Have A Care (Ode To Eclipses)

I speak in faith and deep knowing
that this monstrosity, this asshole manifested
in-human flesh and somehow flying
in the fair and tender skies so blue

just gibbers deep in ravings mad
derived from sucking his own soul
dry, vampire of his diseased self
his narcissistic empty self

and though he floats, he’s counterfeit
he is no poem, he is no moon
so take heart even while he sets
his sights on devouring the sun

and moves and gobbles greedily
and here beneath his blighted run
the darkness grows so threatening
he ultimately simply falls

pulled grave-ward by futility
imploding…that monstrosity
of incoherent hubris mating
with such ignorance towering

and as the sun is wont to do
it beams and scours dark away
and dries the eyes of every tree
that monster vile will just dead be

and us left waiting in the moment
wondering what just happened here
oh…that dark floating shade up there
was just a mirror………..have a care.

 

Reverend Traci Blackmon, Eyewitness, Says Donald Trump Is Lying About Charlottesville | All In | MSNBC

You need to watch this.  Period.  I do not care who you are.  This woman is a lover of God, a Reverend, and was at the heart of the events that unfolded.  She personally witnessed them, she personally EXPERIENCED them.

If you cannot, will not watch this, then it means you are intentionally choosing the skewed and false version of this presented by ttaf…you are not facing the fact that ttaf is an out and out racist.

Which, of course is a domino tumbler for ya, ttaf supporter…because now all of the so-called Christian voices who say that ttaf is God’s anointed are now saying that God sanctions and anoints an openly racist pussy-grabbing sex abuser.

Can you not see how far you have fallen to swallow that shit from HELL???

I comment because I care.  Your wake up call will cause you to grieve more deeply than you can imagine.

Remember:  handsome is as handsome does.  I was taught that as a very small child…it is grievous to need to teach the teacher.

How one former president handled the Klan speaks volumes.

ttaf has just flat out taken off all his clothes and abandoned every pretense that he is anything other than a flat out racist.  He did this in a press conference…and he did it with relish and boasting.

He lied about what happened over the weekend, in lies that are so easily fucking debunked that it beggars the imagination that he could be so bald-faced.

He reminds me of a serial killer who just finally gives up pretending and just wallows in the blood and gore.

He sought to equivocate, which is a bit like comparing the sides of the Allies and the side of the Nazis and saying they are equally morally reprehensible.

He is completely ignorant of the difference between Stonewall Jackson and and George Washington.

ttaf supporters…you put a mirror in the White House, and your faces are the ones he reflects…a liar, a racist, and a bloodthirsty bully.

God have mercy on your pathetic souls.

Below, I post a comparison of leaders…George Bush Sr is a man of principle, and this is what that looks like.


“I just felt I had to speak out.”

Source: How one former president handled the Klan speaks volumes.

Charlottesville and the Effort to Downplay Racism in America | The New Yorker

This is what happened…and commentary about it.  A GREAT think piece!!


“Over the weekend, Charlottesville became the site of an extended white-supremacist revival meeting. On Friday night, like a nightmarish graduation procession, a few hundred white supremacists marched with torches down the long green lawn that leads to the Rotunda, the University of Virginia’s signature building.

“They chanted Nazi slogans in the open, undisguised, unafraid of being photographed, proud to be seen. They circled a statue of Thomas Jefferson and attacked a group of student counter-protesters who held a banner reading “UVA Students Act Against White Supremacy” at the statue’s base.

“On Saturday morning, flanked by militia men carrying automatic weapons, the white supremacists assembled in McIntire Park, with swastikas and Confederate flags fully visible; David Duke was there, along with other representatives of the Ku Klux Klan.

“The counter-protest had grown. Religious leaders had gathered at dawn to pray, and progressive and anti-fascist groups tracked the demonstration to Emancipation Park, which was once named Lee Park, after the Confederate general. There, the violence implied in a “white pride” protest erupted, and the rally was dispersed.

“As the counter-protesters moved on foot towards the adjacent Downtown Mall, a man who had come to town to show his support for white supremacy drove his car down a wide pedestrian alley, killing one woman and injuring nineteen people; he then backed out of the alley and drove away.

“This wasn’t the first white-supremacist rally held in Charlottesville in 2017, and it likely won’t be the last. On Saturday, the self-promoting white supremacist Richard Spencer, a proponent of oxymorons (“peaceful ethnic cleansing”) who is also a University of Virginia graduate, filmed himself saying, “Your head’s gonna spin, how many times we’re going to be back here . . . We’re going to make Charlottesville the center of the universe.”

“The white supremacists have successfully pushed a narrative that they chose Charlottesville because it represents progressive values. Ostensibly, this is all a protest over the impending removal of a large statue of Robert E. Lee. Jason Kessler, the organizer of Saturday’s rally (and another U.V.A. graduate), calls Charlottesville a “very far left community that has absorbed these cultural Marxist principles advocated in college towns across the country, about blaming white people for everything.”

