Tag Archives: Poem

Powerful Quote…Charissa Perspective

Posted on by

2

“Do not fall in love with people like me. I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like blood in your mouth. I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible. And when I leave you will finally understand, why storms are named after people.”
— Caitlyn Siehl

WOW!  This quote gets to the heart of a very salient, perhaps the salient aspect of Love…it transforms us.

Period.

Once you are loved, you are never ever a “not-loved” person again.  Oh, you can lose all your friends…acquaintances who were kind can turn on a dime and revile you as evil and lost (Charissa waves her hand and says holla!  Been there…am there)…but then you will be one who was loved who is no longer…and thus still one who is/has been loved and thus never “not-loved” (or maybe to say “has never ever been loved”).

There are many things that masquerade as love:  desire, lust, hate, fear, anxiety, courage, wanderlust, romance, religion, law…and many others,  Each one of these things affects us, impacts us…but to transform us, now …that is a completely other thing.

I am speaking here of the transformation that is of this order:  tadpoles into frogs, caterpillars into butterflies, ice into steam, plain water into tea or coffee, one who has never reproduced into one who is holding offspring, one who was totally spiritually dead who is not alive with a life not of this worldy order and frame, but with a Life that comes from Beyond the Universe…transformation.

So now re-read the quote, and you can see there that what she is saying to you is that if you show yourself to her, she is going to give you everything, no holds barred, nothing held back, come what may…and she is promising, no…she is covenanting with you that you as you are right now in yourself will be transformed…or “destroyed in the most beautiful way possible”…

I get that.  I get what she is saying…and I want to be this kind of person, but with a slight but important twist that would read something like this:

“Count the cost
if you find me interesting
and want to know more.
If you really want to be in my life,
we will be together, and in that place,
everything looked at will never
be seen by one again!

We will see it, from now on!
Works of art well known
will seem strange and alien and
need explanation and interpretation.
Long familiar haunts of ancient peace
will be new and turbulent and full
of glorious upheaval as they
settle underneath the feet of we.

You will never again
taste anything as it once was…
it will taste always of peaches in hot sun
and fudge in cold snow,
of salt in rainy days
and honey in times of sorrow.

Every moment
I will be present with you
and the me I am
will be an always kiss
of your heart,
to your soul,
of your vital you.

I will never go away
until death sunders us,
and in that moment
you will hate death
as deeply as I do,
and vow to join my side
at the arena wall
when He stomps death dry
and disappears it forever.

Count the cost,
and if you still want,
then I love you
and let us go laughing.”

Love, Charissa Grace and all her sticky bleeding heart

tumblr_mvwggrXtZO1scud9jo1_500

My Inner Editor Got LOOSE!!

Posted on by

0

Constance, if you would?  Give “Calligraphic Gesture” another read?  She kept kicking her footies and messing her didies until I changed her and fed her…she seems much happier now!

LOL…my way of saying I did a bit of editing…I think it sings a bit now, eh?

tumblr_ncxfualFKZ1spq83no1_1280

Calligraphic Gesture

Posted on by

6

Still and quiet sits the morning soft in drizzle,
shadow shades shroud drowsy trees lulled by turning leaves
singing of the coming great descent…
Clouds cling low and skulk about as mists,
as fogs, as wisps and scraps of rainy lace
over Autumn’s aged hallowed face,

and she lays still,
lines, marks and comments made undone,
unmade each day one by one
until she is unmarked, undrawn,
unmasked her surface still and flat
mysterious unasked, her tranquil secrets told,
and then retracted, written and redacted
as days grow short and night walks
in smoky peace longer in the stillness,
lingers fragrant in the moment
and into morning coffee.

My mind, it too is still like Autumn,
and yearns to walk in Autumn’s graceful backwards glance,
her slippered foot fall soft and earnest in her dance,
it reaches for my heart’s desirous dipper to pour out…what?

Words…tears…love…me, yes. Me…my heart’s dipper
pours me out like waters into Water
and then those ripples run,
those ripples push like still wind against
the placid growing unmarked surface…

and I push off neat and quick and skim
across her glory fading into stillness,
my heart my skiff, my words my oars,
my poem my tribute there and gone.

My heart’s hieroglyphics stutter,
eternal and undying ’til they swoon
and into slumber they are flying
to be swallowed once more into her bosom,
until she wakes again and my heart rises up again
from deep within her waters running ever,
I wake my poem cunning, fleet and clever

to row again, to draw again
my quick calligraphic gesture
to signify eternal her bright blue
beautiful vesture

tumblr_ndkq97T81F1r5oqyqo1_1280

Hearth of Empty Ashes

Posted on by

2

our cottage is still,
today…empty.

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

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

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

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

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

cottages, tables and mittens…
all hearths of sorts,
and full of empty ashes.tumblr_ndclfgcvTC1tpw2ero1_1280

 

A Casualty of His War: A Poem about surviving abuse, by Lucy

Posted on by

2

Constance…in light of recent events, I am continuing posting things I find germane to my current place, current state of mind, and current resolve to not accept blame for the actions of abusers…you all know the trope:  “if you hadn’t done (or been, or said, or thought, or gone) X, then I would not have had to say (or be, or do, or think, or exploit you in the place you went) Y.  Classic displacement of responsibility from where it rests squarely and justly onto the shoulders of the one who happened into the path of a monster for whatever reason.

I am vague about “abusers” for very good reasons of counsel…sorry, I would love nothing more than to name them publically.  I might never get back what was taken from me, but they should have to wear the permanent stain of their actions like heart tattoos.

Insidious, institutionalized, and so deeply inculcated into our point of view societally…blaming the victim, and then comes that wonderful training in Stockholm to teach victims how to blame themselves, police themselves on behalf of the abuser.

I wrote a poem last year around this time called The Terrorist .  It is making the point that emotional terrorism is just has destructive, just as death dealing as physical terrorism, and quite likely even more so, because it leaves its victim alive and violated, dehumanized and then made into the object of derision by the blame shifting that is then engaged in like a demonic game of Duck Duck Goose.

Over at Everyday Feminism you can find this article:

I Confused Love and Abuse Until I Refused To Be a Casualty of His War

This contains the poem that I have taken formatting liberties with for effect…it contains it as a poetry slam short film.  I encourage you to first of all watch.  I also took the liberty of giving it my own title.  Certainly if this is in error I will edit that ASAP, just let me know anyone…I just thought the piece I pulled for a title was apropos.

Then…after you watch…I want you to think of something.  Think of someone in your life, someone in your past…the worst bully you can recall being around.  Or, maybe just the most banal, the most bathetic…they are one in the same.

Try to remember what it was like when you were subject to that foul flow, puked in scalding gouts acidic and harsh…and then remember how good it felt to escape it, finally.

Then ask yourself:  what became of that person?  Did they go on from me to bully others?  Abuse others?  Are there other victims out there, and if so how are they…are they scarred like me?  Worse?

And then lastly, imagine what things would have been like if you stopped the bully for good, or better yet, if someone had courageously stopped them before they got to you.  Now what would the imagined future be like?  Ya know, it is sorta like having your own version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” except in reverse…everyone has been living that bully’s truth which is in reality Aftermath.

I am confronted with a daunting and arduous road.  Likely in this confrontation, I will be completely trashed in reputation, motivation and presentation…but maybe it will make the bully think twice next time…and maybe the sight of me publicly humiliated will somehow be the turning point that cracks a hard shell encasing a torn heart, and an enabler will be convicted to take a stand with the powerless in identification instead of taking leave in the safety of what we do now…blame the victim.

I dedicate this poem to a certain “Dick” in my life.

Charissa, clear minded and terrified
Quaking and resolved
Condemned to die and trusting Them who specialize in resurrection

tumblr_ncwjvhI9Bh1s6gq3fo1_1280

 

Thank you. Hi, everyone.
I’m Lucy, and the title of this piece is…

Uh, the title of this piece is…

People make a big deal about eyes,
but it was really
the wrinkle in his forehead
that caught me
as he fumbled to
write down his number.
We fell in love
like children running downhill:

wind whipping past,
parading each other to our friends,
to the sky,
to the old couples we
imagined as our future selves.

When he moved in,
I swore he fused with the house.
I could hear his sigh
in the hum of my ceiling fan,
I could taste him in my coffee,
and anyone could
see him in my poetry.

The grooves in his palm
spoke of tragedies.
A frayed lifeline spread
to the pinky tip.
I traced along
those calloused patches
and kissed the scars
on his knuckles.

When you love hard enough,
you can embrace those scars.
And when you love long enough,
you excuse or even ignore
almost imperceptible
changes in the terrain:

when he gripped me a bit tighter,
a bit more often.
When “How are you?”
became “Where were you?”

In college,
I learned that in World War I,
soldiers rarely wrote about their misery.
They were living
a new kind of nightmare,
so what good were
the same old words
and metaphors?

Poets died in those trenches.
I thought of them
as I tiptoed
around the landmines
that littered our home.

When you live in a battlefield,
where do you find energy to pick up a pen?

Like a numbed soldier,
I lived from moment to moment,
and when the moments were sweet
(and many were),
I savored them because nothing
tastes as good as hope.

Because even on the bad days
when it seemed an eyelash
could set him off,
when he threatened
to leave the apartment
or this world,
still each night
he would murmur
into my ear that
these were the natural
ups and downs of love.

But there is nothing natural about war.

He was my comrade,
sinking into the trenches,
grasping at my face,
my arm,
my collarbone.
I wanted to rescue him.
If that meant
bearing his blows and
his slurred insults,
I would do it.
If I could’ve
swallowed his sadness,
I would have.

My friends considered me MIA,
but I reported for duty every day
and would’ve marched into death
if she hadn’t made me listen.
In that moment,
I realized I wasn’t his comrade,
but a prisoner of his war.
And after two years
and seven months,
I finally made
a break for it.

Some nights I find myself
clicking through old memories.
I marvel at the smiles
and the closeness and realize that
these are the images which remain
with me most vividly.

When time has had its way with me,
has softened the edges of my memory,
I’m afraid I’ll only remember his charms:

the crook of his arm,
the way he said
“Hey baby.”

I’m afraid I’ll miss these ideas of him.

But then
I remember those poets,
and how long they lived
in those trenches,
and the mornings
I spent crying
into my breakfast.

And now
when I pick up my pen,
it is heavy,
but it is firm.
I lean into it
like a staff
as I tread the ground
that hardened beneath me
the moment
I let you go.

The ink smudges my hands
like war paint.
I am bruised from battle,
but I am not
a casualty of his war.

I am free.
I am free.

I am mine.

Our Little Hut

Posted on by

16

Darling, are you awake? Yes?
Good…do you remember our beginning?

A little hut by the sea
wearing grey cedar shingles like feathers
ruffled in rainy winds and shot thru
with browns and blacks…
the red round rock stacked
shambling into walls that just spelled home,
nestled midst woven thatches of
marram shot thru with sedges and dandelions,
clinging to shifty sands like picnic blankets
strewn round that heart…that little hut,
our beginning kissed by windy sands
scritching out beach music
on violin decks and cello chairs of cypress.

You were a wordless humming song
and tidal in my veins you moved
in rhythm, rhyme, in time to that
strumming music tidal
joyous humming in the dancing of the waves
and sand and wind and sky.
We walked each day steady
across those shores ever reaching
to the sea and the sea ever running
back to sands and sunset ever blessing
everyday each moment with its many colored kiss
in hues of pinks and purples, oranges, yellows, hues of bliss
in reds and blues, and greys… you…
always grey lining blue of mine with you,
in silver shot straight thru
with grey shot thru my blue.
We knew each sunset,
whiled away another day
closer to that sunset last
and that final mystic gateway
at the end thru which we enter
Lone and sundered, hoping that we yet may
walk together on a new shore
where there are no sunsets because
there is only sunrise
sunrise
sunrise
yet again
and yet again…

We walk still each day,
and every sunset bows to us,
and then bows to the night,
to the next day yet born,
to the next sun yet risen,
to the next sunset kiss…
and the stars always
over head and constant,
glitter chips of always-light
against the thick and sable night,
the stars nod in return, return…
ahh…the beach at night.
Air refreshing, breezy, flexible,
runs its loving hungry fingers
thru your hair pliable
as we walk, the sand
packed and wet and clean
and time at last is friable
in the smell of salty air
its kiss brushes against you,
trailing fingers across your cheek,
over your skin, and I too brush against you
(rush within you kissing,
trailing fingers)

We are Quietness
nestled deep in certain stillness,
and snuggled yet deeper
in the steady static roar
of the ever crashing waves
and the gurgling swishy swirling
of waves playing tag
with sand and seaweed
and seagulls refereeing
crying foul foul foul
so the waves run
and retreat in laughing ripples
back to the waiting deep safety
of the vast receptive sea,
and us safely snuggled
in our you and me.

