The Crucible of Grace

If you seek to extend grace and love to cover over a multitude of sins, the worst thing you can do is undercut that extension by talking about it and pointing it out.  Right?

This weekend has been excruciating, because the long-awaited and much dreaded article outing me to the entire world was published.  And I am letting it stand uncommented on, because the person who wrote it apparently needs this as they deal, process, and move forward in becoming.tumblr_nj9hjr55am1sodq0ro1_1280But it is awful having my voice stolen from me…it is awful being portrayed as a cruel caricature of who I am and who I was…it is tragic to see the consequences of what I chose and lived twisted so tragically as life spins on by and the gravity of the Fall pulls everything to that fierce collision with nothingness…and it is heartbreaking to see the person that I literally would instantly die for, right now this moment, if it would restore them to wholeness, flail around trying to recover their bearings and watch as they grapple with emotions and choices and basically just suffer a sort of death process.

The place this article was published did not contact me (though if they had, I would have said to go ahead…my loved one needs to speak unfettered)…the things that were written, well let’s just say that one person’s account sounds right until another person in a situation gives their lived experience, and then things are usually a lot more complicated and delicate in determining “what happened”.tumblr_n892glA3he1rmz4wdo1_1280Mostly what happened?  The binary.  The binary punished me from the beginning of my life, it trapped my parents into seeing me as someone I wasn’t…it tore my soul in half and left the only option forward for me a dissociation from self and adopting performance as my currency and agency in the world…it left a bloody gaping void within me that never ever could heal, and in which the Love of God was sufficient, but only just…it led to the birth of children who deserved more and got less in spite of me trying to give them everything…

What happened was a flawed imperfect person full of hope and love and wanting only to have kids and love them and raise them up into life did her best in the skin and role of a man…and is now vilified and excoriated for this…what happened is that I was born in a time and place and culture, and practiced the things that I thought were right and true and proper, and those so at odds with what I know now, what I matured into, grew into, and yet how does that undo things that happened 30 years ago?tumblr_nrqhpzN6nu1s5u2cno1_500And what happened was so much pain in my decision to transition that an entire narrative had to shift to account for the horror and the loss of a father…and I read of things, and am painted in ways that just do not match up with what I lived, what I remember, what emails and letters say to me, what other people who knew us and were around us a lot recall…

What happened was my dysphoria and depression and despair did indeed affect my heart and soul, and that affected everyone around me, and likely was the metaphorical equivalent to belts and abuse so does it really even matter if I never did the actual things I am accused of doing?  Actually no…it doesn’t matter that I never did them, because it is clear to me that I was them…poisonous, toxic, radioactive, damned for being absent and cursed for being present and above all accountable for every last ill in those lives so precious to me.

I never really understood before why God’s answer to the horror of the Fall was to come as Jesus to this world, and suffer and die…I do now though.  Because there are no words that I can say that would explain it, justify it, make it right, make it better, disappear it…all I could do would be to simply die in their place…tumblr_nu4nj5Mkg51rdq2opo1_1280…and if I could do that, I would want it to happen hidden, without anyone knowing, and the provision of that death simply being wholeness and happiness for my hearts…

I love you, hearts…I will grieve until the day grief itself is satisfied and all things are made new.  Say on.  Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you must.

I only ask Mama, please hold me close and sustain me in Your Love.

Forever In My Bones

The echoing of silence
implications of ashes
a song inside my tears
a signifying bond
the moan within my blood.

The writing of a moon
engraven on this water
and carried by the winds
into your heart beyond
the reach of tongue or pen…

this is my ever burden
my sentence that I carry
forever in my bones

tumblr_n892glA3he1rmz4wdo1_1280

Louder Than Beethoven

She talks like cliffs,
speaking words of grey granite
and loose limestone that
stand against blue skies
and grab onto puffy clouds.

She’s exalted over valleys, far distant in chasms
between the green and the happy streams
and places there beside her words
where eagles spin and scream
and echo in the sunset’s gleam.

She is low meadows laying soft.
She is all signification, all there
but you must have faith to listen
because she speaks in silence
louder than Beethoven.

She is not easy or attainable
but she will not hurt you, just
make you count the cost
and if you don’t, then rest assured
you will hurt yourself.

I love her in the mountain air
and in the meadow mist
both lively and lazy.
She is my best friend, and
more solid than all the earth.
tumblr_ntaojshDuB1r3kza7o1_1280

In This Fresh Forever Air

after a storm the air
scrubbed and electric
and crackling with ancient
newness, fresh like a goddess
reborn in wonder and at home
moves across my face
and into my lungs
like eternity alive
and shouting
singingtumblr_nsmq8vCOoe1u4jpboo1_r1_540after we clear the air
and our words sparkle
fresh, cracks highlighted
by tears like raindrops
offered in falling curtains
of feeling, of love, of joy
lingering slightly stained
crimson like liquid crystal heartstumblr_nlh0bryEtH1tc258so7_r2_1280it’s then we see each other
again for the first time ever
and our hearts say hello you
while our eyes scream missed you so
and our voices twine again in song
like the sound of rivers
with the light of mountains
in the fresh forever air
in this fresh forever air32a2468b7da296b817b109c7db52c231

This Place of Living Bliss

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

we go walking in this cool
clammy oddly warm chill
orange under streetlights
and red under starlight

and I sit and watch us walk
away thru the rising mist
and wonder how we got here
to this place of living bliss…

The Center of All Things

I sat down by the fire
in the middle of the roses
planted all around
and fragrant with buzzy bees
so busy in the dusk.

The air shimmered
as you approached
skimming across the grass
like a clipper ship
under full sail and
high on the sea.

And when you sat down,
beside me there in
the crackling fragrant
breezy busy air
it was like the entire
universe had come home
and I was at the center
of all things.tumblr_nsobtj0n6y1qbjv4ko1_1280

Waterwheels and Wonders

I’m pretty lonely, now
that I am not in
the juggling circle
with all your other eggs
tossing around frantic
and always on the edge
of splatting on the stones.

I just got tired of the suspense.
I got bored with the panic
of will she catch, will she miss
and that somehow miraculous
growing of another arm
there just long enough
not to hold but to toss
back up again spinning
in the cool bracing breeze.

And the worst times
when I hadda catch myself
and then pretend that you did
so you wouldn’t drop you
splatting on stones
and seeing that a huge
quantity of love diluted
by a huger number of recipients
is just about like no love at all.
So…I sit now…watch you juggle
and see the eggs move round
and occasionally I snatch one away
so you can twirl just the most important.

I can’t do that thing anymore,
where I am something to be
managed, parcelled, watered?
I wanna be ground to your feet
soil to your roots, sun to your leaves!
I want you to be breeze neath my blades
and rain on my petals and sun synergistically
all around me and warm.

