I am relearning my body. I am visualizing the days spent agonizing in shallow clouds that surrendered to my lower half and creeped in on me. My feet stay grounded despite thick of it, crawling the negative space and I am itching at my bare skin. Across the bed sheets my entire body lingers still in awe of you and, what trust you have recovered from me. Despair covers me all over this, I fear not anything that bends back and outside of this, I am layers thick and a full figured body fit to fill your mold. I stray far from familiarities of my past identities and sit back in me, in your parlor for the in between. I won't leave.
I play a rendition of the Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel," feeling my heavy weigh in on the mattress, palms sweep the rear of the bedframe and I am listening. "Ain't goin back, living that old life no more." It is true. Once the experience was had I hadn't thought of not going back, and now I know old there is no return trip ticket for me. I am loving your influence and for the first time I find what love means for me. And I love this - I hesitate to say it but I love you.
Inside your many walls, beside you several histories, our multiple selves come crashing in the form of looming fairytales, fantasies, and fancy reminiscing. I tell panicked stories out of nerve but I know better than to talk myself out of this. You steal the poison, kiss old wounds, rid my body of the mind wretched toxic influence - with sex they've created love of rotten illusion and with you I've remastered sensation for all that's worth. You look and I see you see me, I trust you so much so I go there and I make promise to myself in whispers throughout tonight that I will go there with you always, I am excited.
I am nervous as we strap the final dressings to this genderbendered of a body, your creation for me. You take what I'm given and come screaming out for the fucks of me. I am in awe of you boy - all I never dreamed I'd meet and everything forgiven. Shhh, secrets not and lust and luck and love never taken aback, nor taken for-granted.
happy coming out day! (raw draft)
queer.
she is small frames on the 14th day of wearing the same pair of 2 week disposable contact lenses. when i look at this face i see it's full and functional, abrupt and paranoid, enraged and on fire, or most lately, inspired and distracted but always, always - this face is alive as though it was always born today with the dawn rising reason, giving me home. this is kate i'm referring to. most day's she is entertained as he calls the shots and corrects my bigotry and i boast onward as though it never matters, i got her - my best friend in chicago. if someone told me that this would be the one person i could count on everyday, in anyhow, at anytime- that i would practically be living with her, breathing the same night air, stepping into the same freezing lake at the end of september, 10 minute walking distance in either direction home.
i could ever imagine knowing now, caring for, the complexity of what i felt for what i couldn't deal with at the time really derailed me. my sense of belief for relationships had withered person by person, the she's of that time we strung along the waste lines for a good while. the urgency i felt to confine and define our relationships is was made that split in the first place. over time the rigid boundaries that separate the present and the past, we are distanced further from the actual event and suddenly all that's left are snippits that we use trace over blurred edges in our minds what was describe from memory as a means to call the ends. the enemy, immediate friend, soul mate, straight-ally, cisgendered male, female born male identified, transguy, he-she, prospective lover, genderqueer, queer, I try now to assume I know none of these are neither correct nor uncorrect each time i meet you.
we are not translucent, fixed, individual, apparent people. our identities are fluid and therefore completely transparent to the naked eye. we have many options and see our choices differently. open to this and this will make you queerer.
i remember the first time i felt something for someone that i was not suppose to feel something so deeply for. i remember this so intimately now because queerness so close to everything I've come to know and have and am to just be - it invades the best of friendships and now binds me in to form the most relentless and mutual relationships. this jars me because it is constant, i am not use to consistency alone but now i am spending my days living, the queer surround me all the time, i bring queer everywhere i go because that is what i demand of myself and this i do to survive queer life with out restraint. i have to put myself and my words out so forcefully or it creates a mess of things later to gut out. i conditioned myself to fit in, to mold, to map onto the ways i thought i had to be in order to be loved by somebody. this always failed me- this method always fails.
in the past my loves ate me, chewed me up, spit me out, sniffed later at the curiosity of my distortion and walked on with or without me should i choose to get up and continue or let them leave. i did not respect myself. over the years in relationship to relationship onto the next failed anything that wasn't worthy of calling a relationship. i learned to let my head get away from what was actually happening with me, the actual events i experienced and live in my body - i reconciled the events of things past, present, i recreate constant illusion. i came to feel the things that i loved that i had completely, single offhandedly made up and that, was a lot of work. keeping it real was tough because i was never really alive for myself in this way.
