is met
in intimate authentic breath
that fears no evil, dreads no debt
and singing rises from short death

In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death

9 political cartoons by Dr. Seuss that are still relevant today.

Posted on November 4, 2018 by charissagrace

Well hello there Supporter of ttaf!

Here is the good doctor who you assiduously made sure I read. In fact, you taught me to read from his books!

This is a great skill to have, and it takes a much more active brain than watching Fux News all day ERRR FOX NEWS…

It stuns me that in this time of information access unparalleled in history, you have stuck your head even deeper into the sands of superstition and suspicion.

I finally understand what you mean when you say “Make America Great Again!”

You liked it better when racism was explicit and unconcealed! You liked it when you could call people of color whatever name you decided…like “negro” or even worse…when you could “Jew prices down”, when you could mock Asian people’s beautifully shaped eyes…all the while telling me Jesus loved the little children of the world…

You want to go back to the days when people of color were “allowed” to live so long as they kept their head low and slunk around out of sight knowing their place, and you liked being able to shake your head sadly when some “boy” forgot his place and got hisself lynched.

Well, I am glad you gave me the tools to free me from your heinous ignorance and xenophobic fears…and I weep for you, whining and crying all about how you are getting cheated of your golden years when you can just be an old crank and vote for whoever you want.

You do have that power…the problem is you are voting for an out and out racist who is committed to harming people who are Other (whether racially, religiously, or identity)…

you are voting for a misogynist who wants to erase and kill your very own child…because the funny thing about evangelicals is they keep producing children who are variant: sexually, gender, ability variant…

because you want an indulgence…

I am revolted by your callousness.

The legendary children’s author had some thoughts about “America First.”

Source: 9 political cartoons by Dr. Seuss that are still relevant today.

i am the moon | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on September 23, 2018 by charissagrace

I am posting my own poem again…because I have new readers and I want to introduce you to my true core rather than the prophetic broadsides I am compelled to post in the times of ttaf and monsters.

This poem speaks about what it is like to be “Othered”.

as i sit in tall grass
silky-lashing back and forth
quiet like tiger-tails talking
in air with movement

i think about the earth
spinning in space
circling the sun
amidst the stars
(but none of them close…

Source: i am the moon | Charissa’s Grace Notes

At Ease In Zion | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on September 21, 2018 by charissagrace

This is to YOU, supporter of ttaf.

No punches pulled, straight to the heart…faithful are the wounds of a friend, and deceitful are the kisses of the enemy.

You stand condemned in what you approve from your own mouth.

I don’t know what I feel stronger, pity for you or grief.

Alas…

Read it if you dare.

“the punching of one’s own face, one’s own eyes
the throwing of sawdust at everyone
the bashing of beams against dull skull bone
the grunting, squee of rooting pigs alone

the missing of the point that TRUTH is making
the wallowing in anything that soothes
retreat into the silly absurd argue
and justice once again goes barefoot begging…”

Source: At Ease In Zion | Charissa’s Grace Notes

30 Seconds

Posted on August 14, 2018 by charissagrace

nine and
a half
minutes
too long…

that’s what
30 seconds
is

Note To ttaf Supporters

Posted on July 7, 2018 by charissagrace

(This is not my original writing…it is from FB and it says very well what I feel, and why I grieve over the vast gulf that is between me and people I used to respect and now am absolutely befuddled and heartbroken by. Watching the lives of the least of these being sacrificed on the altars of orthodoxy and comfort is tragic).

Note to ttaf supporter:

“I am unconcerned that we have different politics. I do not think less of you because you voted one way and I voted another.

We need people to vote and the candidate we select is not always going to win. It is hoped that we will have someone who is competent enough to run our country.

That didn’t happen in the last election. We got a thin-skinned egomaniac who has never been held accountable for any atrocities he has committed.

Let me be clear.

I think less of you because you watched an adult mock a disabled man in front of a crowd and you still supported him.

I think less of you because you saw a man spouting clear racism and you cheered for him.

I think less of you because of your willingness to support someone who openly admires dictators and demonizes the press and anyone who criticizes him.

I think less of you because you heard him advocate for war crimes and you still thought he should run this country.

I think less of you because you watched him equate a woman’s worth to her appearance and you thought that was okay.

I think less of you because you’ve seen his appointees systematically destroy legal protections and loot the tax payers money and you are ok with that.

I think less of you because

You watched, along with the rest of the nation, as he separated families and locked innocent children in dog cages and you were not horrified as the rest of us were.

(actual billboard inside the internment camps)

I think less of you because

You refuse to accept the fact that this man wants to work with dictators but has alienated our long standing allies.

I think less of you because you refuse to review the facts and accept that this man is lying to you on a daily basis.

It isn’t your politics I find repulsive. It is your willingness to support racism, sexism, misogyny, and cruelty that I find repulsive.
I think less of you because you supported a tyrant and bully when it mattered and that is something I will never forgive or forget. Your lack of morals and basic humanity are devastating to me.

There are some things I can never be civil about: concentration camps, genocide, white supremacy, misogyny, harm to children, mass trauma, state violence, rising fascism, to name a few.

There is NO civil discussion with someone who agrees with putting children in dog cages.

So, no…you and I will never be “coming together” to move forward or whatever.

Trump literally disgusts me and I hate the sound of his voice spewing hate and dividing the country but, the fact that he doesn’t disgust you is something that is going to stick with me long after this presidency.

You have shown me who you really are and the fact that you still support this monster and rush to justify everything he does makes me feel that we have nothing to discuss.”

Asleep In The Dark Hour

Posted on June 19, 2018 by charissagrace

This is the darkest period in my memory, of this country, where the culpable inaction of a few, is impacting many, for generations to come…

It was decades in the making, and the coup de grâce was the Russian rise in Worldwide Criminal Organized Crime interaction, the United States’s lazy selfish complacency and greed, and a narcissist ready to be the figurehead of it all.

Couple that with an American Church that would rather masturbate and call it worshipful union and you have a desperate and horrific crucible for the slaughter of humans.

Something that Republicans and evangelical christians must own, is the fact that they alone are responsible for alienating/sewing fear, distrust and potential hatred of the US in each and every child locked up and put in a camp — and who could blame them…

even the sweetest, most vulnerable children will become hardened, angry and damaged by this.
They will carry the scars for the rest of this lifetime.
They will not forget that this country failed them.

Oh, say! See that skull spangled banner, waving sinister o’er this land of the fat and lazy and the home of the privileged drinkers of innocent blood.

