Says who?

I am owned by these fictional characters

They guide my waking life, rule what I have the chance to do.

I tell them what I want them to do.

They retort with what actually happened.

It’s usually much more depressing than what I

Planned (like real life I

guess) But they are strong characters

And shan’t do anything they don’t want

So I concede. Depressing it is.

Solidarity

There’s talk of teamwork, of

What it means to band together.

There’s shouting of political ideas,

Cries for more and more enthusiasm.

But it’s not really enthusiasm that drives this process.

It’s need.

It’s a need you can feel deep in your bones,

One that pulls the best out of people,

Encouraging them to shine and to change.

So maybe the word isn’t solidarity,

It’s need.

A need for power, for control, for wages,

For health insurance, for fair worker’s rights.

We give you solidarity when you have need,

I hope you can some day return the favor.

Perloff – this poem is to make up for the class I missed on Tuesday. 

A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet,

And Nikolas certainly makes Perloff sweeter.

How refreshing ideas and abstracts, no ties to the physical.

A great mass of free floating language begs for poetry

Because it is human nature to give birth to patterns.

Or do patterns give birth to human nature?

Traffic has a rhythm and a pattern, reports turning

Drudgery into poetry.

Poetry needs a revolution just like art.

This is not a pipe and this is not a poem.

But it is the idea of a pipe and the idea of a poem.

People make poetry with more than just words.

Here we conceptualize the unimaginable,

The quiet daily life.

Alien

A friend of a friend who is an editing intern

Offered to edit my story. She shattered my

Fragile spun forgetting, my hopes that maybe

Someday I will manage to be normal.

She didn’t understand my story, editing it

With all the finesse of a bull in a china shop.

It clattered to the ground in pieces, the meaning lost

Because she could not put herself in the shoes

Of this lost little trans* boy. Her edits made him

Sound like a butch girl, a woman who he is not.

Sometimes I go about my daily life and I get to forget

That I am an alien. I am an impostor, a conundrum that

Shouldn’t exist. I am transgender, a transcender of

Cultural norms. So unique, a zoo animal.

And then something like this happens.

I will do this with my story many times, if it gets picked up.

I will shelter this lonely little trans* boy and keep him from

Being turned into a butch girl. I will explain myself

Justify my existence before anything will ever happen,

Before my writing will ever be more than a pipe dream.

It’s just so tiring. Surely somebody would understand.

But maybe if people understood I wouldn’t need to write.

I ask myself would I rather be doing anything else and the answer Is no.

I would not give up the muse of my gender for a normal life.

I just wish it wasn’t so tired a bargain.

Cancer

It is a beast that roars in the night, eating

The people you love. It is not so easily slain

As a simple beast. Radiation changes them, takes away

Who they are and replaces them with someone

More jittery, more cranky.

Their flesh melts away, they are not there.

Instead, they sleep. They sleep, they eat, they need.

They tire, they hunger. Oh, but they survive.

It is hell and it is painful, but they survive,

Flirting with addiction triggers, defying this monster

Ripping away at their insides.

But what if it ever comes back?

Chains

The quilt I never made for you, a double Irish chain

Weighs heavily on me today.

You never got a chance to add your quilt to

All of the generations that came before you.

Even when your body was broken you engineered a way

To make sure that you could still craft, could still

Make beautiful works.

You gave me a job, gave me a chance.

But you’re not here any more, stolen away

By multiple sclerosis. Even when your body

Was breaking down, falling apart

You had the best sense of humor of anyone

That I have ever met. Will I still be able to make the chain for you?

Something to hold you to this Earth now

That you can no longer hold yourself. I don’t know.

You left behind your children and husband

And a collection of quilts that would be the envy of

Just about anyone. On me you left behind

The ability to stand up for myself, even when people

Are family, that blood isn’t any thicker than the loyalty

That comes with it. You taught me your humor, your management

The ability to look at people and laugh. I miss you.

I will continue to miss you when I head home

And don’t have you to talk to about my mother,

Or her boyfriend, or politics, or sports.

I will chain you to the Earth with my memories,

With your quilts.

I hope you found heaven, because you certainly

Deserve it.

 Ink

I can’t read my own handwriting when I write quickly.

Which is a problem when I can only write by hand.

Eighty pages of chicken scratch to somehow

Turn into a story. The paper responds better

Than any keyboard, my mark left in the world.

My hands write better when they move, get rubbed In ink and marked.

I can touch the language here

It isn’t filtered by a screen or the perfection that is typing.

Here is where my drafts are born, because drafts are

Messy, imperfect and full of flaws.

On the computer, they will be edited and processed

Turned into something clean and pure.

This is  necessary evil, because in its raw state of ink

And flaws, my story is not what it should be to others.

It is a raw idea I mold much like a potter, working clay

Until there is something beautiful and functional.