So go ahead and keep in rhythm,
there is nothing over here, don’t reach.
Eggs hatch, and become real,
and you can quit imitating
a windmill and become instead
a waterwheel and wonder turning you always.
born

The Ruin and The Wreck

It’s the ruin and the wreck
of what has been, what might have been
that stands so stark, abrupt against
the soft caress of night and in
the harsh daylight that shows the stress
and strain and bite of time…
so cruel, so kind

in dismantling artifice
and taking more to leave it less
and thus confer a grace upon
the mess of pride and prejudice

there…in the gentle wind’s soft kiss,
that which remains and sanctified
by tears from skies so gray and eyes
so blue and thus made holy in
the loss they gain substance
and stretch across

our hearts
our spirits
our souls
that yearn forever,
ah forever
it will burn
there…that fire

and those bones that burn so bright
in the ruin and the wreck
of what has been, what might have been
become what isImage 005

If You Insist On Living In My Past? Stay There

If you hear people from my past speak of me.
Keep in mind they are speaking of a person
they don’t even know any more.tumblr_nr1hx2eadR1shxmbso1_1280

 

Come, My Love

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

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

and underneath the Moon-Glow Glance

and we will carry our essence there
into the river deep and swift
and we upon the surface light
and walking in this river night

upturn your cup!  pour you out quick!
and I will do the same with you
and mingle…waters, breath, life
time, no time…mingle, ever mingle

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

The One Who Waits

I am the one who waits, the one in love
I cannot help but be the one who loves and waits.

Sometimes I want to be the one
who does not wait, who never hurts

I want to play the part of never waiting.

I try to get there late, busy myself, lose track of time
but I always lose this game and forget my lines.

When I go elsewhere I find myself here,
punctual, always on time
(or even ahead of time)

that’s saying something, being ahead of time

and nothing to do but be who I am,
the lover…the one
who waits

(inspired by Roland Barthes)PersonWalkingAway

 

Bickering On The Bike

“I’m dead” she said.

“Dead?” asked her honey?
“What do you mean?”

“I am slain at last
in the icy grip of
your death hand glare,
and solo icicle silences!”

She fairly dripped martyr blood
from every precisely chosen word
weighted just so and
freighted with layers…

“Ah” her honey replied, nodding.

They peddled on in silence
each one a universe of laughter
inside the heart they share.tumblr_mlmzwwh6nq1rc8sbto1_1280

Least Of All The Past

Mostly, people don’t realize
time is a living thing, a tree
whose roots stretch back
to the beginning (and before?)
whose branches reach high,
broad and all around into
the “what-is-coming-what-may-be”
and we the fruit hanging there
swaying in the breezes
of the breath of Jesus
and Mama at His side
and all creation spinning out
inside this circle dance…

see, the past flows up, into the future
the future slides down, slides deep
sinks into the roots and makes its
transformations silver, shining
or is reclaimed and overcome, choked off
and laid, still born into the red dirt slick and packed.tumblr_mapuluSGB71ruq5t7o1_1280and fruit?  tossed and kissed in space and growing
in the currents from beneath and from above?
fed by rivers subterranean, drinking from
the rain that falls down from the clouds
of all that lies ahead…

we fruit are sweet, or bitter, or savory
in the grip of God and how the past is eaten
does predict the future…

but what the future holds
can quickly change the past
in just an eyelash twinkle
and we all are changed!!tumblr_nsshklpRmr1qat5pio1_500Ahh…I hold to the past
and cling tight to my future
and throw my arms wide to the sides
and hug all “what-may-comes”
into my heart so soft, so strong
and thus shall my heart ever sing
the song of great becoming
and the song of all forgetting

do you get it now?
nothing is “just itself”
nothing at all,
least of all the past. tumblr_nsqbo2iD9x1qafxpco10_1280

Your Tender Thumbs

take your tender thumbs and softly
brush my rosy tear stained cheeks,
tears tender, like moonlight dripping
silky down the screen of night.

touch my face in quiet splendour
electric under starkissed eyes
and hungry for your sighs, your breath
oh Love, deliver me from death

and wreath me in your smoulder-heart
and cushion me against your breast
and hold me close and safe and sound
oh touch my soul, me, lost but found

and cricket song will fall and rise
and breezes kiss my yearning thighs
so softly, take your tender thumbs
and make time stop, oh, strike me dumb.tumblr_n4sg5dkmYn1ri8ligo1_500

That Moment Boundless

It’s when the grey wind
blows warm across
cinereal waters and
picks up pearly moist brushes
to push ashen stiff clouds
outta shape against cerulean canvas
of sky and space

It’s when dark grasses
and yearning branches
and leaves and needles
moan in jealous longing for
the fingers of that grey whistling
wind tasting of granite and glacier,
slow flows and sunlight
and dappled fruit quick
and sudden

It’s when I sit on the porch
and think of those times and spaces
and I remember your faces and my own
grasses and branches
and leaves and needles
stand on end stiff and electric
to catch anything…anything
blowing across my waves
in the grey wind

Tears Of Grace

This time of day…“l’heure bleue.”
I know it as “the gloaming” and was conceived
in it’s glimmer glisten and was born
in its radiant dark glitter-glamouring.

It’s the glamouring that the earth casts
when she hides from the hunters who roam the world
and gobble up the quiet dark and then rough-belch
their choking smothering counterfeit-communion

*non-light*tumblr_ns40g3DiCp1qas1mto3_1280Outside her glamouring, round about
shuttering houses and shuddering hearts,
gardens darken and grow quiet within
while the ravenous rave and wander wild

and hunt,
brandishing their bluebeards
and pulling
stars from the air.

Gardens crouch and sing silent
dirges to sounds of hunter-horns
and thunderous hooves, clatter-hoards
who ride and murder

*the tender sable satin night*.tumblr_ns5yflHIfR1t8tvpvo1_500But inside,
safe in L’heure Bleue
I wander, and
I think of you

*not-lost*

I slide thru grey grass
lining the sinewy river,
I slip thru shadows like
a cat rubbing against

*your limber long lingering legs*

The gloaming dark,
the never ending
extension of a day
that never ends

*and never arrives*tumblr_nrcag3O1421tp8egbo1_1280 but instead just stretches in this endless summer hour,
this full blue one full of blue light
dark and thick and more potent in its indigo flourish
than any wagging threatening bluebeard.

It’s the hour when the earth tries to hide her sorrow,
hold back her tears and so I slide down her face
instead, quiet like a swan upon the surface
of a silent-blue snow rimmed lake

while she glows in the dark-blue
light and gloams, she lets me
fall upon herself blue, like
tears of grace.
tumblr_nrs7vn6ZDK1sooy9go1_1280

Precious Time

All the places of the world
that call and beckon me,
the wander lust and longing heart
to travel there and be.

Be rooted in such rare terroir
and taste of precious life
unfurling right before my eyes…
but Time…that silver knife

has cut me off from my own heart
you there, and me out here
I’d trade the world and all its wonder
just to have you near.

We Are Come At Last

Marshal your forces, you protectors of the crown,
send your dogs running, your dogs of dreams,
your dogs howling, full noses of my fur, my pelt!

Bring on your hunt, your horses in full gallop
and chase for all you’re worth, your lust and fear
of free blood running red, and full, liberty’s blood!

Your coats, scarlet!  Your smirks, affixed with tax,
and become terrible twisted rictus in your sweaty efforts
to hunt this free fox leaping, yipping, dancing on the dawn!

They shall come to me, your dogs, and wriggle ‘neath my touch!
They shall hear my dog-whistle words, too high for your dull ears
but so keenly attuned and pitched to their own straining hearts!