The sand is crisp and cold and damp
as we walk, you and me, our steps
singing skritch skritch skritch,
singing in time
to the cry of those legalistic gulls
and our feet slide as we move from wet to dry
and we skim across the surface
walking like penguins
so we can move thru time
and yet leave nary a trace
and you feel so safe, like you are home
and you feel so safe in my feeling that…
find safety in my adoration
and you are home…
We can see
a vast array of stars overhead,
a broad expansive sea swelling before,
and stretching there a beach, the shore
beneath our sliding skimming feet,
comprised of endless grains of sand
uncountable but having number,
speaking of the days of time
since time began…

everywhere

are unique things uncountable,
innumerable…and you:
a one off, one and done
and rendered even just that much more special
on this stage of infinince
in the midst of audience
of blank uncountable conclave.
and there upon that stage
you are all the more substantial,
present, solid, singular,
just the endless treasure of your beauty
and the vast stretch of my love
(echoing stars and sand and sea)
singing harmoniously
in the presence of this eternal array,
this echo of infinity
we’re in.

And we walk, away from our little hut,
towards our little hut, and away again,
and time is scrolling out before us,
we two, we poised to write
with heart quills dipped in love’s well,
and then time rolls back into itself
(ah, it sees its the sea,
rolling out to kiss the sand
and rolling back to dump those kisses
into waiting heart so deep)…
time rolls out day by day by day, and back again
neath the stars,
in the night,
with the wind.

I wonder in the midst
of this sandy sacred setting
which thing it is my heart echoes
as it aches and hurts so fierce,
so good as it longs, yearns
so empty and so full,
so hungry, satisfied,
so intricate, complete…
my fiery core of passion and of promise

what…

Rolls in and out in waves?
Glitters fierce like diamond stars?
Never ends like grains of sand
everywhere there’s earth?
It aches too fierce, too good,
it thrills, thrums too ferocious
to identify and focus on,
and then it gets dim and blurry
when I look at you and see the quiet
gentle fierce glad brightness
of your countenance at night that
dims the stars, and
blurs the sands, and
makes the waves stand still
breathless and in awe, and
I know then my core
is ever always you you you

we married,
long ago beside this same vast ever sea,
on the same shore of sand golden, tan
and singing to the music
laughing in the running waves
beneath the glitter gaze of stars
overhead and hanging on angel visions,
we married…
and the moon officiated,
she gloamed before us
as we walked into her temple,
her the Officiant,
the Congregant of Always and gentle love,
we walked her moonlight aisle together…
some marry on mountainsides midst craggy peaks
to the wedding songs of brooks and creeks
and others still mingle in the firelight
beneath the tall stentorian witness of deep forests
redwood and sequoia who roll out meadows
soft and green, and arrayed more beautiful and
richer than the wealth of Solomon in their dress of flowers
and stalks and stems as the birds serenade
and sing their praise to them.

we visited there, you and me,
we heard that brooky song,
we saw that craggy might,
we lay in meadow soft
resplendent in love and
we have in our many walks found that
we were foundered, mired
in swampy lowlands funky, smelly,
decomposing rotten and releasing
the last gasp of life in its methane relief
but still stinking of that unbecoming…
we have thought us lost but then discovered
that it is here that wombs become impregnate,
become renewed as elements of used-to-be-alive
stick to our skin in longing desperate clingy clutchings.
But it is back,
always to the sea,
we are drawn, we,
to that intersection
of time and truth and bright eternity
that we see tangible
and with us in the sand,
and stars and sea.

and inside us,
you and me, burns a flame we share,
yes the same one, the same blade
of those fires that we see before us
in the night and yet to rise anew
in the day yet to be born,
the echo of stars and suns,
of the moon’s desires and passions
for lovers everywhere
and the twin of driftwood fires
that we kindle every night
as our offering to beauty,
to love, to us, to light midst
the crackling shouts of wood at last
consumed and released popping up up and away
in sparky eager pieces at last
free to become the stars overhead
that driftwood prophecies of old proclaimed their fate,
and the incense of their longing
drifting around us in thick vapours
that smell of longing
at last to be fulfilled,
smelling of worship,
smelling of Mama’s breath
and the courts of the Risen Lamb,
and smelling of Us,
you and me,
and our little hut.

tumblr_nczqhoQxtV1rcrcdeo1_500

A lil poem of encouragement

Posted on by

2

Constance I left the following as a comment to encourage someone…I decided that maybe it would have value here as well…hope you like it

The ache inside, the empty chasm
looms threatening in the night
and our heart writhes, and moans in spasms
and tries to hang on tight.

The darkness hangs its cloudy veil
and lays its claim to time
and grinds all words fine, down to Braille
and it seems no reason, rhyme

Can ever answer our hurt cry
can ever heal our pain
we know from here we’re meant to fly
clean, free from death’s dark stain

Sis, take heart, we’re out here, we
survived our cross of woe
we learned to share hurt, that’s the key
to rise again and grow

My heart is with you as your heart
beats every second out
may grace and peace to you impart
deep mercies in this drought.

I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers, dear one…if you can but manage to hang on, you will be glad, one day. But now, in the hard times, the silent scream times…just hang on, and think of thousands who are with you.

Love, Charissa ❤

tumblr_nd99rfKy8q1teip6bo1_1280

The Loneliness of Being Other

Posted on by

11

The raucous room and flowing wine, rollicking around us
awash in shallow social streams and plumage all fanned out
and passers by drifted in close to take a look and then they
shifted chins, rolled eyes to sit close jowl to jowl and thigh.20141011_190936

(Donne wasn’t talking about trans-folk when he wisely quipped
“no man is an island”, for I was life boat drifting on an endless sea and stranded,
fish below and birds above and me no water there to drink
as in the midst of many waters roiling, full of stink.)

tables full and over full, like bellies and wine glasses
which were groaning and clinking atonal and so rhythmic
choruses did echo in this gathered congregation
of the goddess Socializing and her sleazy consort mammon

who greedily devours offerings of time and treasure  20141011_190856

Ah, but look…and see our dingy, drifting on that desert sea, in this
oasis of walled off space, our puffed up air-filled punt
the good ship “I Alone Survived” bobbed high and pristine, clean,
midst merry chaos, swelling choruses of merely other.

perhaps we were mistaken as tee-totalers of banquets,
step children vegan and red headed in the roiling throng.
OH! the weight watchers attending but on such a strict repast
that we were tasked to come, eat food but fast the feasts of friends.20141011_190909

We sit alone, apart (the better to stare at you, my dear) in this overcrowded room
and overcrowded tables, one so lonely in the middle
t’was overcrowded by blank emptiness, and occupied
by someone glowing shining sparking happily becoming, but

accounted as a lost placeholder only, and the one
who loves her, sitting side by side and stark there…and alone.
This solitary desert trudge, sometimes teeming with life
and trees and nights under soft moons, but this night doors are locked,

the gates are hidden deep in mystery concealing wonder
of how a transgirl finds her way and what becomes her key
To walk amidst the forests, in the fields of human kindness, there to
forage for the herbs medicinal to cure that blindness and to

find that song, the notes to open up locked hearts, deaf ears
until that day the Other will go forth, sowing in tears…Image 001

“…Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.  She who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing her sheaves with her.”

Psalms 126:5-6
*gender pronouns altered, meaning not violated)

Sobbing…thank you dear one!

Posted on by

5

To the Happy Few

Do you know who you are

O you forever listed
under some other heading
when you are listed at all

you whose addresses
when you have them
are never sold except
for another reason
something else that is
supposed to identify you

who carry no card
stating that you are—
what would it say you were
to someone turning it over
looking perhaps for
a date or for
anything to go by

you with no secret handshake
no proof of membership
no way to prove such a thing
even to yourselves

you without a word
of explanation
and only yourselves
as evidence

tumblr_ncyzu4PqFl1s5fdi6o1_500
“To the Happy Few” by W.S. Merwin, from Collected Poems: 1996-2011. © Library of America, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

October 10th, 1981

Posted on by

3

She walked in white
and wore a white dress simple.
she was Beauty writ so blatant and blinding

Her eyes flashed smoking, fierce she ruled that day,
her day, and as her one choice my day too
and all was bent and formed in her glance.

There was a muddy brown hillside behind the church,
slick with recent rain fallen brown and fragrant
onto October ground boasting in pumpkins and passion.

She was eager to the altar ascend, and she hiked her skirts
and then herself and up that muddy slope treacherous she
trod on hinds feet, on glory wings and she was come into her Own.

I stood fearful, clad in brown drab (and hidden inside the hole of me)
I cried out “be careful baby!  omg don’t fall!”
and she turned, halfway up, left leg poised up hill,

right leg firm, rooted to the very core of the Earth (and her solid present self)
and turned loose those brown lasers on me…flayed me, saw me hiding
(but didn’t know it was me she was seeing).

Her hair moved in the dancing wind and she flung out her hand
(oh her right hand sought, kissed, and become my bridal bouquet)
and she said “Do you actually think I would Stumble on my wedding day!!??”

I wanted to fly into a million pieces, each one singing screaming crooning
blessedblessedblessedblessedblessed…I wanted to coalesce, come out,
but instead I just stood there, gaping and fearful and frozen.

Her lids lowered (that adored half mast glance),  softened even
as they grew more crystal amber gold and she said
“Come on up baby, I am here always” (ohhh)

I took her hand and ascended (were my feet even on the ground?)
and we walked into that building decorated and celebratory
and got scolded by the clucking biddies cus we saw each other before…

The next time I saw her, she moved in music and light, rode waves
and walked forward to stand at my side and never go.
And then she said I did, I do, I will…then we lit Our Candle

and I was delivered to Joy forever.
Happy Anniversary my Dearest Darling
I never lived until there was you.

Love, Charissa Grace

tumblr_n9oxttlRXh1thynt0o1_1280

The Girls We Were Without Knowing

Posted on by

9

high strung doesn’t even come close
to how high strung i really am…
but i lay like the dead lifeless,
empty inside, afraid,
seeing your departure as
the substance of my ugliness
and your withdrawal as
seceding heart to heart and
heart in heart.

anxiety is a fix-needing junkie
inside me, twitching and
twerking at the intersection
of thought and rational discourse,
wielding its squeegee
(some eldritch Excalibur)
over my heart wet and sloppy and screechy…
in its wake i am driving blind.

your hand feels absent.
my heart feels absence…
but your eyes are present,
wide in shock and gaping,
and finally open hurt outrage
asking plaintive, in naked anguish
what does it all mean, the cumulative
crowd of days and throng of years
in the long lost land called trans.
(and we didn’t even know
we were living there!)

your god-damned beautiful
perfumed forehead

(smelling always of heaven’s bakeries hot and warm
and working for that Feasting Day Coming)

it’s furrowed, that one line
near your left eye (silver-grey sea)
jumps up, twists and shouts
“this is not about you!
why is it always about you!
no it is not about you!”

you move off
like clouds racing the wind
black and billowy
to the mountains
to rain there on naked rock,
but I dwell
in the valley lonesome
and shadow deep
and dream of days
past and uncertain
to ever be days to come,
days of waffle weekends,
movies and popcorn (make my day)
chocolate and coffee…

and I am missing
long hours of talk
at the beach
in the wind, and later
at the fire
over wine…and later still
at hearts bonded deep
and words not needed
and action (then, now, coming)
rendered irrelevant.

