Advent Poem: The Season of Reunion

Posted on December 11, 2014 by charissagrace

To a meeting long destined,
long remembered and yet
ironically never lived…

well, that is not quite true,
my Heart, T’was lived
repeatedly apart…
you in your chamber,
in the air…and me?
Marooned and shipwrecked
here!

Nothing to give except this scrap
of paper brittle…it’s a map
to an island lost at sea
X marks the spot to look
for me!

Yes? You know where to dig, right?

in the hubbub, hullabaloo,
Reunion waits for me and you…
That towering act of redemption
Resounds throughout all of creation.

so with that in mind…

a perfect advent season
would involve this place
that has this room,
and other corners
full of cushions
and spice piney boughs
(and incense heart bows),
and it would be

a small place so large

where we
would sit,
and sip

(coffee, tea,
you and me, and
writing…writing…

of what could be,
should be
will be

and writing…),

silence would be
such sweet symphony
as voices ancestral
and ancient and future
speak in silken tones sonorous
and thunderous tenors trumpeting,
the old grandmother clock
slowly keeping time

(I am so grateful
for grandmother
who keeps time,
she saves it up

for us, dear)…

and then this room unfolds in space
to wonders in this magic place
of fireplaces stoked with wood
and laughter warm and food so good
and families mingled full and wild
and always watching is the Child
who designated you and me
and whom we love, and that big tree
there, frosted perfect with excess
surrounded with the gifts to bless
each other and to bless Them too

Reunion there…of me and you.

This is my heart’s Christmas wish
Reunion is it’s serving dish.

Love you…me

Advent Poem: The Season of Enough

Posted on December 10, 2014 by charissagrace

It’s the season to journey
to places we know so well
but haven’t been to…

…and now it is time
in this never enough world
to declare the season has come:
it’s the season of enough!

ENOUGH!

Enough of the certified baby so boring,
our “gentle Lord Jesus so meek mild and timid”,
enough of that muffled mage soft-spoken and sage
who wouldn’t say shit even if He’d a mouthful!

Enough of the small household pet of the pious and pompous,
confined to the shelf there beside the wood stove, sat right next to the Hummels
and rolling His eyes to the heavens above, just hanging from
that jeweled crucifix so goddam decorative!

A God
shouldered It’s Way
into the world that day!

A God,
rough and roaring
and wrapped in the skin
of a baby asleep, hidden
here in our world,
stepping down out of Heaven
and into a stable
so filthy and smelly
and lowing with cattle
and held in the arms
of an unmarried mother
who everyone thought
was a loose filthy whore!

This God is glowing and rippling with Power,
pregnant with Presence and poised there with Promise,
This is the Lion come down with sheathed claws
and become the White Lamb with the Lion’s Red Heart
fairly roaring with passion to blow away lies
and to shatter injustice, whip greedy backsides
and to plunder oppressors so Liberty Lives!

Open your ears to the central lone question
of Advent…concealed in this Lion Heart wrapped in a baby…
do we need deliverance? do we even want it?
do we even know what deliverance is?
do we have a lingering longing for something,
the chance to start fresh, to be granted “do overs”
A Miracle Mulligan of Christmas Mercy
wrapped in the Mystery of the Great Lion
who’s wrapped in those swaddling clothes in that manger
and lying so meek and so quiet, so LOUD
in the silence surrounding this moment of presence
when everything holds its breath
watching…watching…
waiting…waiting…

for the kind of thoughts that expose deception,
and pierce every darkness, shatter hearts of iron
and rewrite the stories of sorrow and loss
into tales of glad tidings and mercy majestic
and Mystery stripped down
and become enough.

Enough. Yes.

This is the season of Enough.

That Gift Gone Awry

Posted on December 6, 2014 by charissagrace

She packed it, after all…after
we had eaten the pie,
fresh from the oven and then
cutting that gift gone awry.

she put it in its covering and heart
full of glad good cheer
so it was hurtful to her too
when touched with doubt and fear.

It helped a bit to know
that I was not the only one
and makes it easier to let go,
let yesterday be done.

Copying A Post Here of A VERY Strong Poem

Posted on December 6, 2014 by charissagrace

My friend Frederic over at Poems & poèmes has written an incredible poem that I simply had to share here with you! For some reason the reblog option is not available, so I am linking to it and also copying it for you below. Please visit over at Frederic’s blog, and keep him in your heart…I know that I have him in my heart everyday, especially when he is “walking the black dog”.

Frederic…hang in there. Regardless of the pain, our enduring and rising up each day is our best resistance against it and those who cause it.

Blessings and Grace,
Charissa

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

Agonies

Posted on December 6, 2014 by F.G.M.

Don’t ask
the doe
wolves
bit and killed
to show

compassion

love them all
it’s the same old tune every time
but I fear
they were fully aware
of what they did

and I’m sorry to confess

I do not
love
them
at
all

let me say a little black prayer

o fair Fatality
may
wolves
suffer
agonies!

Gustave Courbet, the Dead Doe – Image source

Leaning Hard Against That Night

Posted on December 6, 2014 by charissagrace

icicles hung glittering clear,
they shot diamonds, mercury bright
and gleams refracting morning light
they hid the horrid crime that happened
in the cold and dark black night… icicle

how can people do it, say it?
well, last night the deed was done
beneath clouds scuttering wet and rainy
(like my covers wet with tears,)

it will be done again you know,
but only lonely dead will weep
and they are dead…so that leaves just
the children crying in the cold
and hungry violence of the night.

that hand groped blind and deaf, and reached
for icicles hung in the dark,
all light drained dry and swallowed down
fear’s greedy gullet, sucked into
the belly of the raving beast.

that tongue, fearsome and cleaved in twain
and mute, waggling helplessly
between those fearful gnashing teeth
it fluttered, spit, stuttered and hit
with lies, with bitter accusations
comforting and crooning.

the disembodied hand snapped off
that cold icicle, that one that
the red light of Mars’ distant eye
unblinking, licked, caressed and sharpened,

then the hand floated across
the room so dark and thick with terror,
while some choked disembodied voice
muttered Mene, Mene, Teqel, Upharsin
and I knew I was a wall
and it the hungry writer, and
then it fell in fierce red streaks,
such icy strokes of death tattooing bloody_icicle_by_achmedxd-d37863p

“unclean!” “beware!” “mind-whore!”

my blood was its gory ink
and my heart was its inkwell, screaming
as it wrote again, again,
it wrote again, til I drained dry,
lay still, eyes glassed and blindly staring
at the black sky spinning, fading
from my view while that night faded
into grey dawn streaked with crimson
bursting full into today.

I woke up and found my face
was wet, and thank god it was just
my tears and not my blood, but wait…
my eyes were caked, dry, rimed with salt
and sleep…the clammy wet was really
that icicle and the secret
kill it keeps inside its melty
hungry heart so ravenous
and never satisfied or sated,
just drunk on my blood and terror,
drunk on me, so feared and hated.
icicle (1)

i died last night…but in my dreams,
so there is not a corpse remaining
and the murder weapon melted
(they always do in dreams, you know)
and so the killer walks the earth
so smug and lily pure and knowing
that the sprawling feast is now
secure and safe and once again

the killer sings out

“all is well inside the city!”

walls so high, so white, so white,
just like the cliffs of Dover standing,
leaning hard into that night.

The Language Lost Forever

Posted on December 6, 2014 by charissagrace

older than language and deeper than words.
our bodies speak a language
long lost, misunderstood.

but still it’s spoken (though unknown)
in body on body (rain on stone)
in lips on lips (sun on snow).

we don’t remember
this language, yet we
cannot ever just forget it.

and so we let someone love us
(or what we think is love, anyway)
and speak what no one really knows.

In flaw on feature,
fail on feelings
and smile on what’s broken.

then sunlight enters thru the window
broken jagged
in the morning

lighting up the world
inside us, and the language
lost forever

sings here once again.

ghosts of christmases past

Posted on December 6, 2014 by charissagrace

just an ember
in the ashes
in the hearth
in the midst
of a fireplace

cooling off
stones grown cold
in the midst
of a big
empty room

full of sheeted
furniture still
petrified ghosts
frozen in the chill
of indifferent interest

and neglect so still
in the midst
of a house
full of voices
merely echoes

of those voices
long ago
when the ghosts
were thawed and human
and limber in

the room so warm
the fire bright
the stones so hot
and embers glowing
and their skin shining

and their bones throbbing
like maps of knowing
to the way that heaven
felt back then
and where they’d gone

and where they’d been.

Advent Questions

Posted on December 6, 2014 by charissagrace

Where is the promise and news of The Coming?
Where are the answers we need?
Where is the end of suffering and fighting?
Where is the peacemaker’s pen?

When will we find deep reconciliation?
When will our cynical lies
Cease and desist so true transformation
Delivers from deadly despair?

Is there a hope in remembering Advent?
Waiting for God to show up?
Is there a reason to watch and to wait
For a God who arrives in disguise?

Advent proclaims God is born in the manger
Of waiting for Them to appear,
But as what? A King Mighty? A Warrior? A Sovereign?
A helpless baby laid there?

Shall we accept Advent’s great Invitation
And wait for this God to draw near?
Shall we allow our masks to fall away
And lift up hearts and our faces bare?