“In fact, Charlottesville, while it is home to many progressive people, skillfully models the exact sort of coercive propriety and self-exculpation from the legacy of American racism that has allowed white supremacy to publicly re-emerge….”

Source: Charlottesville and the Effort to Downplay Racism in America | The New Yorker

Eyewitness Accounts Really Combat “Fake News” Claims

https://www.facebook.com/mtschwemin/posts/10155016494531775?from_close_friend=1&notif_t=close_friend_activity&notif_id=1502683096604924

Here is a link that goes to a Face Book Post of an eyewitness account of the weekend’s racist eventsImage may contain: sky, tree, plant, outdoor and nature

The FAQs: What Christians Should Know About the Alt-Right

Supporters of ttaf:  you do not get to have your own private reality where anything you don’t like or agree with you simply label fake news and say it doesn’t exist.

SHIT IS HAPPENING IN THIS WORLD THAT EXISTS!!!  In Charlottesville VA this weekend a 20 year old Neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd at high speed and injured several while killing one…and those people were COUNTER-PROTESTERS and not of his own ilk.

It was an act of terrorism…committed by a white male (surprise surprise), a person born on the soil of this nation…a person who is not Muslim…

This person would fall under the umbrella term of the alt-right, which this article is about…and you need to read it if you want to maintain even a semblance of relationship with the truth.

The willingness to live in your own fantasy world is onerous at best…but it is heartbreaking and sickening at worst, in that you are openly christian and your stance about this, about getting EVERY LAST SMIDGE OF INFORMATION ABOUT NEW FROM FOX NEWS…is that you are besmirching and blackening the Name of the Saviour you claim!!!

It is in the name of Jesus that you have hated Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, accusing them of being forces to undermine America…while turning a blind eye to how ttaf supports and condones the Alt-Right, and THEY KNOW IT!!  They are right now posting on their message boards that ttaf’s statement about Charlottesville was a smoke screen cover that actually affirms THEM!!

You are quite literally deceived because you choose to be.

Let me ask you a question:  you do believe that it is possible to tailor the news to present a completely fabricated picture of “what’s going on”.  That is a given…otherwise you would not say all things but Fox News are fake news.

So if this is possible to do, is it also possible for Fox to do it?  Surely you see that logic demands your admission this is so…Fox WOULD be capable of this deception.

The next question is this:  why do you believe that Fox News does not shape the news according to their own views?  What evidence do you have that Fox is trustworthy?  Or if your belief is not founded in any evidence, then it must be due to your being entangled in confirmation bias, which means that anything which confirms your view of the world you assume is true…BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE IT!! Not because it IS true.

A third question:  Given that I once identified as conservative, was far better than you at tracking multiple news sites and triangulating to an understanding…Given that I have undergone a deep examination of self, of the world and my views…and given that I now hold different views, derived from intelligent examination and reassessment, would you believe me to be unaware of what Fox claims…and why Fox claims it!!??

Or would I be more qualified to assess these things?  To recognize error and misstatement and lying?

It is heartbreaking that the most deceived people on the planet firmly believe that anyone who disagrees with them is possessed by a demon of deception.

Well…here is a fabulous article to assist you to climb out of the pit of deception if you have the courage to read it.

At the core of the alt-right movement is idolatry—the idol of ‘whiteness.’ In building their identity on shared genetic traits the alt-right divides humanity and leads people away from the only source of true identity: Jesus Christ.

Source: The FAQs: What Christians Should Know About the Alt-Right

A Lament, The Day After…The Day Before

Our culture is infected nigh unto death, and death is walking the planet in the guise of human skin…in pustules of hate that infect the brains of privileged THINGS that are fallen OH SO FALLEN from grace, from their birthright…

drunk on privilege and wasted on hate and mainlining the toxic excitement of hunting and killing, these sorry pitiful lost WRECKS have willingly gone werewolf and become nothing but sentient beasts.

Quite simply, you must. YOU MUST. Effect some change in your life right now this very day…and NO!! GET AWAY FROM ME, asking ME what it is you can/should do…why are you asking this small child, when there is a Slain One who showed us the way in the days of His flesh, and He lives even now and speaks to this world thru Holy Spirit, my Mama, who sheds light into darkness…

and into the darkness of your unknowing She IS SHINING and will speak if you listen…

…and then act. DO. DO WHAT SHE SAYS.
Maybe you should walk to work everyday carrying a sign that says something on it.
Maybe you should go next door, a block away, and reach out to the person that rises in your heart to reach.