I will indeed again
confess my love for you,
my desire for your company
and time and song

…and seeing…

oh to learn to be
grown women together,
all the while being informed
by the girls we were without knowing
and without needing to know
as long as we knew
how to remember wonder…

but you will never read this
(you never come here, why would you?)
so i can paint with fingers, feelings
and this canvas of grace
showing every clumsy stroke,
every wrong move
public and on display

and maybe
(Mama be gracious)
someday these words will be etched,
stained crimson on my crystal heart shattered
and each piece shouting love love love,
will sing to you of
all i thought
all i felt
all i forgot
all i am

all my loveImage 002

 

Reeling in Rome

Posted on by

7

Things feel like silk over thistles.
My heart is home, snuggled down
certain…in place…and yet underneath
being home pulses pain, sighs and sorrow,
sings sadness…tambourine thistles,
timbrel thorns tipped with sting and with sticker
tipped with grief for the meanness released
in this world, cacophonous, clanging
macabre symphony wailing and keening
and it easily pierces my thin certain silk
tumblr_mzyfu4DB7Q1r4mbs9o1_1280

it is here, in this place…home…
where I am snuggled down certain…
…it’s here too, crept ‘neath walls of love
we raised higher (longer) than the Dragon
and broader than the Icy Bear.

…meanness dissolved…

(become smoke from cauldrons stirred
by darkness and tended by sneaking death)

crept under, around, thru, in vapors
breathed in gasps, poisonous, choking
off health, flowing life from even the elect

(oh Mama, could it be?  Say it isn’t so!)

me and my heart met and we mingled
and made our nest in walls of love,
in temple tones, rhythms so homey
and consecrated with Sacred Love…

but cuckoos crept in on the croaking
raucous dissonant din of black crows,
under safe and the sacred, they sought to steal, thieving
and taking goodness and life, and leaving our chicks

(our heart our heart our heart our heart)

torn and rent by meanness and scratched by claws
and marred and us

(married)

hands fluttering, hands wringing…hands empty

I am reeling here, snuggled down solid
I am reeling…tipping to and fro,

rocking…keening

as I look and long for that imagined future
we dreamed of for our dearest chicklings

(because my own, miscarried misshapen,
deadly-still and sightless in Gaza)

as I look and I long but I see only smoke
and haze, and I hear only laughing, gibbering
vaporous voices blown off cold cauldrons,
stirred by stale darkness, filled with green poison and
witches brew swirling and reeling…
reeling like me.

Mama…oh Mama do You see?
do you hear me here, bereft,
weeping in Ramah with Rachel
for my hatchlings hounded, harried,
torn and carried away
on torrents in time, in tears,

to tarry, to tarry, reeling in Rome
when they should be settled
joyous in Jerusalem
and glad singing.

Oh Mama…oh Mama

(my face slick with tears and my heart reeling in Rome).Image 001

 

I Smelled Rosemary and Sage

Posted on by

9

I was wanting to “do some work” in our garden, right?
cus relationships need nurturing, tending, (like gardens)
flower gardens, vegetable gardens, forest gardens
wild and austere and magisterial…and because our “us” is alive and well,
growing and thriving as time measures us, draws wavery lines on today
to show where we were tomorrow.tumblr_mwp5glJ8t21rs346ao1_500

The warm air hung, lingering under October’s indulgent gaze
and I worked in joy and freedom, gardening there in our
common garden on the border of our homes abutted,
at lyric and language and Poetry writ large
with scrawling free hands in rows and stands
of flowery run-ons and adverby-veggies

then I felt a small shadow but I didn’t look, smiling beneath
my broad yellow straw hat, knowing you were near,
shinnied up that chestnut tree so shady and strong
to spy on me your sister, working on us and love…

…this was another of your mischievous games, one of your plays,
jotted sprawling on the backs of your kisses in the giddy ink of your giggles
and blown my way on ladybug wings and bumble bee songs
and spiderweb parachutes dewy and rich…
tumblr_n9g9f940Kd1qgo6q6o1_500I know you have lines for me, but it is up to me to know them first,
say them careful to not actually know them, lest they fall
like broken bells unmelodious!  And so I sang as I dug into us,
our sandy loamy we…

“I love how you understand that
uncertain restlessness at the crux of my soul!
it drives me to create, to throw the deck into the air
and reshuffle everything…
…ah, uncertain restlessness…
which makes me listen to winds differently
and hear those old feet echoing down
the long hallways of ancient seasons
long passed, and buried in that hollow echo,
the ringing harmony of many songs entwined there,
in that windy, sighing passage…

“I love also, how you know beneath
that crux I am restlessly certain,
and look at light askance and akimbo
and peer into hearts, searching for
that vitality emerging, defining itself
midst those hearts finally grown weary enough,
tired enough of doing what they are doing
to realize at last that they all along
have aggregated unwittingly and carefully
the resources of resurrection
and destiny at last arrived
and called by name and new life.

“But we, Sacred we by all means must not drift unwittingly
to lilypad patterns of musts and shoulds and oughts
but love freely instead on the high seas
of experience and understanding…and gardening,
always gardening and plucking Poems…
Of this I am sure and certain.”Image 001

I heard the silent smothering of giggles
and felt the choking swallowing of snickers
as you lurked there in the branches over head,
hung in mid air loving and tricky…

and then I smelled forever,
I smelled the incense sacred
that you always burn for us to us,
always.  I smelled rosemary and sage
remembrance and wisdom,
love and long life,
loyalty and esteem,
fidelity and yes,
(on the other side)
immortality…

Cus I was wanting to do some work in our garden.

(October 7th, 2014)

http%3A%2F%2F37.media.tumblr.com%2Fcf578d18178a17024b42d2d992402cea%2Ftumblr_n7fm6sNh2n1qcdylgo1_500

 

 

The Entire History of a Bee

Posted on by

1

comments trail behind
lazy thoughts stirred up by winds of words,
steamed up in waters of many poems

the entire history of a bee
follows it to every flower
and leaves its traces there

but the flower feels just the feet
and the breeze of tiny wings
and rejoices in the intimate kiss
of the lil buzzy bee

i guess comments
are sorta like that bee, right?
oh! well
hmm…maybe they are
more like the flower stirred
by the bee’s poetic kiss?
fragrance flying and petals sighing
and green leaves rejoicing
that God made bees

tumblr_mz1ozaeOgp1r5mcv8o1_500

Beyond That Deep Horizon

Posted on by

5

I have seen deep rivers,
tasted long deep wells…
I have sensed some deeper places
underneath that
bedrock scoured,
bedrock bathed,
bedrock carved
in bass basalt and blurry
with water movement.

those rivers run, flow
in clear water,
in cool water,
in living water
come down brilliant from stars
in drops of crystal light,
in flakes of liquid gentle night.

that water primal, original
and not yet tasted with achy teeth…
that water drained pure
and drawn from veins of gods good
but long ago forgotten gods
with whole hearts soaked, besotten
by longings large and looming….
well that water is
right there!

you can cast down buckets
on lines of hope
long and strong,
vibrant with purpose,
but those rivers open
only to the meek,
to the lowly,
to they who know
the password is sorrow,
sorrow…

I admit I’ve been biting my tongue
for some time now, I’ve been
waiting and wanting,
longing to pour my heart
out to you, to bleed on you and you
not wipe it away in shame

but instead you’d
dip low,
dip graceful,
dip soft
beneath the silver surface
into crystal waters running
and draw up healing blood of gods,
lift out liquid songs of stars sprung up
and out again to fly.

I admit it has occurred to me,
maybe you are water…
no, waters
(cus the “S” softens the syllable
and adds a blurry velvet to the word),
maybe you are stone,
are bedrock, are riverbanks blurry,
overlaid with warm velvet,
with steel over that and under,
and blurry velvet inside again
ever singing of snuggles and tickles
and of sorrows too…

yes, I think that’s it…that’s you…
and in this fading light of day
washing over your face
(like water)
in blues and blues and blues
I receive this treasure unto my heart,
breath held for something coming,
breath released for something here,
breath given for deep rivers,
and I wait for that bedrock sunset
writ large in red and banked in blue
there, just beyond that deep horizon.tumblr_ncem5qeJkb1tp2pyqo1_500

Mama’s leaf for ddh

Posted on by

6

Image 003

after your dead leaves magnetic and alchemal
drew from you those vapours and fumes
our Mama gathered each bitter sprout one and all
burned them in fiery plumes

i cried for you, with you, sharing your sorrow
and burden inside of my heart
and then found a leaf from the tree of tomorrow
and wrote there with tears a fresh start

i give it to you, now, here, wet and made clean
and waiting the touch of your pen
that will write of promises aquamarine
Made by Mama, kissed with Her Amen.

and worry not that your inkwell might run dry
for I will my tears shed for thee
and there you may dip your quill, write, and then fly
to your Mama-promised destiny

and i?   i will walk in the forests and trees
in fall, i’ll catch every fallen leaf
and i’ll gather them precious, add my tears as keys
and i’ll Sister-stand there, stark relief

so write on these leaves with your heart and your soul
and when they are filled up, write some more
and our Mama will faithfully there make you whole
from your leaves to your pen to your core.

i love you, dear sister and friend,
me, your ever faithful bringer of tear-washed leaves

tumblr_nc65ajgzPU1sr3adoo1_500

Charissa’s Grace Notes: One Year In

Posted on by

11

Welp…it seems that the obligatory post has thrust itself forward, or rather time has thrust it forward as it rolls on.  Today is the date of my first blog post here, one year ago.

Grace Notes is One Year Old.

It’s funny…way back then, I hardly knew what to write about, I hardly knew anything, really (now, I don’t know much more, but I much more know what I don’t yet know).

I knew that my life had been shattering inside…tumblr_mq79zdd0zQ1rad4udo1_500
I knew that I had admitted, out-loud with words, the deepest secret of my life, one that I had kept even from myself…
I knew that I wanted to die, but could not bear the thought of my darling finding me, or worse yet, not finding me…
I knew that I did not know who I was, and yet I knew very well who I wasn’t…
I knew that I had to get some help, and had searched the internet for counselours in my area…

tumblr_nanv4mzcwL1s2z59jo1_1280

…and that was it.  I sat down, a year ago, and asked Mama (Who at that time was still Lady Grace to me…I had not yet given up deep enough to discover the surface of the depths of Her Great Love Personally for me…for me.)…

It was early, at the usual times I have been haunted since I can remember, and I was up…coping…just coping, using all the ways I had developed over years to push the pain down, to put up some sort of layer between my insides which thrum to even the slightest breeze and jangle with the unfathomable ways of others who say and do things that literally flummox me.

I said out loud, “Lady Grace, here I sit in the night, awake again (naturally)…what in the world shall I call my blog?

You know that feeling when you undress for bed, and the room is cold and you know that under the blankets will be cold too but will warm quickly, and so the moment you are undressed you just snik straight into bed quick as can be lickity-brindle?  And then the first rush of cold covers, followed by that delicious bloom of warmth and you have never felt so snuggly-cozy?

Well, that was what it was like when the title, in whole cloth, snikked into my mind and was bracingly clear and then started to glow warm…as I saw it, and then began to love it…Charissa’s Grace Notes:  Transitioning from works to Grace and death to Life.