Dare we celebrate Christmas instead of consuming
like ravenous wolves on a Kill?
Will we with shepherds and Kings and with peasants
kneel and beseech the Babe there?

Letting Go At Last

Posted on December 6, 2014 by charissagrace

raindrops slide,
stop, tremble
and then let go and run
down the window
in surrender
to the relief
of turning loose
their death grip
on the window pane.

beyond that
water-veined glass
tall trees lean
into the wind and then
whip away in relief
to give up and be ravaged
in smacks of wet windy
winter lips kissing in
moaning fury.

on the sill, here
with me inside
tendrils trail up
up and away,
straining against
the heat and reaching
into the cool air relief
bringing great incense
of smoky espresso promise.

and I relax,
letting go at last
like the rain
on the window,
like the tree
in the wind,
like the steam
in the air
just letting go.

My Tender Misty Heart

Posted on December 6, 2014 by charissagrace

Tender is the misty forest, full of frost, full of frost
Glowing in the velvet night and crystal air, crystal air
I walk silent, carrying my globes of hope, globes of light
In the misty forest tender, full of frost and air.

Shadows track beside me here as I walk in the trees
Leaving traces of their fear, and their hate, always near.
Gibbering and whispering their lies and pain, lies and pain
Stalking me, looking for my heart so red and near.

They believe my globes of hope are poisonous, full of death,
They imagine machinations sinister, scheming loss
They crown me with bitter loathing hateful spite, in this night
Waving branches dead and stark, their signposts of despair.

I know what is in my heart, in my globes, globes of light.
I know why I walk the tender misty forest, forest night.
I am warm, and my head held high as I walk, as I walk.
Nothing can defeat or harm my tender misty heart.

Blow A Kiss To The Ocean (For ddh and lil mama)

Posted on December 5, 2014 by charissagrace

Blow a kiss to the ocean for me, for I am far from there,
Behind the moon and under hills I sojourn while I stare
Inside my heart (where you reside regardless of the miles
that yawn between us vast), for just a glimpse of your glad smiles,
Please…Blow a Kiss to the ocean for me, so far…and yet so near.

The ocean sings and shouts in steady thundering loud voice
And yet it also whispers to the ones that make the choice
to listen with their bones and answer with their ruddy heart
that yearns to cast off every weight and burden and depart
for destinations where there is no sorrow, shame, or fear.

You there, at the ocean, me, across that vast expanse
and laboring in desert sands, I listen…for your glance
my way, and I yearn for the sound, the smell of what will be
when I can fly across the sky and land there, at the sea.
But for now, please…Blow a kiss to the ocean…just for me.

The Tranny-curse (haiku)

Posted on December 4, 2014 by charissagrace

there, around my neck

choking me in its fat fist

branding me unclean

The curse is in the word, and words like it…not in my being who and what I am.

Radio Silence (by anon., guest poster on Grace Notes)

Posted on December 2, 2014 by charissagrace

Dear Constance…I was graced today with the cry of a heart great. A heart beautiful, a heart that can be held in a hand but not contained by the sea.

This heart sent me this poem, this offering of love, longing, sorrow and pain. Such is the way of life. Such is often the way of a world broken and not as it should be.

So…read please? And feel it. And then know that the “ought not to be” is proof that One Day comes…and a righting of all wrongs, and a healing of all wounds and Restoration of the Breach will be, will be, will be…

I die a little every day
With you so far away
Three months it’s been since I talked to you,
And two months for your sister too
Big brother says he can’t do it
and the youngest seems oblivious
And so I die a little every day
and you so far away

Daily each of you will do
whatever it is you do
you eat, you sleep, you work or play
but I hear not a word
you say it’s too hard to talk about
and that you hate being on the phone
I call it radio silence
and each day when
there has been
not a word, not an email, not a message
death takes another nibble

Today I die a little more
I see no end in sight
i thought that if I acted cool,
you possibly, you could you might
return to me, to us and then
you’d share your life ,your love again
and some “boring” daily doings.
But instead I feel the deadness grow
in the place where you once lived.
And so
I die a little every day
With you so far away.

Every Fractured Piece

Posted on November 29, 2014 by charissagrace

Touch me with hands gentle,
hands giving and softly yielding
blessing and the gift of myself
known and thus received.

Touch my heart so it relaxes and unbends,
unfolds and opens up into a million
pieces interconnected and remembered
in the whorls and swirls of your fingerprint’s voice.

I will gentle grow beneath your blessing bestowed
so quiet and alert, so tender, deliberate undaunted,
and rising my heart shall release the Host from
my lips moist and moving simple in communion.

Touch me then with actions become words
and words become kisses and
kisses become kindness
incarnate in the flames so ruby red and warm

and I will then be yours, and captured
bound to you with glances and eyes flashing,
bound unto your heart with trusting hunger
and peace at last singing in every fractured piece.

Only Winter Really Knows

Posted on November 29, 2014 by charissagrace

That last leaf, on that dry branch
scratching at grey skies and digging for rain,
digging in my heart for seeds of grief
buried so deep.

What is it about the last one?
Leaf, apple, pine cone?
Winds rake and tug, greedily scooping prizes
sweet, tart, bristley, floatey…

but there always are those hangers on tenacious,
and never saying die…
or is it that they cannot do it? Say die?
or even “dead”.

Is it that they refuse
to let go? Or is it
that they cannot?
Let go?

And here is the killer: some people think they are resilient
and full of perseverance and persistence,
and some people think they are noble
and full of loyalty and loose liberty.

But I wonder if they are
just not capable, if they are
just crippled by their
inability to let go and move on?

I know how many days have come,
winds blowing, raking and pawing at me lusty,
unwanted doggy beasts, knocking me loose
and then away and disappearing.

I know how many thrusts, rooting have picked me over
and my secrets tumbling dead and colorful in air
away to dirt but I left lonely, hanging unrequited there
and flapping solitary in the winds of shame.

But there are still some (leaves, secrets, treasures)
still hanging on and unable to let go,
adorned in funeral robes dolorous
and hued in autumn splendor.

Most see them as emblems, medals,
battle spoils dearly won and worn…
but they are just proof
of my weaknesses and loss

and inability to quit,
to let go and enter
into that towering
still White transition called

Winter…

which, disguised as death
to frighten all assailants,
holds my dreams and hopes and losses
all in trust and buried deep in wombs
of merciful becoming masquerading
as cold tombs silent, dark and numbing,

Winter…

who holds my heart gripped
in her frosty kiss desperate,
longing for her last gasp
before presenting me
to the sprites of spring and then
the suns of summer.

The last one…there.
map, marking ways
hidden and secret to find
my deepest treasures,

or medal, memory of moments
living and filthy with love
long ago so bold and given over now
to the grave so lonely and cold.

I guess only Winter
really knows and will proclaim
when She calls roll and
the Final Thaw begins.

You Know This is For You

Posted on November 29, 2014 by charissagrace

“I exist in two places,
here and where you are.”

—	Selected Poems (1965-1975) (Margaret Atwood)

This is me…

Posted on November 29, 2014 by charissagrace

this is me, inside my heart, my soul cupped in my hands
and lifted high in graceful beauty unto heavenly lands,
this is my spirit, beautiful and yielded in my place
on sacred prayer mat made of love and tears and joy and grace.

but this is that me, seen, encountered, clumsy in this world,
the way i am perceived and felt, the heated judgments hurled,
hard and horned, coarse and dull, imprisoned in my place,
of silence, sorrow, empty house, tears always on my face.

May I Forget To Breathe Again

Posted on November 29, 2014 by charissagrace

it’s been 25 years, every one a chapter in a book
filled with pages written in words
of surprise and heavenly gifts everyday.

i remember the first, that morning walk,
clammy fog swirling round my face
while inner fogs cleared.

breezes of heaven blew bright and fresh
teaching me to unwrap carefully, faithfully
everyday and hearing that free giggle/laugh.

and then i unveiled me (alas), to us all (me included)
and discovered that i had unwrapped that gift and was done…finished
and revealing my own irrelevance, current, future.

another chapter ended yesterday, another one begun,
passing and being born without a word from me (1st time ever),
at least, not one outloud, lest the universe take offense in silence.

but i remembered, all day long. i always do, you know.
and i sang, i cried, my tears washed my love
so my love could clean hold you secret and unseen.

i am sorry, love…i am. i know i was ruination,
a blight on years meant to resonate and not
rot in futile failed half-built huts.

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

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

Guilty of Too Much

Posted on November 24, 2014 by charissagrace

It’s been said I run so fast, but there is One that’s faster,
One who walks upon the winds and is the tiger’s master.
Trailing on Her garmets quick and in Her steps so graceful
There it is I find Her draft and drink Her flow so faithful.

I feel all the power of the pulse of life in me.
I cannot hold back this river running fresh and free.
There’s a turbine in my heart that churns and whirs and hums
amidst the power and percussion pulsing rhythmic thrums.

Well, I did not receive a choice when I was fashioned thus!
I had no input, say, I couldn’t even raise a fuss!
No…placed inside this body rough and slow and made of dirt
I am a dancer graceful, runner swift, and princess pert!