Repost of A Call To Repent

Posted on May 26, 2018 by charissagrace

From 2016…my thoughts on the popular evangelical christian “shotgun passages” they use to blanket condemn anyone who is not cisgender and heterosexual. I am reposting this because I sense that there are many readers from the past, several of whom have issued blanket condemnation of me and others like me…and who I have not seen or exchanged a single word with for many years…and yet they somehow know the state of my eternal destiny and current connection with God…

It makes me so sad…but not for me, actually! For THEM! So cocksure, so sage and sad, caressing their chins ever so mournfully and yet so piously, rubbing their beards…and wallowing in their own human pride and selfish piousness. People who claim titles like apostle and prophet, pastor and teacher…

people who Lord it over one another and practice a spirituality that is actually “homo-sect-uality”, and in fact the epitome of that abuse of power that Paul describes in the 1 Cor 6 passage, wherein an older powerful man exploits a younger and vulnerable boy…

I have seen (and experienced) that very exploitation myself.

It is my true hope that scales would fall off their eyes, as they did my own…where I discovered that the REAL transition of my life was transition from a self-righteous pit of death and striving towards a humble and broken compassionate vessel of the Love and Generosity of God.

“…Now, let’s see: I spot behaviors in this passage, behaviors that all focus on choices of the will…choices to commit various sexual sins (still not talking about orientations), choices to break commitments made to God and to other human beings (adultery and idolatry, which is a VERY tricky and subtle fault), choices to be envious that result in theft and coveting other people’s possessions, choices to become drunk and pursue a lifestyle of choice to indulge escaping from mature and fruitful living, choices to speak with anger and intense hatred in bitter speech to other human beings (yunno, like the comment section of articles), choices to THREATEN PEOPLE INTO DOING WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO…like the shunning that YOU REGULARLY DO to those whose ORIENTATIONS are imagined by you to be behavioral choices…

and yet somehow, ALL of the above choices you extend Grace and Mercy to, and almost all of those choices you have almost certainly been blood-guilty of yourself!! But you sit cheek and jowl in the pew with your fellow “unrighteous” and allow for yourselves and your cohorts in unrighteousness to participate in the Righteousness of Jesus and thus not only be forgiven, but in your mind EXCUSED from scrutiny…and you are content with the understanding that each person must scrutinize themselves with God (oh wait: Paul said that he did not judge even himself, for God is Judge)…”

Source: Love Wins | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Blind Bartimaeus and You | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on May 22, 2018 by charissagrace

I am reposting this prose essay that I wrote in 2015. Based on current readership, I think it might hit some hearts that are perhaps now harrowed by grief and plowed by sorrow, and tender, softened by trial to receive seeds of humility that may grow and blossom into the fruits of compassion.

At least…I hope so.

May we all find the grace to become as Bartimaeus.

It is clumsy and has arthritic hands when it speaks and cannot hold small fine brushes or move with nuance, and so it paints with a broad brush in generalizations and caricatures…it is cartoonish, buffoonish…it is guffawing and backslapping……and the absolute worst is that it advocates the very hatred and othering and policing against others that has wounded and killed so many in LGTBQ circles.

Somehow, hatred and othering is okay because “they have it coming”.

I would say that I am embarrassed for the individuals to whom I refer, except that I am so deeply dismayed embarrassment is too embarrassed to show her face. I think it is clear that hatred is a human heart problem…and will never ever be conquered by more hatred…ever. Hatred can only be driven out by love, and when love is met with more hatred, the only secret weapon it has in its employ is grace, as displayed by forgiveness and then more love.

Constance: if you fail to grasp this essential truth, then you will be doomed to circle the constellations in this galaxy of ideas and ideologies that provide us with cosmic meaning and orientation, and you will dwell in one thinking it is finally the one with no idiots or haters present inside it…until you hear the voice of hate and bigotry emanating from within the very halls you hallow and inhabit!

Source: Blind Bartimaeus and You | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Kanye West in the Age of Donald Trump – The Atlantic

Posted on May 9, 2018 by charissagrace

I think this article is must reading to understand the actions of a very important figure in our time.

Kanye West wants freedom—white freedom.

Source: Ta-Nehisi Coates: Kanye West in the Age of Donald Trump – The Atlantic

Carapace | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on April 1, 2018 by charissagrace

I wrote this 4 years ago…a lifetime ago…when I first began to see I really really REALLY had a shell over me…and that it was possible to live free.

I want to challenge you today, especially if you are cis-gender and not transgender: what shell are you living in? What transition must you make as a soul, one that is not a transition of gender, but your own answer to the call to “cross-over”?

Are you called to cross over into creativity and leave behind the world of grubbing for money?

Are you called to cross over into true relationship with God, leaving behind the shell of conservative evangelicalism that is nothing more than a gateway to the gas chambers, with a sign over it saying “Welcome to Hell?”

We all are called to trans…from death to Life…from works to Grace…I pray you find your courage and begin!! Cus the water is fine.

“It caged me in its cold confining bars.
Long have I been its lost and longing thrall,
its tenant-serf of weary plodding on.
It’s clung, tentacled round my throat, my eyes,
and darkness was its cruel confederate
who caged my strong uprising Ne’er-Say-Die…”

Source: Carapace | Charissa’s Grace Notes

The Fascist Right Is Bloodied and Soiled

Posted on March 30, 2018 by charissagrace

On “Good Friday” of Election 2016 you chanted GIVE US BARABBAS!
You settled for ttaf…and here is the rule of your “king”‘s result:

“Here are some statistics:

“There have already been 17 school shootings in the United States in 2018, an average of 1.5 shootings per week. There has been an average of one school shooting every week since 2013.

“Police have killed almost 1,000 people in the United States in each of the past three years: 987 in 2017; 963 in 2016; and 995 in 2015. One in three people killed by a stranger in the United States is killed by a cop; black people are three times more likely than white people to be killed by a cop.

“Jihadists have killed 95 people in the United States since September 11, 2001.

“Cities that hosted Trump campaign rallies reportedly saw an average of 2.3 more assaults reported on the day of the event than usual.

“Right-wing extremists have killed at least 274 people since 2008, accounting for almost three-quarters of all murders committed by domestic extremists in that time.

In 2017, fascists and other white supremacists in the United States killed at least 22 people. Their names are Heather Heyer; Taliesin Namkai Meche and Ricky Best; Richard Collins III; Timothy Caughman; Srinivas Kuchibhotla; Buckley Kuhn-Fricker and Scott Fricker; Casey Marquez and Francisco Fernandez; Charles Davis; Martin Gonzales; John Byler; corrections officers Christopher Monica and Curtis Billue; Deputy Sheriff Mason Moore; Randy Gene Baker; Jorge Slaughter; Cord Colgrove; and Jeremy Himmelman and Andrew Oneschuk, themselves neo-Nazis, and Frank Ancona, a member of the Ku Klux Klan…”

Source: The Fascist Right Is Bloodied and Soiled

I Mean Every Word of This, Too

Posted on March 26, 2018 by charissagrace

“Dear Friend,

I don’t think I can do this anymore.
I’m afraid we’re at an impasse.
I’m not sure it’s fixable.