And in that year…

I survived a family member not speaking to me for 4 months (4 months!!!  I freaking thought I would die!!  How do you go 4 months and not talk to someone you love?  Heck, I would talk to my bff every 4 minutes if we lived in paradise lol!!)…

I survived major betrayal and blame shifting at work…from multiple sources (and I was not even close to being out then)…

I survived suicidal feelings that got so strong and scary that I made an attempt, until She snatched me up (thank you Mama)…and Constance, I think about that day, that horrible day of weeping until I was dry and still couldn’t stop crying, and how words lost their power and I was reduced to literal babbling in the woods as I thought to myself I am insane, I am truly having a mental breakdown, and how close, how awfully close I was…tumblr_ncjrcmD9gI1qczwklo1_1280and if I had, none of the poetry that I wrote would be now…I would not know my bff, or my Sissa Kat…my darling would still be unsparkly and shriveled inside and utterly shattered…

I walked into a wonder-ful moment when Mama showed up…and that I will keep to myself…tumblr_naayt7L3AA1qc91i1o1_500

Somehow someway I began to grasp that I am worth something, not a monster or pervert of freak (yeah, those words will likely echo in klaxon intrusion til I am resurrected and set free)…

I discovered that I am a real person, always have been, and have been fighting for the life of the “man” that I portrayed for all those years and I developed a “resilience” (thanks for that word bff) that simply would not give in…I found me…tumblr_nc8zw1O12y1rr74i9o1_1280

I found out that I am sort of a cool person at times, and have something to offer thru my poems…

I found the courage to start transition!!  The courage to tell Dr. Jessie (who laughed and rejoiced and said “Oh thank God you finally figured this out, we here knew 6 months ago!)…tumblr_ncriliyBsU1t96d7to1_500

I started going to a spoken word poetry group in Portland, one that I didn’t know a soul there, and no one knew me either…and I went there as me…me…Charissa Grace, and in faith I spoke my self to them, my name to them…and they received me, and once in a while they think my poems are good…

I wrote 2 very significant (to me…it didn’t create much of a furor to anyone else) poems…they marked some sort of a turning for me somehow…I think it was after my HRT had had a chance to extinguish the testosterone poisoning I had suffered from for 54 years…

My Heart DaresImage 002

Carapacetumblr_nckjs2TL0U1txde3xo1_1280

Those were written at the end of the first quarter of the year, and in hindsight I see that quarter was a detox time…detoxing from the awful assaults death made on me the year before, and the year before, and the year before…the declarations there in those 2 poems are still ringing…

I began to dress as me, out of town and openly, and how can I ever ever ever find the words to tell what that is like, because as you read if you are cis-gender you literally lack the ground of (non)-being to feel this.  If you dressed up as the gender you are not, and went about, seriously, for a day or two…then you would know just a poor facsimile of what dysphoria is…well I began to experience time lived in a non-dysphoric experience…tumblr_me80pisMV81qgk2yao1_500

I further integrated, and regained a ton of childhood memories…and Mama showed me the true reality of “that event”…the one that tore me in two for the next 5 decades…and though I cannot unhear that woman shrieking in fearful angry horror and I will never not hear the epithets she hurled into my fabric, I at last can hear Mama, and Her whispered words tenderly telling me who I am…and She knows cus She is the One who made me…

tumblr_mu65e4ZaRi1qc6wuio1_500

I began to spontaneously sing worship and praise songs again…and I was shocked when one day I heard myself, and knew I had been singing over an hour and not even knowing that I had…tumblr_nbooffw6JI1sl0gcwo1_500

I began to pray again…oh I had always “prayed” cus that is what a good christian does, right?  Pays the Lord their bribes? (Yes, I went there…and if you are honest you will admit that you have done this, bribed God with your deeds and prayers…)…but I began to pray for real again, pouring out my momentary heart (and ddh you think I talk a lot to you…giggle!  Mama knows…)…

I rode bike with my darling…together…and those times are better than all of my years of riding alone…

…and thru all of that…I wrote here, most everyday, but not always…and I began to discover I have a voice, and a name…

…and 4 days ago, that name became legal…all things are made new, the old has passed away behind me.

Along the way people connected to this blog, and it tickles me that there are actually people who follow these mewlings and musings…and tickles me even more when I see blogs that have thousands of followers!!  LOLOL!!!  How the freak does that even happen, since I really don’t get it how I have any followers at all???  But really?  The only followers that matter are the ones who read each post, and invest it with life, dress them up and let them live far beyond the page…to you is my blood grateful thank you!

And I am still Charissa Grace…God’s Grateful Gleam of Grace displayed…if She and They love me, I know They love you as well and more so.

tumblr_nc8u0aGrNL1rpvmfno1_1280

In the Edges

Posted on by

6

snikked back up deep in rocky crevice thirsty
i wait there for the changing sea…for she
has danced again away from me across
the wet sand brown and just becoming tan,

and finally white as all its moisture fades
again in fickle flight of waves gone running
out out away, entranced, infatuated
by soft moonlight and warden gravity,

eternity’s twin engine sirens singing.
i wait, desperate, grinding gritty dread
into the chalky powder of mere sadness
so i can mix it with my tears and drink,

and try to disappear it dust to dust…
but my thirst can’t be quenched here on the edge
of deserts where sunlicks lash my quick feet
and scorch my liquid heart, fall like whiplash

upon my salty soul to feed that thirst.
the desert creeps in sideways, snaking, slith’ring
thru hot sands, then across the wet seaweed,
chasing the sea as she cavorts and dances,

as she asunder runs, her lacey skirts
bounce briny, lift, swooning in moon-lorn longing,
her green eternal ever yearning quest.
the desert hisses its hot joy in radiant

baking waves of heat and takes another
worn sodden sandy vassel wet and cool
relief falls into sizzling fiery thrall.
i wait for the sea…pine for her cold droughts,

her rhythmic waves, relief washed over me
like heav’n’s promise…then i can wait no longer
as sun beats down with eager lusty limbs
on my rock, me within my crusty shell

I bake on edge…as if t’were damned in hell.

i peek slow, take a spattering face-full
of sand surfing on winds and sizzle sun,
and then i slide out skitter-quick and sideways
toward briny ocean of such cool relief,

zigging towards bright sunlight dazzle-zagging
and zagging when the desert dapple-zigs,
in fits and starts i make my way cross edges
on edges…the edge…of sand…and sun…and…sea…

tumblr_nb0wpj8Lwn1s2z59jo1_1280

i live in these long edges…on the edges
and i am never sure if i am running
from fro or running to but does it matter?
still in edges, on edge, to and fro.

i finally draw close to those briny blessings
i once again feel her quick liquid life
so cool in pulses, pounding sand and driving
cool water deep inside me once again

to baptize my dry well springs in her depths,
and there i feel her washings o’er me…
she recovers from her sweet tide enchantment
to the soft moon and moon-swung gravity

Thus writ in circles large and sung in cycles
cross every edge…the sun, and sand, and me.
she runs her musky liquid fingers gentle
thru my lank hair and kisses my hot brow

with lips that speak of depths unspoken, hidden,
buried within her vast oceanic self,
and deep within her womb of seaweed life
her friendly waves wash warm and reassuring

but then her hunger wakes and eagerly
she reaches for my depths with her cold waters
that always live beneath that dancing surface
and i can feel her kisses and her yearning

as she my hot soul drinks like her lifeblood
that runs in waves and time right to the edge
of sun and sand and sea, and yes, of me.
i founder in her fathoms and her caverns

and pull away before i sink and drown
alas! i must away with me or perish
and ever be her hollow lifeless crown.
so desperate i slide, i bounce, i skitter

away and to the right, no to the left
until i find again my crevice rocky
and safe there, on the edge and yet bereft
of sun, or sand, or sea, i haunt the edge

yes, i live in the edges ever…edges

the singer said the first cut was the deepest,
well she was sadly falsely optimistic
for i am cut when she goes gallivanting
and cut again when she returns so thirsty

and overwhelming in her vast expanse
that stands against the sun, against the sand
and lives there with her edges pulling me
and pushing me too back across the sand

until the sun is threatened with my dance
and pushes me away with one hot glance.
under the sun, on sand, and kissed by sea
…i live in the edges…bound…and free

 

Heartwalks and Higher Places

Posted on by

5

when i woke up this morning, it was gone…
that dull ache of nothing
being where something should be,
that dull blade mechanically, relentlessly
sawing back and forth and
twisting in time to every ticktock.

gone.

my soul ran frantically inside my belly
like a tongue darting to the missing tooth,
but now it found words spoken where
there was only a hole before:

“…heart of my heart, marrow of my marrow”

(yes, those words were said to me, and a
4 hour conversation became a grain of sand)

i felt something different…happy?
present?  I dunno…because
I had always looked askance at happiness,
mistrusted its promise of meaning
in the hearts of other hearts.

but there is no mistaking the words
of that heart…your heart…
there inside me broken jagged and worn smooth
by the blows of grief and the waves of mourning
and flooded with raw, pulsing, vital and golden
sticky absolute resolute present!

you ask…no, that is not right…
you demand burdens from me
whether your limbs are
green and supple
or dry and brittle…
and you have looked, and
it was scary to be seen!

don’t get me wrong:
i wanted, i want to be seen,
to belong in our heartwalks and higher places…
(you speak my braille so well!)
i want us, and am joyful in your knowing
that you are safe to me
and glad.

tumblr_na85zgkT4j1tu2m70o1_500

but that is a dare I have never dared,
a deed before that always was so full of death
(to want)
for I was earthbound, Sis…
i am born in the dirt, Heart,
and not living breathing flesh (you)
and grace gathered (you)
into body and soul (you)…

but you shared your wings with me
(wings, oh wings oh wings ablur!)
and yeah, I can fly abit already
dodo, become duck, and becoming swan!
and i have looked…
to see that you prefer
the company of John the Beloved
and Mary the Mother and Mary the Magdalene over
the company of James and John and mighty thunder!
and i see that in your electric broken wholeness
i have been given priceless sparkling wonder…
i am unfolding, i am blooming and becoming
in those showers silver and shimmery glad.

when i woke up this morning …me there…
and you there too, speaking shalom
and I exaltation and us saying
life life life again and again
from this day forth until That.1369708048971258

Mama You Told Me

Posted on by

9

You told me there would be silences,
differences between
mountain streams and valley brooks,
You told me Your flow was warm,
liquid collecting of the gifts
and graces of valleys.
You said my bracing quick lightning was
“clear and quenched thirst, but good lord girl,
to bathe in that electric chill??
I might never sleep again!”

You said.
You told.

And Your Face
so still and mobile
and wreathed in grace,
always grace…
and determined healing.
You wear tears naked
like jewels, like crystal
chips of Your Clear Heart,
intimate on Your face.

and me…spit up and emptied
and waiting for You
to fill the silent spaces
that ate grace and jeered
while feasting on my food.
me emptied, waiting …
and my heart,
ego-stained and washed clean,
captured
by Your face,
Your gift,
Your grace…

waiting…for that one grain of sand
to start an avalanche within me
of hope, nay!
of Hope,
sure and certain of its end,
like a leaf on a stream floating easily
on its way to the sea is certain
that it shall the voyage endure
and enjoy rejoicing!

You told me there would be…
You told me warm…
You told me…
You

tumblr_nc3cnutDFJ1qcll8no1_1280

Jacob’s Half-Sister

Posted on by

7

words.

swallowed in medicine times
but found to be only poison
slow half-life killers
just in time spat out
in relief,
in apprehension,
in hope…

i am jacob’s half-sister
confessing her sin of being…
her…

“guilty of wasting a perfectly good man”
say those words that lay writhing
in a painful pile of self-loathing
at my feet, finally, and not
at my throat, those words
with their acrid foul smelling stench
befouling my legs and
the air around me.

i am expiated.
and my Mama is well pleased
and readying me.

the stone under my head grows soft
and i think about my long ago
half-brother, and his ladder.
i search the brooding night sky
for mine, my eyes
pleading like puppies
hungry for milk

but my ladder is my heart.
i know that, finally,
and the skies will open
only as my heart pries open
to spit the pearls formed
within this shell-shocked soul

the stone under my head becomes flesh
and i think about how jacob named
that stone, that ebenezer memory
of open skies and accessible heavens…
bethel…and it echoes in the dark,
rings midst the stars and
chimes in cloudy choruses.

that stone,
that living stone had legs
to wander, God’s house sojourning
from place to place and time to time
ever wandering…
the stone of Scone
stone of destiny
stone of coronation
old, red, sandstone

the stone under my head becomes red
and throbs and thrums and thrills
my soul open and searching the skies,
and i sense it will speak
as it spoke so long ago
and whisper my name,
my new name from heaven.
but it pushes me to listen elsewhere,
my answers not from
rock and sand and ruin
but from the Cornerstone Rock
and its bloody open hand
red and throbbing and thrumming

my half-brother was grasper
and then God Persists…
and me…
i was messenger,
herald blood bought
price paid
white as snow
washed.
but now,
named now…

tumblr_m0bxiaWjjK1qlkonlo1_1280

the stone under my head becomes blue
and then becomes wind,
and disappears to run
in trees and mountains and back to me
from Mama singing Her sweet answer
to my bitter long palaver…
singing my name’s song,
yes, my stone singing
the singing stone
the wind stone singing
my name-song on my face,
singing Love on my face
and my name, my name
echoes ever in me singing
charissa gracetumblr_nc4t585oIa1qat5pio1_400

 

petrified

Posted on by

2

I am petrified stoney
of all the jammy things
I will come to forget,
their juice wrung dry
from my mind.

What if one dread day
I wake up wide and can’t
remember how my
Dad’s voice sounded
(like cannons, like rivers, like trees)
when he was
trying to tender-tell me
he loved me?

Or that loud unspoken
change in the living air
that I tasted quick and lively
when I opened the window this morning
and knew that airy Summer
has turned to earthy Autumn?