I am a mind mercuiral, I am a soul of grace!
My heart is fashioned intricate, my spirit is spun lace.
And I have wings and courage, I am bold enough to soar
on winds to mountains high, and then dive deep to delve for more.

I am Charissa Grace. I always have been she.
Imprisoned in this body dark and struggling to be…
My deep flow furious is just a shadow of my thought
so I will simply open and bring forth the things I’ve bought.

Going for the Throat of Love

Posted on November 24, 2014 by charissagrace

I have always
gone for the throat of love.
Right? I mean,
what else is there, really?

See, you are wiley…
you have your snares, your wire-traps…
but you know your way
around these woods

you touch those red trunks thick
and feel the moss and know
when that woody heart is open
and thirsty and available

you sense the wondering wildlife
hid nearby and hushed,
and know just how to move thus
and not startle the deer

and how to whistle for the birds,
you trill in practiced ease, that’s you…
touching terrain, scheduling territories,
reading maps and visiting…

spreading out your hunter’s eye
in webs and nets
and next thing you know, why
love is there and snapped

neatly on your leash and sat,
ears cocked, so it knows to roll over,
and speak, and play dead
(with a smile).

But me? I have eyes that see, inside
those scented trunks concealed with fringey moss,
and ears that hear inside the hearts of harts that crouch so still
and hidden there so neat and underneath the wings of birds.

But I don’t have body, right?
When I move, I snap twigs and crash,
noise and blunder, all bleeding desire
and wet contagious bonding sticky heart

that catches on the thorns you deftly step around
and tears on twigs and snags on gnarly cedar fingers
and then clutches at the brush to cover
my embarrassing naked need of something other

my need of what I was not even given
the dignity of denial,
denial of my heart-felt soft request…
like a tree not granted the dignity of a forest.

So I just jump que sera sera, aiming for
the things I see inside the hearts of trees and
the things I hear singing inside the flight of blackbirds in the night…
and the humming of the bees

…and find myself missing…
…over and over and over…
and thumping hard on stones and tumbled
scratched and hotly embarrassed

by yet another fruitless
leap of faith while moments
walks right past me,
walk right thru me!

I imagine you, your skillful
deft dread lilting steps
and secret smile of success,
you equipped and given grace that matches…

and moving
in the forest ways
and easy and always
so at home.

Finally I pick myself up,
and listen, look, and get a bead
on that pulsing place so secret there,
the tender hollow of its neck,

love,
and I get myself ready to go
for the throat of love once more,
and missing take my deep compelled encore

in hope that I will
catch my quarry, or am still
and never need to long
or ever jump again.

This Indigo Night Redux:

Posted on November 23, 2014 by charissagrace

Hey, Constance, some of you read right away and some read much later…if you are an “early adopter”, consider checking out “This Indigo Night” again, as there was a hidden rhythm there which kept niggling at me…it was bugging me like a stray piece of popcorn hull stuck in my gumline.

I worried on it a bit, and it popped free, and now the poem flows in all its dark and sorrowful power.

I apologize for that…it truly oozes hurt and agony and that horrible existential loneliness that every single human has felt at some point in some way, even if it is but the shadow of the eye of Mordor looking, probing…and it barely hesitates on you there, cloaked under your fortunate sunny disposition and unfractured nature wrapped around you like an elvish cloak of protection…

…and even if I am the only one who feels thus? Well, it is honest. It sang true to the agony.

Thus shall it stand, and I the prouder of it for its courage.

Charissa the Sorrowful

Overcome

Posted on November 23, 2014 by charissagrace

i admit this is tough for me…
chewing it is like a steak that
aunt myrtle sacrificed on the
altar of cleanliness is next to “done-liness”.

and swallowing it? HAH!
i always ask too much, expect too much
hope too much, believe things will work out
too much…and when that lump of
“not” gets stuck in my throat,

it grows hands topped with many fingers
tipped with sharp claws taught malevolent glee
and it jams itself sideways, stuck there in me
and declares “be ashamed!” “be nothing!”
or be both.

what i have overcome…what is that?
well, it is more like nugget, sweet and chewy
and promising substance, and then gone…
dissolved into nothing, just an aftertaste
torturing my longing heart.

but I am working on this.
I am gritting my teeth til my jaws ache.
I am saying I AM…subject, predicate “overcoming”.
I am drinking guilt by the glassful,
shame by the snifter and
terror by the teacup.

someday maybe it will be drained
to the last drop
and the ocean bottom will start to dry
at last there for the air to touch
and mess up its hair.

maybe…maybe then,
i will know being proud
of overcoming

A L’encre de tes Lèvres

Posted on November 23, 2014 by charissagrace

J’ai saigné des lunes et des soleils nocturnes
Sous le ciel de ta peau, ayant un goût de miel
Me fondant sur ta langue ou à tes rêves diurnes
Que tu faisais jadis mon singulier pluriel.

Quand d’un geste fougueux, je me pends à tes yeux
Usant de l’imparfait pour taire les silences
Tu ignores les nuits où les terres en feu
Jaillissent du néant et remplissent mes stances.

J’ai enroulé mon cœur sur tes pages fébriles
Mêlant l’encre rouge à tes murmures d’amour
Et tu gagnes le jour quand ton âme érectile
Se suspend aux restes d’une larme au long court.

Un naufrage de mots s’échoue irrésistible
Toute voile dehors sur le sable émouvant
Ton souffle me parcourt en atteignant sa cible
Apaisant les sanglots d’un ultime courant.

J’ai déposé les maux sur tes lignes inertes
Liant l’arène de ta muse au bois dormant
Et je livre l’ivresse à tes rimes expertes
Nouant mon innocence à tes pouvoirs troublants.

Je m’ancre à tes lèvres et fusionne à ta plume
En t’inspirant des chants de divines passions
L’ombre de tes peines soulève mon enclume
Et je forge tes vers au sein de ma raison.

J’ai saigné des lunes et des soleils nocturnes
Sous le ciel de ta peau, ayant un goût de miel
Me fondant sur ta langue ou à tes rêves diurnes
Que tu faisais jadis mon masculin pluriel…..

Mystic4ever
Le 5 Avril 2011

This Indigo Night

Posted on November 23, 2014 by charissagrace

what am I,
here in this current so swift,
here in this flow so crystal,
the color of none, of nothing
seeping from hearts of high mountains
whose tops are jagged and sharp,
sharp enough to shred endless blue skies
into ripped bloody red torn pink remnants
purple while day fades to black?

what am I,
feeling the kick inside me,
the writhing insistence and roll,
the knock knock inside my forehead
that sounds in nebula bursts
and sings in galaxy galas
inside my conductor heart
waving my rhythmic baton thoughts
emerging and piling up useless?

what am I,
feeling such guilt when I think
about all that I want you to know
all I feel and I long to feel with you
and I hear the desperate tremor
in your voice, I fear deeply that I am…what?
a burdensome ball that needs juggling,
a silly dead thing that needs managed,
another condition to cope with?

what am I,
in the dark heart of lean hungry hours
when nightmares slink bold and unwary
and sing in such sibilant hissing
that I’m not a what or a who,
that my sorrow and sharp disappointment
is hollow, is nothing so when
I shout “Marco! Marco! Marco! Marco! Marco!” over and over again
my desperate cry is gutted and added to indigo night?

what am I,
when I feel such life in my thoughts
and my insights streak thru my dark fear
like diamond-tailed powerful comets
fierce and unstoppable birthed, but
black holes of indifference they simply
yawn, stretch, and swallow them whole
and then check their watch sweetly ticking
for the truly important things?

I guess I am this at the least: the sum of all of my fears.
Those things are real, at least they must be, right?
The way they tear, the way they bite,
the way they drink my blood at night,
the way they croon that they will take me, wrap around me, never leave me
they’ll accept me, treasure my heart’s living blood so spurty salty
gushy red blooms from the cuts the jagged mountains made when I fell
from the sky upon them and discovered that I was not
made to fly, or be a worthy bird, or even just a little pretty butterfly.

what am i?

Under the Surface

Posted on November 23, 2014 by charissagrace

I never scuba dive.
I’m afraid of those sharks,
great white sharks
(I could never figure out what was so great about them).

I think what they mean
is big white sharks.
and they aren’t even really white!
(why do we call things white that aren’t even?).

Their teeth are white though,
white razors running
from snout to throat and down
(I think they chew their way thru the water).

Besides, I am in enough danger (on land)
from things called great (that aren’t)
from things called white (that are just pale fish belly dead)
from things with teeth (that are hungry for blood).

rooster (for l’il mama)

Posted on November 22, 2014 by charissagrace

rooster.
Rooster…
ROOSTER?
ROOSTER!!!!!

are you kidding me?
I mean, really, standing there
so straight and throbbingly smug
and shifting back and forth, foot to foot
in such preening pleased with self
admiration…oh such wit.

such wit, but wit by half I would say
being how it is you that goes off
half cocked or on full cock or
locked and loaded. isn’t it?
your glee when I am hot,
it pricks me, pokes me
and I am well aware of your baloney!

and you call me rooster!??!

I mean, really, walking around
cock of the walk and
buck naked and
all in front of yourself
thinking never once how
no one ever anywhere
thinks that is a good look
or even a look good,
and you whistle
and then murmer things about
not sparing the rod
nor spoiling the wife??
Hmmm…the bishop might think one thing
but I am sure the bishop’s wife
(is there even such a thing?)
would be of another mind
entirely.