Initially I held out hope that we could find some compromise here; that we could make an uneasy peace, that despite our differences of opinion we could forge some tenuous truce moving forward.

That was a long time ago.

Back then we didn’t know what we know about the person you voted for—and I didn’t know what I’ve learned about you as a result.

Back when you voted the way you voted, we didn’t know the extent of:
his sexual indiscretions,
his allegiance to the Russians,
his dangerous nepotism,
his revolving door Cabinet,
his contempt for the rule of law,
his disregard for the environment,
his oppression of refugees and dreamers,
his neglect of sick and disabled people,
his indebtedness to the NRA,
his defense of racists,
his attacks on journalists,
his reckless financial waste,
his golf excursions and Twitter rants,
his public war on the FBI,
his impulsive hirings and firings.

Before we knew all these things, I could give you the benefit of the doubt. I could imagine that you’d never have consented to such cruelty, such incompetence, such bigotry, such malevolence.

Before we knew these things, I could believe that you couldn’t possibly harbor such hatred in your heart for so many people sharing this country with you.

Before we knew these things I could have made every excuse that it wasn’t racism or misogyny or nationalism or supremacy or weaponized religion that motivated you to vote the way you voted.

But we do know these things now about this man, and yet your support hasn’t wavered in the slightest—and this has been heartbreaking to witness:

Listening to you regurgitate FoxNews talking points, seeing your timeline fill with fake news, sitting through bitter holiday meal diatribes, hearing offhand, off-color comments that sound just like the man you voted for—and through it all, wondering where the rational, compassionate, loving person I thought I knew has gone.

I don’t recognize you anymore.

I see you dig in your heels and double down and amen his toxic filth, and I feel myself grieving the loss of who I once believed you were.
I feel the gap between us widening.
I feel the fracture deepening.

At first I did my best not to ascribe motive to you.
I assumed that you came to your vote as carefully and rationally as I did mine.
I tried to show you the legislative damage he was doing in hopes that it would move you.
I reminded you that we are a nation of immigrants and outsiders and refugees.
I asked you to consider the duress people were under now as a result of your vote.
I appealed to your compassion for the marginalized, poor, and hurting people—left more vulnerable because of him.
I showed you the words of Jesus about loving your neighbor and caring for the least and welcoming the stranger.

I hoped that any one of these things might reach you and that you’d show me your humanity, and I’d again see the person I thought you were when we were close.

I realize now that none of these things are effective; that no amount of data, no evidence in his words or legislation, no firsthand stories of the people being destroyed right now are enough to move you.

I realize that you have no desire to entertain any reality that threatens the story you wish to be true—and in many ways this makes you unreachable right now. It makes you less and less someone I feel good about being around.

And the longer this goes on, the less and less possible reconciliation between us seems; not because I don’t wish for it, and not because I won’t grieve it—but because I can’t compromise the lives of millions of other people just to keep the peace between the two of us. That isn’t a fair exchange.

Equality and diversity and compassion are hills worth dying on for me, and if our relationship is the collateral damage of fully fighting for these things, I’m going to have to live with that.

I’m still hopeful one day things between us can be better, but I’m almost positive they’ll never be the same; because of what we know about him and what I’ve learned about you since this began.

And so this division, this impasse, this separation, as painful as it is—is far less painful than denying my deepest convictions or ignoring the suffering around me.

I need to be able to sleep at night and to look in the mirror.

Because of that, these differences we have may be irreconcilable.”

Source: The Irreconcilable Differences of This Presidency

A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…

Posted on March 17, 2018 by charissagrace

This is talking about my own life, my own family…and yours, too…because all of us have this brokenness. The evidence is irrefutable.

This poem is all about forgiveness…trying to give it and trying to receive it…and the incredible revelation that it is impossible.

There is no trying…there is only becoming.

“…And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit,
no escape from agony,
pitstop from pain…
all we can do is
exchange suffering’s form
and it’s face, from our own
for the pain of another…”

via A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…

Situla

Posted on February 4, 2018 by charissagrace

Just after dawn…
but before sunrise
I wait
ajar
a jar
of costly
perfume

I hear the sound
of music stilled
and waters hushed

hushed beneath
frost crystals clasping
roses’ leaves…

I rise and wait,
hushed and clutching

me
my
alabaster
jar
this
empty
situla

still reeking
of sorrow and nard
of fragrance and tears
and deep joy too.

I guess the guests
are still around
the table, I think
the gusty crowd
is still sitting in
the dark and staring

(eyes shut)

at the inside
of the veil…
as I travail
in silence,
as I writhe
in ecstasy

and groan

for separation
to give way
to liberation
and this coming
fragrant day.

The frost
surrenders
as light and heat
sing gently ’round
the edges,
as the roses
are anointed
and

the alabaster jar
breaks open
yet again

and I
pour
out my
soul

Her
situla

Some Older Poetry That I LOVE

Posted on January 10, 2018 by charissagrace

“talking with you
sometimes is either
a slap in the face
or a slammed door,
and yet the Void…gaping gulf,
it is but exhalation
in the Light of your shadow!

And falling
into that seeming nothing,
yawning and gulping, well
it is but a dropped stitch
in the Banners over me
of You.”

The Fall of Ancient Time (A contemporary Re-write of Psalm 5)

****************

“…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…”
barcelona_above_by_coigach-d9gyhp2
City of Bones

*************

“like the way
you touch my ankle
when we sit upon
the floor there,
by the fire
in the speckled-star-lit night
gathered close
outside the house
just like a mama bird who nestles
down so gentle on Her chicks…”
tumblr_ny9okxgwbf1rsj4s9o1_1280

This Speckled Star-Lit Night

A Look Back That Inspires

Posted on January 7, 2018 by charissagrace

Something happened today which prompted me to want to repost something that I wrote in January of 2014…so long ago, and yet only 4 years…

In order to understand where I am at emotionally and spiritually in light of the event which transpired today, you need a bit of a refresher…an understanding that the repost at the bottom of the page was written BEFORE so much took place:

I wrote the words I am reposting before I wrote about the beginning of the shunning from the spiritual culture as defined by the vast majority of Christian Evangelicalism…these words, which talk about the nearly total experience I have had with Christians from my past (there is one…ONE person who has verbally, physically, emotionally and spiritually received me who is from my past. She did so with tears of joy and literal kisses all over my cheeks and forehead, and was stricken as she thought back to the prison I was in and she was amazed that God had loosed this captive so wonderfully).
I wrote them before I wrote about a baby step of coming out that was looming…and ended up being a devastating attack and shunning by the time it played out.

I wrote them before I wrote about the shunning that happened on a monolithic totality in regards to every single friendship from the past which happened when I came out…I received a letter from a person that I had known for 30 years…a person that I had worshiped beside, shared many meals with…a person who had lived in our home…a person who I had walked alongside as they sojourned thru the valley of the shadow of an addiction which nearly destroyed family and self…a letter that shunned me in the Name of Jesus, The One Being who welcomes me constantly and says that His Blood is enough and more than enough for me…

I wrote them before I wrote of the public shunning that happened, when it was the searing abandonment in public circles.