MAYBE WE SHOULD CANCEL EVERY FUCKING CHURCH SERVICE TODAY AND WALK THE STREETS IN SACK CLOTH AND ASHES FOR OUR UTTER FAILURE TO LIVE OUT THE GOSPEL!!

We need some kind of antibiotic to kill the strain of bacteria loose in our body politic…well, I think that antibiotic is the Gospel of Jesus Christ (not the gospel of evil so-called preachers and fearful status-quo priests)…and I think that every single one of us who can still see that this is evil and deadly are the white blood cells.

I see a culture that has engaged in self mutilation, has engaged in drugging itself…and I see a people in power who wring their hands and say there is nothing we can do that is a sickening echo of the mantra that was shoved down my throat when I was executed and cut loose from a place that supposedly thought I was something valuable and yet when it came right down to it the man-made thought up written down rules were held more sacred and inviolate than my bleeding torn and tattered heart.

How has there not been a dropping of all things and a rising up?

We need a nation-wide deliverance.
And even within my own circle of acquaintances, I KNOW there are those who blame the BLM protesters rather than the racist, drunk on demonic doctrines of death, hate infused SENTIENT BEASTS who have willingly discarded their Divine Spark…

and this makes me so sick I wanna puke.

To be very vulnerable, I don’t know if I am safe around people today…well, to be more honest, I don’t know if they are safe around me…Because

I WANT to inflict THE WOUND THAT WILL NOT HEAL UNTIL WE SEE OUR SISTERS AND BROTHERS OF ALL RACES AND RELIGIONS HEALED…
I WANT to step on your toe so hard you will limp forever, blessing the name of the Wounded Healer Himself…

I WANT to vent your side, so that you would never again gather possessions to it to feed rapacious greed and instead would gather the least of these to staunch the flow of sorrow and slake their thirst for mercy…

When the prayers of the people go up this morning, and the presiding human says to offer the prayers not yet prayed, how do I not just SCREAM AND SCREAM WITHOUT CEASING…so loud, so offensive, so volatile that NO RELIGIOUS SPIRIT COULD STAND IN THE SUMMONING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD TO HAVE MERCY ON OUR SORRY GREEDY SLUMBERING ASSES?????

How can I not pray for an hour, in vehemence and tears?
And to be quite honest? I TRULY and DEEPLY suspect that the vast majority would call for me to be disciplined and reprimanded, more upset with my disrupting of the expected order of a worship service than the absolute defiling of our culture with the disruption of justice and the flow of mercy.

Yes.  The Cows of Vashon would mill and moo and low and trample…and chase me out the door straightaway…Or WOULD they?

What are the odds that during the night the watchmen have been gathering sack-cloth and fashioning slip on garments, and burning the watch-fires to collect ashes

(why Charissa, you dumb bitch, it is not Ash Wednesday, wtf with the ashes, idjit???)…

What if the leaders are ready, handing EACH person a garment made and saying that unless you don that cloth and take a mark of ash, for THIS SUNDAY, you do not come into the house…for it is a time of repentance and rending garments. It is a time for face falling and weeping aloud and BEGGING for the streams of justice to wash thru the House.

Well. What an…EXTREME..girl you are, Charissa.

Umm…okay. SO I WILL SETTLE FOR THE TRUE HEART ATTITUDE OF SACK CLOTH AND ASHES THIS MORNING!!!

Can you even summon the fucking COURAGE for THAT???  Can you BURN your fucking programs and orders of the day and expected liturgy and smear your own HEART with ashes and let your face be rent with tears on this day??

What the FUCK is there to preach on if not this?
If our dire and needful moment is NOT front and center and a call to repentance not issued then we do indeed serve a false god made from human hands and not the GOD of gods, the One who came and suffered and bled and invited the outcasts first.

Let us go outside the city, bearing His reproach…for there He awaits for us among the outcast. And in returning to the city after, let us draw near to the gates, and to the entrance of the doors, and to the high hill beside the Way where our paths meet…and hear the voice of WISDOM…the voice of Holy Spirit…the voice of MAMA who is SHOUTING SHOUTING SHOUTING to all fools and indolent ones DRAW NEAR!!

Statements by ecclesial bodies are just that, especially when the orthopraxy of said bodies still is exclusionary in so many ways and practical applications.

I don’t know what to do with myself right now. My chest is red and scratched as I claw and claw seeking to tear this pain from my heart.

I am well and truly troubled and do not know the way forward today.

My Fellow White Americans…

 


“For the back of the house: no, all Trump voters are not white supremacists. YES, all Trump voters were comfortable electing a white supremacist to the highest office in the nation. This tweet is weak because the President doesn’t want to upset the members of his base because the members of his base are either okay with this or they are the very tiki-torch-lit assholes pictured above. These are guys wearing MAGA hats. These ARE the faces of your base. This IS the same rhetoric that Trump has always espoused. It’s Racism Classic™, now with Extra Tiki.”