And they shall call to their comrades, your horses, who will alert and thrill
and leap into the air to gallop freely there…and you unhorsed…you laying there
upon the blood-stained grass of yesteryear…

Your time is up, for we are come to hunt you down
and tear that red coat straight away right off your back
and tossed into the sky, our banner free unfurled and our war cry…

No Longer!  Not Anymore!
Related image

On Leaving Behind “Too”

“You are allowed to outgrow people.”

I found that quote this morning…and it startled me, scared me, and then I was quietly excited about its implications.

I have never had any friends in the past.  There are a lot of reasons for this…some are due to me, and my own flaws and stinkeroo heart.  Some are due to others who saw me as a pile of treasure to be used and exploited.tumblr_n6q9lekvjJ1tsgjavo1_500But mostly…I never had any friends because the people I wanted to be friends with were women…and I was stuck inside a biologically male body!  This automatically shifted all friendships into the “potential romantic partner” realm…or the “creepy dude being overly friendly realm” (which I never was but was always terrified that I would be perceived as)…

…or with males, it put me in the realm of absolute befuddlement:  they with me and me with them.

My therapist has helped me to see the ways that males treated me just as they do other women in our culture and this revelation has been key in accepting and forgiving myself.

But in the past 6 months, I have been gaining friends.  Amazing, towering women (who would shout derisively at me that I call them towering lol) who have opened their hearts and spread their wings to me…earthy, rooted women who have twined their roots into mine and have stood with me present…every day.tumblr_nr0nudVxoI1qas1mto6_1280They are teaching me to value myself appropriately and not sell myself so cheaply for bread crusts when there is a whole feast of friendship on the table.

So I am gaining in perspective…in experience…in confidence…and in direction.  I don’t think I want to be part of relationships that are not substantive and real.  I don’t want to be in connections where I am thought of as a bother, a chore to be tended to, or a minor annoyance to grasp (like a pineapple).mine-field1I am a very unique person…and I am a force.  I have been called “too” in the past…”too much”…”too intense”…”too passionate”…”too hard on myself”…”too high a standard”…

Well.  Let this be known:  I am not “too”

I am me.

If that is “too” to you, then likely we are not gonna really connect and grow together.  I have tried to slow down, to sit down, to tone down, to quiet down…and I die inside in guilt, doubt and self-judgement.

I am not doing that anymore…taking that label to myself about myself “too”…

and I am knowing that I am simply me.

And that is the best and only thing I can be…

Those who will shall find me and in these new lands I will become even more…and less.  Less that “me” that is self-judging and critical and self-hating…and more in their wonderful offering of themselves to my heart.Image 001But especially less…for it is in the “less becoming” that I truly become.

I have been knowing this for sometime now, without really knowing…
well, I am getting there…

Gosh it feels so good to run barefoot!tumblr_nmxzr28pzd1u38l26o1_500

As Is

The sounds it made were bold, cavernous,
an opera in a wooden box.
The grown ups said this was an early model
and it was in mint condition.

They spoke in hushed tones.
A perfect treasure, a magnificent and flawless toy.
It was not sold “as is”…dscf4606

“As is” marked the clock that had stopped ticking,
or the rocking horse that had a crack in one of its legs.
That label also conveyed a certain sense of defeat,
a lost cause—a treasure bearing some distinguishable,
irreparable flaw.

I have always felt “As is,”
that label covering over
the tag inside my collar
that says “As I long to be”
and the treasure of me
going awry…in only a matter of time.tumblr_n9r92oy73M1s3tosqo1_r1_1280

Well, thank God
They delight in “As Is”
rather than sacrifice,
They dote on broken spirits
They comfort contrite hearts
and will not despise the humble.212standsforstars

“Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows…
But he was pierced
for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities.”

Isn’t it strange
that we who are saved
by One who was broken
should struggle in the presence
of brokenness at all?

we are never nearer
than when we come
with nothing in
our hands to offer.

And “As Is” gives a certain hope,
for in this recognition of brokenness
we see the promise of
wholeness.tumblr_noi74zupo91qas1mto2_1280

I Think It’s Memory

There’s deep green truth
in the spectral grey heart
of this ghastly pale notion
haunting our desperate minds:
our own truest blue heart
is most deeply discovered
in desperate ragged edges,
jagged, sharp, contrasted,
in tight precipice moments
(both high, and oh so low).tumblr_nr3s43ffiK1rn12zko1_500It’s on those thresholds,
in those moments
of “life”, of dismal death,
weighted and full moments
where indecision and decision
wrestle for supremacy,
where comfort lulls,
boredom deceives,
and indifference dulls…tumblr_nqy1drd2ru1qc6wuio8_r1_1280Tell me, what’s the essence of a heart
delivered from this life lived badly
to a certain death well-died?
And there and back again
into life lived and risen
from the bony spectral grip
of that small death called
cowardice?

Iris Fox ©2013 Gretchen Powers all rights reserved

Iris Fox ©2013 Gretchen Powers all rights reserved

I think it’s memory,

(and of course courage
to forget what is dead
and press on in pursuit
of those matters that matter)

to bravely (courage)
recall (re-member)
those things long ago
when first love was
fresh, free, fragrant…
that gives us perspective
to risk a decent death
and choose to lay down all
in hopes that we will rise
before the Great Rising.tumblr_np4plshztV1tv3g49o1_1280It’s when we remember
in poised precipice moments
that we can see most clearly
how our affections flow
and what and who we are…

But:

what we remember deeply,
all that we have ingrained
into identity assumed
(like costumes for the play)
it’s far more likely we’ll recall
when crisis, pain or comfort make it
hard to remember anything,
the deep memory will hold against
temptation of forgetfulness in
“the Forgetful Green.”tumblr_nq9w38M1RM1qat5pio1_500If we refuse to actively remember
the story in which we participate,

(moments where God
has acted mightily,
the times humanity
has learned in tears
of reality and immortality,
of the autonomy of God
even in this)

then in sickness and in health
undoubtedly we will forget
that memory even is a thing
in this world that’s forgotten
and bids us forget as well.tumblr_nmlz7sSJYH1u3o58go1_540Lay aside the panaceas, cure alls,
life supports, and take up courage
to embrace a good death given
Die a Decent Death, in faith
that such thing does exist!

What is a good death?
The question’s asked and answered
by people who mourn and lament,
who weep at gravesides lingering,
who live and die and live as those
who follow That One gone before
in boldness and then risen high
above the false finale of
the gasping gaping grave!

A decent death, a certain hope…

I think it’s memory…
I think it’s memory.tumblr_mnjid9PJp21ry9w1bo1_500

 

Reaping Waves

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.tumblr_not59dYYGf1s5u2cno1_500

I sail on clouds, on streams
on brook-magic mists rising
in the gentle night and dusky dawn
and sow in rose-glow song
to the fields of new morning
by the light of the Morning Star…

tears are my seed
laughter my harvest
in grace taken and shared
in the cycle of that itty bitty seed
so small, so unstoppable
so certain at the beginning
of the Endless Daytumblr_nqyd9yxhEh1s5neh1o1_1280

Breaking Beans

the *snap* of crisp green beans
the smell of the fresh linen
infused with lacy scents
of baked bread lingering

the sound like
*past* and *present* and *future*
punctuated with
period.  period.  period.
and my heart the ellipsis that lingers

like the freshly baked bread.tumblr_npqjbzQDhF1thfeewo1_500I toss snappy green bodies
*broken for you*
into the big tin tub
that has held generations
of bloody green beans.