I wrote it before the 21 Gun Salute took place, that professional execution I endured…that death, and the subsequent resurrection from those Phoenix Ashes…

I wrote about it before the horrid attacks coming from supposed Christians which were filled with literal perversions, profanities, and exhortations to kill myself…all given in the name of Jesus of course.

Yes. That literally happened.

So what happened today that precipitated this reminiscence?

This: there is a man from my past, a person that I met in the late 80s and who I was in close proximity with until the year 2005…this man operated (and perhaps still does? I really do not know. Lord knows that I have grown up, been pruned back, become more and become less, been adjusted, and healed of terrible blindnesses…so I do leave room for the possibility that this has happened with him as well. But I do not hold out a shred of hope, or a scintilla of expectation that this has happened, for the need of those who are deeply in thrall to a certain assumption and paradigm to punish me and punish me utterly is far greater than the ability to actually live out the sacrificial Love of Christ that went straight for every single person who was “yet dead in sin”…and not just to the so-called righteous)…

This man operated under a deep orientation that assumed all the doctrines related to “submission”, and truly felt it was the loving thing to enforce that notion…I have many many hurtful memories of those years, from the comments regarding my supposed “cheesy grin” that I supposedly wore (likely, it was whatever mask was on me during the deep dissociation of living trans in a male role and carrying the burden of remembering every detail so I could forget that I was a woman, and thus related to the fracturing events of early childhood) to the interactions which accused me of seeking to utilize my role as a worship leader on Sunday morning in service of self, to the utterly devastating final blow given in such “sad sorrowful tones” which said that my father was suffering and dying in the way he was because I was not properly submitted to “the leader” of this group…

There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that every single one of these actions was done from true conviction that it was the right and loving thing to do, based on the paradigm in which he (we) swam…indeed, I myself interacted with people who approached me for help and counsel as they struggled with their sexual orientations in light of the teaching assumptions we were under…and I gave the “answers” I had learned…and I grieve over that…so deeply…

I myself bought into attitudes and distortions of good teachings that I sincerely and 100% believed, and I thought those with other understandings to simply be sinners who were seeking to justify remaining in sin yet still retaining connection to God, and I simply…well, I simply did not have an ounce of compassion…

I shared the privileged view of the privileged…and had NO CONCEPT of the Other…

And it wasn’t until I was no longer “one of them”, not because I resigned membership in privilege, but because when I transitioned I was executed swiftly…

In the personal-relational realm
In the spiritual-religious realm
In the professional-economic realm…

So I know that the intention of those times was, within his own heart and self, “good”…

We also shared many other times too…good times where somehow who was submitted to who wasn’t that important and was never even thought of…such as working on each other’s houses…putting out a fire that started on a hill and nearly burned the entire area down…eating meals together…

Those years…I believe it was about 17 years…during those years I did a lot of dying, and had a lot to die to…and that place was the crucible of purification, in which I gained much wisdom thru death to self. I was so fractured…so young…and so deeply in the grip of dysphoria and dissociation which was the hidden reef under everything in my life.

He did not know anything about this…neither did I. And looking back, sooo many things just SHOUT it out so loudly, and while it is occasion of grief and mourning looking back, it also is comforting to know that at least there was a reason for it!

Well…Charissa’s Grace Notes is a public blog. And this man is a reader…regularly…how frequently, I really could not say, but based on my own internal tools I have as the creator, I suspect it is fairly regularly.

How did he even know I had a blog? I have not exchanged a word with this man for years…a good 7 years before I even transitioned, and certainly not a word since transition….God forbid! I am pretty sure he would not, and I KNOW I would not because I decided in 2014 that I would never again submit myself to spiritual abuse and attack from anyone to whom I was a priori a demon-possessed hell-bound apostate.

It is obvi that he found out about my blog via word of mouth…because it is funny: the biggest evils that scripture has volumes of teaching about (the tongue, the heart) are so easily ignored in Christendom in order to condemn the phantom evils which scripture never even speaks about (gender variance and orientation)…and wowsa did the word spread like fire!!

In fact, the person mentioned here even swore to me that he considered it his spiritual service and duty to God to out me to every single person he met, lest he be tainted by my “sin” of intentional self-deception and thus have my blood on his head. Yes…these sorts believe this: “If you see your brother approaching destruction and you do not restrain them, their blood is on your head”. They interpret this old Proverb as the license to attack anyone doing anything that is to them “a sin.” He told me that he needed to warn every single person he could that I was anathema and not to be received among “the brethren”…

try and imagine how this felt, and feels…

So anyway, I know that the man I am writing about this morning found my blog fairly easily, but after hearing the words of the tale-bearers, those morsels of gossip that go down so sweet and titillating…

But he has stuck around…and has been reading…for a long time, if I am guessing right…and because I am made who I am, and because of my heart towards God and understanding that I have been made thusly to break down walls and uproot lies and then to plant and build true kingdom attitudes, I have held out hope…a very very teeny tiny shred of hope…

…that maybe he has done the work, read the research…maybe he has examined the scriptures and his own assumptions…maybe he has the courage to know that in spite of anything he might believe about gender variance, the person he knew was truly a child of God and is still one now…that maybe he has met other transhumans…

I am not optimistic about this, or myopic…the odds are VERY slim.

But this man has done something, not once, but twice.

He has contributed money to my transition fund, each time choosing an amount which is significant to me as the number of my name.

But I am leery. It is not inconsistent with the old assumptions of that paradigm to do acts of charity or service for those considered lost and perishing. It is thought of as heaping coals of fire upon the head…it is thought of as setting an example…and sometimes it is flat out a genuine expression of God’s heart of love.

How do I know this? Because I have been there, done that…myself. Previously.

I am also skeptical and very wary because one of those donations referenced my children…and there is a huge assumption in play in those circles that a righteous relationship with God is able to be detected in the condition of relationship with one’s children and other family.

(Remember the remark about my dad suffering because I was “not submitted” and “rebellious”?)

It is not by any means whatsoever a stretch to see that particular donation coupled with that particular remark about my children as the “coin of unsanctified pity” and ultimately as a dig, a cut, an arrow shot in hopes of providing a wound that cleanses and restores…and if it was that, it was an arrow that shot and wounded and brought death because there literally is not a cleansing and restoring relatable to gender variance and orientation.

God knows there are plenty of areas in my heart that need adjusting and cleansing…it just so happens that being a woman who was assigned male at birth is not one of those areas, anymore than anyone need repent of their gender orientation, or their hair color, or leg length.

So I am very wary. (Oh yes: the donation this morning simply said “thinking of you”…and that was both a very simple comment and a very pregnant comment.)