Source: My fellow white Americans. | I Am Begging My Mother Not To Read This Blog

Julius Goat on Twitter: “Imagine if these people ever faced actual oppression. https://t.co/dhPCbtfEjO”

Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect 

There IS no “other hand”.  There IS no “other side” that must be heard.

There is hatred and devotion to satanic ideologies that have slaughtered millions and millions…and there is resisting this.

If you are not against this, and openly against this…then you are for it.

Period.

Any attempt to ameliorate this, to talk it away, to justify it…any attempt to “Fox News” it is in itself evil and enabling.

++++++++++++

From the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect:

MR. PRESIDENT, LEARN THESE WORDS FROM ELIE WIESEL OF BLESSED MEMORY: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Source: (6) Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect – Home

They Are Your Family Now, Not Me

ttaf supporters…the ones in the background are your family now.

Not me…not anymore…not until you denounce them, and their new avatar of bigotry ttaf.

ttaf is saying to us that there is moral equivalence between the Nazi demonstrators and the counter protesters…

there is not.

If you think there is, then I have no truck with you.  Ever.

I denounce ttaf.  I denounce all of his supporters.  I denounce the hatred and bigotry on display.  I denounce those who claim the name of Jesus who refuse to have their eyes opened by this orgy of hate and racism.

God save us…we are truly entering into hell.

Image may contain: 3 people, people standing and outdoor

Statement About The Slaughter In Charlottesville

Congratulations supporter of ttaf…

you now know that you would have supported Hitler

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Tweets About Charlottesville Capture The Chaos Of The Protest & How Terrified People Are

This is what you think of as “again”?  ttaf supporter??  I am asking you…is this your “again”?

You bought this monster’s rhetoric and snake oil because he said “Make America Great Again”…and immediately this erupts when your avatar of hatred takes office.

There are literally thousands of incidents similar to this that have happened since ttaf was elected.  They are easily documented, and if I were to just press them here it would be boring in its droning continual outpouring.

The marchers were shouting “Heil Trump”…

This is your again.  This is what you wanted a return to.  Except that the genie is out of the bottle…people are NEVER going back onto Massa’s plantation…ever.

Their courage and passion carries them forward…

And now there are white supremacists driving vehicles into crowds of people exercising their Constitutional Rights…

The racist answer to this…YOUR answer to this…”Well they should not have been out there protesting.”

And how fascinating that you do not say that the absolute fuckers who are channeling Nazi hatred and rage and want to resurrect the 3rd Reich should not have been out there!!”

Why won’t you rise up and join all decent people and denounce racists and bigots?

Because you know you are wrong…and you will not admit it…and it breaks my heart that you do this in the name of God and the name of America.

I wanna vomit that you have become this…no…that you have not actually been what you pretended to be for so long, and when the opportunity came thru ttaf to dive into the pool of shit you did a triple backflip of joy.


Violence and chaos broke out on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday during a white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally. Tensions were already bound to be high after a Friday night demonstration at the University of Virginia, wherein …

Source: Tweets About Charlottesville Capture The Chaos Of The Protest & How Terrified People Are

An Eclipse Of Grace

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

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

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

A Spoonful Of Sugar | Charissa’s Grace Notes

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

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

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

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

I Fly Steady On | Charissa’s Grace Notes

The only comment I shall make this year during Independence Day…from a couple years ago

 

Past Lady Liberty,
looming silent still
thru slant snow, icy, cold,
frozen feet firmly planted
atop the broken chains
of captives loosed, unbound.

Past her seeming sightless eyes
fixed on an end unseen (as yet)…

Source: I Fly Steady On | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Poems About Gender Dysphoria From 2014

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

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

From Provence To Salamanca | Charissa’s Grace Notes

From last year, a poem describing leaving a place of fruitful becoming and ending up in a place of religious bondage…it wormed its way out of me freely and insisted on the geographical terms, which now in the age of ttaf make far more sense to me.

we had wine
rose wine, pink
blushing with laughing
joy in the midst of
a light crushing

we were in Provence,
and it was warm and sultry
but not thick or sweaty
in that yellow light seeping out of
the ruddy dirt…

Source: From Provence To Salamanca | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Burnt Offerings | Charissa’s Grace Notes

This is an older poem, and I really like its rhythm.  Try reading it aloud, for you will find that the sound of the words shapes how you say the coming ones.

These words are my offerings burnt
singed in fires of pain and hurt
written as gouts of bright blood spurt
from my contrite soul.

I take treasure from my heart
pleasures, pains, my every dart
burn them for a brand new start
the incense of my spirit …

Source: Burnt Offerings | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump | Literary Hub

This article is a powerful examination of how privilege works…and shows that trump the absolute fucker is the collective mirror image of privileged people in the USA, even those who do not have copious wealth and yet still retain utter privilege as elites in our country.

