some performance and poetry work

Apologies, Mother


I am generous with my flaws
Early in the morning I hate myself and share it with you
Over a cup of bitter coffee and stale cigarettes
I bitch about the way us fags and freaks are treated
I am a lemon in your apple grove
My pocked yellow skin, my sour disposition-
Don’t they know how quickly those apples turn to shit when cut?

Everyone knows you put lemon juice on apple
To keep it fresh and pretty

Are you fresh and pretty?
I thought so until I cut you deep
And saw the cracks ‘neath porcelain
And saw the blood turned sap
And your beauty, thin and tenuous,
Dry and thirsty, mewling-

You want bitter acid like what comes from my mouth
You want hard survival like what comes from my blood

You want me to pump you full of glamour
Pet your coif and cow-tow your generous ass
You want me to sing you harmless love songs
Bump and grind you with my neutered sex
Turn myself into a homo-like-you-all
Instead of a homosexual

I can make hatred from my ivory tower, too-
Without the backing of false, moral cowardice
Without the tight-lipped stink-eye from disapproving so-and-so’s
I can make a claim on God and pathologize the lot of you-
I can birth a river of sadness, AIDS privileged sorrow
That tastes of rainbows, red ribbons and organ failure

I can show you a magical kingdom
Packed with diseased, dead bodies
Holding each other like puzzle pieces
Heaped in bundles like their namesake faggots

Yeah, I’m bitter, thick-skinned and
Hard to take without a little bit of sugar
I’m acid, venom, Methuselah, drag queen
Medusa, NaNa, I don’t need the approval
Of the Dumb, Deaf and Rich
I don’t need your power of attorney
To come back from the dead
Because I’ve come back every time you’ve killed me
Spitting from the grave Greek curses
And silver laments So sorry, mother, really-
I’m not a sweet, innocent fag.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remain Calm

Remain calm. Remain calm is what they tell you when your plane is crash-landing.
Remain calm is what they say when administering a rape kit.
Remain calm is what they tell you when your building is on fire.
Remain calm is the prologue to death
When panic hits they say Remain calm, stay cool bitch. Take a deep breath. Relax
(Breathing) I have been taking deep breaths all my life
I have been breathing very deeply all of my life
I have been patient I have been cool I have been calm
All of this breathing has built a fire from a spark and now my soul is in flames
And still I breath calmly and still I breathe slowly as the flames rise
To consume not just my anger but also my wrath.
I am a building on fire
I am a nose-diving plane
I am a rape happening here and now
I have the seed of death
Remain calm. Remain calm is etched in the bullets
Remain calm is sung on the wind
Remain calm is dangled from branches deep in our history
Remain calm is the knife in my gut

Remain calm is the burden of silence
Remain calm is the nuclear blast
Remain calm is the song the assassin sings
Remain calm is the whip of control

I’m burned I’m raped I’m whipped I’m killed I’m crashed I’m death I’m gone

I am the moment you can never take back, the swan dive to fate that breaks your neck
Remain calm
I am the witness to suicide bombs and the smile of victory on the young soldier’s face
Remain calm
I am the tide sixteen stories high that dashed a thousand skulls against rock and mud
Remain calm
I am the dagger of Maya thrust into your heart
Remain calm.

Remain calm to witness
“I’m gonna kill your motherfuckin ass”
Remain calm to witness
“I don’t want to hurt anybody. Just do what I tell you and everything will be fine”
Remain calm to witness
“You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, right?”
Remain calm to witness
“everything done to me I do to you in the here and now you are all my reflections”
Remain calm
Remain calm

Breathe in the fire of acid destruction
Breathe in the fire of reincarnation
Breathe in the fire of self-realization
Breathe in the fire of reclamation,
Reunification, reparation,
Unclean, untidy devastation

Remain calm bitch
Remain calm motherfucker
Remain calm remain calm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Addicted


I get addicted to the nice things he says
and I wonder how long till they go away and I know
it seems desperate and there’s an urgency in me that I can’t quiet down
I can’t calm her or nurse her or save her.
There’s this panic in me around love that makes my stomach hurt,
revives the days of cutting and strangling myself unconscious.
I sometimes want to see my bones when I’m hurting
to know that I’m actually alive and not a ghost dream of myself
I’m scared because I have to admit in the face of love
that all my detractors all my family were wrong,
I’m not the ugliest dumbest thickest one
I’m not worthless stupid hatred-worthy

I’m a being of light like everyone and worthy of love.