I hear the sound, somewhere between
a thump
and a ting
and the tremor of a gong,
the tolling of a bell

and you,
I hear the sound of you
breaking, snapping
and thumping into your tub.

This season could last forever
as far as I am concerned.

This season cannot roll past fast enough
if you want to know the truth.tumblr_nr28o2lNKD1u0xmcmo1_1280Truth.
Thump.
Ting.
Tremor.
Toll.

I stare at the horizon (beyond)
as my fingers find familiar quan
in green beans
*snap*ping like
castanetstumblr_nqtiiuBszi1snlnsio1_1280

The House of My Heart

If you sit down in my life
and find it snug, merry, warm
and full of the smells
of bread baking and
food cooking…

then you have made it to the porch.

If you stand in horror
at the mess you see
the dirty laundry next
to the washer running
24×7…

then you have made it to the mudroom.

If you walk, amazed
and cannot find words
for those rooms unfolding
and full of art, of music
of funny lil knic-knaks,
and the only uniting theme
is wonder…

then you have made it into my heart.

And if you find the stillness
filled with golden light
and fierce joyful gladness…

then you have made it to my soul.christine-ellger

It’s The Wonder

Lately it’s been getting harder,
harder to breathe…my chest
is burdened, weighed down,
constricted and heaving
and breath, a woman writhing in labor,
gasps and tears at air so thick
it only gives up in pieces ragged
and jagged and grippy.

The older I get, the harder it is
to breathe.

Doctors call it asthma, they say
I’ve had it all my life
(who knew?  Not I!)
And me none the wiser, I just
worked so hard and suffered harder
and swam straight on thru strife.

But recently, I coughed real hard!
And what I thought was sputum
was really a fresh bud coughed up
and then spit out for good!

That’s when I realized, my lungs
have turned into a flower bed
of Mama’s Blossoms Fragrant
and oh so beautiful.

He Said…She Said

…I have remained a poet, in the most radical sense of the word.
Friedrich Nietzsche, from a letter to Peter Gast

I am laughing as I read this quote
this poor man sounding like Bill Grogan’s Goat
who swallowed the farmer’s red long underwear
and now has indigestion everywhere!

remain…poet…radical…sense…the word
that sentence is red long underwear
giving me indigestion, and as I bleat
I cough it up down at the rail road tracks
and flag the passing train that hurtles by
rolling towards the trestle out, destroyed!

how can I remain a poetess? I am still “main”
and thus have no access to “re”…just main
and Poetry?  She scoffs at notions, high pretensions
such as “most” and “sense” when grafted
to the context of the Word.

NAY! This heart poetic, precious is defined,
is described, is found and measured
in the shadow cast and context of the Word
*in the beginning was/is/shallbe*

and in the Word “sense” is mere nonsense,
and radical is a sub-atomic particle straining free
and remain is so redundant, oh so boring
and goats munch red underwear and choke

I am a poetess, because the Word
and Poetry my mistress and my Queen
and nonsense is outside sense as dark is light
and I “main” my flow, my creative Delight

I am Charissa Grace and I am free
so sorry for Nietzsche, too fearful to be
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Catacombs and Caverns

I heard caverns deep behind your words of wonder.
I heard water dripping softly from wet ceilings
in those hollow places that you talked
so gingerly around…I heard your words resound,
your words of wonder…

in catacombs within so dark with dying
and dismal longing smothering and sighing,
the death to self and terrible becoming
in places of deep grief and self-discovery
those spaces once full, quick became so hollow…

I hear your hollow places faintly filling
with sorrow bleeding, and thus filled becoming
drained, emptied in the lonely tearful crying
that hallows fearful places looming darkly,
places of slow death so severely emptied,tumblr_nqq99nTys31qccgmso1_1280

bereavement fresh yet ancient,
everlasting and then grief become
dark resurrection hinted at
in every birth brand new,
in every dying….

I found your trails familiar, well worn, hidden
so deep within the kidneys of your words
and yet those trails well known in rising darkness,
(a left at that root ragged there, then quickly
around that rugged rock jutting sharp right here).

I have been walking word roads too, becoming
and finding that my caverns dark and thrumming
catacombs full, then empty, full then empty
more times than I can count or e’en remember
and I wonder in such a holy horror

when my wonder became wander…wander…wander!
Yet I am here!  Alive and breathing! Singing!
I’m here to tell you, it gets better, Darling
But only on this singular condition:
the losing of your everything in dyingtumblr_nqg1jqI8y51tw3geao1_400

and thus it is
you can be born
again and live
so lively new,
again.

Today, as I sit, listening to your heart, Dear
I look back at what I have lost…oh my God!
The stuff of Titans, losses heaped and horded,
my trinkets, treasures tossed, honors awarded
all tumbled in the twilight, gleaming dully

in the hot noon listless sun, laying there lifeless
and in the evening gloaming calling mutely
midst catacomb become my living darkness,
that cavern now my womb filling with wonder
all finally lost…and now?  And now…The finding…tumblr_n1joa8cesG1qm86t3o1_500

truly nothing
can compare
to the all surpassing
wonder of a world
made brand new

and my
Catacombs and Caverns
filled forever,
never failing, filled
and brand new

every morning,
every mourning
every warning
made brand new
and full of wonder
full of wander
full of You.
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To The One Who Seeks My Faith’s Tender Throat With Teeth

I will never turn back.

I will never not Love God…why do you keep making that a condition?

When God has chosen (for what reason I know not, certainly not based on any merit I have, being the worst example of a human being that has walked the planet) to reveal Themselves, Their Beauty, well…

…the one to whom the revelation is given is slain forever…wounded forever and will forever bleed

love

and love

and love and love and love.

This is not about me, or about righteousness…it is about adoration.

I shall always always love Them, for They are Good and Kind, Clean and Pure, and have no shadow or smell of evil in Them.

If me renouncing Them is a condition for you, then you might as well go rave at Kilauea, go worship Krakatoa (if you can find him, blown apart in his own powerous pouty poofery)!  Go lay hands on gouts of liquid rock, let them run through your fingers and clench down their flow and see what happens…

your flesh will not burn nor melt neath their heat…for you are ice and icy, austere in your inviolate Olympus of self, and I find myself cast out of your heaven and consigned to your outer darkness midst the sound of your gnashing teeth…tumblr_noypg7Py1z1s5u2cno1_500But you have thrust me deeper into that side pierced and bleeding…you have pushed my face into His Heart Bloody with Boundless Love…you have cast me on my Mama’s Breast (the one for me, contained in Her deeps, She:  El Shaddai, the Many Breasted One with place for whosoever will…even you, dearest, even you…no…especially you).

I am my Beloveds’ and They are mine…it is by Their Hand and Word and what can I do?

To even renounce is to affirm for I use the Voice They gift to utter forth a word and thus it turns and leads me home again…

I will never

EVER

turn from Them, for with Them have I trusted my soul and I shall seek Them all the days of my life.

And the rest of you…who think that I have fallen into “sin”, into “sexual perversion”, into (you don’t even know, you just “know” it’s bad and tragic)…to the rest of you?