I guess it’s your way, eh?
Chuckling at what you (think not think)
hear as me clucking, and do you
even realize that a rooster
is a male chicken, strutting
and thinking it made the sun rise?

well…you try to get that rise out of me
because I am that rise in you,
now that much is undeniable waggly truth
now isn’t it?
Have a care, MISTER…cluck away in your
glib wobbly lugubrious laughter.
It just may come to pass that
this belled cat might slip her bell
and rest assured that my hand will not bobble
or wobble, no truth will I cobble
while you willy walk and your
ding dong ringing with that bell.

rooster
the nerve!

oh MY!! Margaret Atwood has indeed nailed it!

Posted on November 22, 2014 by charissagrace

“Here is the handful
of shadow I have brought back to you:
this decay, this hope, this mouthful
of dirt, this poetry.”

—	Margaret Atwood, Mushrooms

Japan Was Far Away

Posted on November 22, 2014 by charissagrace

When I was little I used to lay in bed
and it was like time would surround me,
fall down over me, on me, lay round me
like the blankets, rough and wool
(and scratchy, so I could never get comfortable).

But the problem was, time would not keep out!
No…it seeped thru my pores and wrapped round my bones
with its icy tendrils that could morph and move
like foggy fingers there and not there
(and just like time has always been, uncomfortable).

I got desperate and anguished and panicked
and I thrashed around frantic like a fish
hauled out of the lake and flopping on the deck
with a bitter hook caught at its jaws
(because hungry and wanting comfortable).

But I wasn’t actually moving, not really.
My body was still, frozen, fearful of fury
and the stormy flipping frenzied flailing
was all in my head while shadows laughed
(on walls akimbo and decidedly uncomfortable).

Those shadows all the way from Japan, there on my walls.
Kabuki pallbearers waiting to carry me to the last place
where the hook of time would be pulled at last from my jaw
and I thrown into…what…the larder, or back in the lake
(I feared each one, false friend and never comfortable)?

Finally, blankets scratchy and harsh, holding me down,
conspired with time and its frozen invasive thrusts
and I was filled with the brutal fecund flow washing
over my fertile imagination and there conceived such spawn
(shadows and time and me spawn something very uncomfortable).

Then that thing began to writhe, kick inside me, jaws working
faster and faster until I knew it would gnaw me thin, and then gone.
I knew it was chewing its way to the freedom denied me
and I screamed so fearful that ears could not hear it
(but my doggie did, she was never away from me and comfortable).

I screamed until I passed out, and blood spatter gouts spurted
their baptismal incantations as I gave birth to the only offspring
I could bear, the bastard child of time and shadow and fear,
and awareness left me like the dirty water of my bath draining
(it spiraled down clockwise…that wisdom so uncomfortable).

But I always woke up, as if nothing had happened
and my stomach was flat, unmarked, taut and young.
The sun shown bright and birds sang all round me
and there was nothing on the walls…not even a shadow of shadows
(and Japan was far away, bowing, waiting and comfortable).

Bleeding Light and Memory: On Transgender Remembrance Day

Posted on November 20, 2014 by charissagrace

Here is my first poem written regarding this thing called Transgender Remembrance Day. I wrote it last year on this day. It is located here:

Bleeding Light and Memory (Without Images for Structure)

I present it to you again today…and it has grown, shrunk, matured and gained its presence a bit.

In other words I edited it.
Please…read it and let the reality of it hit your heart with the tattoo needle and not the jester’s feather. Please be changed…how can we live if you won’t unbend, unfold and become? I am right there with you Constance, wings straining for every weft of breeze, sails hoisted and praying for that puff divine and transformative…

Love, Charissa

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

Bleeding Light and Memory (2014 version)

When light struck my soul I blazed fierce and exultant!
Into awareness, I bled joy so radiant just like the horizon
bleeds sunlight at dawn. I gazed in the gawky glass of exultation
(and I in my youth seeing darkly thru that glass)
I knew myself and was gaudiloquent and I was so glad and full,
I was so wonder-full.Til it rained, titters fell tinkling down on heart-tin, then rebukes raging,
lashing at my roof and thrumming and drumming til I saw no more thru that
bright young glass darkly, but dull thru a lonely storm dimly and starkly
and everything eerie and glowing in green, and radioactive remarks so redactive
and careless cerulean comment, alas! I came to know what I was
and was not and I melted misshapen and crippled.

Then came the days long and same and repetitive,
passing by people of 2 kinds that easily pass, they belong
but they never see beyond, they never see inside the rose.
So I plucked throbbing buds, thorn blood price cheap and held them out
from my side of that dark glass wet with stormy tears, washy with rivers
of arrogant vain assumed presence attributing value and worth.
Life ground me down as it moved without mercy, a glacier inexorable
grinding in glances so cold and so frozen, that flow moving over
the dark silent boulders of being…I saw bones strewn round me
like gruesome pick-up sticks, cast-offs from careless hands,
players who tired of children’s games, children’s cruel nicknames,
grown weary they tore out their hearts with bare hands mad with grief
but the world grinding by didn’t care. tumblr_mv21x4W9Lk1rk1cbbo1_1280 Until at last long from those dizzy heights brilliant awareness burst over me,
bleeding in fullness and in terror tinklings, thrumming and cold and that
startling certain blue clarity…I finally remembered who I am, and know
finally what I am, that I am, and my long lament “alas” nevermore uttered!
For I am become me…at last, me…a lass.

That’s me in a nutshell, my story and journey transgender…but what about you?
Will you take time to think and remember? Will you find mercy today?
Will you find the care? Will you go gently with us into our long night,
will you rage, rage with us gentle and bless now the living of the light
that’s straining to dawn bright and final in blazing clear beauty?
You too are dual natured, corrupt and dying and incorrupt rising!
We share one grim struggle, together the dead and together alive
in one deadly bold dual to live. You….are US. and we are you…
but you without arms, without eyes, without mouths
we scream loud and cry for release! We cry out
for the midwives of mercy to meet us and make us
so beautiful for situation at last and delivered of our awful charge.

OPEN YOUR EYES AND EARS FOR US. tumblr_mv2wk5jIW71spa6l5o1_500 See us…and hear us…don’t fear us, don’t fear to see yourself,
come stare down your own stormy floods, sit and listen!
Don’t be afraid to hear us, we’re the voice of the echoes you hear
in your own fearful nightmares of being, oh Daughters of Pharaoh!
Reach down and lift us up out of the reeds and mud! Because of you
a whole nation was freed, and we too are Eve’s sons and the daughters of Adam,
but trapped and acutely aware we are helpless! Too often we’ve fallen
to dread hands and dead eyes of no grace and no mercy
and no compassionate symmetry!

Today…here…
Light strikes in blacksmith blows,
soul sparks chip off and away on this day…
I intention…remember
my own radiant flood
bleeding light and day’s promise,
remember the resonant thunder,
remember the frowning floods
the gushing gouts
and the othering stares
and the brutal don’t cares
of long years I walked
in the country of lost men
and longing despair…

I remember the pangs and the waves and the lurching
of labor as I, pregnant with my own measureless mystery
and full of such knowing began to emerge and break forth
deep-touched forever warded by Grace, and kept safe
from that pit which has tripped far too many and eaten them,
chewed them like Goya’s devourer,
Zeus eating every last child in his madness and horror…
incarnate in this patriarchy that rounds us up
into its abattoir death camps like cattle
and herds us into chutes and charnal house horrors
of slaughter and blood-spattered baptism.(let their fate haunt you
and give you holy hush
and give you sacred silence).

Dare. Look. Feel.
I will too, and somewhere
we will fight off those demons
compelling and fell
that haunt us and cause us
to rave and destroy…
Then we shall be set free to fly again
all together in one flock of birds
of all feathers and all calls
become One Glad Song!
We will dare to fly off
to the sun and beyond
where our song will bleed joy
and rain down on the earth
to bring healing and hope
home in Love…

forever…
together…
we’ll
Bleed
Radiant
Light.

Okay, Okay…too cryptic by half and a mistake

Posted on November 20, 2014 by charissagrace

Okay, Constance…I wrote a poem yesterday called Elegeía Paidikí̱ i̱likía.

I figured you all would just copy the title and go to Google translate and find out what the title meant? And then have the key to interpret the poem. A lil fun before a somber day (today, where over 1500 names will be read, everyone of them the name of a transgender person who has been murdered, committed suicide, or died of inflicted injury)…

…Well, inquiry revealed that Google did not do a good job of translation back to English!

So to remedy that, I will just tell you that the poem is called “Childhood Elegy” or “Elegy to Childhood”.

In Greek it looks like this:

Ελεγεία της παιδικής ηλικίας

Also, as I wrote I flowed with the sounds and syllables of “Coronado”, associating the name with the image that I had and wanted to evoke, that of the fountain of youth.

The fountain of youth was sought of course by Ponce de Leon, not Coronado, who rambled about looking for the lost city Cibola and the 7 cities of Gold…

(which is a post all in itself: Constance, remember when people explored stuff thinking they would actually find spiritual meanings or things that answered deep existential questions? No? Me neither. It has never been thus in my lifetime. Instead, we have sought to explore so we could “know”…and we define “knowing” as deconstructing whatever it is we stumble over, dissecting it, defining it, and never once realizing that we end up chasing life right out of the thing along with wonder…hmm…gotta post on this sometime, and how we do this with people too).