I am trying to imagine a whole four years of this corrosive soul…and I cannot.  I imagine that those who place their trust in trump the absolute fucker will find themselves with no soul, having sold it in exchange for the delusions and empty nothing that trump the absolute fucker and his minions will visit upon us.

Empty, washed out and vacant souls, gaping like some bank had foreclosed on them, and stained forever with the blood of millions.

“He is, as of this writing, the most mocked man in the world. After the women’s march on January 21st, people joked that he had been rejected by more women in one day than any man in history; he was mocked in newspapers, on television, in cartoons, was the butt of a million jokes, and his every tweet was instantly met with an onslaught of attacks and insults by ordinary citizens gleeful to be able to speak sharp truth to bloated power.

“He is the old fisherman’s wife who wished for everything and sooner or later he will end up with nothing. The wife sitting in front of her hovel was poorer after her series of wishes, because she now owned not only her poverty but her mistakes and her destructive pride, because she might have been otherwise, but brought power and glory crashing down upon her, because she had made her bed badly and was lying in it.

“The man in the white house sits, naked and obscene, a pustule of ego, in the harsh light, a man whose grasp exceeded his understanding, because his understanding was dulled by indulgence. He must know somewhere below the surface he skates on that he has destroyed his image, and like Dorian Gray before him, will be devoured by his own corrosion in due time too.

“One way or another this will kill him, though he may drag down millions with him. One way or another, he knows he has stepped off a cliff, pronounced himself king of the air, and is in freefall. Another dungheap awaits his landing; the dung is all his; when he plunges into it he will be, at last, a self-made man.”

Source: Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump | Literary Hub

Unfurling From A Set-Free Throat | Charissa’s Grace Notes

I am gunna begin reposting older poetry, here on Grace Notes…because Facebook is a wasteland of the driest thirstiest most stingy desert sand that has ever been. Proverbs would say that Facebook has two sisters:  “Give” and “Give”.

My older work is good…at least, in my own internal scales of what I like and do not like, it weighs out as treasure.  I feel it in my bones…it RINGS of true truth.  But it is unwieldy, this blog, in getting to those older poems…one must make time and space to even find them, let alone to eat them and digest them…

…because my poems are not immediately burnable carb calories…

Anyway…here they are, such as they are.

This particular poem is about finding my voice as symbol of finding myself.  It examines paradigms and presuppositions, and advocates for freedom from old superstitions and lies…and freedom to timeless Truth.
I still struggle to dig it out,
that splinter you shoved into me,
down my throat without so much
as a shot of whiskey or
a shot in the dark.

and you are so certain, sure
of how to walk the world an…

Source: Unfurling From A Set-Free Throat | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Holding It Tight

you’re there
I see you in the
glow, the fierce proud
glow that melts snow and
vaporizes anything in the know

you hold
your bouquet
of blooming hatred
tight, vise-like, clutched
and gathered to your chest

where it
burns everything
it melts anything that
even thinks about getting
close-like, including your fingers

clutched
gripping

so tight
that you cannot
shake it off of them
your fingers and your face
so that your heat could even

get shared.

National Day of Prayer: Donald Trump White House Dinner | Time.com

I draw attention to this because every single one of these people at this dinner thinks that transgender people are anywhere on the continuum from “insane and mentally ill” all the way to “demon possessed”.

Each of these people supports discrimination against LGTBQIA people.  Every Single One.

These shills are there with trump the absolute fucker telling him that he is God’s Servant when he is carrying forward towards  becoming law actual statutes that are the equivalent of death warrants for people as they lose their access to medical services and will simply die.

In the guise of “religious liberty”.

The list in 1 Corinthians 6 that is used as the cudgel against LGTBQIA individuals contains many things, ALL of which refer to behavioral expressions of basic violations of human beings by the exercise of power over one another.  The list is not a prohibition of actual things (such as speaking, such as sexual activity of any orientation, such as possession of property), but rather condemns forms of each of the things I mentioned (adultery, theft, lying, malice (which is hatred), and a specific form of homosexual activity that is widely held by all serious scholars to be condemning a specific homosexual relationship that involved the subjugation and oppression of one of the participants in a power dynamic that was akin to sexual slavery)…

Why do I mention this?  Because it is this list that is cited to oppress LGTBQIA human beings…while the same people who do this willingly serve people who lie, steal, cheat, run around on their wives…essentially ANYTHING that cannot be seen or is not admitted to!

But let someone be open about their sexual orientation or gender orientation and they are ostracized, shunned, and often literally physically assaulted.

This is who you have become, evangelical christendom (I will not shit on the word “Church” by letting it apply to you).