i've always been queer but god how to begin to define this - it is not so simple. and it's not simple to live queer either but it's faith, it's consistent, it's real, honest and sensational. to me queer is obviously as the term finds vague understanding in the mainstream and that's exactly it. it is not mainstream it is marginal, it is not popular it is outcast and outcast and living on the outskirts of what "normal," meaning- mainstream people who live by the law, by the cut outs predetermined to their hetersexual partners in there neatly crafted life. it fits, it's known, it's comfortable, it's so not queer. this is fine. several people live their lives forever happy and in love with that they've been handed or what they were driven to achieve and do fine with that are deserving of what they've received - but i don't know very many mainstreamers out there that are comfortable or satisfied in that. i know a lot of queers and they're always satisfied or working through it and getting to it - we're never just sitting, waiting, obligating ourselves or society to define us. we're too busy living, or trying to at least. it's not easy being queer because it means going against what we're traditionally taught to become and that forces us to recongize and reconsider ourselves in relationship to every single other. it's the actual going against it that takes courage, you can know something you're whole life and not do a damn thing about it but that's not queer and it's no fun.
i guess i'm coming to losely define queerness as openness. it means to me living freely in what seems unconventional, it's a life that is practical - i say that's queer and i mean that's a lot of love for a lot of difference and in this i notice, for my immediate family, as we like to call ourselves (i am refering to my queer family here) life is oddly different, struggle is a large part of our functioning and i mean consistently. we are always processing, always voicing, always challenging, always always always. we go through it together, we're queer. we love each other and we trust that - something it is enough. there's little need to cut out the shapes and circles of ourselves because growing up and surviving normality already did that to us until we found ourselves here, scrapped together and misshaped as hell, we came from all angles at ourselves and pieced what we could of what we've recovered never knowing if tomorrow it will work but we respect that. we say hey, you want to come in, come come be in this space, share with us, talk, help, love - family. it's queer, it's really really queer but let's not get too far from the purpose because this really isn't all that radical. it shouldn't be radical, respect, courage, love, trust, these are all included in my relationship to each one of these relatives - apart or together, it's there and we talk about that. it makes loving yourself and knowing love exists accessible. it turns away from the restraints that objectification and unreal subjects of which as humans we've socially trained thoughts and ourselves to co-exist as follows. but we don't follow suit, not ideologically. we certainly wear all types of suits, nevermind you what gender says our body says what your teacher explained to be true about sex because that's irrelevant really. from the inside to the deepest depths and beyond anything outside because even with that you are familiar, it is queer - to live outside of anything and love anyone and trust in the possibility of all that's existing. it seems so boring but it's true and it's exciting to wake up every morning, i have reason to look forward now knowing i'm queer and share in this ambiguous acceptance with and of other queers.
i watch the hand that strums. and see the ways necessity reconciled all that for me, time and trust gave me room to accept and adjust accordingly. i gave myself permission to ask, to tell, be real, we continue coming back individual, with love unconditional and a sincere hope, this go we're in it together. ballad after ballad i watch both hands working, i retrace our history across all that song records. in the voice, the words chosen long ago, and chords once picked carefully come now effortlessly against the past of life with which fingertips and heartache brushed and pushed away in us. yes this is my friend who held my hand intimately and knew better than to keep holding on, briefly i held tight before letting go and now we've let go of all of that, the broken and weighty, the heavy of history are stuck in the past for me today the symbol for us is not clearly laid down or easily defined. i did not imagine four years later this would be a hand hold, a friendloverfriend, the partner with whom i've made a family, a queer centric relationship alas, my everyday wake up all, my reminder of what wasn't what i won't know will ever be unless there comes the words of family, encouragement and worth pursuing.
