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Excerpt from Questions of Existence that I particularly love

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Here I am

Outside

Surrounded by such an abundance of life

The thick spring air

The grass

The thousand and one types of trees

The gray storm clouds

The wind

It is all dripping with life

And here I sit

Sad and stressed on the porch steps

No knowing what the future holds

Not knowing how to love the world best

Fumbling along with my little human heart

Feeling things I don’t know how to feel

And the earth around me

Exists exactly as she does

All I have to give is the gift of my existence

And that is enough

That has to be enough

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Poems like to take themselves seriously, and i like to write seriously, but at the same time, i feel like now is a time that i want to let go a bit, i want what i write to have more color in it than serious.

And I guess it could have both, but the slumping of my shoulders has been holding it down, the way my breath catches in my throat. The steps I take, back and forth. Sometimes I feel like there's a fist in my chest and she is holding all of it and one day her grip will fail, and what then? How to be a human being? How to balance a brain that doesn’t know what it’s doing, how to be soft and delicate and uncertain, how to dance and cry and pray, how to be afraid.

The wild pieces of us are forgetting this. Their singing voices and howls at the night are being drowned by typing keys and coffee machines and too much of not enough. They are aching and hungry and awake. Reach deep and find them, I know, I know, I know that you can.

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A poem for burning man

Sitting at the edge of myself here

In this cacophony

This mad celebration of fire and insanity and dance and elsewhere

Here in this moment I have left myself

The spirit sat me down and

I cannot hear

And I can barely stand to look at the flames

It is so intense

It is death

Indulgence

Lust

Intensity

And I am feeling it

And I am soft and small

I am air

And I feed the flames

And I was eaten in that moment

A piece of me went to the fire and I was left

Sitting and spinning on the earth

Out of myself

And burning burning burning.

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Some of my favorite words I’ve ever written

–with inspiration from @bottlecap-press and Elie Weisel's Night

And tomorrow they will tell us ten more terrible things

And we will lie in bed

And dream and tremble

Maybe the water has dried up

Maybe bats are extinct 

and we will never again see their little irreplaceable bodies filling up the sky

Maybe the war is still going

Still, 11,000 years on.

Maybe people are still hating and hurting and healing

Maybe he's dead at 26 from too much of 

not enough

Maybe we are all drowning in this.

But listen,

Listen. 

We are still

Laughing in the library

We are still smelling flowers

And getting drenched

We still cut our hair

And tell stories

And cook dinner for our loves

And still

11,000 years on

We hold hands

We look into eachothers eyes

We say:

I love you and I see you.

These are the first human words.

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There are things i can't be angry about

Because if i am they will laugh

They won't take me seriously

This story has been told for centuries

There are things i can't be angry about

Because if i am the feelings i'm feeling will be too big

If i am people won't listen

If i am the whole world would surely blow apart with the injustice of it

There are things i can't be angry about because i have a uterus

Because i make babies

Because i smile and agree and don't say anything

Because the whole world is telling me quietly how to be

There are things i can't be angry about because where do I put it?

If i let my anger out

If i scream and shout and tear all my hair out

What will it do?

Will I have control over my body then?

Will the men who think they can make better decisions than me understand?

Will they get it?

No.

They will laugh

They will say,

Hysterics. Silly woman.

And they will continue to think that the only way the world is

Is how it is through their eyes.

They will refuse to even try and understand

They think they're right, they think they're listening to us

They are not.

And when they speak they will do it better than me

And people will listen

Because they are a man

Because society says “okay thats a good reason to listen to someone”

Well fuck you

And fuck society

There are things i can't be angry about because

What can i do?

When they say,

“Actually I've never given birth and never can, but god says it's bad so let's make sure no matter what happened to you, and no matter what you want, you have to.”

“But also we realize you need help with that kid, but lets go ahead and wait till this law is passed to even try”

“Oh and also no time off work”

And “oops he's not giving you child support, how is that my problem?”

And “oh, your body and hormones have been through all this without your consent hmmm

But at least you didn't kill your baby”

Like an abortion is easy for anyone

Like that little beam of a potential life is worth more than me

Like i matter less

Like i am this empty vessel you control

Like my only worth is giving birth.

I feel like you don't care about me

When you make decisions for me

When you control

my

Freedom

What i hear is

Fuck you and

your unborn baby matters more.