I cannot convey to you how truly irrelevant to life and love your gossip and gibbering is.  It is as consequential to me and my fate in the Hands of the Lord God Almighty as a flea is to the ocean.

I love Jesus and follow Him, for He has accepted me and declared me His own and worthy.
I love Holy Spirit, blessed Holy Spirit, my Mama who calls me Her own and instructs me in Her way.
I love Father…who is good and kind and generous and forgiving and always always smiling on me in the darkness.

I care not if you read this and judge me…don’t you get it yet?  My faith is not about you, and it never will be.  It just isn’t.  I no longer live to try and impress you, or please you, or deserve you.

I do not require you to say or do or believe or be like me in order to connect and laugh and love and live…why do you lay such requirement on me?  Because you will never get it.

I will never leave Them.  Never.

Found, at last, and in Them I shall dwell forever.

*All others, forgive this lil soliloquy…it is not for you unless you know it is…nothing to see here, move along quick*
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Here’s What’s Okay (And Not Okay) to Say to a Trans Person – Once and For All — Everyday Feminism

Here’s What’s Okay (And Not Okay) to Say to a Trans Person – Once and For All — Everyday Feminism. Dear Constance, this article will be good review for some, and a great beginning for those who are interested but don’t know protocol.

The one that is most crucial to me?  The one that says my story is mine and not yours…and you have no right to out me to anyone…even though people have done this to me. It’s sorta weird to meet someone I knew then and hear that there is all kinds of gossip about me happening…that means that the paragons of virtue who told me I was beyond a river they refused to cross and that I was demonized?

They started the rumors and passed them along…and likely think they served Jesus in doing it. The trouble they caused me…I weep still at times over things that I could have shared in my own way and time that got shared and soo distorted… …but that’s the way it goes when you deal with the privileged…whatever they say is God’s will becomes God’s will…

because they say so (which makes them God, I guess).
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Thoughts of Connection

I love thought that runs in this fashion…not on “eros” as a topic…but the way in which it is discussed.

This is Signifier and Signified Thinking and a good example of it.

Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive.
“But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me.
“And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can.
Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

butterfly

Beside This Ring Of Ashes One Year Later

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.tumblr_nq9ngm71fg1qat5pio1_500

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?

tumblr_nm8fo9zWD51tkr81jo1_1280When 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?tumblr_nd6tstqbwz1sckob0o1_1280

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.tumblr_nneoshc0PX1sq00azo1_1280

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).54606def315a3No 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* tumblr_npuhk5h8PG1uru6h4o1_1280

(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.tumblr_nq5pgxrQWz1qllucco2_1280

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 richestumblr_nm27mtsR1i1qkevp7o1_1280

*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…pooftumblr_na3un4PrG41r1arpmo1_1280

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.tumblr_nq3ucoBZSl1qat5pio1_400

“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 
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That Small Distance Gaping

It’s not that far, really,
when you consider
the arm’s reach
of Andromeda
or the stride
of Cassiopeia.

But that distance
between you there
and me here
confounds me
confuses me
in its elasticity

in its plasticity
it grows and shrinks
with the mood
of the moon
and the shades
of your heart

rolling up sunny
pulling down flinty
and all laid just so
at the feet of that
lead based busy god
pretending at time.

I wish I could
escape the shell
of time and dance
across galaxies
in a twinkle
and a dash

and swing
all day
with you
dear friend
all day
with you

Our Us

It’s not a game, my dear,
to see who keeps their cards more near
and shunts examination clear
behind them and well, to the rear.

You win, okay?  I freely share
I put my bleeding heart out there,
and if I’m foolish, I don’t care
cus holding back is just no where.

Please share your heart, it feeds my soul
and when you open up, I’m whole
cus your friendship is just like coal
becoming diamonds in the toll.

You win…I give you victory
Control, access to all of me
I do not fear, do not dread thee
because in our Us I am free.
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What I Wish Every Person Knew

…this would transform the world.

It is the hardest thing for me…ever…to not hear from loved ones, and then get a dashed off note with the word “sorry” (not even “I am sorry”), and a line of sandwich filler, and a conclusion of “love you” (writing “I love you” takes too long).

Saving time and all…for what?  Where is all that time saved?  In a bank somewhere drawing interest?

No…it is spent…everyday.

Every.  Last.  Red.  Cent.  Second.

Ticks and tricks…tickles and trickles thru your will and then your heart…

…and finally your fingers to lay there at your feet as the record of what you did and what you did not do.

Charissa is regularly labeled wordy…of generating too much content…of putting too much out there to be dealt with or responded to…

but I guess that’s just how I roll…cus time.  Fading.  Flowing…flying away and done too soon. And I want to give everything I have to give…especially my time.

Do Justice.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly

To The Ones Twisting In Agony

Dearest Hearts:

As time passes it becomes increasingly clear to me that you are incredibly shocked and perhaps even traumatized by recent events.  What started as a journey rooted in solidarity and a narrative of history held in common, stitched together by memories of holidays, traditions, and countless days in the sun has been blown apart by a story describing a life experience so different and distinct as to seem like the most crazed and addled of fictions.

Except it is far more complicated than that…both your experiences of it and ours.tumblr_npmvryFJ0N1unf033o1_1280

And trying to put the spotlight of truth on “what really happened” is as fruitful as running on the beach to try and catch a seagull…memory and our past flies up and away when we run hard at it.

Certainly there is a plethora of artifacts that buttress my own experience…but here is the rub for me:

So much of those days is fuzzy to me, blurred by time and by the assumption that we were pretty fortunate to have one another…but most of all so much of it was swallowed whole and robbed from me by a Leviathan called Dysphoria.  In the bone-frying terror of trying to survive the assaults of despair, a lot of my memory is reduced to memories of just hanging on.528483-Depression-1364630455-842-640x480

As you all have been processing things, you have gone silent, gone angry, but mostly, just…gone.  Nothing.  And what reports do trickle back have been shocking in their vehement accusations and recollections, have been utterly astonishing in the gaping holes where context tells a radically differing tale…and completely and totally devastating to read and encounter.

It has been like a pogrom on my history…and what is worst of all is that whatever or however it happened, you have come to this time and this place where you have these driving needs to tell your story and write your history thus.

And thus the heart of this post:  I want you to know that it is okay.large (4)

I want you to be and do and say whatever it is that will bring you expiation and freedom.
I want for you liberty and fruitfulness.
I want for you life and wholeness.

I want for you what I have always wanted for you and sought to provide you.

And I love you…regardless of what you might think or not think, say or not say, remember or forget.
I will never not love you.

Never.

Perhaps someday there will be enough said or done that you might begin to feel those relentless scales within entering into a sort of equilibrium…the doors of my heart are flung wide open.tumblr_ngu7ex2a631t5zt91o1_1280

Perhaps someday you might be handling the artifacts that my fingertips and heart tendrils trace daily, and you might find the tracks of my tears and the perfume of my love…in letters, in cards and emails…in memories other than the ones who swell and swarm our landscape like Red Tides…

…and if that ever happens, please do not waste one moment of your lives in regret or remorse…while it is evident to me that it is highly unlikely that this will ever happen, there is a chance that you might feel as if you have in some fashion or way done wrong in the process of this becoming of ours, and if this is ever the case I say to you

I love you
I forgive you
I have no record of wrong
I believe everyday in who I know you are
I want the best for you as you are able to discover it and access it
It is my honor to have had a part in your coming to be and it is my doom to be accountable for the innumerable ways that I failed you and caused you pain and horror.
I hope everyday that you are finding the sort of strength in becoming that I am experiencing.