The first time it happened, I accepted the donation, spent it on my legal costs in fact…yeah, dude…you helped me change my birth certificate, a great day in my life!! LOL!!!! But I did not reply or interact with the person, because I do not expect that interaction to be life giving and healing, but rather to be a battle and ordeal.

And then it happened again, this morning, and this one is significant to me…

…you see, just before the end of the year, on New Year’s Eve morning in the early morning, I dreamed about this person! In the dream, Jane and I had a place we were building up in the hills. We went up there one day to do some work in our structure, which was framed and roofed and wired and plumbed, but lacked sheetrock or siding and finish work trimming…and when we got there, we were shocked to discover that the entire area around us had been developed and had structures on it of various states of completion…all told, the area had around 30 houses, where there had just been ours and a lot of wild land.

We looked around a bit, confused and concerned, when who should approach us but this man who donated to me this morning! He walked up to us and called out to us…and looked me full in the eyes and greeted me with “Hello, Charissa, may I walk close to you?” I was very taken aback that he used my true name rather than my dead name and that he knew he needed to ask permission before moving close to me!!!

I said yes, and watched as he approached, and saw tears in his eyes. He extended his hand to shake hands, and I impulsively brushed his hand aside, greeted him by name, and gave him a hug. He did not shy away from the hug OR from the double reminders of who I truly am…and then he broke the embrace and held my by my shoulders at arms length and said that it was really good to seem me, Charissa…and his tears were streaming down his face.

I motioned around me and said “So what is happening here, and why are you up here?” Meaning the development and his presence where there had been nothing but our house and no one but us.

He looked down in what appeared to be sorrow or shame or conviction or regret, I really couldn’t get a good read on it…and then he looked up and said to us “I am so sorry, and I have been wrong. God has been working in my heart…in our hearts…and we wanted to learn.” I said “Who is the we you refer to and what are you sorry for?”

He said he was sorry for all the same things that I sorrowed over about what I used to think regarding LGTBQIA issues and Christian teaching, he was sorry about the same things I sorrowed about in terms of the expression of God’s heart in such a cancerous and poisonous way that evangelicalism has become…and that most of all he was sorry that he had automatically condemned transgender people to the label of (fill in your favorite slur, I am not using it today)…

and he said that the “we” he referred to were all people from this little group that grew up, insular and inbred, from a “school” that he helped to start and keep going…that around 30 people all had this deep repentance and wanted to walk away from that old set of beliefs, and that he had bought all the property around us, in order to live close to us and learn from us…

…and would we please teach him, teach them?

Well, Jane and I looked at each other, shocked, suspicious, wary, and on the verge of running.

(Credit: Tyrus Wong
Tyrus Wong, Bambi (visual development), 1942. Watercolor on paper)

But one this is so clear to me…more clear to me than nearly anything I have ever heard from God: It is completely and utterly inviolate to me that God Themself planned and intended to create me as I am from the start: A Transsexual Woman, who would grow up wounded and fractured and driven to God as my only hope of salvation from despair and ruination…and that it was a very sobering thing to Them to do this, for They knew full well the horror and pain this would be to me…and each of Them stepped forward and said “I am enough for her”…and the reason for this is that They had assigned my life destiny to be a prophetess to the people of God who forgot the Heart of God…to speak to them of God’s Heart for the ones who are slaughtered in every realm and sacrificed on the altar of gender…

and that it should be easy for those people to receive me and God’s message, for in those old days I doubt any of them would have thought I was hell-bound, and in those days virtually all of them thought that I heard from God regularly…even though “there is so much wrong” with me LOL!

And so because of that mission, that quest…and yes, the desire to set them free of their blindness and prejudice and hatred, we did not run…but stayed…and said that we would consider it, but had many things to be worked out, many boundaries to be defined…

The man was joyous in our response and agreed to this…

and then I woke up.

Of course, since this was a dream, I interpret the details and events symbolically. I got up from bed and sat and thought and prayed for awhile, wondering what in the world I was dreaming about that dude for!!!??? I had not even thought about him for a couple of years. Jane held similar puzzlement about it…and we both thought that it was talking about “a neighborhood of understanding/teaching/thinking/transformation” rather than an actual sub-division, and we saw both the man and the people he referenced as symbolic of that whole group of “white, cis-gendered, straight, evangelical Christian conservative” human beings who literally have NO IDEA how much they are bequeathed things on the basis of their race, their sexual orientation, their gender purity, and their religious understandings.

So we said a quick prayer…and I promptly forgot about it.

Until this morning.

Here is this comment “Thinking of you” and this monetary amount…and the dream rushed back…along with all the wariness, suspicion and other emotions which come from the experienced trauma and trial of those years.

The crucial thing to know is this: a bell, once rung, cannot be unrung. A woman who gives birth is always a mother, even if the child dies. There is no “going back” because there is no back to go to.

It is this way with me: I will never go back. He is dead, Caterpillar Dude…he is no more. He is the “back” and is gone. So there is no “going back”.

Any “kind indulgence” will not “induce to repentance” because there is nothing to be repented of in terms of my transition! As to repentance of any kind? Oh yes…the continual joy of beholding Jesus and being transformed by degrees from the glory of the letter which kills to the glory of the Spirit which is life…yunno…the same repentance we share in common.

I am not sure what I will spend this amount on…probably on my HRT, and this is a valued and well received gift.

I am always open to the generosity of heart and spirit that flows in God’s economy from they that have abundance to they that have need…and would always in that spirit welcome such donations/gifts…other gifts I have actually passed on to others in far greater need than I.

But if the spirit and intention of the gift is anything related to “getting me to go back”? To “repent” of “gender heresy” and “assume my old name and role?”

There is not a chance.

Those things are further from me than East is from West.

And if that spirit and intention is thus impure, then I consider the donation to be “the spoils of Egypt” and still put it to good use.

Wow…what a ramble, eh? If any are still with me, thanks for reading patiently.