Or how the wind
burnt in clear flames
that night when I climbed sweaty
up the old hill from my house
and suddenly realized
I was no longer a child
and on fire?

key moments in my life,
simple sensations, brief instances,
and every day, they fade
a tiny bit,
dissemble, dissolve.
one dull day
what if I am
an old lady
dried and pressed flower
with nothing but ghosts of fleeting moments
inside my brain that
I can’t catch hold of?

maybe those forests
got it right, way back then
when they bathed in lava
to capture the moment then
forever,

petrified

tumblr_n79i1pgrMZ1qa7gx5o1_500

Fluttering Fingers in God’s Face

Posted on by

4

how much is enough?
I ask this because…growth.
Right?
how much is enough?

is growth a candy-cane, a barber pole
spiraling and twisting twins of
life and death entwined?

or is it a mountain trail,
switchbacks and double overs
and 2 steps back for every 3
each time you’ve gone a hundred.
and sometimes you just march in time
or stay beside a bush
to see if there really is a bird in it.

oh wait! maybe growth is
the wind, catching us up in it
like kites to kiss the sky and dance
while our bones are picked clean
by its breezy nips and us clutched in
airy talons by our hips.

if that is the case, then
the answer is never!
Growth is never enough.

No, what we need to go along
with the never of growth, is loyalty!
Cus loyalty is either there,
or not there…no one can be loyal
only when they feel like it!
you either are, or you aren’t…
loyal.

so spin that barber pole of
growth and loyalty
while we wait, and wait,
10,000 little prayers like
fluttering fingers in God’s face.

your hands are muddy from
digging and investing in growth.
my hands are hot from
stoking and cuddling fire!

together, we can answer the question
that cannot be uttered by only one person:
how much?

enough.

tumblr_n9ijdvrk441qczv3po1_400

 

I am the wings of birds

Posted on by

7

Time flies by in birds’ wings
and the sounds of flutter and
rustles of winds
tugging at leaves,
leaves that want to leave
and yet still hang on
still hang on.

and me? I stand still
while time whirls by,
seasons twirl by in
turning unfurling
display, all
pomp and pageantry.

but sometimes I think
secretly, that I am the
wings of birds flutt’ring
and the wind rustling…

…but mostly I am
the leaves
groaning to let go
but still hanging on
still hanging on

 

tumblr_nb9auu2XhR1rnecpgo1_500

The Sound of The Name of Your Kiss

Posted on by

3

last night
i heard your kiss calling me.
in the night it sang,
flutes forlorn in fog, i think,
in mist it sang of
how your heart has missed me.

i think
i’m the only one who knows
the name of your true kiss.
it’s on my salty lips and in my utterance
it takes wing in song and then flies past me.

i breathed
out of my heart, into my throat,
your kiss’s secret song.
on my tongue it sat and pushed
with pepper palms, it tapped
its fudgy fingers on my teeth
in code to thus release me.

your kiss
it scratched my lips until they bled
in love, stained permanent in song
and joyous sound of your kiss’s name,
Joan of Arc of Hearts,
in the precious fading night and morning mist.

in dreams
you’d struggled soundlessly
to speak, to sing, and waking here
you gift wrapped me in wandering hands
and kisses, beautifully, tongue tied
and heaving against traces, time and reins
to lay against me.

last night
this morning
and always I can hear
the sound of the name of your kiss

tumblr_nckji3Wu3Y1txde3xo1_1280

If you don’t tick like I tick you’re a heretic!

Posted on by

4

Yes, there is…an intentionality in how my latest poem Of Women and Wolves follows the post Never Again.

It is like being around a hungry wolf…when you are in an encounter that feels like it will devour who you are, what you are, if you are not careful…and if you are careful.

The only way to appease a wolf is to feed it, and that is to diminish yourself or others…

And no…the man I talked to is not a “wolf” in the biblical sense of a deceiver who is seeking to destroy other people for the sake of his own gain.

No…he is more the garden variety religious person who has found meaning and purpose both in the search for those specific thoughts and those specific actions that “please God”…and then being “diligent” to make sure that others whom they define as part of “the body of Christ” are “taught” those same thoughts and do those same deeds…and if they don’t, if they think different thoughts based on the bible, and are led by Lady Grace to different actions expressing their understanding, then they must “correct the deviant” (and it is for their own good, only, of course).

It is the old saw “If you don’t tick like I tick, you’re a heretic!”

Thus the poem, and its metaphor…at least on one level…the fabulous women who read here will find the other levels over time…all of them.

Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly,

Charissa

tumblr_nciub8E0kv1qllucco6_r1_500

Of Women and Wolves

Posted on by

8

let’s talk about our bleeding hearts,
what it means to call those bloody parts
by their names…

yes, here we are telling stories about them,
telling stories about women and wolves.

there are also stories

–corollaries to these lupine tales–

of feminine triumph and guile,
(stories of the torn, the disappeared and devoured)
elegies…

and to whom would we show them to?

so let’s us weave with words
epistolary and elevated,
eloquent and ebeneous.
let’s tell us our secrets
and set each other free.

and then
we can walk
down by the river
deep, and dark with
told secrets, cold silent
secrets told in winds and
moans, shrieks, of lightning
shimmering, flashing, and
dancing down to earth
called by our long
sudden bright
summons.

our pockets will be full of stones
there, down by the river deep.
our mouths will be safe, closed
over all the words we spoke,
the secrets that we shared
for keeps…

and the words
we wished we’d said
(and the words that wished
we had said them too)…

why, they shall be our catechism,
our communion for sisters of blood
and dull loss and bright victory
over empty wombs and hurt that looms,
lurking and lappaceous.

and those wolves, those lonely wolves
shall fall silent, denied their howls by ours
and our words spoken and unspoken,
our silence shattered and unbroken,
our secrets shared
for keeps.

and the river will ever again always
be ours and carry the flow of our tales,

our stories of
women and wolves
20171002_113730

How Bones Feel

Posted on by

9

together
like dry kindling and hungry fire
like full fire and eager air
like clingy air and cool water
like glitter water and thirsty earth
like yearning earth and welcome sky
like starry stars and nitey-night
like secret night and tender love
like burning love and full desire
together.

i think i know
what my clothes feel like
when I put them on,
fill them out and move, inside them,
them wrapped around me
in warmth, softness
scratchy sibilance singing
socks sliding over feet

and when I met you
I felt like my clothes feel
after,
and all full and moving and powerful…

when I’m with you
I know how bones feel,
inside bodies
moving, running,
free and full of being
full of knowing

I know how kindling feels
when it is near fire,
shivering, eager
enamored and wanting
to be thrown and thrown and thrown,
burn free, be undone

I know how the silver spear-point
diamond-shiny and sleek
feels with the weight of that shaft
so smooth,
so long,
so heavy,
pushing it thru air
to pierce dead center every time
and know you are following
solid and substantive
and remaining there
behind when I am buried.

we work together
thru much
we walk together
thru more
together

tumblr_nc24nl8mrH1qjsrxdo1_500tumblr_n4swt13AHe1sgs12oo1_1280

If Only…

Posted on by

8

If Only…

Fated words, uttered loud and forceful
(expletives deleted) with hot breath fast and panicked.

If only…
*sigh*

if only…

those words have marched in lock step
with this silly goose so desperate to be a swan
goose stepping right along with the best
of the fuhrer’s furor-troops and shock tropes.

my friend spoke of these, and sentences that
jail themselves with these bars “if only”.

well, I “if only”-ed myself into Horner’s Corner
and stuck in a thumb to pull out

if only i had not said that
if only i had thought before i moved
if only i was smaller
if only i was quieter
if only my body…yeah.

that.

if only the blood didn’t come out of the wounds
if only…
if only…

(i whisper this, shame steals my voice but not the evil thought)

if only i had never been…

Those are my “if only”s.

So, how to go on to “yet shall I”

“yet shall I praise Them”
“yet shall I lift my eyes up to the mountains, from whence shall my help come”
“yet shall I bow”
“yet shall I breathe”
“yet shall I hope”
“yet shall I say sorry until the word is a worn out Hush Puppy”

“and yet shall I love, shall I love, shall I love thru it all”

tumblr_nc9xwyfXVH1rr74i9o1_1280

The Pull of the Moon

Posted on by

2

Part One:  High-tide/Crescent Moon

the moon
the pull of the moon
is gentle in grip
but
fierce in fruition!

we all, yes…all.
we all are like
either the sea or the moon.

Do you ken the difference between
Treasure and Riches?
Money and Wealth?
Bauble and Gem?

(…either Sea or Moon…)

No?
Oh, Sea, then you,
you are storm tossed and windswept,
and without strength you quail
and bend you to the moon’s soft mastery.

Yes?
You do?
Good, Moon. good.
you will pull tides hither
and push waves thither and
write your calm and placid face
across the depths of the
changing but never changed deep.

Part 2:  Low-tide/Full Moon

your heart thrummed,
a bird trapped in a room of windows
and just a transom cracked thru which
you flew on vague and careless whims
of winds still racing with the moon.

your wings battered walls and ways out
implacable and illusory, and
the sound of many waters
rushing over gurgle stones
and running from the moon
and losing
filled the fluttery desperate room.

your wingtips grew wet and red.

i stood there, horrified and still.
my rotted wooden bucket was
half full and leaking water salt as blood,
liquid moonlight stolen from
her treasure ponds.
I was going to wash those ancient flagstones
beneath your fluttery flight.

i dropped the bucket and ran to you,
hand upraised and palms open and soft
and scared of your rustle and bustle and frantic frenzy.

i pushed like the moon,
arms waving and wordless voice wooing
“there, there”,
i reached like the sea and grasped
handfuls of beak and blood
until I had you at last
and safe from yourself and walls and ways out,
and slowly hurried to the transom high and sideways
and thrust you out to freedom in the dusk.

you flew to branch and twig and lit,
heart a fluster and hard with anger that
was pulled over fear and hurt like
some feathery mackinaw
and there you glared glitter-eyed and beady black at me,
my rotted bucket and water everywhere.

and then to air you took, to wing,
soaring on the lines unseen,
the traces invisible
that followed down those beams,
those living lines of light
hitched to us one,
hitched to us all in night.
all.

then i, sorrowful and glad in the darkening wet room
so hot and still alive with evil fates escaped,
i watched you go, trailing cries and wing-tip red,
fly and tinge that golden glow deep crimson
with the bloody brush of wingtips caught
but now made free again,
and I felt me within, I felt me outside in,
I felt that ever always draw as well…
the pull of the moon

tumblr_nb0w8uU1IU1s2z59jo1_500tumblr_mvc6isw6wG1r71b95o1_500

Soul As Big As Autumn

Posted on by

3

“People choose what they want,
but do they always want what they choose?”

This question floated to me
on the grey water-laced wind
across the busy square filled with
lunchers and loungers, and orange clad
crossing guards.

It caught at my ear and clung there, leaf
clinging for dear life to the gutter grate
to hold out against gravity and the mass of
watery opinion that we should
all rush down and away.

I saw her, hair caught,
transfixed on dancing
wild breezes that lifted,
poofed, primped and pinched
braids and bangs and barettes and her eyes
lit with that autumn afternoon fading fire
gleaming from behind the clouds
carrying water for Miss Autumn in Her sudden rush and approach.

Her friend was eating a PB&J, and nodding,
and I was knowing suddenly
this tableau played out
on that milling stage of common strangers
every day…together they would walk,
our prophetess of Autumn, our herald
lifted high to purposes Platonic and ideal…
and our girl “Monday-thru-Friday”
whose job and pleasure was to
listen to things that sounded like winds in mountain crags
or in castle eaves, and were just as understandable.

But they made her feel alive,
those windswept high and wild sounds,
made her aspire to truly enjoy that PB&J!!
And she knew that she would
ever always choose
to be with her friend,
and want it too…

…for her friend? OH!
Body, like the mountain
Heart, like the ocean
Mind, like the sky…

and Soul as big as Autumn
in all Her Glory

tumblr_n80ho0PUiP1rxekheo1_1280

 

Each Fleeting Moment

Posted on by

8

Goodness…and all this in return
for the names you cannot say,
names I cannot say
names that cannot be said
or they would no longer be names.

simply to love from the bones!
Love, radiating upward and outward
like the warm cherry glow of
crackly drowsy evening fires
in the dusky autumn nightfall
wreathed in smoke and peace.