she is small frames on the 14th day of wearing the same pair of 2 week disposable contact lenses. when i look at this face i see it's full and functional, abrupt and paranoid, enraged and on fire, or most lately, inspired and distracted but always, always - this face is alive as though it was always born today with the dawn rising reason, giving me home. this is kate i'm referring to. most day's she is entertained as he calls the shots and corrects my bigotry and i boast onward as though it never matters, i got her - my best friend in chicago. if someone told me that this would be the one person i could count on everyday, in anyhow, at anytime- that i would practically be living with her, breathing the same night air, stepping into the same freezing lake at the end of september, 10 minute walking distance in either direction home.
i could ever imagine knowing now, caring for, the complexity of what i felt for what i couldn't deal with at the time really derailed me. my sense of belief for relationships had withered person by person, the she's of that time we strung along the waste lines for a good while. the urgency i felt to confine and define our relationships is was made that split in the first place. over time the rigid boundaries that separate the present and the past, we are distanced further from the actual event and suddenly all that's left are snippits that we use trace over blurred edges in our minds what was describe from memory as a means to call the ends. the enemy, immediate friend, soul mate, straight-ally, cisgendered male, female born male identified, transguy, he-she, prospective lover, genderqueer, queer, I try now to assume I know none of these are neither correct nor uncorrect each time i meet you.
we are not translucent, fixed, individual, apparent people. our identities are fluid and therefore completely transparent to the naked eye. we have many options and see our choices differently. open to this and this will make you queerer.
i remember the first time i felt something for someone that i was not suppose to feel something so deeply for. i remember this so intimately now because queerness so close to everything I've come to know and have and am to just be - it invades the best of friendships and now binds me in to form the most relentless and mutual relationships. this jars me because it is constant, i am not use to consistency alone but now i am spending my days living, the queer surround me all the time, i bring queer everywhere i go because that is what i demand of myself and this i do to survive queer life with out restraint. i have to put myself and my words out so forcefully or it creates a mess of things later to gut out. i conditioned myself to fit in, to mold, to map onto the ways i thought i had to be in order to be loved by somebody. this always failed me- this method always fails.
in the past my loves ate me, chewed me up, spit me out, sniffed later at the curiosity of my distortion and walked on with or without me should i choose to get up and continue or let them leave. i did not respect myself. over the years in relationship to relationship onto the next failed anything that wasn't worthy of calling a relationship. i learned to let my head get away from what was actually happening with me, the actual events i experienced and live in my body - i reconciled the events of things past, present, i recreate constant illusion. i came to feel the things that i loved that i had completely, single offhandedly made up and that, was a lot of work. keeping it real was tough because i was never really alive for myself in this way.
i've always been queer but god how to begin to define this - it is not so simple. and it's not simple to live queer either but it's faith, it's consistent, it's real, honest and sensational. to me queer is obviously as the term finds vague understanding in the mainstream and that's exactly it. it is not mainstream it is marginal, it is not popular it is outcast and outcast and living on the outskirts of what "normal," meaning- mainstream people who live by the law, by the cut outs predetermined to their hetersexual partners in there neatly crafted life. it fits, it's known, it's comfortable, it's so not queer. this is fine. several people live their lives forever happy and in love with that they've been handed or what they were driven to achieve and do fine with that are deserving of what they've received - but i don't know very many mainstreamers out there that are comfortable or satisfied in that. i know a lot of queers and they're always satisfied or working through it and getting to it - we're never just sitting, waiting, obligating ourselves or society to define us. we're too busy living, or trying to at least. it's not easy being queer because it means going against what we're traditionally taught to become and that forces us to recongize and reconsider ourselves in relationship to every single other. it's the actual going against it that takes courage, you can know something you're whole life and not do a damn thing about it but that's not queer and it's no fun.