Blessings to you today from our wonderful counselor and our comforter and the lover of our souls,

Charissa Grace White
God’s Graceful Gleam

via Updates about my life

It’s Been A Year

Posted on December 29, 2017 by charissagrace

it’s been a year…

a year gone down whimpering,
a drowning swimmer foundering
who sought salvation by drinking
the river and instead sinking
beneath the waves of themself.

it’s been a year…

a year that is a dying finger
pointing at the trembly beginning
of a situation hardly noticed coming…
that few saw in its ever-morphing
bones exploding thru ancient dark depths.

it’s been a year…

of slaughtery reeking rank death
(deifying) defying reality
as we had known it
exposing all over again
the worst aspects of humanity

it’s been a year…

of intoxicating home-brewed hooch
swilled carelessly amidst mockery
merciless crushing of human decency
beneath the rotting soles of intolerance
and arrogant fear…

it’s been a year…

that cheated in plain sight and laughed
in our faces preening psychotically
in backwards congratulations and exposé
both of side-scuttling cowardice
and band-wagon jumping by far too many.

it’s been a year…

in position of power flimsy yet fancy,
a hulking brute that let us know
in no uncertain terms that evil is always
waiting round the corner, ready to sell us
poisoned swamp land and expired lottery tickets

it’s been a year…

burning bright with flames
of wild fires gone too far and seething
maniacally in immature hostility and failure
to curb the desire to lash out
at one another…

it’s been a year…

that frolicked, bathing in
the steady yellow shower
of the devil’s bloated trump card
who gloats and hulks and bloviates
and sings the song of wrong…

ill thoughts
ill words
ill deeds

it’s been a year…

a year gone down
while death has come

Nina Simone Sings It True

Posted on December 16, 2017 by charissagrace

This is from 1976…and how I never knew about it until today is beyond me. I have mocked and mugged over the song “Feelings” since it first hit the air waves…it is a piece of crap song.

But listen to what this incredible human does with it…what she says with it…what she doesn’t say…

Please…this is what I want to do with my Poetry

May I Forget To Breathe Again

Posted on November 28, 2017 by charissagrace

Happy Birthday, Dearest One…

…but i will never sorrow o’er that day, that moment
when Heaven spoke and told me of Their gift,
and my heart was blessed forever after.

i remembered, all day long…and sang.
If i ever forget, may my hand forget to live,
and may i forget to breathe again.”

tumblr_nfhmahJhnO1tubkf6o1_1280

via May I Forget To Breathe Again

Full Circle

Posted on November 7, 2017 by charissagrace

Spinning like leaves
loose falling and slow
and scurrying brownly
to nowhere…no when…
fast flakes flying, fleeing
the huffy long Storm
of The Great Tree of Life
abandoned indifferent
for the dim tree of EGO
dried out, lacking relevance
and fading, and fading
disconnected and done
just a leaf…just a me
and lost in the pile

And the stormings of Autumn
turn cold here, outside,
clammy and indifferent
to everything else
but the deep dark long job
of laying down still
in the cold cooling earth
and The Long Sighing slower
and slower.

I have lost my True North
and grown cold and weary
in my mission to Grace:

to be Grace remaining
in roots, to drink Grace
clean raining so free
to walk on Grace quick
in the wind, to swim deep
in Grace beneath the vision
to fall like Grace landing
like swans white and dolorous
to crash…to settle, to touch
like Grace.

The fallen brown flakes
they smolder and smoke
as skies above tense
and bunch and blow white
and acrid smells clench
all around me and promises
piles disappeared…
into ashes…and yet…

I can’t find a flame
and can’t feel the fire
on my skin, in my bones
and real tears on my cheeks

and I find
I have come
Full Circle

Hearth of Empty Ashes | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on October 17, 2017 by charissagrace

This is the first poem after…not after the FIRST cut…but after the last. Autumn 2014…The Great Reduction began…resulting in the Phoenix Fires.

“our cottage is still,
today…empty.

oh, I see the flotsam and jetsam
that jumped from the garage sales
on life’s oceans, my knick·knacks
strewn round about jousting
with your bibelots and baubles

our lace tablecloth
crawling in intricate pattern
on our lil table like a web
sprung from Oh Smart Charlotte
and laid down for our delight,
and our kettle like a bird
flown into its window-nemesis
and broken.

our hearth lays there, still…silent
and sorry ash too listless to even
puff and rise for flights of fancy
with dust motes and sunbeams.

our mittens and scarves
lay over there, forlorn,
bereft of body and they listen
to the music of clothes
piled beside railways to hell.
they are thankful for tiny tragedy,
small in scope and easily buried.

but i am still in me,
like the ashes in the hearth,
and I know that tragedy is a hologram,
from the smallest piece to the greatest
and I miss your quick warm movements
that sing without saying a word.

cottages, tables and mittens…
all hearths of sorts,
and full of empty ashes.”

Source: Hearth of Empty Ashes | Charissa’s Grace Notes

My Only Way Out Today: an Anti-Poem | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on October 17, 2017 by charissagrace

Shudder. SHUDDER. SHUDDER!!!!! This was written moments before that event, that seminal event that was the deepest violation, betrayal, and opportunity all rolled into one. I forgive the ones who did this seminal penetration…but I will never ever be around them, ever again.

**********

“Pray that I hit the hole
when I am hurled violently,

that I roll like cats
and land soft on paddy feet,
that I swim like otters free
and surf like Icarus of the sea
and waterproof

i dangle now
stuck in and out
and bleeding
upside down
and reeling
eyes throbbing red
red red red darktoday will be a birth
or an abortion
a hand or
a sharp knife
and liberty
or lambasting
and sentenced
to Kafka penitentiary”

Source: My Only Way Out Today: an Anti-Poem | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Things Trump-Supporting Christians Can Pray About In Church This Sunday

Posted on October 15, 2017 by charissagrace

Another great challenge to Christians who are still convinced that ttaf is a servant of God.

To argue that, you have to argue that whoever and whatever is a servant of God, because God uses all things…which is ridiculous.

ttaf is no more God’s servant than Hitler was…and yet we know that God will triumph, even over the deception that those who take Their Name in vain are currently mired.

“And yes, pray about this President.

“Ask God specifically how his life and body of work align with the Jesus you’ve known all your life; the one you find hope and joy in, the one you read about in the Gospels, the one whose voice you recognize as peacemaker, forgiver, lover, healer, helper.

“Ask God if his vile words about women, his cruelty toward those suffering, his vicious social media tirades, his neglect of hurricane victims, his siphoning of funding from public school students and healthcare from cancer patients—if any of it feels at all like the Jesus who talked of loving the least, of caring for the poor, of loving their neighbors as they love God, of the last being first, of the righteous turning their cheeks, of the meek inheriting the earth, of the good Samaritan showing mercy.

“Ask Jesus if this President is someone worth a follower of Christ emulating, celebrating, empowering, amen-ing—if he is someone living in that image.

“Ask Jesus about saying that the way we treat the lowest and the vulnerable is the way we treat him—and how this President is treating him.

“Ask Jesus what the world is learning about his heart for the world, his character, his compassion, his gentleness by the man you elevated to our highest human platform.

“Ask Jesus about the kind of world he was trying to usher in when his feet were on the planet—and how this President is doing anything to make it a reality in these days.

“And if you can walk out of that worship gathering into another Sunday afternoon, completely unchanged and without sensing the slightest conflict between Jesus Christ of Nazareth and Donald Trump of DC, and without a trace of discomfort at the disconnect between your inner convictions and his tangible actions—pray for yourself, because you have clearly lost the plot of the one who brought the world a Good News that is now completely inaudible in these days because of this man and because of a Church that refuses to stand against him.”