So, there you are, Constance. Title revealed and mistake corrected and Charissa chastened…(not really! giggle)

Ελεγεία της παιδικής ηλικίας

Posted on November 19, 2014 by charissagrace

when did it happen,
that twizzle dazzle
Rochambeau during which
you twinkled and tap-danced
from our wordy
hot tub merry
and full of laughing waters
to the river swift,
grey and roiling
thru the locks
and around the island
on the way
to the stormy seas
so vast and voiceless?

you used to
babble like brooks
and I used to
bathe in that
Ponce de Leon flow
eternal and new

(did you not know this?)

and drink of the wine everlasting,
drink of the young perfect you…

today I was down there,
at that creekbed
and it was just
full of dead leaves
that were dank
in stagnant pools
and crackly disappearing
whisps where that
bed was bone dry
and empty of water
and of music
and of laughter.

i miss you so bad…
so bad.
and in these times
it’s impossible
to keep hope alive
without a sop
to my thirst for you
and your fresh vibrant
open and happy face.

My Leather Journal Sailing

Posted on November 15, 2014 by charissagrace

the leather journal, and the part about pretending…
that is really quite a haunting lil ghost to us, isn’t it?
Pretense. And those voices, mocking, whispering constant
“are you who you think you are?”
“is you or is you not Her Baby?”

and then I turn from them with listening ears
and turn to them with deaf ears unassailable
and lift instead all my chickenscratching,
my poetic hardscrabblings in the dirt so meager
and occasionally alive…occasionally.

and with effort I take my special pen and lift it
and hold it tight against my cheek and shut my eyes
and wish upon that Star above that twinkles there, unfailing
and feel around inside for me in panic, my heart flailing
to touch the metaphor and meaning in the glowing core of being.

yes, and then I write it down, and truly wonder!
I wonder why it seems that no one knows how beautiful,
how lovely the pulse ordinary of all things, so constant
so miraculous and ever all surpassing,
far exceeding even Marilyn, Raquel and Sweet Sophia,
and singing sweetly more sweetly than every lark on every wind!

I wonder why it seems that no one knows that just a glance
from the gimlet glittery eye of that Poetic Siren
crooning there upon Her Island will utterly destroy you
if you sail a bit too near unless your limbs are chained unmoving
and your yearning heart is thirsty and so hungry for a crumb
just one Crumb of Her Bread Living, Her Bread Living…

But my scrawls chart the clever currents there, to glide securely
and map the words to lead me safely home forever
chained in that leather journal, my boat “The Plain Poetic”
its pages poised to catch Her singing winds and Her Bright Courage
to catch my breath, and then set sail again…at last undaunted.

Rivers Breathed and Mercy Streaming (For DDH…and For Massi)

Posted on November 15, 2014 by charissagrace

hi.

wanna know how you are,
cus who you are,
ya know?

oh.

me? well, I been well
but still and always how I am
cus who I am.
you know.

sometimes I think how you flutter inside
your heart and your breath there, racing the moon
around the night sky ablaze in fiery contest
between her jewels and her sable coat

sometimes I get a glimpse of that goblet
there on your nightstand
after you’ve been in your cups
and I ken the vintage and varietal

cus you do drain what is opened to you
(a bit too much, darling, a bit too earnest and compelled)
and when it is joyous red I sip too and laugh in your rest
but when it is dull brown and rust and no diamonds

well, then I sit beside you as you sleep, those miles away
and you there still torn open and seeping your value priceless
and that goblet stinky, forceful, insisting on being drained
but only sipped from and then denied unbearable…but present still lurking.

sigh.

you toss, and then I see your shuttered eyes glimmer
and then your loss leaks, wells up and thru limpid lids
squeezed tightly against remembering ever but driven and compelled
by memory’s tortured brew…alas, that goblet…and you

I snatch up that cup (this cup is passed to me, dear)
and to my tender lips I raise it up and press it hard against them
(ah, it burns so hot, it aches so frozen and immobile)
and down I drink the bitter draughts so tragic for you, so tragic in you…

but inside me they find a resting place
to be changed and sweetened, then expelled
out thru my eyes so tender and so kind
and filled with teary balm of sorrows healed tumblr_nf1xxrw5FK1qgk7mfo1_1280

I catch them, the tears, one by one, in that rank glass
that goblet graveolent and grim, musty and mephitic
and loathsome in its unwashed remembers and never can forgets
and while you sleep my tears work a washing wonder

and then the cup do I return and place beside your bed
and just in time, for whimpering you thrash about and grope
wanting to forget, needing to remember, your heart stuck in December
another drink to drug you, goad your hurt and to falsely sustain you

but to your lips my tears transformed within the cup
into a sleepy healing vintage of AD 33
and hale and healthy once again
my tears…my heart…
and your eyes flutter in relief,
and your chest heaves, and sighs
and fall at long last do you from that cliff
and into Her soft stark healing embrace

and as I look, I see your face grow placid
peace in rivers breathed and mercy streaming
and then you rest and restoration reaching
to touch your troubled brow and make you whole again.

so.

you got broke, yes? torn.
cus that’s just how this world…yeah.
you know.

love.

just one heart torn willingly and glad
cus that’s just Love and constant
ya know?

sleep now, you will awake, and breath so lightly
and know that all is Love Redeemed and Lifted,
scars are left as medals, evil works are sifted
and what remains becomes

the makings of many poems
of Life Divinely Gifted.

tumblr_nexx8d8vnd1ri86b6o1_500

Happy Birthday Dearest Darling

Posted on November 9, 2014 by charissagrace

to write a poem for you
is to make one snowflake out
to be an avalanche.
there is beauty in the snowflake,
unsurpassed, unique, breathtaking.
that flake comes from no where,
appears, and returns
to where it came
without leaving a trace,
except in me
tattooed by glory…

except in my heart,
where i am cut forever
by that shape exquisite,
where i am cooled always
in the stark clarifying
fiercely cheerful clear cold,
where my heart makes
that perfect simulacrum of that
impossibly beautiful flake
over and over again
with the dripping blood
welling from my heart
cut by you, that cut, that flake.

an avalanche
began that day,
that day the light
danced up my battlements
and captured my eyes
forever in your dazzle,
an avalanche of
one flake persistent,
one flake present
in deserts and monsoons
and fierce fires
of the coldest frozen sorrow. tumblr_nedi99gYbj1rwn2euo1_400 you,
my ever-fire,
my ever-ice,
soothing and searing,
and impossibly yourself

i love you
more than all my tears
multiplied by all the tears
of every person
multiplied by the distance
east is from west
and added to itself again.

i love you
more than every laugh
that’s tumbled gleeful
from my lips, and

i love you
more than every piercing longing,
poignant and unspeakable

if you hadn’t come
i would be there hanging, high
on the side of the mountain
stark and slate
in morning light.

i would be that
field of billions
of unique flakes settled
all the same and piled
into meaningless multiplied
unified snowy sameness,
still and without motion.

but you did.
come.
and that has
made my world
alive.

love forever,
and i mean forever

Charissa Grace,
your undying heart devoted

Me? I just make one up and I am good to go!

Posted on November 9, 2014 by charissagrace

Et si je vous aime…

Posted on November 9, 2014 by charissagrace

Et si je vous aime d’instants pluriels

C’est sans doute que les rêves s’évadent
Aux voluptés des amours essentiels
Que j’oublie qui je suis au bord du ciel
Quand la nuit s’étend comme une cascade
Mon elle se froisse aux désirs charnels
Et ma moitié s’élève en embrassade.

Et si je vous aime d’instants pluriels

C’est d’audace que les pensées paradent
D’un exil prudent , d’un dernier appel
Que l’encore claque aux sens textuels
Les yeux s’égarent, l’île se dérobe,
Mélangées les cambrures se torsadent
Au rythme essoufflé d’un baiser mortel
Et l’aube s’attarde aux corps sensuels
D’un vertige effeuillant une tornade.

Et si je vous aime d’instants pluriels….

Mystic4Ever
Le 21 Juillet 2011
Ce texte est la propriété de Mystic4Ever Tous droits réservés ©

D’Eve vouée ….

Posted on November 8, 2014 by charissagrace

O mon vain cœur, mon compagnon de je docile
Avec toi tout en moi, tout semble si facile
Tu es le rire dans mes yeux traversés d’eau
La candeur de ma plume et mon porte drapeau.

Quand la nuit s’étend et que ton sommeil me prend
Tu es dans mes rêves , tu respires mon sang
Veillant sur mes émois, adulant mes stigmates
Même la lune semble aimer tes soies délicates.

Et quand au petit jour, tu lèves mes nuages
Mon ciel paraît plus bleu livrant un doux présage
Une belle journée à charge en marge du temps
Quand en fil conducteur, tu « miracles « le tant.

Je t’aime, tu le sais, comme à nul autre pareil
Je te dois chacun de mes vers couleur vermeil
Je te vois et te sens partout chaque seconde
Pour toi en secret, j’aimerai traverser l’onde.