I don’t have to work so hard that love gets confusing
I don’t have to wrap my head around everything that happens
and wait for words like a starving child abandoned in the street
even though that’s what I am, what I have been and where I come from.
Dirty shoes and clothes with holes in school they sent me home
cos I was dirty I got made fun of a lot for being poor
and I’d never seen marshmallows in a jar,
the cream kind you can just put on bread with peanut butter and
thought my friends were rich because they ate food that wasn’t from packages Top Ramen was a big deal and mom waited tables

I bussed them for quarters ate the scraps when no one looked cos I was hungry- sublimating…

Nursing wounds from the world around me,
crying blankly, never-articulated anger
and sadness at the world rejecting me…
my brother and sister didn’t like the things I did
cos once upon a time I wore girls clothes and
someone told them that boys in girls clothes equals unstable,
weak and worth nothing, might as well start over he’s a lost cause
and I only wanted to be pretty
like I felt on the inside, watching Linda Carter spin around and around-
I wanted to spin like that too and become a Wonder Woman
bullet proof and invincible making bad guys tell the truth, Like
why did you pin me down and marker me up
with all those nasty words that I had to internalize
like the spit you hocked in my mouth,
when you called me faggot and panty waste and
spent all of that time convincing me you liked me
just to hold me down and shame me

You were the first rape I ever had and I feel sentimental now because I’ve been raped so much-

Uncle Feely fucked me hardest with his fingers and his mind
kissed my mouth with blinded tongue- though
he probably tasted that loogie you put there so many years earlier-
He’s the only one that hurt me so deep
he could probably taste the pain in me and relished it
somehow my mother never scrubbed hard enough to get those words from me

Forgiveness might be golden
but in me it feels like pewter
cos nobody took the time to forgive me
for being mixed up and confused at life-
nobody took the time to holler at me and say

“I’m glad you’ve made it out alive,
what beautiful decorations you’ve got. Those battle scars are lovely.”
I get to feeling like I turned
into Wonder Woman’s invisible jet-
there’s something powerful sitting inside me
if I can just incorporate her into me
then I can be a whole, living person-
I feel like a doll on a shelf waiting to be made real-
all of these experiences have hurt so bad
that I’ve been turned to plastic parts and porcelain veneer-
distance makes the heart throb muffled
distance makes life like static, white noise,
comforting and disconcerting, the thrum of a steady but slow bass line,
just waiting for it all to stop-
No more memories of my mother screaming help me
and us children not being able to stop him,
no more memories of falling out that window
with my father’s hands pushing and crying “I have no choice”,
no more wondering if the same demons that got him will get me,
no more wondering if I, the product of rape
and a victim of rape would ever go on
to commit such an atrocity
no more thoughts of having children and
how badly might they be tortured when I wasn’t looking?
and would they ever be able to tell me?
No more turning over in my sleep
in fits of anxious prowling of my deepest, angriest parts.
No more recollections of dead faces in boxes
eyes closed and lips shut to never say I’m sorry,
explain away the pain, let me say I love you

but your dead ears don’t hear, your living ones didn’t either

No more questions about why the fuck did you ever have children
you sadistic depressed motherfucker?
No more freak outs around people who weren’t there
to see it feel it hear it and wonder why the fuck I’m so affected
by touch why I’m so urgently telling my own truth
why I’m so angry when my friends drink and drive,
take their families that pay their rent for granted and call their mom a bitch

All I ever wanted was a family to love me
accept me for who I am not be like me
or think like me but at least recognize me in a crowd as one of them,
not a defector cos I never left them, they left me
like a bird dropped from a nest smelling of human hands to die

I get addicted to the nice things you say
because someday you’ll stop saying them
and you will have left me
but I’ll still have those words tattooed on my brain
to remind me that once someone saw something in me
that no one else did.
Someone at one point saw me as whole,
nurtured that vision and stuck with it long enough
to let the fear of exposure vanish
and the thought of family bloom
So someday when you’ve had enough
and my depression hacks through your resolve
and my death ghosts rob your sleep
and my resolve to have solitude has planted weeds in your Eden,
I will still have words to show that you once cared
so deeply you formulated sentences around the idea
of loving me and for that I thank you
for that you will always be famous to my heart
there will be an independent, foreign film
complete with songs and subtitled dialogue
because I don’t yet know the language of thanks