Each fleeting moment,
fleeing away daintily and quick
darting, into that bush
and up that tree
where it sits and scolds,
taunts?  No…
sits and serenades and calls to me,
take wing
take wing,
take wing
for time is short
and the sky is fading
but still so brilliant
blue and resonant with love.

tumblr_nbv5duMJ1k1s39dc4o1_500

This Knowing In My Heart

Posted on by

6

relief…can you see this word is a bottle?
it has a message stuffed inside it
a sprawling message scrawled
by the pen of your heart’s heart
that whispers its ever poem to you.

but…

there is a remove…always a remove
somewhere there
between you
and what you have written.

you there…
your words there…

observed,
watched
spied on

they are constantly observed,
and thus they sit silent
and never sing.

for words to sing, we must
somehow be entered into them,
so that we are not watching them,
we must become the word incarnate
for they are us

our essence

in squiggles and symbols,
and when we have the faith
to possess them bodily
(and be possessed by them)
they become contagious,
we become contagious
beyond the most virulent virus!

our words replicate themselves
in the heart and soul of the hearer
and then…
mutate
into something else
if guided by love something grander
if guided by hate something murderous
if guided by indifference something monstrous.

yes
we are our words, and
whether we are entered in
or not
is purely a matter of awareness
not of essence.

so find your pulsing core
sacred white hot nature
and let your heart be displayed upon
the canvas of your body
and let your soul give utterance
of your primal deepest cry…

…and then find someone you love
and who loves you too
for you
and wrap yourself,
curl around them (and enter in)
like a precious flame protected
in a wind storm punctuated
by the rain lashing from outside
(and thus creating your
“warm within”)

I am glad of this knowing in my heart
that not only can I ask this of you
but that you would be insulted if I didn’t.

this knowing in my heart
so wonderfully banked and tended now
fuel just right, air even righter
trust                     love

this knowing in my heart
this knowing in my heart

tumblr_nc77kvP81d1qzif7oo1_1280

Message In A Bottle

Posted on by

9

I found a bottle bobbing in the tides along the shore,
slick with slime and battered by the storms that came before
it found its way to me. The cold wind moaned and nipped my face
as I waded out to snatch it up safe, from that murky place.

It was roughly crusted with a barnacled hard shell
and smelled of desperate furlongs traveled far too close to hell,
and loneliness…for hell is total isolation, stark…
just self forever chained to self in utter endless dark.

I held it up against the muddy skies just tinged with red
and golds as the earth turned and spun and day stood on her head
to mark another moment brief and echo all the days
gone tumbling by since the first sunset sky was set ablaze.

Hidden there, just barely seen thru crusted colored glass
I saw a wispy paper stained and dull like tarnished brass
neglected for some 50 years and put there then by me…
I’d written it to this me now, and cast it in the sea.

My heart, my tears, my blood combined to fall upon that page
and tell of longings, tell of sorrows, tell of that locked cage
of flesh and words and hammer-fists and heartbreak ever more
and tell my future me about the life that I’d abhorred.

My knees grew weak, then buckled.  I remembered that hard day
I’d put my heart into that bottle, hurled it far away,
thinking I could rid myself of all my hurt and ache
but knowing not that we can never outrun life’s heartbreak.

My hands shook, fingers fumbling as I freed my desperate cry.
The bottle birthed its message, gave a tiny copper sigh
and then began to sing to me in querulous hopeful song
of future hopes and me made free instead of me born wrong.

I’d written there “Dear Me, please do not tire of our fight
but be courageous in the midst of darkest blackest night.
Rise up inside yourself and let your beauty blooming free
become the joyful woman that we know ourself to be.”

The message trailed off in a scrawl, the letters marred by tears
I’d cried that day I’d cast away my me, then, all those years
I’d lived in sorrow, days passed dead within my mask, my shell…
that scroll was me, a message in a bottle prison cell.

I sat there for awhile until I’d caught back up to me
and let those words become living and vital, strong and free.
And then I blew into the bottle grace to there reside
Forever, then I corked it and returned it to the tide.

I watched the bottle drift away until I had to go
and saw the years marked out thru tides of time, and ebb and flow
How our hearts return back home to whisper secrets from the past
to help us lay our burdens down and find True Rest at last.

tumblr_naiiksxVzS1qkgblgo1_500

 

Posted on by

0

Quartet

One the 1st

there.
back there.
where was it, when was it?

somewhere,
between the ends of the rainbow,
in the middle,
where the gold pushes east
and the gold rushes west,
and leaves green, leaves mossy green
and bowed by light.

my eyes dazzled…there.
gleamed.
your eyes,
soft and intent, hawklike and cowlike
all at once as you took me
in glance and
then in glitter-glance
and then (shiver) in hungry glance and I,
I was still and not moving…
between the legs of the rainbow…

but between my own, I was alive (again),
I was the heart of a star,
my light wet and my gravity heat
pulling you there by your eyes,
to me, and then

there.  oh
there.  oh
there.  oh

After…when you…yes…
your eyes and their leggy light
gone there and then gone out,
I lay wakeful, still in the moonlight streaming
thru gossamer curtains, swaying slowly
‘neath the wind’s caresses.
And my smile,
my endorsement of you
played round the corners of my mouth
and moved in time to sounds,
the symphony of many waters
rustling in me now,
rapid, and rushing runny…
there

and I held my life-your life,
I held our life
there, curled round it
with my galaxy curves
and molten churning spark.
I thrummed, hummed,
taut and unstrung all at once,
and waiting for that java-jolt,
that move, that kickback…
there.

until there was
no there.

and we…here?
Eyes dulled
in pain’s muddy waters dirty,
hearts torn. Just torn.
Nothing fancy,
just brutal grip,
grab, tear, shred, toss
and then I was empty

there

I journey steady now,
come to (that)
grips, come to terms
with that day but
never
come to heal or honor it because,
my heart wanders
there,
it sneaks off from the chain gang
and floats, up,
circling the rainbow’s middle spaces…
never in Oz, never in Kansas,
but always
there, looking
looking there,
for us, come and torn away…
and finding footprints, hearing echoes, touching ashes
of what never happened but should have,
there.

when I walk I get tired.
when I get tired, I sit down,
here, or on the wet grass,
and I remind myself that
there’s a cure for all and
everything, somewhere
there and I content myself
with knowing that,
I trick myself with knowing that,
I choose to know our us-life…
waits…for us

there.

tumblr_n9urfjJqW41s7xbtfo1_500

 

Two the 2nd

stare.
that’s all I could do, waking up
in warm and darkness close and clothed
in the warm velvet of you.

I heard steady “Luv u. Luv u. Luv u,” together
with some sound like wind out in out in
around me, thru me…it felt good to be, swaddled
and surrounded with you

(by you)
(I stare),

I strained, tippy-soul up to surround you back,
around your voice, around your breath, to add to you my “luv u. luv u. luv u.”
back, in octaves high and beyond, but in dark.
I saw blind, inside wonders but I still sang, I still stare.

you held me careful as you sang and told me things without words
(in your colors and shades), remembering yourself (then)…and him…
(and me there, almost, but still here too), you stared at you,
youth and inexperience veiled in optimism and immortality…

you saw, that then time…(the rain, pouring steady
crackling like forest fires, popping like firecrackers,
water splashing and sweat spouting in the dusky light flicker-dash-streaks,)
you told me that you clicked your tongue in time and tempo

your slick and graceful grappling torsos, tissues, tangos,
and on your lips the glorious taste of salty skin like mangos…
and you moved…in time…with him…and you…and him…and you…
stare, dance, that then time…different from this one…now.

you hummed, he thrummed, near bursting in the joyous moment
and incense of recovery from the tragic, fluky lash of death’s
hungry whip o’ nine tongues, til rejoicing, rising, falling safe and one
then me, brewing and becoming, moving future of hope fulfilled.

I was me there, with you inside your song and center
while you gathered courage still to stare unblinking into dark unknowing gaping,
you sang of me…

then silence…

and I was spun afraid and cold and oh the wrenching rain
in the dark dawn hours
of that green field clotted
in stone and searing sorrow.

you keening, fallen on your knees and wordless,
empty agonizing grappling with that monster blind and mute,
that just rolled over, ripping you in two,
ripping every goodness from the heart of greatness,
leaving all creation crying in the center of every bitter moment.

I float over you since then, and now, here in front of you,
your face tattooed forever with the tales of me writ large and hidden there,
and I try to wipe those silent tears and dry them with my hair
and then I stand in that spot, there, the one you focus on to live

the one you wish hard on, will hard in, try hard to go on within…
well I wish too, will and try hard, to get in, become, break out and
to burst in, be born into your world from mine. but there is always that…

shadow and space…

between me here and you there in time.

and so I wait and follow you, learn you and I shout to you
it’s not your fault, I don’t know what or why but it was not!!
your fault…or mine, and like you, I am waiting…mama.
Love you cross the years, as you are loving me, we wait…

we
stare.

tumblr_n3ryzxzoo21rcf4reo1_500

 

 

Three the 3rd

Sissy!!  Dani!!
Where are you?

You walk
(there)
in time
(here)
at pace, keeping place, for them
step steady…
step steady…
step steady…
for them
silent beat…
silent beat…
silent beat…

but oh god bereft of them
(oh! oh! OH!!!)

you walked alone inside (me too)
and haunted, by ghosts of your regrets (me too).
You, bereft of a full womb, and I,
a womb bereft of a full me!

Dani!!
My heart keens, cries, with you
and for you, thru you

But now…
(why we met now, and not before…)
where am i to go?
Where is there now for me that you are not as well,
sister-friend, walker on the paths of the dead
and thru?

questions turn and spin in wonder,
longing to have been
there, then,
and afterwards to be
here, now…
pouring river-deep-consoling,
over pain and empty sorrow
and then break a hundred times
and heal a thousand more!

I could shatter endlessly
(oh please, I can, oh please let me)
shower pieces teary wet
this red heart over you, and then
extinguish grief-fires and wild questions
drowning all conflagrations of
there
and drain that bitter cup of black despair…

Let me take some…sister-grief?
I practiced 50 years for meeting
here and feeling there, my sister,
me a sea-sponge wrung out dry
of love so I can sop up sorrow
mop up gall into this hyssop, I–
made for so many things, I–
made for just this one thing…
by your side, in your shoe,
I will walk with you and dance then walk
with you and sing then walk some more
and cry then walk with you
and then just sit and sigh.

Let me bleed over your feet,
over your way, don’t worry,
ddh, there’s plenty blood enough
for grief and for me both!
When you kneel at graves, me too
When you walk, tears dry and stale
me too with tissues in my glove.
When you sit, remembering? I’ll serve you “Cookies Rissa Roo”
and love-tea…and when you are smiling
I’ll rejoice and shout nonsense,
the world’s best Fool of all.

that’s all I got, sissy…
and Dani…that’s all you need and that’s the truth…
wait…
wait…
that and Mama always…

love, forever,
from your sister
friend devoted me

Charissa Grace

tumblr_nb9m9qORRo1rcicodo1_500

 

Four the Fourth

My daughter Dani bends low.
Her hair drags feeble thru the scraggly mud.
I watch her there, hands on her knees
and stomach clenchy sick.
My heart breaks resolute and sure
on schedule as I feel her…
sad…grieving…torn…
and empty-numb.

I approach her and she knows,
somehow…she starts and stands up quick,
a gold-brown willow springing up
resilient and released from ill winds blowing…
Her fine hair frayed and flying, she looks
right at Me!  Straight into my eyes, but she saw
only the white leaping fox, her tail flickering quick and neat,
the silver hare hopping and skittering
into her warm burrow waiting
and the glinty moon reflecting
frosty on the secret owl-wing gliding,
silent in the still soft ebon night.

I step to her, she feels Me as the Wind in her face,
smells, scents, wafting cleansing arctic hymns
and fragrances following spicy with that joyous island song.
I touch her precious tear torn cheek,
and her eyes close and she smiles low
imagining that holy flakes of ice falling from heaven
bless and beautify her solitary suffering and sorrow.
Then she stills, she lets go and My Love washes her over.

Glancing right I see her sister
(My daughter Charissa Grace)
kneeling in the silent softness,
tears like diamonds in the incandescent moonlight and the snow.
Her crimson garments caked with ice at knees,
but she does not take notice of these, for her heart is fixed on Me,
and her eyes fixed upon her sister.