Should you ever glance my direction, I am here at the end of the lane of home, everyday standing on tippietoes and my eyes combing the horizon and my heart listening to the wind and my nose sniffing the air for your presence…

…hoping to see you, praying for your safety and shalom…and never ever failing to hold you in my heart precious.

I also want you to know this:  whatsoever you need to write, need to shout, need to throw, need to yell, need to think or tell or believe…whatever you need to do or be in order to be whole, it is okay with me.tumblr_msjrksOnZh1rkjw3bo1_1280

I refuse to ever be “a betrayed one”
I refuse to ever be “a wronged one”
I refuse to ever be “offended”

I choose you and your wholeness.
I choose you and your horror that you lay at my feet and at my accountability.  Let it be on me, to make things lighter and easier and more fruitful for you it is my glad and sacred honor.

If the narrative is now that I was the worst abuser, a victimizer, a (fill in the blank)…whatever it is…as long as it is an assignation of responsibility that enables you to be delivered and put in a place where you can choose life and choose wholeness and becoming, then it is a sentence that I want to have over me that I shall do my absolute best to carry in the way that creates the freedom and deliverance and cleansing within that brings you the very best that can be brought.

May it be my meals for the rest of my days if in eating it there is even a modicum of relief and wholeness for you.

Everyday without you is like Kafka’s world with no exit…unless in the absence I have the assurances it is resulting in your liberty and gladness and joy…

…and in that case it is the greatest of honors to be in this place.

I think I know who I was…and who I wasn’t too, finally.  I think I acted in good faith, but who really knows?  When one is dysphoria’s ball of yarn it gets a bit discombobulating to be batted around for 5o years.

But now?  I know I know who I am, and who I am not…and while I can do nothing about what has happened, the future is mine to write, each and everyday that is left in God’s coffers for me to walk out.tumblr_npxzck3PTr1rav43uo1_1280

I love you with all my heart, and I am honored by each of you in your strength of voice, your commitment to one another, your loyalty to truth and your heart for justice.

There are many who could have loved you more perfectly.

There are none who could have loved you more.

I loved you utterly, totally…I still do.

And I always will.  Love you.

Say on…it’s okay, let it rip…do what you must and need and want…be…become.

Cus I am here now:  Charissa Grace, and I am finally free and not a helpless bystander any longer, and nothing can ever lock me up ever again.11094852_690388207737694_2806437274797532527_n

Written in my blood and tears and sweat…and the tattoo ink of forever love,

Me…the one who was there and now is here…the one who engendered you…

Your loving parenttumblr_noiz30RJh51tpdjt7o1_1280

In Arpeggio Miles

Prelude:
There is an indigo bunting
outside my window singing
in the moonlight streaming by
a million miles an hour.
But it is not the window
on my mind tonight…
I keep returning to that door,
the one between you and me.

Fumes of light stream from my soul
and ribbons of sound rise from my heart.
I glow with purpose and echo with meaning
and love descends so soft upon my shoulders

and kisses my brow
with lips of apple red
that grace the inmost curve
of the coming sun arising.tumblr_npj2lfAzvL1qz62xqo1_1280One:
Some people drown in the darkness of the night,
some people drown in the waters of the lake,
some people drown in the creamy golden moonlight…

*sob*

I drown in you, your heart my anchor
pulling me down to the depths of you,
to the bottom of you but never finding it,
the bottom

in this
ecstasy of sinking
into you.

You…you…
Luminescent and Limerent and I know
in my depths the outside is temporary.

Your fatal gift, the fatal gift of beauty
was revealed when the Redwing Blackbird
stopped by our house tonite,

and perched on her throne there
in the blue spruce tree grey in the night
at the center of the grey green wood all around.

She dignified
our proceedings with her song,
and all was well.tumblr_nm25jtSBHh1szbceio1_1280Two:
Beyond, on your side of that door
the moon tickles the lake
with her golden liquid fingertips
languid in the soft night
and sounding of rivers of song
that soar between stars,
that pour between galaxies

*in arpeggio miles*

that take not light years
but move in sound centuries
that stop time and make the past
and the future stand off
and stand still in awe
of these fabled musical moments
that fold time in deep space.
tumblr_nng5ilQYoZ1r312weo1_500

The moon is loyal always,
but only to herself.
She comes and goes…
She is always there,
watching, steadfast
and knowing us in
our light and dark moments,
She wavers with us as we wax
and wane…
She knows what it means
to be on display and assaulted
by meteors in the night.

Three:
I buried her nose
(the nose of the moon)
in my hair,

(my hair, rampant and unpinned, on the loose,
set free from the usual noose of clippie or headband,
untamed and untameable but always laying back
and down for you, your palms, your fingertips
in those tresses thick and fine, golden-shine
and dusky red overlaying and singing
of my inner pulsing red wet passion)

she drinking in/thirsting for me here
and my perfumes in dim rose-tinged light,
and there we danced upon the air,
hanging in the space between there and here,
and I felt the tips of my breasts swell and tighten,
come to focus and awareness, the smoothness of my belly
and my thighs clenching on hers and meshing tight,
an intricate creation of vaporous mist and lightning
of rain and dust, of desire and aching, groaning must.

And we two, in our separate skins
but sharing those common vital organs of us,
face to face and flying in freedom
to discover each other’s universe
and thus enter in and live this love adventure
full of risk and promise.

We lay together, in my mind, we lay together
in the full of night while others drowse unawares
in the halfway darkness of night’s deep sable, washed out
with screaming electric light.tumblr_npdx52lbec1tw8mtoo2_r3_500

Four:
The moon pries at the ripples and the lake stirs into waves
under her touch and inhales swift in desire and exhales
in winds of want, and her lakey answering song of delight
rises from those moundy wet humps of her body
against the rocks, and onto sandy beaches

It’s the song of lovers lost and longing.
It’s the song heard only by hearts that listen.
It’s the music of the stars writ in the moment
in dancing waters by calligraphic moonlight rays
extending from forever and into never ending
and never ceasing until those waters answer
with sweet frothy songs and foamy longing harmonies
sweet and sibilant whispers against the dry and thirsty sands…

and then at last, in gurgly gasps,
her answer of longing for the moon
rising and falling and caught
by the moon’s grip,
mesmerized by her gravity.
tumblr_nqbu90vAHU1qat5pio1_500

Five:
The wind’s soft palms caress my face tonight,
her tender tendrils pluck my tresses,
kiss my cheeks rosy and peachy-soft and me here,
beside the stirring lake and beneath
the ministrations of the moon
inside the heart of the naked night
and lost in starry reaches over galaxy beaches
strewn over the vast expanse of nothing.

*and yet it is
never really nothing,
is it? nothing
doesn’t really exist…
because something!