Parfois tu m’échines à en mourir d’envie
Ironique et fragile aux touches de la vie
Tu ébranles mes pas me rendant orpheline
D’un jamais à moi ta fille de mousseline.

Quand je mêle ta voie pour écrire un poème
Tu susurres que tu es enfant de bohème
Alors je sublime une à une tes absences
Car qui mieux que tes chants connaissent mes silences.

O mon vain cœur, mon compagnon de je docile
Avec toi tout en moi, tout semble si facile
Même si parfois tu fais défaut à mes vœux lourds
Je te suis dévouée depuis toujours,Toi l’Amour……

Mystic4Ever
Le 24 Juin 2011
Ce texte est la propriété de Mystic4Ever Tous droits réservés ©

This Ghost Poetic

Posted on November 8, 2014 by charissagrace

I wander this world ghost-like
in poetic places, like a phantom
passing thru unseen, unfelt.

I wonder in the presence all around…I see, I feel…
I dwell in mists, resarciate revelation,
in the clear and frosty glow of iridescent knowings
and I vibrate with the rhythms and the meters of forever…

and yet…and yet…and yet I have no body to encounter anything.

How it is that I cannot touch that rock, that tree, that river?
Oh it’s not for lack of trying! No, it’s not for lack of crying out
until my throat is torn and sundered by the torrents of
poetic whispers midst the thunder booming in the heart beat of the ocean!

Blue and silver tinged in crimson rushing furious from deep
inside my belly and into the deserts stretched around me desolate…
and bleeding wet across the dry rocks stacked in careless ruination
like a giant game of pick-up sticks, I flow…
I water this ground thirsty, this land burnt and deaf and hungry!

I see dwellers in the dust and so I run to them
in glad and eager assignations, to speak waters cold and clear
in dulcet tones delightful…but I’m stunned, disheartened and confused
because my waters glad, my torrents true blue in their striking mercies
simply pass right thru them, as if they were ghostly manes,
mere spirit rivers, haunted waters!

I have no solid being in this non poetic world!
I am eidolic without body! I am eidolon!
And I rush at them in hot frustration, I fly at them with fists poetic
windmilling the haunted air like stinging butterflies and then
I see that glass jaw of untruth just jutting forth in pride,
I see those flabby dull and paunchy souls and rain down blows
like honey bees dive bombing wooly bears below…

and stand and watch in horror as my fists, my quick poetic fists
of thunder-boom and stormy rant

(and lightning laced with baby breath and MamaSong)

just pass right thru…without a trace.
That’s when it hits me, I’m the phantom in this place!

I’m a ghost poetic without body,
save my words which have no presence
save their spectral wraithy breeze
as they pass thru the dwellers in the land of Nod!
And then I weep, and see my tear drops fall straight thru the carmine earth
and out the other side to float in space like stars unhinged from Mama’s eyes.

…But once in a while I hurt my hand!
Because I see that tree, that rock,
that mountain, that sea and I swing
with all my might so desperate
to make contact, connect but glum
expecting that it will be just
another sickening stomach churning
free-fall thru and without touching
anything that makes a difference
and gives me substantial presence
that I yearn for unrequited,
always unrequited…
…Once in a while…BAM! That tree is THERE!

And oh, that mountain in the air
hits back with all its mountain might
and I break open and pour poetry from knuckles
barked and ripped and dripping bloody meaning.

So I walk, proceed with caution and with people,
careful not to punch with fists, but swing with kisses blown poetic
and with whispers strewn so pretty in the paths of maybe-solid
peace that feet can walk upon and crush the petals
of my life poetic, thus releasing such sweet fragrance
of that Mystery Lurking Beyond Wonders.

And while I walk, I have been wondering…
what if I am not a ghost? What if I am real, and walk
a world of trees so solid, mountains stark and clouds so soft,
so touchable and trembling singable and trodable
in skies so blue and thick with skin like opal seas?

What if it’s not me the wraith but everything around me
that’s unsound and apparitional, haunted, insubstantial?

What if I’m the solid one and live inside a singing body
solid and substantial in its meter, rhyme and rhythm?

What if I walk a world of ghosts within this body poetic,
and with dactylic soul still singing ever in exquisite
anapestic harmony and twine my song with river-chorus
in the currents of the Milky Way so high and flowing ever
from my Mama’s ruby loving lips?

What if it’s because my fists’ poetic swinging, punching,
on the rocks relentless pounding on the trees
until they gain their being solid and substantial,
bit by bit and flake by swing, whiff by hook they reel
into reality and become present, incarnated to wear atoms
for their royal robes piled high and gold with poems now glorified?

What if my words, passing thru them like the winds wind thru tree branches
leaving something solid, something real that feels good to inhabit,
what if my heart poetry is giving walls and floors and roofs and doors
to enter in and stay and take on body, soul, and spirit?

I am a ghost poetic,
I’m a poem in a ghost world.
I am a song unseen and spectral,
I am heard in opened ears.
I am a difference that I long for
and a solid longed for morsel.
I’m a river in the desert
and a cool cup of sweet water
and a riddle-paradox
of ghost-words become manifest
and incarnated in the bloody
hearts of listeners and hungry
mouths of singers
and the happy souls
of Mama’s children.

The Last Faint Spark

Posted on November 7, 2014 by charissagrace

The Last Faint Spark.

Constance, this devotional is by my favorite devotional writer Jill Carattini, and rather than copy and past it I decided to press it…

…and then copy out a poem here that she quotes. I was stunned by this poem…and Constance? You think I write poems?? *charissa laffs and shakes her head in wonder at the thought*

No, dear Constance…this is what a real poem, a grown up poem looks like!! Just wow.

Still Falls the Rain

Still falls the Rain—
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss—
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us—
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain—
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,—those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear—
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh… the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain—
Then— O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune—
See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,—dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar’s laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain—
“Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.”

Andrea Gibson Performs ‘Privilege Is Never Having to Think About It’ — Everyday Feminism

Posted on November 6, 2014 by charissagrace

Andrea Gibson Performs ‘Privilege Is Never Having to Think About It’ — Everyday Feminism.

Constance…this is a great post, and should make you think. The link takes you to a performance…I am posting the poem here in transcript form, and the decisions about line breaks are mine…if it is good, credit to Andrea Gibson and if it is bad blame to me.

Give some thinking about privilege, cus chances are, all of us who have WordPress Blogs likely do indeed have some privilege as well…but I will let you figure out how that works!

Charissa Grace

This poem has two working titles. It might end up having five working titles.
The first one is “Privilege Is Never Having to Think About It.”
And the second one is “Touring with a Black Poet: For Sonya Renee.”

She steps out
of the hotel bathroom dressed to the nines —
stilettos sharp in her glossy, glossy,
elegant, tailored, boom glittering,
a bold burgundy neckline —
locks her shining eyes on the worn t-shirt
I haven’t changed in days and says,
“Are you going to wear that on stage?”

I smile,
gloating in the cool of my gritty apathy,
the oh-so-thrift-store of my dirty grunge.

She says, “honey, do you have any idea
how much privilege it takes
to think it is cool to dress poor?
You wear that dirty shirt;
you are a radical saving the world.
I wear that dirty shirt,
and I am a broke junkie thief
getting followed around every store.”

That conversation happened years ago.
On the same tour where Sonya watched
me pay 75 bucks to have my hair
cut in a way that would make me look
like — quote — like
“I couldn’t afford a haircut.”

The same tour that began
the day after I was the feature performer
at a university’s women of color symposium.
No, I did not ask whether or not
featuring a woman of color instead.
Yes, I got paid. I’m pretty sure it was a good paycheck.

Just like
I’m pretty sure someone licked the paycheck
when Trayvon Martin’s gun range targets
got sold out in two days.

I know those things are not exactly the same

I know I wanted to burn
every noose white seam of our cotton flag
when Trayvon Martin’s mother
was on the witness stand
trying to convince a jury
of mostly white mothers that
she could actually recognize
the sound of her own son’s scream.

I know I wanted to
split the fucking sky
when I heard
the whip of the verdict
and Sonya had posted online,
“How many different ways
can this country tell me
I am worthless?”

I know it was right then
that I walked upstairs and started counting
the hoodies in my closet. I have fourteen hoodies
that tell me I will never be forced
to dress a wound as deep as my mother’s heart.
She will never be woken in her sleep
to peel my body off gated grass,
to beg God to sew the hole in my chest.

I know my family will never
have to hear justice, say it wasn’t
until I was lying in my casket
that I was wearing the right clothes.

I know a woman
who once knew a woman
who collected the metal collars
they used to lock around
the necks of black children
to chain them to the auction block.
I was told
she hung them
on the walls of her home
for decoration.

I remember when I used to believe
that was the entire definition of racism.

Believed there was no one
hanging in my wardrobe.
Believed my style
had nothing in common
with king Leopold’s.
Thought I am not
outfitting the Congo
in spilled blood.

I am just buttoning up my shirt here.
I am just rolling up my sleeves.
I am not unstitching the face of Emmett Till.
I am not unzippering the wail of his mother’s grief.

The laces of my shoes are just the laces of my shoes.
They could not tie a body to a tree.
I am not fashioning a noose here.

Sonya, do you hear me?