Source: Things Trump-Supporting Christians Can Pray About In Church This Sunday

This Place Bleeding | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on October 3, 2017 by charissagrace

really…REALLY?

we are here, this place bleeding out arterially
black blood cells fused from antique plants
and dainty dinosaurs and precious people
deemed damned

and all we care about is our artesan chocolates
and our tan designer bedrooms that match
our pocketbooks in fashion and depth
damned dumb…

Source: This Place Bleeding | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Beneath Blood And Skin | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on October 3, 2017 by charissagrace

we simply must face it,
we are on the brink
of loss blind as wind
and empty as death.

but loss is a gift
when you think about it
it gives us some space
and cleansing tears too

it gives sacred questions
pathways to the center
and old maps long lost
to ancient deep wells…

Source: Beneath Blood And Skin | Charissa’s Grace Notes

When The Whole World Howls

Posted on September 12, 2017 by charissagrace

what did you see there,
on that road when setting sun
began to blink again, again
and turned into a threatening heart
beating so slow and pumping out
the blood of stars and planet-scars?

How did it feel when phantom friends
just went on walking, on and on
oblivious to open wounds
in skies above, your breast below
and the railing reached and grabbed your hand
and tired death grinned madly dull?

You heard a noise, a scream of sun?
A scream of clouds, of blood or heart?
A scream that slashed thru everything
so real, so loud, so everlasting
What to make of that? That sound
When the whole world howls and howls

and howls?

“I was walking along the road with two of my friends. Then the sun set. The sky suddenly turned into blood, and I felt something akin to a touch of melancholy…My friends went on and again I stood, frightened with an open wound in my breast I stood still, leaned against the railing, dead tired. Above the blue black fjord and city hung clouds of dripping, rippling blood. My friends went on and again I stood, frightened with an open wound in my breast. A great scream pierced through nature.”
Edvard Munch

Across the Aching Blue Sky | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on September 8, 2017 by charissagrace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That Awkward Moment… | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on September 4, 2017 by charissagrace

We have all experienced this, haven’t we? Everyone?
That moment when our head goes from Bugs Bunny’s smug smile
to a jack-ass head because we feel so foolish and dumb?
Or is it just me who feels this…

it lays there, bloated
in between when you
and the other person
connected and laughed
(or that’s what you thought)

and when you speak
and your heart falls
out and open
on the floor
with the inscription

would you like
to come over
for dinner and wine?

eyes narrow,
furrowing brows
and glance off
to the side
and it shifts

and it’s game over
flowers fade
the smell of smoke
and burnt cookies
lingering

Source: That Awkward Moment… | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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

Posted on August 31, 2017 by charissagrace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by and by…

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

no melody down here in sight | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on August 26, 2017 by charissagrace

I wrote this a couple of years ago…about being othered by dull insensate humans…or did I write it about supporters of ttaf…or likely I wrote it about evangelical so-called christians whose blood sport is the judgement and death of anything that sings, that moves in beauty…

or did I write it about you?

There is still time to influence who it is about, with your true song and love.

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, yet 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

Source: no melody down here in sight | Charissa’s Grace Notes

An Eclipse Of Grace

Posted on August 10, 2017 by charissagrace

we are down to it now
here in the land where dragons
have forgotten their names
and deny their children
who loved them

Puff and Jackie are no more
it is now all sturm und drang.

A monster has arisen
and graves quiver and tremble
as fingers long thought dead
scritch scritch scritch
on those coffins so
recently buried

and show that they live
and gibber in glee
with prospects of release

scritch scritch scritch

but the moon has not forgotten
does not forget her beloved
now hot and baking in the
disjointed unhitched sunlight
called not-Puff (Sturm) not-Jackie (Drang)

called alt-
and hate
and patriotism

the moon has made her move
and soon will shed her grace
a respite from unrelenting baking light

An eclipse of Grace is coming
to save from the eclipse of Grace
found in this screaming perpetual
day without softness
without tender coolness
and velvet still…

I hear the moon move
in the dry drumbeat of bramble
as I pass by, smelling their
desperate intense perfume

the canes of thistles move
in the wind like bones
and sing to me

sooon soooon…
beneath the croon
of probing beams
that are definitely
way more than they seem

the sky will bend and yield
as moon she rides in day
and comes to eat, to take within
her belly all the taint
of poison so-called light

our moment of escape will then present!
a moment, chains can break and curses rent!
in dark while others fall upon their face
we who watch well an eclipse of Grace…

can learn there at her knee, her royal knee
and small eclipses everywhere we’ll be
from our burnt courage burnished bronze in heat
as we the moon and grace together greet
and mercy kisses truth…at last they meet

may things be healed by our eclipsing feet.

The Twenty-Five Hour Yesterday | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on August 3, 2017 by charissagrace

I wrote this poem in 2015…taking on the topic of privilege, and how it devalues everything it touches…like entropy works…especially erasing the humanity of those who serve privilege to the same degree that they exercise it over their fellow human beings.

Supporters of trump the absolute fucker, I am taking DEAD AIM at YOU.

Some of you ttaf supporters think I am mean…but you are wrong. If you were to wake up, there will come a day that you will thank me for keeping you from a fate FAR worse than death.

In the poem, there are italicized lines. They signify to the reader that the reader is to “sing them in their mind” with the tune that corresponds…

“…We stand before God today
even though entropy
deferred yesterday
we stand before God
as Their Potter’s clay

the urgency
of the present moment,
shaped not by nostalgia
for what once was,
but remembrance
for who God was,
and is,
and ever will be.

that fierce urgency of the now
within a world in need
not of more pointing fingers
and dividing speeches, but of
people willing to rise up
and work as if we now already
are God’s people willing
and surrendered.

I deferred entropy yesterday
It was the least I could do.”

Source: The Twenty-Five Hour Yesterday | Charissa’s Grace Notes

13 past 13 | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on July 21, 2017 by charissagrace

One of the most important and least favorite things from last year was being faithful and diligent to listen to my muse as She SCREAMED in warning and horror regarding the monster who was approaching power.

I mean, c’mon…I don’t know what is greater: his sociopathic narcissism, his intention to do harm to less powerful people, or his literal willful stupidity!

ttaf actually said in an interview that Jeff Sessions should NOT have accepted the nomination to the Attorney Generalship of the United States “if he knew he would recuse himself over Russia…”

Constance: let that sink in.

If you were picking someone for something, and you ended up getting investigated for something…how would the person who you picked have any way to know you would be investigated, especially if you were innocent of all wrong doing? So why would there even be a need for recusal?

If you were the person picked…would you fill out the papers completely? If so, there would be full disclosure and thus the person picking could assess ahead of time whether there would be a conflict of interest…but only if they knew ahead of time there was a possibility they WOULD be investigated!!