i guess i'm coming to losely define queerness as openness. it means to me living freely in what seems unconventional, it's a life that is practical - i say that's queer and i mean that's a lot of love for a lot of difference and in this i notice, for my immediate family, as we like to call ourselves (i am refering to my queer family here) life is oddly different, struggle is a large part of our functioning and i mean consistently. we are always processing, always voicing, always challenging, always always always. we go through it together, we're queer. we love each other and we trust that - something it is enough. there's little need to cut out the shapes and circles of ourselves because growing up and surviving normality already did that to us until we found ourselves here, scrapped together and misshaped as hell, we came from all angles at ourselves and pieced what we could of what we've recovered never knowing if tomorrow it will work but we respect that. we say hey, you want to come in, come come be in this space, share with us, talk, help, love - family. it's queer, it's really really queer but let's not get too far from the purpose because this really isn't all that radical. it shouldn't be radical, respect, courage, love, trust, these are all included in my relationship to each one of these relatives - apart or together, it's there and we talk about that. it makes loving yourself and knowing love exists accessible. it turns away from the restraints that objectification and unreal subjects of which as humans we've socially trained thoughts and ourselves to co-exist as follows. but we don't follow suit, not ideologically. we certainly wear all types of suits, nevermind you what gender says our body says what your teacher explained to be true about sex because that's irrelevant really. from the inside to the deepest depths and beyond anything outside because even with that you are familiar, it is queer - to live outside of anything and love anyone and trust in the possibility of all that's existing. it seems so boring but it's true and it's exciting to wake up every morning, i have reason to look forward now knowing i'm queer and share in this ambiguous acceptance with and of other queers.
i watch the hand that strums. and see the ways necessity reconciled all that for me, time and trust gave me room to accept and adjust accordingly. i gave myself permission to ask, to tell, be real, we continue coming back individual, with love unconditional and a sincere hope, this go we're in it together. ballad after ballad i watch both hands working, i retrace our history across all that song records. in the voice, the words chosen long ago, and chords once picked carefully come now effortlessly against the past of life with which fingertips and heartache brushed and pushed away in us. yes this is my friend who held my hand intimately and knew better than to keep holding on, briefly i held tight before letting go and now we've let go of all of that, the broken and weighty, the heavy of history are stuck in the past for me today the symbol for us is not clearly laid down or easily defined. i did not imagine four years later this would be a hand hold, a friendloverfriend, the partner with whom i've made a family, a queer centric relationship alas, my everyday wake up all, my reminder of what wasn't what i won't know will ever be unless there comes the words of family, encouragement and worth pursuing.
queered family healthy portrait
let me tell you something about my family- my immediate family. A family of queers, the gender non-conforming ties that bind us solid to the history we're creating. in short time that stranger over there became relative - we couldn't help but marry in, together we're rediscovering the truest selves, soul searching, an honest exploration, safely tucking that past away from all we fear and closing in on the small stuff, the point of getting to know my self in this very moment in this very time in this very relationship to you though i know you hardly, at all. knowing this, here and now, to us is worth the maintenance because love for us is plentiful - love is essential. that is changing, renaming, redefining, re-contextualized genderfucks, appearance that is fluid, frames that we use to border each other and protect us from forgetting this is all that we have.
siblings, who will they be this week and what pronoun should i use today, who will i be tomorrow and how will i adequately present the self of all my yesterdays without ruining the representation of someone else today. someone else who you will love, who will be accepted by the company and receive a job in a society my family is bending and breaking and bound to escape. if we push forward restricting nothing, no dream's impossible. we are constantly reminding each other that though the outside real world is ever changing, unforgiving, continually re-defying us, but we know not to do this to one another. respectfully, we ask - how do we define this, how can i create hir or them or that. more explicitly we give room for support, honesty and trust. there is constant help and in turn constant hope, for there's a constant reminder of love, allowing me to take that challenge and make that change, consistently we nurture this process alone and together, whether it gets worse some days, it's for better. how can i be me, we produce answer upon answer forever and then the more we wonder how it's possible but we are reminding ourselves. deep breathes, be easy, gently go forth, look back and don't be angry, learn from the past.
siblings, who will they be this week and what pronoun should i use today, who will i be tomorrow and how will i adequately present the self of all my yesterdays without ruining the representation of someone else today. someone else who you will love, who will be accepted by the company and receive a job in a society my family is bending and breaking and bound to escape. if we push forward restricting nothing, no dream's impossible. we are constantly reminding each other that though the outside real world is ever changing, unforgiving, continually re-defying us, but we know not to do this to one another. respectfully, we ask - how do we define this, how can i create hir or them or that. more explicitly we give room for support, honesty and trust. there is constant help and in turn constant hope, for there's a constant reminder of love, allowing me to take that challenge and make that change, consistently we nurture this process alone and together, whether it gets worse some days, it's for better. how can i be me, we produce answer upon answer forever and then the more we wonder how it's possible but we are reminding ourselves. deep breathes, be easy, gently go forth, look back and don't be angry, learn from the past.