I nod, Charissa jumps up, ever eager serving vessel
cracked and faithful broken…quick she runs unto her sister
and she wraps her arms around those shattered shoulders
And I watch how Dani flicks her eyes wide open,
pools of night and galaxies of stars therein those touching depths.
Charissa gently touches her dear sister’s cheek and nods,
she deftly touches hand to belly, heart to heart,
and Dani breathes and sighs released and reaches
out to touch Charissa’s back with fluttery grateful hands.

I smile, happy and rise up wings spread,
healing flowing forth.
I am well pleased because My daughters,
sisters of My Heart and in the Sacred Blood,
My Brood is well.

tumblr_n8224wKXPs1rpe0jco1_500
Loving you with my life, for the rest of our days.​
Pledged to you as sister, pinkie-swear,
Love and all my gooey heart…

Charissa Grace

Lassos and Lanky Lines

Posted on by

1

For too long
lassos and lanky lines
have spun round my neck
and held me to this dirt in time.
I listened, a few words here like grime,
a big fat echo there like slime,
up in the sandstone and
limp mountains like bars
around my world.

I believed them,
I let them choke me
tame and chain me
to plantations of shame
and fields of blame

Well, I am rearing now…
I smell water in the air!
My Mama tells me I am
Her work and She is
Filthy with loving me!
____5894820_orig

Streaked and smeared
with my red clay,
with my white heart,
Her hair standing
glowing, flying as
She works the treadle
and spins me loose
and into my shape yet born
but always known.

The dry skies crackle, and victory rumbles
in my throat like thunder,
in my heart like lightening
and the cowpoke slides sideways
and decides it’s time to go have lunch
and forget to ever come back here

and I will run on winds
my passion-fires will ever burn
in freedom so fine, so full.

tumblr_nbded7N4cy1qgv0p0o1_1280

Your Light Feet

Posted on by

11

Did I hear you there, your footsteps near
approaching on the shore?

I’ve held your heart while we, apart
await that open door.

I never knew your spirit true
was keeping me in tact

Until that day, and you away
did go with no glance back.

Was distance great and casual fate
a mountain far too high?

No matter, dear, my spirits cheer
for your light feet step nigh.

1410555130480525_tall

Falling Like Snow, Falling Forever

Posted on by

4

I remember your fall…silent, turning
skin burning and flakes
falling like snow.

I remember the shaking…plumey ash
(demon of dachau come home here)
and more, falling forever.

the ones who ran forward, ran up churning
to with bodies breach tragic tear
and then hurtle down, falling like snow

and I have watched memories fade
media circus turning and truth burning
and falling forever.

but my tears will come
every year on that minute
falling like snow, falling forever

jumpercomp2

Across the Aching Blue Sky

Posted on by

6

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh…I’m still over there…
where everyone stands, and sips
hot tea and nods so sagely…
I’m in the roundabouts,
just staying in my lane

and signalling (my intentions clear
finally even to the least
of these), signalling easy…
now that I float across
the sky…and drifting, wispy
and fading into sameness
into just like everyone else
everything everywhere else…
fading…just like that.

what was it, that made me…
made me me? Different? ME?

What?  My song?  My sing?
My voluminous preludes?
My silly rhymes, word crimes?
My heart that cries at bird wing flashing
or a dove cooing or a dark look
looming long and loutish?

Alas…the sky awaits,
the sky opens, beckons,
but can’t contain and hold, no.
It’s just Stygian canvas for
a murky ash calligraphy
of unique but too too me.

And now I’m seeing traces,
in smoke and empty vapors
of  ‘trodes and tendrils, shocks that curb,
that cut back hard, that make all things
not new…but same…
and safe…for others but
not for me.

the glitter of dreams,
the flakes of hope,
and the ashes of a heart…
a heart…what…
dripping?

Fire does belly up,
hungry, focused on eating,
fire does purge, does pardon,
and place me there unseen
in the park, soft on the swings,
the teeter totter tamble,
in the quail and quay and quiet
at last…no scramble, still…
and still.

Spread them, fling them, across the sky…
across the aching blue sky.

tumblr_mbzvloCwgD1reohnuo1_1280

On This Shore I Break, We Break

Posted on by

3

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

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

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

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

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

by and by…

1409093025210548

A Rosetta Stone

Posted on by

5

Constance, I am going to do something, reluctantly…I am going to pull back the curtain and explain the deeper meanings and levels of one of my poems.

See. I have this friend and she loves my poetry, but I had her read “Her Door, Her Red Door” and she enjoyed the process, but had no idea what it was saying.  Well, that presents a dilemma…on the one hand, it is my belief that poetry works in our hearts first, it haunts our guts, right?  And then slowly, it bubbles up into our minds, and we make connections with the world via the symbols and metaphors that have fallen like seeds into the dirt, or sand into oysters to become pearls.

But on the other hand, if it is too esoteric and not accessible to the reader, then the poem ultimately is a failure.  (I am not counting the cases where a reader is lazy and wants it all on a platter, instead of being let out into the garden, and then given access to the kitchen to gather and create their own understanding).

So for one of the very rare times, I am going to let you inside the form and foundation of the poem…it is gonna be sketchy in places, for I just cannot bear to strip her entirely of her mystery…but if it made you feel something, if it made you have an itch, or feel like you were getting one scratched, then you might want to read more of my things, and most of it is far more accessible, with much lower aspirations than this one.

Her Door, Her Red Door (Analysis)

Okay:

So my therapist is named _______.  I wrote a poem for her way early on in our sessions, a wonderful lil ditty, small, cute, a lil skert and testing waters…she loved it as a mom loves a finger-painting of course…lol.

But last session, we were both morose, and we both had on our hearts the sad and beautiful exciting discovery that I was ready to “graduate”, and our times together would come to an end, and we would transition to friendship.

As I said, she was so struck by the changes in me, how I was become myself, and not stuck in between or ashamed of where I began, but was woman.  I have very strong symbolic resonances with woman as living creature…for instance in the biblical creation myth, woman is the only being created of living flesh…all else is created from dirt.  That, and many similar things have absolutely galvanized me with the truth that woman is the crown glory of all creation and that the patriarchy is so fearful and so jealous it tries to “kill her” (a topic for another day).

We discussed many things in my becoming, which led to discussion about why and what it was that brought me the final release in being able to become becoming…in the talking, ______ shared of her own journey thru womanhood, of being pre-menopausal and how hormonal imbalances are affecting her, how hormones have been so liberating to me as well.

So we come to the title “Her Door, Her Red Door“.  First, I am talking about _______, and about how she has brought me to the doorway of being, becoming who I am.  This door as I saw it was red…but at a deeper level, it is her heart.  ______is all heart, and it is her door, by which she “enters” me, and I “enter” her as well…follow?

But then, and this emerged from the subconscious, I realized that “her” is me, too…my heart, and even more, my own red door “down there”…or for me “in there” (Isaiah 54 speaks to this btw!)…the one we discussed, and she shared so openly with me, woman to woman as mother to daughter, as teacher to student, as woman to prepubescent adolescent girl…

…and as you must certainly know, women have doors, are doors…men simply are not.

Next:  in the poem she invites me, commands me, bids me follow her, and she has keys (authority, and conferred authority), the means by which doors are opened, for it is not enough to merely have a door, it must be accessible, traversable…

A woman’s booty is completely unique to women, that shape, that curve, perfect and echoing the curves of galaxies, built on Fibonacci sequences mathematically and the perfect mean geometrically.  And she sails…there are only 3 capital letters in the whole poem…about the ship sailing…so picture a woman walking, confident and sure, as a clipper ship sails.

I also reference brick house and “back” and when I do that I am intentionally deriding the Commodores’ song “Brick House”…which reduces and sexualizes a woman and her miracle ship…and “Baby Got Back” which is even more blatantly egregious…truth be told?  If men knew the half, nay a tenth of a woman’s desire and passion?  They would run terrified and screaming in the night!!

And then the repetitive there…here…there…here, and leading into the honky…tonky…(which each start with t and h like here and there)…and that is the connector to the first comment about me directly, as ______has mentored me, drawn me…and so Hank Williams, a singer (building on the Brick house and Baby Got Back reference) moans, and becomes alcoholic, and “sees that end”…meaning Woman’s miracle ship intimidating, and also directly the male role I was imprisoned in is dying fast and is gone…Hank Williams symbolizes my birth name, and socialized role…and his music was wild and despairing as my life was then (not lifestyle wild, but emotionally wild and despairing, and self-destruction was always a siren song.)

Next stanza, it speaks of the new place _____and I were at that day, and had not been there before…she had been far more good and kind mother whom I wanted to be like…and we had at no time discussed sexuality or the deeper spiritual power it channels…it was about recovery and reintegration then…I picked the image of the Columbia river, because women are rivers, have rivers, channel rivers, and oh the power…and all others seek to harness that and benefit, right?  Men, turbines in, and women turn them…

The lines about her walk (and remember I am speaking of me as “her” in a very distant sense as well)…and her swishing, ricocheting from gutter to gutter…what a hip swing, across the entire path of being, but also to tie in a pun about balls…”no gutter balls” Picking up a 7-10 split…that is nearly impossible…and becoming myself was to overcome that split in me, between who I am and what I am…see?  And no gutter balls…eff yeah!!

Those keys…no sound, bunched…the image of power, seeing keys outlined in tight jeans, and the promise of power and entry granted, authority…also keys are in pianos, so you see the musical theme sowed back around again.

Teena Marie is the next musician, and she is as I recall of Portuguese, Italian, Irish, and Native American heritage…she was a soul singer, and omg was she ever amazing…as good or better than Diana Ross or Beyoncé, and I love them both…well she was also singing a lot about power in sexuality, and I loved her so when I was in my 20s, for reasons I could never articulate then…and I…”half” one thing and half another, and in some ways neither…and she grabbed her keys, her authority, her permission from street corner dudes…(think singers around the barrel fire singing a Capella…)

I also bring her in because Hank is passing, going, going…and Teena, who is dead, is also Marie, Mary, made pregnant by divine fiat…and so me made woman by miracle and Heather, and medicine which is the same as magic and miracle in so many ways…

…and then we come to the door…go read that part again…and you can see a living heart, or a vulva and vagina, and mystery temple of every single human being ever, even the Christ…

her door before us fat, streaks-run-swirls-whorls, depth-breadth flowing
crimson coral flaming, cardinal glowing carmine cerise chestnut cracking
garnet sanguine scarlet and rosy…that door was thick and giving…it blowzed there
full, sprawled (like titian’s venus) and throbbing with certain promise.

…and all the words are all shades and various hues of red…and how is a woman’s heart all that different from her glory?  Her temple?  Is not every child first conceived there, in her heart, who that child is and shall be?

And then _____gives me a philter, a potion, from her river, from her flow, from her heart, from her glory…

(of course not literally, as you read never allow those elements to do anything but drive the heat and passion of the poem…they are a moan of desire and lusty want…but only that.  I assure you of that, but must mention it because I was so honest as to feel it must be there, for it always is there in every woman, if she is blessed enough to know herself, or to be shown like I have been, or strong enough to own herself from the start.)

And at that point we go to Aretha Franklin…natural woman (think of the lyrics, crooned as I drank the philter)…and Respect…

And then the touch of ______’s hand glowing gold (which in alchemic terms was a type and shadow of divine character in medieval times)…and “finger fragrant and savory” is definitely just exactly what it sounds like…but it is a vibrant and intensely earthy form of communion, and also a conferring, an anointing given to me…and I was thinking of ET, and how he had no home, and healed with that glowing finger…but Heather/Woman/Me so much more present and dangerous and contagious…

Me never “phoning home again” (never going back to that cursed male role forced upon me)…and then I swallow the key…(HRT…communion…permission, authority, the key becomes me and I the key…)

And then the door (whom I have been always) is opening and my male biology (the hinges, Hank moaning and dying, my body literally changing, swings open and there I am…being prayed over by the queen (Aretha) and I getting my own locks like _______’s…and Beyoncé with her combination of sexuality and independence, and she like Joan of Arc, divinely appointed to deliver a people (woman)…and then the key moved in me…my own “child conceived”…and then finally my “wad” is no longer this god awful bulge between my legs always haunting me, but instead a wad of keys and my own clipper ship.