I am scared to say I love you
because where that comes from in my family history
is a dark place full of gut punches and behavioral allowances
that make children objects of scorn and resentment,
sexual punching bags
I am scared of you telling me you love me
because that means you now have the power
to completely obliterate me
that gives you power over that little girl-boy inside me
who’s still flipping off the world for never seeing her for who she is,
a part of me as valid as my heart or brain or tongue

Maybe there’s a part of you that sees her
and you want to hold her.
Maybe there’s a part of you that recognizes her
as one of you and you just want to help her
flip off the world even more. I don’t know.

Perhaps we can do the same for each other, but together and that’s the truth behind I love you,

not all this hyper sensitive shit I wanna leave behind,
but all the rest and permission to let my crazy hang out sometimes
is all I need to know.
Do you really love me now?
Or will the dawn emerge in silence
and sorrow for every promise of tomorrow
that will never come because THIS love is too intense?
I’ve heard this before and I know I‘ve not had the last
of the red hot rejections
because my mind is too different,
because I obsess over goodness and romantic gestures
and I want to spend time lavishing in anything that’s good
without having to explain why it feels so fucking good.
I’m in defense of my love and of my good feelings.
I’m in defense of my resolve to see something through
to it’s conclusion because my family left me like they did,

mom in the ground dad in the ground, what’s left for me?

I fear you’ll say the same when you see how I self-medicate,
the sicknesses that I have.
All I want is to accept and be accepted.
So tell me am I dreaming when you say you understand??
Tell me I am dreaming and I’ll walk away
my footsteps to the shore of never again
I’ll sail away, believe me,

the muffled sound of my speech drowning in uncle’s fingers and prepubescent rape.

In Boulder

We arrived in Boulder late Thursday night, puffy from crying and spending the last hour on the road processing through some core issues. Without really getting into them I'd like to state that my boyfriend is probably the most courageous and conscious person I've ever met. I love him very deeply and every time something like this happens and we are both able to relate to each other in this way, get through something with the potential to get nasty, we both just get really soft and listeny.
I have never really been treated with so much respect and dignity before. It's kind of weird sometimes. There's the expectation that he's going to be like every other partner I've had and just walk out on me because I'm complicated and processy and need a lot of communication. Conversely I don't need a lot of affection and we're not attached at the hip or any other part. Most partners I've had are really unconcerned with healing insomuch as they don't know what it is or why it's necessary for me.
Not a lot of men I've known have been through the horror of rape or incest or child abuse, let alone all of them in combination with so many other tragedies in my youth. These are not statements that I use to victimize myself or ligitemize a behavior/histrionics. I'm a pretty gentle person with my own experiences at this point. I'm glad for who I am and how I am who I am.

This also means that I endure a lot of aftershocks of said abuses in many areas of my life. That's OK, it comes with the territory. I am willing to face everything I must in order to heal those wounds and survive, thrive and pass ov love and encouragement instead of neglect and abuse.

So the road trip was pretty good altogether, but fraught also with this stress really hanging over me. Just before leaving for Detroit in the end of April, I got a message form my sister that she'd been diagnosed with Cardiomyopathy and needed to get a pacemaker implanted. We've been sharing symptoms for the last few years and hearing this news was/is distressing! The day before that, the BF got his rejection letter from Naropa which we had both built our whole moving around his getting accepted. So two days later I'm in Detroit with my godparent to celebrate my birthday, receive some ritual divination and spirit work.

He's just had a back surgery that wasn't too effective though he's no longer walking with a cane. He's mostly acting weird and says that he's withdrawing from his pain medication since the surgery. I've looked up the symptoms and his behavior was the same. Then there is a shift and he's acting a bit speedy and paranoid. He's not eating and has diarrhea. I go into the bathroom and notice the HUGE bottle of laxatives. Damnit. ANOREXIA + OPIATE ADDICTION

This means that he's been really dishonest with me for the past year in which he claimed to be in treatment for his painmed addiction which I believe also branched out into SOMA addiction. Here are some quotes from people addicted/affected by SOMA that I found on the internet. These are all things I have seen and experienced with my godparent:

" I take 30-50 a day and need help. I have slurred speech, fall down and wake up with bruises all the time, get the munchies and wake up after a blackout with food in my mouth that I have not swallowed. I had to quit my job. I don't know how to stop! I am so scared at this point and do not know what to do. My husband hates I take this. I drive while on it to drive thru to get food. I have almost hit other cars several times. When I am taking it I do not realize I have a problem and should not drive. I do not know I am slurring my speech but my husband tells me. Please, someone help me get off this! I have tried several times but have bad withdrawl from it and start up again. I vomit, get the chills, have diarrhea or constipation when I try to stop. I am afraid I will kill myself and I have a toddler I want to be here for. HELP!!"

" just lost my best friend of 17 years to this drug. It is HIGHLY addictive! She could not kick it, NO ONE would help her! Insurance won't cover detox because it's not an opiate...there is not enough information on it out there for rehab programs to help anyone. It is a very sad sad drug. DO NOT TAKE SOMA!!"

"My girlfriend however takes them like candy. Just yesterday she took 60 in a 24hr period, how she didn't overdose is beyond me. She drove, of course without my permision, I would never give keys to a drunk, and that it what happens when a person takes to much soma, they become a drunk. She can become violent, but it's rare, she just normaly slurs her words, falls all the time, breaks stuff, and for some reason she gets the munchies. She will lie about how many she has taken, she thinks that no one can tell she is whacked out. She was even pulled over by a cop and they didn't do anything cause she didn't smell like alchohol. She will drive with kids in the car, with no regard to how much danger she is putting them in or the other people on the road. I get so angry when I see her this way, I can't take it. It's so stupid. I wish there was a way I could get her blacklisted by all pharmacy's for this drug, but I'm sure she would find a way to get it illegaly. BEWARE"

"I've always had an addictive personality, tried everything but heroin, quit doing speed after my son was born, but found out I can get these on the internet without a script. A bottle of 90 350 watson used to last weeks. Now the wife is starting to like them and we go thru 90 a week easy. Not only getting expensive, but I know it's a problem. They send me reminders every week on e-mail and its harder to say no even though I know I gotta stop. Iwas able to quit the speed cold turkey after every day for about 5 years, but I'm afraid this is going to be harder for me. I'm insomniac and I mix them with 10mg Ambien and I feel like it's only a matter of time before I don't wake up.I need help, but can't afford to take time off work as the wife takes care of the kids and home, so no rehab for me. Am I just a functioning addict and always will be?"

This goes ON AND ON, describing the slurred speech, falling over, nodding off during activity and conversation, dual personality, alternate hybernating/insomnia... I don't really know what to do for him at this point, so I just tell him that he needs to get help. I know that he's afraid and frustrated and angry.

Upon leaving Michigan, he needed to go to the emergency room. I stayed there with him for a couple of hours then went back to his house until he was discharged. Then the next time I heard from him, he was slurring really bad and mumbling and not making much sense on the phone. HE said he was in treatment for his anorexia and went hysterical. Then I followed up with him two days later and he said that his kidneys are failing and he's going to die. He refused any advice I offered and only repeated himself constantly and nodding off or trailing off on some unintelligible tangent. I was crying really hard with my BF next to me. It's like my father is still alive and on heroin or coke or drunk and using all of this manipulative, sentimentality to get me to ignore the fact that his addiction is destroying everything around him. Including him. I do not know if his kidney failure is real. I don't know what is real at this point, beyond the anorexia and depression and addiction.

He needs an intervention either way and I'm just not sure if we will all be able to get this done in time to save his life. I feel like he's using the words "Kidney failure" instead of "Suicidal"... I am scared and horrified and I feel like we've all let him down.

He means the world to me and I've made a vow not to judge him and to accept him as he is. I do accept him as my friend though it's very difficult and emotional given my history with addicts. I have been sober from speed et all for 18 years now and intend to stay that way.

Upon returning to Oregon, I felt relaxed and happy to be back with the BF. With the godparent, I rarely feel safe. I am always triggered and anxious wondering when the trip to the E.R. is going to come and if he will freak out and endanger us again. I was back a day before he called in hysterics, in the middle of our going away party, no less.

There I am in a dress, heels and FLAWLESS make up, sobbing. I just brushed it all off and got back to the party. My WASP ancestors would be proud.