My compassion is not a costume.
My passivity is not hate.
My privilege is not genocide.
This is just how I cut my hair.
That was just how they cut the check.
This is just how I dress.

Your wound.

I don’t even think about
what I wear.

Days and Nights and Nesting Dolls

Posted on November 6, 2014 by charissagrace

We walked in that old thrift shop musty,
dingy light seeping around stacked shag carpets
and formica tables piled high with bakelight plates.
It smelled of dried rain and wet mildew.

It beckoned us luridly, promising hidden treasures
squirreled away in dank depths and skinny aisles
piled high and tippling.

Your eyes glinted with purpose and glee
like Sherlock Holmes on the case,
so I resigned myself, Watson-like,
to the chase and followed
your dashing red boiled wool coat
and white fuzzy stocking cap deeper in
to the belly of this lazing laughing thrift whore—err—store.

And sure enough your squeak of discovery
morphed into a squeal of delight
and you held up your find like Aphrodite
holding up her heart to Adonis’ ruby thirsty gorgeous lips,
and you possessed, moved demi detourné
and grinned gleeful in the tight aisle
when changement you spun to hand me
your thrifty trove plunder…wait…

Russian nesting doll?

“Oh Charissa!!” You spoke softly
but your sotto voce rang in my heart booming
cus you know that place big and special
that only you live in and call my Lady’s Chamber…
“It’s soo you!” You cooed and fussed in total committed certainty
that this odd intricacy was me.

It was wood, golden glossy with painted folksy face

…and it was male?? Wait. Whaaaat is…?

You saw me, my confusion in this
the only time in my living memory
you had paid this shell more than
the passing glance and haughty sniff

we all share at how uncooperative
our bodies can be, and your smile
more tender than all the leaves of every Beech and Birch under the moon.

“Oh Sweetie, let me tell you…these dolls…you…well,
there is a history here, right?
Tradition carves these, dolls within the dolls within the dolls
until the core and look! Just open it up, ‘kay?”

My eyes were blurry and my nose felt raw
rubbed in rough coarse handkerchief flesh
oversized and clumsy and inside my lil toes
throbbed hard in hurt stomped ache
from what you had not done ever
and yet had brandished that day
in triumphant tinkling delight…

but behind your insistent excitement
I saw awareness, I saw your pleading strong
ask of my trusting heart open to you
there and waiting…

So I took it, I felt
its smooth warm grain
inviting and fairly singing
of mystery and glad discovery
and with a last foreboding look
at your face illumined I twisted it open
to find the waiting center was another doll like the first
and painted gaily and it was female…

and when I looked inquiring
if I should open it too,
your fierce nod was
in time to the trembling
of my hands as meaning
washed me and when
I twisted it open
the skritch of the wood turning
sang together with your
smothered cry of joy in me…

..and I saw the small girl I am
but never was and inside
the baby whole and of one piece…
“See?? I told you, Charissa! It’s SOO you!”
And with that, you pushed past me
like winds pushing past the windmills
and me turning in your wake
to follow you to the place
of purchase and presentation.

I sit and stare at those dolls…
I remember that day when you were here
and our short time was forever and our poor spouses weary
from our fevered pursuits so fueled by that find
and so eager for our next parable-mystery tracked out…
and all the days since, and

who knew that so many dolls
could fit in so many days?
So many you’s in me and me’s in you
as we walked us the streets of life together
and laughed our way deeper inside
from me to you and back to me,
and us, nested there within.

Sands and Shadows and Pearls

Posted on November 4, 2014 by charissagrace

tumblr_n8uexsxvE21svnysso1_1280 I do shed tears, these days
(and nights…it is strange to wake
and find the wet residue of sorrows
dried and digging at the corners of my eyes),
I also shed dreams too
(like tears).

I dreamed, last night
(last night…it is strange to wake
and find the dry remnants of dreams
moist and pressed, pushing into the spaces between me and my pillow),
I also shed tears too
(like dreams).

I think…yes.

I dreamed that I walked lands crying
and my tears fell on red sands glistening
(my tears glistening, not the sands, they lay leering, skulking, glaring flat and angry).

my tears
(the ones in my dreams, the ones with no shadow)
my tears on red sands sizzled
because I had no shadow, they had no shadow
(the tears and me, not the sands and dreams) tumblr_n7toayaEkz1sifsb9o1_1280

and then in that glaring sun unbridled, that staring star unfiltered
they (my tears) became pearls
of white
and ivory
and pink
(like the armpits of abalones, who also learned to live without shadows)

they
(my tears, not the abalones, or the red sands, or the shadows)
became pearls of My Mother, the Mother of Pearls
(born of tears shed on red sands glaring, tears glistening and without shadow)
and then I saw, Her (not shadows or sands) walking there,
sowing in tears and reaping in pearls with nary a diamond in sight
(because diamonds have shadows and slinky songs and glittery platinum brittle best friends)
and She turned to me, She bid me pick them up
(the pearls, not sands and shadows)

and take…eat…and I did and where they lay the sand was gone
(like shadows flee daylight)
and green grass jumped lush into my eyes with verdant glee!
And the pearls tasted like honey
(and clear thirst-quenching shadow-clearing life)
and the pearls became glory within me
and I rose up on glory, I rose up in glory,
glory within me and glory in the air
(and the pearls of my Mother, not the sands and shadows)
and I saw my shadow, distant and crumpled and pinned to the ground
for always by arrows and spears and the knives
of those children of red sand and shadows.
life_in_color_by_bojan1558-d5xq6zb

And just as I began to wake
I realized that ever would they gather there,
around that shadow pinned and empty of all save their vitriol and hate
while I walked free but achy across the red sands, with no shadow
between me and that stark sun except for the glory
that’s given by pearls plucked from green grass so verdant
that used to be red sand hot
on which was shed precious
tears without shadow.

So I wake, each time
(not to day, not in night, I wake to me)
I wake and realize I do not need a shadow
to stand between me and the sun and some something
to tell me that I am, I am.

I just need those tears
shed on sands red and glaring
become pearls from my Mother
to wrap me in glory and glory wrapped in me
and no shadow
my shadow forever

and pearls

Messages Off a Cigarette – Draught | calliopes lyre

Posted on November 3, 2014 by charissagrace

Messages Off a Cigarette – Draught | calliopes lyre.

This one I decided to press, rather than reblog…wander on over to Cookie’s blog, won’t you? I know I am much the richer because of it, and quite a lot of the pain that I had no words for (omg, yes, imagine that! CHARISSA has no words????) she managed to tap into and say for me…

…and for that measure of relief, I am grateful. It is like a thumb push on the morphine pump of hope to keep me going.

Confessions

Posted on November 2, 2014 by charissagrace

I sit here, like my robin there,
watching the geese overhead
in their socially aware V
pointing all together and chattering
in honking gasps of glory and gathering.

My robin looks up,
head cocked and eye a-glitter
and wonders what the hub bub is all about…
and also wonders why she sits,
alone and remaining
as the wind grows chill
and the sky grows grey
and the air grows still
as the more social birds
gather up and leave together
on soft grey southern wings.

Didn’t we used to all trill and honk
and tweet and cheep together?
And I came everyday eager to the yard,
to flit and look for bugs and worms and seeds…

but now? As the leaves have left
and the geese are leaving
and the cats still lurk in black slashes
of slink and dash and calico camouflage
patterns against the browning grass?

I really don’t understand
this community thing
when I show up
everyday in the yard,
but worms taste
wriggly and gritty
without any company.

Maybe the high rock raptors
had it right all along,
maybe solitary unconfinement
was better than that
surface social refinement?

And then the robin
swells her breast with breath,
quivers behind her black bright eye,
and takes wing to fly,
and make her moves
around the growing absence
in the winter neighborhood waiting
until the spring once again
brings those members in the moment
noisy and social, and hell bent
on the seeds and bugs of the verdant yard.

21 Gun Salute

Posted on November 2, 2014 by charissagrace

They stood there,
silhouetted against the sunrise
and rifles aimed, at me
silhouetted against the velvet dark
of dawning and birth and being,
silhouetted against that red brick wall.

21 guns, barrels like unblinking eyes,
black, flat depths unblinking too
and peering from their graves
in grim unfeeling determination
to put me in my place,
put me in my grave,
put me back with them.

There are 3 bullets among them,
the 21 guns staring unblinking and grim,
and they comfort themselves with lies
that they do not know who has the bullets…
but I do, I know, I see
the silver winking bright
in the unblinking barrels

once (Father!)
twice (Forgive them!)
thrice (They know not what they do!)

And then the lightning struck
in those volleys of thunder raining down
over my ears as my eyes went bright
and my vision streaked red and silver
in terror and tragic tremour and
violent shuddery release.

It knocked me out of my shoes
and pinned my shadow against that
smooth red brick wall, now pitted
three times pitiless and gaping,
and I felt funny somehow, floating there,
hanging light and airy, somehow too light
without my shadow, crumpled
and remaining nailed
to brick and beam
by palm and palm and foot
and those empty shoes, kicked akimbo
by my eager rushing exit from that place.