Something!
And all else
is not that
and thus is
Something else,
and nothing is
dispelled…
and this is
why this song,
why this light
and the water
and the sound…
why the you
and the me
is a something,
an us, and
not a nothing,
not loss.*tumblr_mksatpyfwr1r5fwoio1_540

Six:
I stir and shift, as the waters in the bathtub
lose heat and their ardor is dampened
in the thirsty soft night air sneaking in
thru the cracked window, brushing against
the curtains you made me in
the 7th winter of our vast contents.

I run my hands over my hills (yours)
and they dive into valleys (yours)
like fog banks rolling in for the week,
beneath the surface of my bath (this lake)
and you so far away

I am still yours and yours alone love…
well, and the moon and the lake
and the stars in the night…
I am theirs too, but as they lead to you,
what’s that really matter?

My fingers dance lightly into my lake, across my folds,
they pry like moonlight into my depths,
probe like starlight into my galaxy cores that stand,
eternity’s target for time’s arrows of light
shot from the bows of longing…3513680_orig

longing for you, always
you across the sands of time
vast like beaches,
small ‘neath reaches
of stars and space
and become as nothing
when I summon to my mind
your face…your face…
your curve and swell
and moans escape my lips,
and such tales those moans do tell
but they speak only in tongues
not of men but angels
and sound bells sweetly
between the lips of time
and there again,
I gush like rivers
I am yours,
I am thine…
OH…

thine alone
thine alone
thine alone
thine alone
thine alone…

and all the symphony
of us escapes my lips
in sighs and whispers
of your sacred name
and in the air above
my parted lips
and just outside
my lowered fluttering lids.

Our song hangs there
over my yearning face
as sung by me
in solo sotto voce
so softly in
the slick and velvet night
and tender touch
of golden glad moonlight.

It swims above
my longing heart so red
across the distance
indigo that stretches
until it finds you, there,
until it touches
you in just the same
way it just took me
and you enter into
our Holy Us,
our Glory Be…

Seven:
But now the winds subside and waters have cooled
and night recedes, sucked back into the stars
from which it oozed in hungry sweet washes

and time looks on, time resumes, time takes back
its rightful place around me, in huffy shrugs and jerky yanks
of garments back in place…and jeans just so

and nothing is what remains of moments long unceasing
except the footprints of the moon across the surface of the lake
and brushes of their dance on sands

in footprints keeping time locked firmly in its place
and held in check between the stars, behind the shining moments
of the galaxies showing off, immune

*to time’s inoculations.*

But water graces my bare shoulders,
drops of starlight linger in my hair
and our song dances in my eyes and lives

in my heart and you
always, always always
are only here

and questions are at peace now,
and answers? They are known,
like long locked rooms in an old familiar house

where each creak and groan
is recognized in darkness
as the sighs of a familiar

faithful friend and lover
in a language that the heart alone
comprehends.
Screen-Shot-2012-09-14-at-3.22.22-PM

Eight:
The mind lacks understanding and I am standing,
under, under moon and stars in something, here.
I spin on my axis and show you my other face
for we all like the moon, we have 2 faces,
and we also like the moon keep our best side facing out…

but is that side the one most real, or even best?
And so I turn and hear the creaking of the turning on my axis
to face you with my other face, the dark side of my moon me
and the light has come to set me free and time is there
and is of no meaning, not anymore, not ever.

(It’s become
nothing which exists
not, never, no more.)tumblr_np6lnxVe2O1sg9acoo1_1280

Finale:
Wallace Stevens said
“sometimes the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.”
but I know different, I know the sojourn that I take
to walk on waters is to know the place
where truth is held, in love’s own heart of grace.

So let’s not hurry home tonight, let’s linger, here,
in hammocks under diamond slick black sky.
The stars they are on fire tonight so high
above us, I think someone could go check,
see how they shine, how they shine, OH.

And the miles are present too, they are
like an overly unctuous waiter eager for a tip,
hovering between us, connecting your there with my here
and taking the lone from the a,
we are connected in what is called

the distance, but there is a shortcut, dear
it’s my heart, feel right there
see it shine (like stars) for all it’s worth
and more, so close, so near
and travelling forever in arpeggio miles.tumblr_njqb6a8kks1r3fkjno1_1280

 

Love Like Breakfast

I want
someone to hug me,
walk up behind me
on kitty paws padding
quiet and pouncy,
put their head next
to mine and talk
to me in sleepy singsong
while I make them
breakfast.
tumblr_not63j0qLH1qat5pio1_540

In Consolation’s Loving Arms

Consolation…
such a beautiful word.
con-     “to be”
solus-   “with the lonely one”
Offering consolation is caring
like that early summer mist
cares for the thirsty ground
dreading the coming sunny heat.
It does not take away
the coming pain
but rather covers over
and assuages that fierce dread
and says I’m with you
you are not alone
together we can face the sun
though I dissipate
I shall return
always I shall return
to bear the burden with you
a gift of union joyful.
2e9fe7f6aa58381456fa363f42cd4490

In Humility’s Scale

there ain’t much ground to stand on
there’s not a lot of space
for all my lil toesies
for my skert lil face

to go before me in the world
and represent my heart
it takes balance and grace unfurled
my banner and my part

it looks like I must tiptoe
on post and on the wire
but actually I walk in joy
aflame with Mercy Fire

so disregard what you see
and look beneath the veil
see mercy balance justice
in Humility’s scale

Without You Adding To It

“It bugs me when people are unnecessarily mean. Like, you didn’t have to make that comment.
You could have just kept your mouth shut and left that person not feeling bad about themselves.
What do you gain from making someone else feel like shit? Nothing of substance.
Maybe a fleeting moment of power but that’s gone as soon as it comes so why?

There’s enough unhappiness in the world without you adding to it.”tumblr_nfq77xlbRu1ska0k5o1_1280

From The Writings of King David

This.

Gives me hope.

Always.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.barbara-bargiggia

Mama With Me, Near Today

Constance…

How I wish that you could know…know…the Love of God…the Presence of Them in your core essence.

God has been so polluted and trashed by the low things that oppose Them.  God has been so misrepresented by complete morons who spin out of their corrupted souls a god made in their own image, and it is ugly, it is gross, it is cruel and it is crude…and most of all it is blind, dumb, and deaf, just like them.

God is Humble.  They pounce thru every single crack in human perception that shows the least openness to Them, and They shine…oh how They shine.

They have loved me.

And that is a wonder that breaks me open again and again and again and again and…

Holy Spirit of God…Holy Spirit is Their Presence here in this creation.  Jesus has ascended and is in heaven in this time and making all things ready.  So Their presence is Holy Spirit…and oh the honor of Her drawing me near Her, opening the Word to me to see Her…

She is like one of my poems…layers, hints, indirection, inference, and sometimes subtle in its baldfaced straightforwardness…this is Her.

And She is altogether good, and I love Her.

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

Reader:  I will never not love Her.

Never.

Your statements and judgments of Her are dust and lower than irrelevance.

Why do you fulminate and foam at the mouth because I love Her?  If indeed She was just a myth, why would you even care? I love Her, and it is to Her that I have surrendered, and willingly laid down control.

Thank you!

Dear Cassandra…

Your kindness and acceptance has been Eternal Gold to me.

You wear your heart on your sleeve…definitely a Woman after my own heart, and I have learned so much from you as I watch how you negotiate the space of being an older child with so many young ones, the eldest sister of three pretty powerful girls, and your own seething yearning heart that longs so for that…beyond.