OK…so that is the analysis…all of this is in me as I write, but I am not aware of it consciously until after I am done…I just write, and feel my way to it.  After, I see it, it starts to emerge, starts to be birthed, and then it is easy to go back and help it.

Nearly every one of my poems operates in similar ways and layers…I invite you to go back and read…think of strange ones like “Spitting Bones” or “A-Maze-In-Me”

I wonder if this counts as a “Found Poem”?  Or “Just a Fact”?  Giggle…yep, I am still befuddled by that ignorant and intentionally short-cut thinking…oh, I have a poem about that sort of thing:  “Bury My Head in the Sky“!!

Constance, if you are inspired to re-read some more inaccessible work, and this helps unlock it, please…let me know?

Thanks forever, and gratitude for reading!!

Charissa

tumblr_ldnnvxoU5t1qad8alo1_1280

Scorpion Wisdom

Posted on by

5

I have tired of deserts,
tired of dry browns
throw-downs and death tangos
of thirst and thorn.
I have watched walkers and
binary Bedouins
beguile one another,
play acting
tea-time niceties,
witnessed them
both turn to look at me,
saucer eyes implacable
and blank

(like deserts)

and then dismiss me
with eyebrow arched or
wrist waved and curled
casual.

Well, screw that.

I followed my teachers,
stepped foot to feet
and print to post to paw,
they taught me
to dwell in sands
silent and still, and thaw
in scorpion wisdoms and knowings
of dry times and seasons.
I gleaned, and
they gave to me
my red and living covering!
They snatched off black cauls and
stingers waiving
all safety warnings
they down and down again
destroyed dark days
and dismal hours.

I am headed
to the edges,
where sea and
sky meet sand, and sing
of Father and Mama and Shepherd
who meld, One,
and become Three
(and They so fond of me)
there, on the horizon’s rim and
at the edges
of dry and wet
and wind.

Sometimes I cover miles
sometimes miles cover me

in the meantime,
I listen to
their skritchy whispers,
(Their whispers too)
and climb high
to what breeze survives,
and face first
I wait content and thrive
filled with love and fire, and
scorpion wisdom

tumblr_n8788sIr651s4rjsro1_1280

For GK (Gracious and Kind) a.k.a. georgiakevin

Posted on by

0

Hi Constance…Ima put a few links here…to some earlier poems buried in the reams of this blog, lol!

(Hey, it’s fascinating to me to read thru the early days, and where I was then, so shattered and so cared for by Them!)

This is for georgiakevin, who said he had not had the chance to read may things yet.  Hey GK…please find your way how you most enjoy…here are some links to some of my poem kids that I love and adore.  Love, Charissa

A Yarn

The Great and Long Reduction

Haunter of Worlds

Last Nite

Chrystal Clarity

The Simplicity

All Day Long

Grace Ain’t Easy

Suffragette of Sight

High Spring Pastiche

If I Could Go Back

Summer Snapshots in Haiku

Here ‘Neath Marvel Skies

This one is my bff’s fave:  Come Home To Yourself

OK GK…that will be enough ta get you going…then just browse around.  I think poetry alone there are like 180 pgs of poems..

Right now, though, my 3 favorites are my two newest babies…and they are right up front still:

Her Door, Her Red Door (for my counselour) and The Chisel’s Hungry Bite…and Phoenix Rising

Thanks again for your courteous gallant wise edifying words!

Charissa

familiar winds

The Chisel’s Hungry Bite

Posted on by

6

laying on the workbench, half carved.
clamps grip my “here and there”
there…here…anywhere I move or
slide away to from
under the chisel’s hungry bite.

wood shavings lay strewn about,
results of carvings complete,
curling locks shorn
from a recruit
on the first day of basic…or
from the denizens of Dachau
on the first day of chaos.

the view from here is clear by half…

…half:
done
undone
too smart by
falling short of the other
done with this

but incomplete, in the hole
of halfway.

a rocking horse, there, high up
on the shelf, intricate carved
curves sleek and defined,
It is there.
Safe and knowing its place done.

it is not here, clamped and halfway.

a train taught its shape
with that chisel sharp and knowing,
with that auger licking hungry
and this drill sublime and hole-y…
trained to whistle and to
click-clackity click-clack
down tracks laid by hands
and connected to ground
and come round again
displaying always it was here
but it is now there.

jaunty paint glistens red,
and yellow, and blue with glad
waiting for strings,
and plucking fingers
that move carved arms,
kick knife-hewn legs
and blink eyes saw-made
and staring…
staring at here unseeing,
staring from there.

and parts jumbled
pieces present and
full of purpose yet unfolded
sit still, calm and unclamped

I wait too, in pieces along with parts:

midst dry cedar shaving clouds scented
midst ordered clutter and stilled clamber
midst bunched silver sharp-toothed oily tools
sitting sleek, and sleeping with one yellow eye
open.

the chisel croons its tangy tangled song
in my ear which is indeed there
and waits to taste me…here.
it promises to take me
it promises to pierce me, rend me,
spread here splayed and waiting
to be taken…there.

i dread the coming dawn
and the chisel’s hungry bite
i yearn for it to touch me
and shiver with delight

because it takes me…there.

yes, at dawn,
the chisel’s hungry bite, oh…
the chisel’s hungry bite25 Beautiful Doors Around The World 009

 

Phoenix Rising (For she who knows this is for her)

Posted on by

3

She woke, arms reaching to the singing moon
that glimmered in soft velvet star-streaked air.
Her heart lept joyous, woken from death’s swoon
Her face wreathed by her effervescent hair.

She stirred, she rose by trees there, sentinels
of sacred sleep, of metamorphosis
who reached to resurrect her fulsome soul
and clothe her in green boughs and woody kiss

and there she danced, unclothed, absolved, untamed
and kissed the moon with hungry clear desire,
while ardent winds caressed her, unashamed,
and she took wing on tongues of Blazing Fire

Arise my love, leave sorrow’s crucifix
and fly to me, your Resplendent Phoenix

highres_309235992

 

Anxiety’s Thrall

Posted on by

2

your eyes yellow and sucking light
from my soul white and drawn
your silent rumble purring tight
has sundered me from dawn

your weight, familiar from long visits
year in, day out, right there
to rip me with dread claws exquisite
and make my mind your lair

your cold breath, fetid, drenched with dark
consumes me in its cloud
and snuffs me, blows out every spark
of hope within its shroud

your claws flex and my heart bleeds
as you inhale my fear
I tremble when you yawn in greed
and dawn is nowhere near

I wait for dawn, it never comes
and I am just your toy
I cannot move, beneath your thumbs
while you live off my joy.

usually my faith is strong
and I can lift my head
but these times drown Her comfort song
I sit amongst the dead

but they are free from horror eyes,
from dreaded weight and breath,
from claws like lightening in night skies
they dance the waltz of death.

Wait for the Lord, Oh my soul
Stand firm, having done all
I wait in terror in dark like coal
just anxiety’s thrall
just anxiety’s thrall
just anxiety’s thrall
tumblr_naff4vSlcJ1qzkc2uo1_500

I wanted to hear from you

Posted on by

2

(I go to see HR today…I am frightened stiff from the unknown.  And it is 3 AM, the worst time of all times in every day of times.  I wrote this in the attempt to loosen the grip of anxiety that tears inside…alas, it knows the teeth tracks of years and finds them effortlessly.  To be honest, I think this poem sucks…it is too much a mirror of me, bound and terrified in this moment.  But to be more honest, I think the act of sharing this poor bound baby poem is a stance of courage in the face of fear and my challenge hurled back, that I will never ever drink that hemlock escape.)

 

When I was sparkly fire and glow, and scintillating with insight
I heard from you.
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was prescient and perfect, precise and plenary
I heard from you.
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was funny and tickling and a madly capering jester
I heard from you.
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was torn and teary inside, and still like lakes at midnite
I didn’t hear from you,
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was thrumming stiff and stark, helpless in fear’s talons
I didn’t hear from you,
I wanted to hear from you.

When I was mute from sorrow and deaf from grief
I didn’t hear from you,
I wanted to hear from you.

I face unknown guillotines,
strange purveyor of power
whose lifted finger could be life
or the executioner’s twitch.
Does it mean life, or
death to my dreams and me?
Your words uncork my heart
unlocks my jaw
undeafs my ear
pour wine and set table
they calm, gentle me

I wanted to hear from you
I wanted to hear from you

tumblr_n3mzl3jHzU1txnrn6o3_1280

Reflections

Posted on by

6

The scent of our home,
funky quaint and riddled
with books and bikes,
and the long laid scent of family.
The scent of the kitchen,
yesterday’s dinner
and the overlay of croissants
like fierce french washer women
scrubbing away all other scents.

…the scent of our clothes,
and our laundry soap…
the scent of the air cooler,
that of the soft night air
waltzing in,
slow and sleepy
from her night out
amongst the stars,
and carried in drowsy
on cricket wings…

…the scent of popcorn
shared on the couch,
of our wine wafting
from bottles possessed
by only the last 12 drops,
our lil garden outside,
and the auto sprinkler
which has come on to water
in the dark and the cool…

the scent of your currents,
your deep distant observing soul
that hangs back and watches,
even in the midst…

i do go on…

from here…from now…
in the sweltering heat,
where you and I lay,
you sleeping,
me watching you sleeping,
soft face limpid and languid…here…
listening to tides of eternity
race round and round
inside our veins, our universe…

i do go on…

…watching our breath mingle unseen
as you sleep, and I
my many rounds to keep,
awake as usual.

in your world,
nothing is what it appears to be.

(i mean that “mirror sentence!”
nothing is what it appears to be and
nothing is what it appears to be and
nothing is what it appears to be and…)

well, as I think about it,
it seems logical
you were drawn here…
maybe I was
the one thing
you were supposed to get,
maybe I am
the one thing
you cannot forget…
or get shut of!

regardless…

you now have me,
writing here
my musings and childlike tears,
my laughs and my cold dark fears,
my forever fat and full
wet joys of today

(as long as it is still called today!)

Alas it will cost you,

(I will cost you)

but at least it will
only cost you
what is yours
to easily pay:
everything.

I am here, but you must
look in unusual places.
not in scents (innocence)
from bottles
and spray jars
and spritzers
and cream pots
or flesh pots.

I may be hiding,
laughing in the most
unexpected spaces.

It is time
to set the last croissants…
I am smiling,
and feeling that
wonderful joy that has
a tinge of sadness to it
because it knows
though joy lives forever,
its moments come and go

like the meals of our lives…
the scents of our home…
reflections of what was
and what is yet to be

tumblr_mql7fnG14x1szm930o1_500

 

 

 

Matters of Heart and Bloody Core (for Kat, whom I love)

Posted on by

2

She rides today, shotgun
in matters of heart and bloody core,
matters of blood, matters of bone,
her flesh become word and wing
and flight to wider blue skies
and pastures…
…rides shotgun atop
treasure boxes soon emptied
but not until
the very last second…God forbid…
please.

She sits, still shielding
but fingers open
and heart unclenched
in the green ritual of becoming
yet again repeated,
yet again echoing
those who flew before by thousands,
swarms searching for Capistrano
and finding college and career and clouds
gathered…and clouds parted.

She rides shotgun,
she, shotgun,
rides with diamond frozen tears
pinned back callous
behind both barrels
cocked and loaded,
her tender torn eyelids
primed with tearshot

(frozen tears rip as they sit
gathered, bunched, clenched)

Waves, washing by, wistful,
irritated, emotions
mendacious and mirror walking
around that carriage of connection
to futures unseen
swirl and caress her face
with terrible talking fingers.

Her heart is still,
on hold,

(she holds him in her heart)

what was once,
and is, and knows
what will be comes…

(Que Sera, Sera!)

…but not yet.

Because across miles, time,
her blood calls to bone,
her soul and spirit moan
remembering, loving, memorialized
and set in stone
forever.

Miles will pass.  Time
will roll by, and that
return of body and bone
will glad at last be known…
and her laugh, her squint,
(shotgun)
her head toss
and still wonder
will echo to her heart
from babies to be born,
but still bone of her bone…

and heart will thaw and
throat unclench
at last and swallow
that diamond lump stark and
glistening with inevitability.

But now…
Across miles, time
she rides…
shotgun

tumblr_nagt9g0eCk1qb5t88o1_500