Except I can’t read my own writing.

Always an exciting adventure.

The Most Beautiful Thing – somewhat suggestive

The Most Beautiful Thing

Oh it’s dark. But a small light shines,

Illuminating what little I can see of her.

It’s blurry. My glasses are next to the light,

Left there to avoid getting dirty. Dirtier.

 

Oh, we’re sweaty and sticky. I am not allowed

To do anything. So I lay and compose poetry

Distracting myself from the goddess sticking

 

Oh so elegantly to my skin. Her noises drive me

Wild. They make me want to help. But I am not

Allowed. Shift hips. Slide into her. There, yes there.

 

Oh her noises. I melt against her. It’s so hard to lie

And do nothing when she’s making those noises. Poetry.

The way people flow together, flow apart. The way that we

Flow together and flow apart.

 

Oh she’s screaming. This is the most beautiful thing

As she falls onto me, weak, knees not working. I can move.

So I do. I hug her close, stroke her hair. My turn.

 

Oh, I’m looking forward to this.

 

Carving – self injury trigger

Carving

I wish it was as easy to see

The marks that not cutting

Leave on me

As the jagged open wounds ripped

By a dull knife wielded in shame.

 

Because scars are a reminder of what you did.

But I don’t have anything so neat for what

I don’t do.

 

I have a ring. Silver. It sits on my finger.

A reminder of how long I have not cut.

861 Days. (I had to look it up. I am not

Careful enough to keep count). Two years is

The number I remember.

 

The way the ring sits the lines remind me

Of a tree. Resting on my finger, breathing with me

As I hold on to my will power hold off this thing

That I will never be able to beat.

 

For the rest of my life I will probably

Count those days.

I’m fucking proud of those days,

All of them hard won.

 Fast Lane

Fast Lane

My life is forever going to be slow.

I live at a different pace because my body

Demands. Its demands grate on my nerves.

I see people fly by me, doing things so

Effortlessly. Look, this person works

And goes to school. They work and they

Go to school and they never wear dirty underwear

Because they are too tired to get out of bed.

 

What a world that would be, so different.

How much could I get done if I was not me

With this disability?

Oh, but where my will, my will did it come from?

Would I still have my will if I did not have to shape

My body away from so much disability?

How much would I get done if I was not me

With this disability?

 

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

I have questions without answers (doesn’t

Everyone?) because what I want, oh what I want

Is to go into the fast lane with my peers, see them

LIVE.

But I can’t. I can’t live like them, my body (OH

MY BODY) will not allow it.

 

I sit in my chair as people speed by.

Fine, I huff. Fine, fine, fine. I will sit

And watch what I cannot have. I will paint

My chair wings, I will give it wheels, give it

Life.

I might not go anywhere, but I can make my own world.

If I must be caged, it will be a pretty cage

Made of language and stories, freedom from

My own little corner, in my own little chair.

 

Home

I am built

From the taunts of catty rich girls.

They are hurdles on my path

To boyhoood.

 

I am filled

With the sounds of rushing

Creek water. Peace and quiet here

When nowhere else feels

Like home.

 

I am the sounds

Of demons being slayed

In the basement

Of a dissertation being slayed

In an upstairs study.

Life defined by two absences

As much as what is present

 

I have rot

From this house that tried

To kill me,

Life away from friends and school and

Sanity

 

I am the couch

Where I lost my virgnity

This old combination of cloth

Cushion and wood a bigger

Absence than my father.

 I am

A cripple. Sixty years old

At least on the inside.

Pills and bottles, mobility aids.

My body is a husk. Or something

I work around, not with.

Maybe I would get along better

If I tried with not around

But it is demanding, picky about

How much I sleep, what I eat

When I do what  do

So much I cannot give it

Or even

That it won’t give itself.

Life is to busy for me to rest away

All of the aches and pains. So maybe

I am pain. Life is pain in

My fingers, elbows, ribs, knees, lungs.

Loud or quiet but always

Always there.

Yet I go on.

Maybe that makes me pain’s super villain.

Paws

Your paws will carry me.

They will guide my life as you

Help to grant me my freedom

From fear and anxiety.

These paws carry your big and magnificent

Body. Life without you, without

Those paws would be bleak indeed.

 

Life

Life is a journey of seeking.

We look for what we want to do

When we grow up.

We look for items, family

Schools, careers, friends, books

Better days, food, bathrooms, language.

A college, a love, a spouse.

We look for purpose, for meaning.

For lost children’s shoes, baby toys,

Glasses, teeth, soft food, a bed.

Whatever it is we look and search,

Finding things that define our life

Even as we dont’ know why

We are are here or if anyone

Made us, if we are alone.

Life is a search and a joy,

A noble quest for something we

Never can quite idntify

Curiosity at its best,

Resilience and drive of the

Indomitable human spirit.