But only when its inside you

Once its out

I don't give a fuck actually

There are things i can't be angry about because i have to many words to say

But i don't have a dick

I make babies

So who'd listen

anyway?

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Marina Tsvetaeva, from “One A Red Horse”, Bride of Ice

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June Jordan, from "Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L.", Directed by Desire: The Complete Poems of June Jordan

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What do I have as neither?

What is my power as someone who is in between

Like a stranger in a body that is becoming my own

I can’t deny how the world sees me

I feel disconnected

Like I’m floating

Like I’m pretending

I’m not making this up

This niether is not something knew

It’s something I have learned the name too

That niether is special

It’s smiles from the man at the airport who said

“You have the most beautiful androgynous face”

I hold those words so close to my heart

It’s the 11 year old girls who said

“My friend thinks your a girl”

And me saying “I am a girl”

It’s their looks of astonishment

It’s the man at the ice cream shop and target calling me sir

It’s June asking if I was two spirit

It’s these moments that mottle my life

But it’s hard because I don’t know where this road goes

There is no beaten path to travel

No words for my divine soul

Souls?

What is my power

Tell me it’s not lesser for being both

For being confused

For I was born like this.

Have felt this was since forever

Since four playing dress up

Since fourteen learning about gender

Since seventeen learning every word I could to explain what I felt

Since 19 buying my first binder

Since sweet Robin

Since Azana

Since twenty two and exploring what it means to be feminine

Without discomfort

Without shame

Without discarding that I’m kinda both

That this path is mine to discover

To write

To be

I get to feel this out

This confusing little piece of me that exists as I go to school and fill my gas and cook and meet strangers and kiss my love and all the while I feel like a liar

I don’t want to feel like I’m hiding something of me

And don’t want to have to explain my being to each everyone I see

See me.

I have been trying to release that

And say

The way that I want you to think of me is the way that I exist

When you say you see me it fills my soul

I want to be seen.

I want to be seen.

Why is that so heavy in my soul

There are tears in my eyes

This is a path I am still on

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I feel sad as I often do in the wake of what has passed

Here I sit at the end of this road

Flying home

Where I will learn to be still again

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This place feels like the old and timeless remains of another time slowly crumbling to dust

These are the old gods

Still and immovable and falling back to earth

They are reminding us of time

Little pieces of the ground beneath someone else’s feet

Our ground has gods too

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Grandmother of the heights

What have I brought you?

What takes 10,000 years to grow?

Here I stand

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Why don’t we have fur?

Why don’t we too curl up with our families and wait out the winter?

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Over and over across the long drive I have been thinking of the words of a poem

And forgetting them

Perhaps they will come to me when I have had a moment to sit and be still and forget the pounding of the road

And the endless blurring miles of scenery and stories I will never know traveling past me

Wishing I could pause for a moment to behold them

And knowing there is not possibly time for that

There are so many places in the world that want seeing

Sitting

Being

Including me

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Once we all sat together and held hands and

Although we didn’t really do that

I can tell we are all touching

Our hearts and our heads and our silly little words

We sit and we drink tea and I pour you water and I chuckle and I fret and I find it hard to know you are here for me

Dancing falling speaking seeing sipping

Is that what it’s about ?

The things we do for others?

The way I hold you hand

Look in your eyes

Here we are

Smiling and being and here

Once upon a time we are existing

And oh my god was it good

And wonderful and sweet and so it goes

What blessing we receive from this

That’s all there is to it

Thats is the reason to be

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One small and unsuspecting piece of being

You were a wonderful experience she said

And got on the bus

And didn’t look back

Because moments happen

And life happens

And the whole of everything you are is made of both of these things

Thank you

Driving away I am left somewhere new as she takes away the pieces of me I was with her

Watching that life become another is heart breaking

I am sad for all the things that never happened

And I’m sad for everything that did

And still

You were a wonderful experience

And you led me to the rest of my life

We are butterflies

Just spinning on through time

Running into the moments and the people that we need

So chaotically cosmically organized

Of course I met you.

There is no world in which that doesn’t happen

Because it happened.

Nothing meant for you will ever go to anyone else

The things you are

The words you say

The being that is experienced by others

You are a human being

And you may play all you like

And the fireflies may dance when you kiss

And the bus may drive away

And we may make mistake after mistake

And I am here sobbing and holding the tiny pieces of my broken heart before you as you leave

And still

And still

You were a wonderful experience

thank you for being