Right under their noses!
I rose up unseen
while they stared on
in horror and resignation
except for the three
who leered in hungry glee
and desperate jealous lusty thirst.
But for just a bit, I stayed,
to move from gun to gun
and kiss the barrels each one cold
(and 3 so hot and acrid)
and then I began to rise and leave,
when I heard some flat dead zombie voice say
“get that thing out of here and clean this mess up”.

I saw that it was one of them,
a former being who was
a current corporate walking dead
(but hey, see this company credit card?)
and dressed
in shoes and sunglasses
and lumpy
in the dawn’s early light
and I couldn’t tell
what was more offensive:
my shoes skewed
sideways and useless
or my shadow
pinned and unmoving?

I shed one celestial tear
and rose up on the sound
of 21 flat cracks still ringing
and I leapt graceful
on feet bare and light
from sounds of wrong
to sounds of ever right
and found my wings
midst the flurry of sound and fury
and flew away for good
to a 21 gun salute.

This Drifty-Floaty Timeless Moment

Posted on November 2, 2014 by charissagrace

tumblr_ne97jfRo0t1rnheglo1_r1_500

Hanging here,
this moment,
this drifty-floaty
timeless moment,
timeless

like the moment just before
a leaf decides to let go
but the tree doesn’t yet know it,
so it waits, the leaf, it waits
to leave and never return.

It’s this moment, still,
between determined faith and action,
between sharp heart felt questions

(like whether God loves me or tolerates me, or cares or hears my prayers or is even near?)

and dark deep-felt screaming
despair unquestioning running
ragged and burning in flames
undulating from faith to action
shoving hard against paralysis.

This drifty floaty
timeless moment
lingers, lurches,
lunges, becomes

that drifty floaty
timeless movement
torn loose,
tossed down
spinning down
pinwheeling down

and it drops, it drifts,
it breaks and crashes, it dashes
into a thousand brilliant colors
and a million diamond drops
each and everyone shouting forever

I was!
I was, in my birth,
and I am!
I am in my courage
and I will be!
I will be

in the sea
and its salty desire, in the dirt
and its brown gritty tang,
in tree roots drawn up liquid again
from the ground to the limbs thru the leaves there to breathe

and to fly up and shine
in the glowing deep night
in the twinkle and tingling cold there to
glitter and shimmer like silver elixir
for seraphim thirsty in splendour…

slaking the thirst of angels…

stoking desire in God…

tumblr_ne8exoJPxI1qft4nwo1_1280

then, now
someday, now,
hanging in this moment
midst the fragrances of hope
and stormy lightning-strike ozone
stark and fresh and scintillating
in the stillness of the moment,
of the drifty-floaty moment
before movement,

this drifty-floaty timeless moment

Our Paris, our Pretty Poetic Paris

Posted on November 1, 2014 by charissagrace

Good morning Constance…and Pamela! 🙂

If you have been reading here a while you will know that I was sooo blessed by Mama to run across Lynda Bullerwell…her site is over at forget-me-not .
I am continually amazed by her poetry and the truly significant and moving poems she writes. But even more, I have been amazed and warmed and felt such connection in how it is as if we share the same muse, a flitty lil fairy of the realm Poetic who loves to sprinkle her magic pixie-poety dust upon us each, and then scrape if off and sprinkle the mix onto each other!

There have been times when we wrote nearly the exact same poem, and yet it had different clothes on, and revolved around different images, but it was still the same one…and lately for me, as I have been choked by sorrow, burdened by betrayal and assaulted by online a-holes, Lynda has been my surrogate, and has written out my own hurts and haunts and hallelujahs.

I am ever so grateful…company in this life, especially in inner spaces that had always been solitary territories, is such a gift, such a precious gift.

Lynda wrote a poem yesterday, which just pulled a comment out of me as if I had been with her in the poem’s conception and making. It tumbled out of me breathless and intoxicated and full of determination to tattoo itself to our outside skin just as Lynda’s poem had tattooed itself inside our heart.

Lynda loved it (thank you for that, Sis), and suggested that I post the comment…and I thought that a collaborational moment may even be better? She loved that too.

So here is our poem…hers, and mine. I am taking liberties with her lines and meter. Any deficiences therein are my mistakes, and any glories revealed were already there.

PS: Lynda, if it just simply cannot work for you, let me know and I will put it in its original form, which is just fine! It was the collaborative notion that appealed to me!

Love, Charissa

❤

Our Paris, our Pretty Poetic Paris

ONE: Just Desserts
(Our, our Poetic)

We could visit Paris, walk in the rain
without an umbrella and sit
on the steps of Eglise Saint-Etienne-du-Mont
when the clock strikes twelve and we are back
in that club rubbing shoulders with Hemingway;
shots of wisdom swirling in cocktail glasses
with cherries, olives or whatever you fancy;
culture parading its diversity
in paintings by Picasso

that make you take a second look

and wonder where a mind could go
to find such muse, blue and clearer than sea water,
these syllables that taunt you in your sleep,
weigh on you in vibrant colors of indigo, azure;
scents of lavender filling pretty stationary
tempting you to write, scratching you
from the inside, these words dying to escape
from pink painted lips that only
want to feel that last goodnight kiss.

TWO: Post-Midnight Aperitifs
(Paris, Pretty Paris)

…but when my limpid pen stirred
to stroke across the paperskin, to move
light mountains like what we saw, it only
squeaked with dry throat and trembled
…oh that wine, it made me laff and you
looked so CUTE with that escargot, and omg
did our sexy waiter actually brush your arm???
and hey thanks for that lil white flower,
truth is it breaks my heart

more than this Picasso guy, cus he’s no Van Gogh…

…and your laughing lullabye to me last nite
as we slept, you there, and me here,
our stockings half on half off, in
our intoxicated heady cuvée
of life and grape and sea and garden
and you silly songed me to sleep…
…but i most of all loved when
you saw him, Hemingway and pointed
him out to me and me drunk just a scosh,

I said he looked like Hawmingway

cus he hemmed and hawed so much
trying to figure out if he wanted to be brave or to be dead
…and you cackled like the gypsy woman did when we
put those silly hats on our heads backwards and sideways
while we lingered at her table there in the street
and she spelled the money out of our purses
…most of all I loved that…
cus you made me feel brave and knowing
that i was vital and alive and would never die

no matter how tired and sleepy i eventually get.

Love, your companion in our Paris,
our Principality of Poetry in
our Province of Wonder…
your co-conspiritor Charissa,
Sis

Hummingbird Hurricanes

Posted on October 30, 2014 by charissagrace

all was hushed and quiet, so still
that the fiercely beaten air
fanned by that ruby throated
hummingbird became a hurricane.
her breath was fast and furious
in crimson jeweled puffs darting,
diving streaky panting gasps,
her wings whirring, fluttering frantic
roaring in the looming silence,
in my towering still moment
me so quiet here, so settled
and so solid that Nia-gara Herself would
whimper and under her breath
would mumble terse and choked,
reduced to churny tumble.

then a solitary cricket
just erupted into singing
and then nothing dared to stir
dared draw breath or dared to move…

and there,
in this space of cricket clamour,
in the hurricane of hummingbird winds
blowing but so far away
on lost lamenting shores
(in the edges, in the edges)
and an instant comes, arrives

when a wave is born and rises up
no longer sea but now itself
and knowing time and longing
to emerge and run forever
to the moon and to the shore…

this kinetic stillness stretches
in this intersecting moment
touching time and touching timeless

from the whirring wings aflutter
and the cricket in the gutter
and Niagara’s jealous mutter

to this wave leapt up from clutter
hanging on that crucifix there
not yet broken by its futile try

to fly across the endless sky
to kiss the moon and touch
her golden placid face…

the moment…the wave

hanging

no more sea from which it heaved
but not yet broken and unbalanced,
not yet shattered on the edges

not yet fractured there forever
to be that wave again…
…never…

that one moment of moon passion
and that rushing exaltation
(in the eye, in the song, in the mutter of this matter)

and then the moment shatters
and foretells a falling future
and the wave loses its option
has no way to retain wholeness
and just slide back unobtrusive
to the silver sea unbroken
there to merge again with nothing
and unknowing.

and the hummingbird is stricken
in the sound and in the breaking
of a moment and a wave
in a hurricane of movement
midst the singing of the cricket
and the mutter of that falls
and it darts away, is gone,
trailing airy sangre breaths
and the cricket falls asleep
and Niagara is emboldened
to again assert Her tumble
and the hurricane is gone,
yes the moment it has broken
and the Voice of God has spoken
in the quiet, in the mist.

but for me, well moments still
string together into prayer beads
slipping smoothly thru my fingers
as I mutter like Niagara
and I sing the cricket song
with my hurricane-heart flutter,
wings a-beating with such longing
for another rising moment
to arrive and to break over me
in knowing soft moon passion
and a promise of redemption
and release to finally rise
and fly away, my spirit panting
in red puffs and exaltation
when I reach the shore so broken
I can be no more there broken…

until then, well I will live,
midst the whirring,
in the singing
thru the muttering
in the breaking
on the shores
of Golden Morning.

Powerful Quote…Charissa Perspective

Posted on October 29, 2014 by charissagrace

“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

So tragic…and yet so beautifully written

Posted on October 27, 2014 by charissagrace

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Bleeding Light and Memory (2014 version)

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Our Paris, our Pretty Poetic Paris

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