just a thought
I was standing outside and thinking about a dance about people and bodies and stillness. These things cross my mind daily at an hourly rate on a regular basis. I was considering the performance, questioning the movement and my focus - my attention dismantled, my focus strong, direct perhaps obvious. I have terrible performance anxiety, it's no secret if you've met me. I am unnerved in the most simplistic of conversational discussion, debate and dialogue. I remember as a child growing up this form of fear rarely rose to the surface in my dance class or on the days before hours leading all the way through my small town studios annual performance. In fact I'd say that those days the "showy" part of me came easy, my ambition was strong as my ability to recognize and respond accordingly where my presence went unnoticed. Those days the roles were choreographed and in the safety of a local studio I could try that on. I would then slowly carried out the dance I imagined on my own time, never on the correct count or well enough to be the star. Yes I learned to try these things on for size and lived vaguely in a space hardly meant to be mine. I learned to NOT fill the role, to fail, and anticipate post performance you would look at me and no matter what I would know I'd failed, you were disappointed in me. I am redistributing these weighted thoughts unto braver ideas stretched out across my body's terrain.
here now take me soft
here you, now take my shirt, my pants, my fears
by the waste lines up my pelvis deep in my side
i can't push down pull away tides are running
century late i still believe
don't take this the wrong way or lie down on my bed
pushing on sore things as spots become worn rough
weary on endings terrify the livid days gone dead is love
come on take me, take my waist by the belt loops
scare me but even
then
you have got me knee deep, tongue tied, my lips pursed tight
you don't even know me as a father would fair
enough i trust in
you did see that far beyond my scared plays
acting kinder than him, you did
you've had me since the first night
tired tried and out of sight, i'd like to think you're gone
off my radar
you swooped in like the first time was yet another reminder
he reminds me play easy, have friends with whom you talk
to me you are ever simply the biggest mystery so familiar, so fine
go on leave cross the street at my corner don't look after
me, my mind will be spinning, the system keeps churning and charging at me
stunning, the sky, your history, i am staring after empty glasses,
clear moon and flakes effervescent, empty bottle, meaning wrought glances
and this space unwinding and it's undone what we're doing is reassuring
i have nothing you love, no one - no wonder i'm no woman and, i am not manly
lady-like and without type for my lover has left and my love is not well
dreaded uncertain, i've experienced such heartache but this is not that and you
are not she and he all the same thing
you're not just anyone of them to me your body stays closer to me, another
mind made a mess
this closets a clutter just like my gender
contingent
cunt
cock sucks
yet i just remembered you- boy
who to love and how to trust.
by the waste lines up my pelvis deep in my side
i can't push down pull away tides are running
century late i still believe
don't take this the wrong way or lie down on my bed
pushing on sore things as spots become worn rough
weary on endings terrify the livid days gone dead is love
come on take me, take my waist by the belt loops
scare me but even
then
you have got me knee deep, tongue tied, my lips pursed tight
you don't even know me as a father would fair
enough i trust in
you did see that far beyond my scared plays
acting kinder than him, you did
you've had me since the first night
tired tried and out of sight, i'd like to think you're gone
off my radar
you swooped in like the first time was yet another reminder
he reminds me play easy, have friends with whom you talk
to me you are ever simply the biggest mystery so familiar, so fine
go on leave cross the street at my corner don't look after
me, my mind will be spinning, the system keeps churning and charging at me
stunning, the sky, your history, i am staring after empty glasses,
clear moon and flakes effervescent, empty bottle, meaning wrought glances
and this space unwinding and it's undone what we're doing is reassuring
i have nothing you love, no one - no wonder i'm no woman and, i am not manly
lady-like and without type for my lover has left and my love is not well
dreaded uncertain, i've experienced such heartache but this is not that and you
are not she and he all the same thing
you're not just anyone of them to me your body stays closer to me, another
mind made a mess
this closets a clutter just like my gender
contingent
cunt
cock sucks
yet i just remembered you- boy
who to love and how to trust.
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