I carried a lot of that baggage on the road with us. We bickered a little here and there and then finally, an hour away from Boulder, we just started really getting into things and then it all resolved so beautifully. I feel closer to him than ever, I feel more loved and respected and held by him than any other person in my life.

He is my wake up call to love.

What is a relationship an answer to? What is the reason for being in a relationship and sustaining close quarters with another person? Some say that loneliness is hard to bear. I find that true in a person who has not become friends with his/her mind. Though being alone has sometimes been hard for me, being alone has also enabled me to divvy up my time as I see fit.

I am interested in freedom. I am also interested in love and sharing.

I do not think that the two are so separate after all.

For me, the answer seems to be to find another person who has the same CORE interests, such as a spiritual belief (or not), a sense of self and where they are going in life, etc.

If you couple with a person who is interested in being your lap dog and you are like me, you will have no time to decompress between interactions with people at work, home, etc and you will become irritable and sick of your partner and break up with them to a tremendous amount of satisfaction and emptiness in your bed.

I love my partner. Few people make me laugh like he does. Consequently few people make me ache like he does, either. In the truly humble beginnings of our relationship I sensed that this would be a substantial thing and all signs pointed towards LTR. He snubbed me a few times in the beginning. It is my belief that he was getting his bearings and taking his time deciding how our relationship was going to work for him.

Each time he snubbed me I felt furious and confused about where our relationship was going, etc. I figured that because I felt a certain way, he did, too. He is after all a magickal queer, I told myself. How could he not feel exactly what I feel? When the arrogance wore off and I was ready to see what he saw, I called him and we talked about it.

We shared the importance of our core values and shared some painful stories about our individual abuses and things we have overcome in our lives and things we'd need to overcome together in order to have a healthy relationship. We did an astrological compatibility chart to double check our own theories and of course there were areas that highlighted our shortcomings as a couple, some things that I'd already theorized about. We have a fiery relationship when it comes to arguing, but a rare tenderness exists in our exploration of love and the respect we have for each other combined with the strength of our communication and our commitment to honesty that has for me, been unparalleled in any relationship before.

We are both having a lot of "firsts" in our relationship. This you might think would bring stress but so far, so good. Each first has been birthed with love and sensitivity and a caring that I've never seen before. I am excited to see each new step of our relationship.

I feel free in this version of commitment. we have certain understandings about attraction to other people and to what extent we can within the boundaries of our relationship, act on . I find this a happy place to be in. I love my boyfriend. From his ornery behavior down to his placid Buddhist soul.

So cook me some chicken and Jo-Jo's, bitch. Mamma's hongry. NOM NOM.

Today is a new day

Today is a new day. My toenails are neatly painted white, my eyebrows are plucked, my legs and all other appropriate areas are shaved. I've considered waxing, but it's expensive to get done and I'm nervous to do it by myself or to ask for help. There are only so many tactful ways to ask a friend:

"Hey, mind getting my coin purse and starfish?"

And though I'd like the hair removed from those regions (I'm no prude, believe me, just...I feel weird about my physical gender and don't really like exposing those parts of myself which prove that in some of us gender is inescapable...more than an image maintained through careful pruning, planning and painting.)

Having a woman I don't know remove hair from my scrote seems terrifying and embarrassing. Shrinkage wouldn't be my only issue- I see myself tearing up and sobbing my way out of the salon, swollen and dejected by my own body and another's too up-close view of what I was born to be. A man-woman-lady-boy who feels it's nice to have a big penis when someone's looking, but embarrassing to feel inadequate when pressed, desiring an intact vagina, clitoris and perky tits to cal my own. This is a paradox that I own, maintain and somewhat cherish.

Thanks to the circle of friends I've carefully cultivated over the years, I am now safely outed among my friends as GenderQueer. I don't really identify as tranny, simply because I equate that with the label of Drag Queen. I honor my sisters in that tradition for sure, but that just ain't me. I'm more Amy Winehouse and less Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

I described myself to a woman who very cheerfully sold me a pair of pumps and polka dotted dress, as a tom-boy in a male body. I'm like that girl with the mohawk and jeans who cleans up nicely in a strapless and heels. But I still like to play rough and toss 'em back like one of the boys.

I'll never be one of the boys and that's OK with me. I'm a total girl. At least...on my way to being.