We will go mad trying

To define ourselves with language,

And from that madness

There is poetry.

Away

Who am I when

I am you

Away, away, I fly

Fleeing inside

My inner eye

 

Dance, dance little puppet

For the master demands

Wake up, wake up

The puppeteer’s hands.

 

Raise oh raise

The curtain high

Come one, come all

A show is nigh

 

The boy who is

But somehow isn’t

A magic act so unresilient

 

Stuff here, tuck there

Now bind it all down

No boy here just

A girl all worn down.

 

Ironies in Insults

Calling someone a pansy

Is a bit ironic.

Pansies are tough flowers.

Scouts of spring peeping

Up through snow and freeze.

They don’t need much water

Thrive with very little attention.

Not the kind of flower that coloquially

Means someone weaker, someone

Who is gentle, afraid of conflict,

Possibly a mama’s boy.

Pansies thrive in Colorado weather

One of the few flowers to make it

Entirely untended (the other being

tulips) No small feat

With March blizzards, May flurries.

Tougher than we give them credit.

Nature

Trying to define nature is like

Trying to define art. Because

Nature itself like human nature

Is the essence, the whole,

The soul of it.

But humans are nature

We are fruit of this

Evolutionary tree, born of nature.

Nature is a part of our essence

Of our history because those trees

Out live us. They become something

Beyond what we live to see.

Self

Perhaps we find ourselves in nature

Because in nature

There               is               space to

B                                   E

R                          H

E               T

A

Away from everyone telling us that

Our lives will be better, more complete

If we act this way or

Buy those products

Fill ourselves with other people

Other things

Here there is none of that

Thoughts, bird songs, wind and river.

Beautiful sights and air.

Time for talk, quiet focus, hard work.

Hard beds.

Here you exist, eat, sleep.

Are.

This is nature, with room for

Your nature

As much as you exist

Without anyone else.

I Graph Relationships

Novelists are actually mathematicians.

We graph the interplay of conversation

Show the probabilities of human interaction

Write equations for the human heart

Breaking down the large and infinite into

Personal chunks of people

 

There is gravity in relationships

The come hither/go away in love

Mapped out with the words of an author

Factoring out a person from

The role they play in their lives

 

The orbit of people around God

Whomever they believe a deity to be

Sucked in by faith and an idea

So much bigger than who they are.

Other people spin around, drawn close

But somehow never touching.

 

Mathematics is poetry is people

We echo the patterns of the people before us

Who echo the patterns of the world.

What patterns, what poems, what dreams.

And this is why I write.

 

Bead Poem

Twelve year olds aren’t good at fundraising.

But I did it anyway.

I sold about ten dollar’s worth

Of beaded animals for my sister’s

Mission trip.

I wanted to help.

So I did.

I have bead critters somewhere

Or I did before the moves.

All with names in different sizes,

Skunks and a lochness and a duck

Snow man, mice. Lots of mice.

One rabbit.

Not stuffed animals, not cuddly.

But I made something.

Spheres and stories of my childhood,

Audio books and colors, patterns.

So much loss in growing up, dicvorce.

Where my spheres, but perhaps

Time to let them go.

I mourn them more than my father (they were

there far more than he) Relics of a simpler time.

Soft and rounded memories, taken over

By quilts and cloth and love.

More practical, more fun, more involved.

I still miss the quiet rhythm,

Reminder of my nimble fingers.

Language my new beads, new craft.

Less messy, cheaper. More portable.

Somehow less tangible.

I was four. Which is funny, because

One in four. This number seems low

To me because of who I know. So many

Survivors. People with broken hearts and

Violated bodies.

 

Stuck inside life with the worst moment

On repeat. Hear a loud noise? Away, away

Away I go. Down into the rabbit hole.

Only the rabbit isn’t late. He’s angry.

 

Drugging others is for cowards. The friend zone

Is a place where people live when they cannot accept

That sometimes women want men around for things

Other than sex.

 

And this is why I write. This is why I spent six hours

On four pages when on a good day, it takes an hour to write

Five pages. I am telling the story of a woman who survives everything.

 

Maybe if I tell her story I will believe it of myself.

Fantasy lives inside my blood.

It has defined my childhood since I could read.

I got Harry Potter for my fifth birthday, wrapped

With shiny unicorns. (I still have that

paper somewhere). When I was nine I read

Tamora Pierce for the first time.

And this was fire in my veins because

I wanted to be Kel, Protector of the Small.

Here was a woman in writing that I

Not only could, but wanted

To look up to. 

Stories like these I’ve wanted to write

My whole life. So why now but

Not back then? It is still

Rough.

Still easy to tell that I love Tamora Pierce,

My own style immature. But maybe

Telling my own story means that now

I can tell other stories. Or at least…

That’s what the novel taking over my life says.