In this passage from Isaiah 10, we discover why these actions are a stench to God:

Isaiah 10   New King James Version (NKJV)

“Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, who write misfortune, which they have prescribed to rob the needy of justice, and to take what is right from the poor of My people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless.

What will you do in the day of punishment, and in the desolation which will come from afar?  To whom will you flee for help?  And where will you leave your glory?

Without Me they shall bow down among the prisoners, and they shall fall among the slain.

For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.”

Did you know that if the current proposed health care roll backs become law that it will result in a transfer of wealth of 300 billion dollars to the people in the country who make more than $250,000?  Yes that is correct:  the top 1% are going to get even richer…

These things matter in concrete terms of life and death…but they also matter in that the hypocrisy of these people at this dinner and every single person who supports these people is now on prominent display…the party of the goats who wail “Lord Lord when did we see You hungry or sick or naked or in jail” is forming up fast.

This is your chance to turn from your lazy, mindless, sinful supporting of an evil evil party and an amoral greedy titular head of that party…and return to your first love.

The book of James says this about “true religion”:
 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Not the flocking to the side of a man who is willing to do your bidding to make it possible for you to literally hurt, destroy and murder the oppressed and the defenseless.

I will not associate or participate with anyone who actively supports these individuals and their leader, trump the absolute fucker.


The day before he signs an executive order on religious liberty.

Source: National Day of Prayer: Donald Trump White House Dinner | Time.com

And Dogs Ran At Us Hard | Charissa’s Grace Notes

Last year on this day this poem came to me, along with feelings of overwhelming grief…
today, after the hunters began their work yesterday, legislative guns blazing and celebrating after…

today it makes sense.

we soared high on currents,
uplifts unseen by human eyes
but oh so visible to us,
we dancers in the skies…

ever young and long did we thus fly
until we tired and we had need of
landing, resting…

Source: And Dogs Ran At Us Hard | Charissa’s Grace Notes

CHECK THE SCIENCE: BEING TRANS IS NOT A ‘CHOICE’

I am posting this for those readers who still may not understand the complex physiological and psychological factors that work together to form our gender orientations.

In light of the fact that the Bible is utterly silent regarding the so-called “morality” of gender, this article could be especially helpful for those of you who claim you love Jesus and yet treat transgender humans like Hell.

May God spare you the kind of treatment that you have handed out to others in the name of Jesus…but that is not how it works, is it?  The fact of the matter is that the exact standard that you employ to show your rejection and hate of transgender humans is the one that Jesus will hold up for you on your day of dawning…

Stop Using Phony Science To Justify Transphobia

The Hounds Of Torquemada

sometimes scared I hear
the stink and the hot blood
rushing thru the crowds
like demons on the loose
the hounds of Torquemada

sometimes I see them
all the people in the streets
lost and in a mumble
of pain and crazy jumble
and death in every tumble

and I just wanna lay there
in the streets so dirty
teeming with the garbage
of privileged excrement
and tear my chest wide open

and with my desperate fingers
claw my hurt ribs agape
and reach in for my heart
and rip it from my soul
and hold it over head

and let my blood gush forth
in step with all my tears
and wash it all away
why can’t it wash away
oh Jesus wash, oh Jesus

why is it them not me
i think I’m gunna cry
and cry and cry and cry
while my heart bleeds and bleeds
until it’s bled all dry

Nothing Rhymes Orange

“…and the nuance is gone,
disappeared in the mist
along with soft kisses,
it’s all been dismissed

by orange fading soft
into white then returning
to orange, and orange
and then just more orange

so i sit here, i wait,
i remember another time,
other days full of
sweet music and rhyme…”

Source: Nothing Rhymes Orange

The Sound of Beauty Silent

Standing beside gull-force winds
strong enough to blow a waterfall
back into its own face, something
no man has experienced but needs to
Image result for waterfall flowing backwards gifs
I watch Beauty roll down and meet unbelief.
And I remember all over again how I am haunted
by the ghost that grows when Beauty glows and screams
to the body transcendent and compelling and

then goes silent once again
a waterfall thundering down
and pushed away with every might
and longing stirs all over again

as I just wonder how it is
that God can be resisted, how
that God has chosen suffering, now
in person and in heaven, wonder

that God is…that God is…that

then the song is sung by Beauty’s
absence in the scattering
the scurrying, no one cannot not be aware
and longing for the shelter

of The Safe Wing Stretched Divine
though it feel ominous, and gone and here
the absence of what cannot leave
beauty…or itself.
Image result for a guillotine
a guillotine to answer to the knife in my clenched fist
and I realize I must go thru this once again, this absence
that leaves all things scattered, scurrying, suffocating
in the Stripping of the Altar, in the scattering of all

and the sound of tombs slammed shut
and the sound of screaming triumph
and the sound of darkness looming
and the sound of Beauty Silent

all compel a halt to movement
so we listen in the stillness
to the absence, to the absence
to the looming screaming absence

and the Sound of Beauty Silent

Our Sacred Desert Story

We set out on tender feet
and tender hearts to match
and faces become flint as we
determined that we would not faint.