May you ever be blessed with clear vision, and the courage to let your muse sing at the top of her ever-livin’ lungs!

Much Love!!!
Ms Charissa

tumblr_np96m4s1FE1qmygvyo10_1280

“Your Best Friend”

I rolled into work early, comme toujours, and bustled down to the kitchbah to get things prepared for the day.  There were ranges to light, ovens to turn on, dishwashers to prep, and food to coax.

*You realize that…don’t you?  You must coax food to “join the party”…usually with letting it warm a bit, and then liberal application of olive oil if it is something that must come together.*tumblr_muo6bsyfhO1qzleu4o1_500

What do you know, when I got there, and spied on the counter an 8 1/2 x 11 sized package, wrapped in light yellow tissue paper and green yarn holding it together.  On top of it was a folded piece of paper…

“Only for Mrs. Charissa
🙂
Your Best Friend”

The paper had been drawn on to make it appear as if it were an envelope…it was soo touching and adorable, and from the handwriting, I was certain it was from one of the children that I help care for.

Have you ever had the experience of finding out unexpectedly that someone considers them self “your best friend”?  I have not…until that day.  (No…DDH, when I discovered that you considered yourself my bestie, it was delightful beyond belief but not unexpected! lol)tumblr_mug8bcrC3A1qkjpslo1_1280

Inside the folded paper (special stationary type paper) it was laid out like an email with a “to” section and a “from” section.

It was from “Cassandra” (name changed to protect my angel lil friend’s privacy)…this young lady is one of the most amazing people I have ever had the good fortune to encounter in my entire life…and she has 2 sisters who are equally amazing, accepting, friendly and loving.  Her youngest sister was the bold child on my first day at the center when I was doing my “try-out” classroom test…she walked straight up to me, her dark eyes like limitless pools, and so solemnly asked me if I was a boy or a girl…I told her I was like an oreo cookie:  one thing on the outside, something different on the inside, and all together I was me, and sweet.  She thought about it, smiled, and nodded.  I then simply explained to her what happened to me as I was created, and the insight and look of knowing that happened in those eyes was an eternal gift.

Since then she has been one of my biggest fans.tumblr_mt637dVtd31r4hhzeo2_500

But Cassandra…well, she also was kind, caught on right away, but she hung around a bit, listening, watching, feeling the experiences I have everyday in living.  She paid attention to my true heart, and not the things I spin outta my kitchbah to feed the kids.  She is the one who was walking beside me, talking, on the way into the center from the bus parking lot…and these people who live across the street decided to verbally and loudly tell me what I was, in the lowest and most crude slang imaginable.

I ignored it, like always…sigh…and just kept talking with Cassandra, but her face went white, and still.  Her eyes widened in shock, horror, and then…something else:  she realized that this was my life.  Every day.  Just because I am…and she began to cry.  She was horrified at what was said, and I think even mildly traumatized, so we of course talked a bit about it.

It was a true teachable moment on the meaning of forgiveness and a lifestyle of Grace.tumblr_mukhaaFXSI1qd0knjo2_1280

So anyway, Cassandra had written this:

I now you will
like this.  I Made
some Pritty Good
ones for you
I was Thinking of You at
school

🙂

Can you say *Instant melty heart exiting eyes PDQ*???

Okay, first of all…she knew.  She knew I would like it, a priori.  Let that sink in.
Secondly, she judged her own work, and decided it was pretty good (it is, btw), and that it was for me.
And then…the killer love words:  I was thinking of you at school.

When it was time to create, her thoughts turned to me…

Rapture.  Pure.  Rapture.

The next several poems are hers…I am placing them here on Grace Notes as my own weak ineffectual attempt to show I am thankful and grateful for her love and affection…and her friendship. cropped-tumblr_m4t7m7roid1r743s1o1_12801.jpg

A Couple Of Older Favorite Poems

Constance, here are a couple of older poems, and these are bookends of sorts.

The first one has a rhythm to it, and you may enjoy reading it outloud.

Deaf Earth’s Denial

If I Could Go Back…

May they bless you in the reading as much as They Blessed me in the writing,
Charissatumblr_np3pf9C4wp1s5neh1o1_1280

What Prints Does YOUR Heart Leave?

This asks us to do this…but it is a bit incomplete!  It should read this way:

“Everywhere you go, you leave your heart print.  Be sure the marks are kind.”

Eternal Continuum (Part Two)

a central point
lurking somewhere
between nothing
and all—
and infinitely far
from understanding
either…tumblr_nlxdr5BkKB1s2z59jo1_1280blind to nothingness
from which
we flashed
at the call
of Fiery Lips
and numb
to the infinite
glories that engulf
and hold us.

this point unchangeable
this chameleon point
containing all contradiction
and inconsistencytumblr_np01taszo51s5neh1o2_1280

(desire to be a friend
the bent to manipulate friends
the being of a neighbor good
the compulsion to walk away
cold hearted without helping)

this point,
this tipping point
has honour enough
to erect the head
of the poorest bum,
and shame enough
to bow the shoulders
of the greatest king.

that Point,
that Mediator
of Merciful Hope

(drying the tears of a broken world
reviving the Image of the Divine within
overcoming the enemies
of our Death and Sin)___6021929_orig

Sure, grounded
obviating and containing
all contradictions
in this point

that point provides
the only grounding
and offers hope
for the contradictions
within, and more
than mere hope
for escape.

That point redeems the tension this point is.tumblr_njx55hxpLn1sypuuko1_400

We have born
the image of
the man of dust.

We also will
bear the Image
of the One
in Heaven

overflowing
with
thankfulness.tumblr_noy7d6hyuJ1s5neh1o1_1280

The Pools of Illusion

Your bellies drag the ground,
crouched and coiled and waiting,
unsprung and deadly potent,
filled with waters, poison, imbibed,
ingested, indulged,
you lurk and lay in waiting
to pounce on me defenseless,
beside dark pools malignant
with memories, dreams, reflections
that sit off kilter, cracked,
those springs of tales seductive
retold and twistedclockwise

(remember that we used to live
anti-clock-wise?  You recall?
Remember how that was?
Can you even do it now…
re-member?Your tails lashing hazy air
your tales lashing me in here,
deep inside, they probe and seek
to replicate themselves,
like viruses, contagious
half-truths bitter, poisonous
in decade-long half-lives
hanging like a blade
of time left to be served
in a sentence undeserved.tumblr_nlo1ogBFSk1s2z59jo1_1280But I swim rivers
pure and vital,
waters crashed on
clean stone, shattered
into liquid smithereens,
a million broken rainbow prismstumblr_nb949v0kp41s1vn29o5_1280clinging to the air together
to speak of wholeness
in the broken
gath’ring of them
all together tumblr_nmzdul5Y8W1qbe766o3_1280and I breathe air, drink
the water of life immune
to your off-kilter philter.

So if you see me
(if you even bother
to look) and I am sick?
It is your own infected myth
I drain so you could simply stop,
quit worshipping the twisted past,
old box of pain, and you can join me,
once again beneath the stars,

beneath the moon in the spring rain
in the spring rain beneath the moon
the moon and rain so clean and pure
and free from stagnant pools.tumblr_m67b1gzLlg1qzn4kzo1_1280