Except that ttaf insists that this whole thing is made up! That it is ginned up and is fake…he claims there is no there there…so why would it matter if Sessions felt the need for recusal? (Which, by the way, is so patently firm and completely established, he likely would have gone to jail if he did not recuse himself).

ttaf insists this is all out of nowhere…and yet he says in the interview with the NYT that Sessions should have told him ahead of time about his need to recuse…which clearly gives away his lie.

ttaf does this kind of shit continuously and consistently…it is the only thing consistent about him: his utter ruthless commitment to his own survival.

He knows that he is guilty and in deep shit. HE KNOWS.

And he also knows that you, supporter of ttaf, do not give a shit about any of the crimes, the ways that he has sold YOU out, for his own profit.

You used to be intelligent and thoughtful, parsing lies easily. But now in your greed, your need to preserve your privilege, you will lay down for him like one of his underage models and beg to be raped by him.

I literally despise him…and I despise and pity anyone who refuses to see that he is the biggest political disaster to hit the USA in history.

He is a mirror to you, ttaf supporter. Look at him…that is who you are.

the cuckoo clock so pasty white, so dull
ticktocks its hands to point at the orange cull
and jumps out crazy, chiming, shrieking shrill
the wall is trembling in its echoes still
CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO

Source: 13 past 13 | Charissa’s Grace Notes

This World Too Much

Posted on July 18, 2017 by charissagrace

It was somehow so moving, so compelling
up from the shaggy earth, looming and shorn
so sleek with steel and concrete ribbons running.

It wrapped around the way
the way entwined with it
and it was wet and smelled of wind forever.

I stood, soaked to bone and fully brindled
against that wind that prodded at the dangle
of knots, of cracks, of edges all atangle.

And yet, somehow it still all glowed in glory
and still my eyes thrilled at the vital touch
of movement, place and people in the crush

perhaps I love this place, this world too much.

The Outer Rim Of Ruin

Posted on July 18, 2017 by charissagrace

I walk around the outer rim of ruin
and ruin walks the inner rim of me
and ivy climbs, caresses every beam
as I surround and caress every bone.

The ravens, hated birds of spite just sit there
and croak in harsh and squawking dark duet
their song of ruin running on the old walls
and dripping down in tears inside of me.

The empty windows stare on desolation
the broken columns gnash the air in sorrow
the floors are jumbled messes of despair lost
lost trying to just get from here to there

But still I walk around the outer rim
and still it walks the inner rim of me
I wait for that return, that restoration
When love comes home, comes true, and I’m set free

A Spoonful Of Sugar | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on July 12, 2017 by charissagrace

The bitter lil pill…narcissism…this from 2016

ttaf mainlines it

Can
you swallow
the bitter pill?
The pill that’s come
to dull our conscience,
cushion comfort, corners
nipped just so, sides longer
than tops and bottoms,
that exquisite little
emerald coffin-
shaped bitter
little
pill?

Life’s
fragility, life’s
impermanence…

Source: A Spoonful Of Sugar | Charissa’s Grace Notes

It’s The Blood Of Stars | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on July 9, 2017 by charissagrace

This poem hearkens back to the poetry I wrote directly after the Pulse massacre occurred in Florida last year. I was interested as it emerged…connecting different threads from those immediate poems (you can find those right around the dates in mid-June 2016…use the calendar at the bottom of the page)…up thru the poems of around July 4th…and on to this one (and “Hidden From Your Eyes“)…

It breaks my heart that the foreboding of these poems came true with ttaf…

…but it breaks my heart even further that so few were even aware.
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

Source: It’s The Blood Of Stars | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Hidden From Our Eyes | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on July 9, 2017 by charissagrace

From last year…a tragically prophetic poem about life in the time of ttaf…

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…

Source: Hidden From Our Eyes | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Reaping Waves | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Posted on July 7, 2017 by charissagrace

This was a couple years ago…”viking” is metaphor for “patriarchy”…and the rest should follow naturally…

I’m no Viking, not me!
Charissa Grace?
Pshaw…I do not sail
on waves like crops,
oars for ploughs
and battle lust for seed.
I shudder at the thought!
Of harvest moments
in peaceful lands
and no limits but my lusts
and the certainty of loss
at the end of Ragnarok…

Source: Reaping Waves | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Poems About Gender Dysphoria From 2014

Posted on July 1, 2017 by charissagrace

Here are a couple of poetic attempts to describe the special hell of Gender Dysphoria.

In the first, I talk about the feelings of guilt and self-loathing…what it is like when they are tyrants inescapable.

In the second poem, pay close attention to homophones…words that sound the same and sometimes are even spelled the same and yet depending on context they have different meanings. This is extremely important to understand if you wish to get inside this poem to the place where it will give up its honey to you.

I hope you enjoy them…3 year old poems that stand up pretty well.

That Numb Relief

Born On The Edge
tumblr_mr7ao1YaDq1sw327to1_500

Microphone cut after Mormon girl reveals she’s gay at church

Posted on June 24, 2017 by charissagrace

Hey…this heinous and evil action is not unique to this one church, alas. It is standard operating procedure in evangelical cultures.

But notice something particular…read the article and notice: she was not doing any sin. She was not sexually sinning, she was not defaming anyone else…she was simply being authentic and vulnerable.

That list in 1 Corinthians 6 which is used to rape, pillory, and execute LGTBQIA humans “In the Name of Jesus” is a list that refers to actions taken which flow from an unredeemed heart…here they all are:

sexually immoral
idolaters
adulterers
thieves
greedy
drunkards
slanderers
swindlers

…and of course the infamous supposed ban on same sex relationships which was actually speaking to the unequal and evil power dynamic practiced in those days by men of power over young and exploitable boys…very similar to how today’s Rape Culture looks.

Sexual immorality is a perversion of sex
Idolatry is a perversion of worship
Adultery is a perversion of relationship
Theft is a perversion of property rights
Greed is a perversion of desire
Drunkenness is a perversion of pleasure
Slander is a perversion of truth telling
Swindling is a perversion of relationship

…and the practice that was mistranslated by the KVJ translators is simply a perversion of sex no different than sexual immorality…

Not one of the root things is in itself an evil!!
This list is by no means exhaustive…but what is exhausting is the evil idolatrous, slanderous, swindling undertaken by millions of so-called Christians EVERY SINGLE DAY who carry it out in Jesus Name…and ignore all the other things in the list.

You’re merely a sinner in need of God…unless you are a homasexshul.

Truthfully? It is your own guilt and shame which you scapegoat onto LGTBQIA people as a sop to your own guilty conscience.

This girl is far closer to the kingdom of God than the rest of them put together…because she is authentic!!

I suggest you try some…you may end up having a few less “Lord Lord when did we see You’s” to answer for…
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A video of a young Mormon girl revealing to her congregation that she is lesbian and still loved by God — before her microphone is turned off by local…

Source: Microphone cut after Mormon girl reveals she’s gay at church

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