When our sojourn was hip deep in heat
and we were well and away, out to sea
she told me of the heartbreak and the horror
and there how we did rain our tears…

We took turns (while we wiled the desert paths away)
swimming away from the ship of us…naked, vulnerable
and healing in the slick water…further and further
and then return and up and back into our desert ship.

It was in the sunset wrought with haze from distant destinations
that make you think about fire, and about what might have been.
We, perched on that rock solid emanating heat and spitting healing
while the sky, bruised by our advances, turned purple in our song.

It was just Day Umpteen Kazillion in our great traverse of deserts,
we walking, swimming straight by myth and extraterrestrial,
feeding on lizards, trilobites, and our sacred Stories our Communion shared
and we, oh so close to our arriving, our becoming, our sacred Desert Story.

 

The unlikely Texans fighting anti-trans bill SB6 | Fusion

For all who want to:
A:  Understand transgender issues and origins
B:  Want to be allies in the granting of human rights
C:  Believe that being a christian precludes hateful condemnatory behavior
D:  Have a trans loved one(s) that you wish to support

This article is for you.

I personally have experienced every single thing mentioned in this article.  As a full grown middle aged human…the loss of family connection;  the loss of employment;  the loss of social standing, the hate-filled behavior towards me of literal total strangers; physical violence…

…not to mention the sort of thing that happened when I was little, and my choice of dissociation from myself.  Only God can ever really measure that damage done as a child…damage that was not “intentional” but was fully empowered by the cultural forces of the binary and thus did no less damage.

This mom literally tried all the things that transgender rights opponents espouse…read her story.  A conservative christian family with bona fides that may well make St Paul’s head spin!  The accusation that parents’ poor parenting is responsible for the “mental illness” of the child is revealed as the false belief that it is.

This child is amazingly strong and persistent.  I did not have that strength…I caved…and nearly died for the next 50 years.

All this damage, all this death…all because of clothing, genitalia, and bathrooms.

And trump supporter?  Please pay special attention to the reporting of the trump administration’s specific and deliberate plans to take away transhuman rights!  Just exactly as I told you.  Supporting this absolute fucker taking office is the deliberate empowering of someone who wants to hurt me…

as if you could what…beat the trans out of us?  Pray it off of us?  Be sure and notice in the pull quotes below the full grown relative who vows to send this little kindergarten kid to the hospital on a stretcher if that child was in a restroom that his 22 year old niece was in!!!

That is literally flabbergasting to me!  Really!!???  What is a 5 year old child gunna be able to do to a 22 year old woman??

No matter how many…no, even if you slaughtered every single transgender person?  We would be back in the next generation…because we are a function of human reproduction, and not a function of “social engineering”

“…No matter how much punishment this kid got, you couldn’t beat it out of her,” Kimberly said. “You couldn’t pray it out, I couldn’t cast it out.” Indeed, Kai was having none of it. Sometimes she would wait until Kimberly was on the toilet to taunt her from just out of striking range: “You know I’m a girl.” Other times, she began praying within her mother’s earshot that God would “let Joseph” (Kai’s former name) “go home and be with Jesus.”

Kai’s prayer was Kimberly’s breaking point. That, and learning about the sky-high suicide rate for trans kids; according to one study, 41% of trans youth had attempted suicide—a rate almost ten times higher than their cisgender counterparts.

“There are so many trans kids who don’t have her persevering, persistent spirit,” Kimberly said. “And if Kai didn’t have that spirit, I would have succeeded in breaking her, into conforming into what I was trying to make her be. And we would have all been ok with that until she killed herself, at 14, or 13, or 11, or 20, or 50….

“…Still, the social fallout for Kimberly was swift. Trans advocates often say “everyone loses someone” when they transition; Kimberly’s family lost almost everyone. While one of Kai’s uncles helped his niece pick out new outfits, most of her extended family distanced themselves. One aunt threatened to call CPS on Kimberly. Other relatives shared a Facebook post from a Houston-area preacher, proposing a training day where the church would teach children how to spot and report trans kids at their schools. A cousin sent Kimberly a Facebook message warning if he ever saw Kai in a bathroom with his 22-year-old daughter, Kai would “need a stretcher.”

“A best friend from the family’s church, where Kimberly served in ministry for years, stopped their years-long 5 AM prayer phone calls. When Kimberly attended a school board meeting last June to discuss the accommodation of trans students, she said one pastor from her church showed up to speak out against them…”

Source: The unlikely Texans fighting anti-trans bill SB6 | Fusion

I Loved My Grandmother. But She Was a Nazi. – The New York Times

trump supporter, pay attention.  Do yourself a HUGE favor and read this article…it will save you from grievous regret!!

A lifetime of living for truth is being flushed down the toilet.

Manafort’s daughter’s hacked text messages lead to calls for probe – Business Insider

I give credit to the child for understanding:  SHE has profited from what her father participated in…and has blood money.

I believe that Business Insider is reputable.  trump supporter:  You cannot hide your head in the sand of “only FOX news”…remember when in school and the scientific method was taught…apply that here, confirmation of truth from a preponderance of the evidence and from a plethora of sources…

but that takes work…it does not go down easy like FOX’s pre-chewed gummy bear news does.

A lawyer wants to know who was influencing Yanukovych when he ordered Ukrainian security forces to crush protests. One name that has emerged: Paul Manafort.

Source: Manafort’s daughter’s hacked text messages lead to calls for probe – Business Insider

Because I Know You Will Demand “Proof”…

…it’s contained in this article…incident after incident after incident…and the links to the primary documents.

That is what real news looks like.

A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…

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…”

Source: A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…
tumblr_ni0sfjatWG1qzq0kvo1_1280

This Darkened Path Of Self-Examination

Your vain cold words wielded stark like an ax
against a tree because you’re cold in spite
of conflagration blazing behind you
but that ax slinks solo chopping at that
frozen sea, once us, so insufficient…

and now?  It is just more ice-pick chipping,
adding to that devastating sea
of loathing and despair you wallow in,
you, leper in the Dead Sea of yourself.

And common grief can crack a frozen wall,
but frozen sea?  Alas, this grief looms large!
Singular…and you giving, so giving…
but only of more death and dumb destruction…

where was this giving when there was something
more to give besides grief and a pecking,
a chippy picking needle peck peck peck ing?

I’m searching in corners dark, difficult
because the light is empty, Fool…and ‘neath
barrage of comments belittling, gory
I face our scandal torrid, flaccid, hoary                                                  (our story)
which is the scandal in every last story
that you refuse to read…instead you hide
in that pervasive smothering attitude

and as I gasp for breath and fumble with
my flaws in jagged close shuddering dark
you trumpet your search for beams of darkness
that occlude specks of light, light that, blinding,
irritates our eyes to tears and tears that
frozen sea to pieces, tears my frozen
flesh to pieces…tears me into pieces…

It’s difficult, this dimly lighted place
that requires much more, and then some more…
a merciful throne compels honesty,
transparency…that a dictator sees
as only weak capitulation…but

it is here…

In the shadow of incarnation, Here
I find the strength to walk this…this darkened path…
this darkened path of self-examination.

Abandonment

This was my being’s experience for too many years, and the first poetic attempt to deal with the major stronghold of my life…and the gif at the end…brrr…I lived in terror of those footsteps on the stairs, coming towards me with harsh words and blows…

Source: Abandonment

“It Would Falsify Everything You Taught Me…”

I am sharing this, written a couple years back…thinking now of those who literally believe that trump the absolute fucker is good for this country, this season of history.

The ONLY good thing that I can see is that his election tore off the masks and showed the real faces underneath, and what the worth of faith professed is…and isn’t.

Just in case it has not been obvious:  I reject trump and everything he stands for and embodies.  He is utterly at odds with the good news of the gospel.  Until the day he repents and brings forth fruits commensurate thereof, I will call him the absolute fucker.  I am not and will not be unequally yoked with him or his ilk.

I am stunned in the ripping of the masks…it’s as if I am watching the Yale debate team become “Lil Abner”.

He is maelstrom consuming and the earth disappears.

Read on if you dare

Source: “It Would Falsify Everything You Taught Me…”

Fire With Fire

All it takes is a word…just one.
It gets free and yeah, so it trods a toe
but hey that’s okay cus the point is so
important, potent.

Then a couple words,
and a sideways slide
and down the hill
a ways

but that is acceptable
too, because this
is so important

well, the next thing you know
you’re in the WWE (even tho
you’re the good guy)

and death is okay because
you HAVE to fight
fire with fire.

The Very Thing You Hate

It starts small.

Just one word,
connects almost
without effort to
another word

and they twist
together a corkscrew
actually…

and suddenly
that cork slides
so easy so tight so slick

and then
such popping
sudden relief!

the bottle in
a heart so bitter
is open at last
invective is free

but just a sip
then a glug
(one must be
careful you see
to apply bitterness carefully)

just to make a point

just to become
the very thing
you hate

 

Poison And Placating

It stinks the way that
women will trade in their
very selves for a small sliver
of complementarian pie…made
from fruit of the forbidden tree…

poison and placating.