The Poetry Marathon

I would gladly,

hungrily

press the fast forward button

on this leg of my transition

skipping over the recurring

and highly visible marks

of this second round of puberty—

albeit voluntary

I’m thirsty for the vision

of future me

having already

respected the process

looking back on now

with kind nostalgia

and limitless perspective

And If I managed to enter some deep sleep,

drooling my way through the next year or two,

I would be missing out on the ripe juiciness

of this singular moment and the discoveries

that I get to make every day

I chose this road

I trust this road

I love this road

Respect

Process

Respect

Process

With presence,

I find joy in the floating,

the lily pads of euphoria

when the pieces come together harmoniously,

when the shining trans gods are smiling upon me

and everything is golden

I drink deeply

Searching the Web

Where are the stories

my ancestors told?

They have died in the mind

and I’ve stopped insisting

on answers from the living.

What I’m looking for

is not written nor google-able

and I am at a loss.

We remember

bellow the pines,

standing tall

The red bloods have forgotten,

but, we haven’t

chatter the mycelia,

coyly, crocheting webbed fingers

Then, I will continue the search

in the strands

and ask the mossy stones,

I will catch them dangling

from crow’s beak,

and listen to the thrumming

of the Earth for the stories

in my bones

Unlearning

On an autumn evening

bike ride with my father

my tires skidded

to a horizontal stop

on wet auburn leaves,

rocks lodged themselves

in my bloodied hands

and chubby little knees

Circling back he dismissed my tears

which trickled and mixed with

the fear in my eyes at the

sight of my body spilling red

over rough asphalt

He said, “Get up.”

What?! I thought incredulously

“Grab your bike. No one will help you.”

The walk, though short,

was tinged with pain

and the creeping sensation of…

desolation?

Long enough to make it home

with the realization

that his generation

inherited the teaching:

Expect to suffer randomness

eat the pain and your bootstraps

to stave off abandonment—

to ask for support is less than a last resort.

I have fallen down

toppled into leaves,

dirt and concrete,

bumped, and

pushed hard into

the sharp edges

of my common sense

again and again

The scabs heal slowly,

I’m still unlearning and growing

that impactful lesson.

There’s no merit in maintaining

pretenses of soldiering on,

do you see?

Nor shame in asking:

Can you help me?

Because of the people

who show up when asked

I don’t stay down long

and I can begin

to forget the past

That Equinox

I’d just begun to recognize

a new layer

of my inbetween-ness

emerging unsteadily,

an egg too cracked

to put back together.

Back then, I was oozing

out of my shell

and unable to scoop

the contents back inside—

the goop of my past selves

dripped from my hands,

they were forced

to begin again

This wasn’t long ago.

When I first crawled

from my cave

and the allegories

I was taught

about leaving them,

I found life.

On the outside

sat a friendly pack

in a circle

ready and willing

to gather up

my mutating parts

into a bucket

so, they could

hold me

I used to chase it

venturing into the world

night after night

like a child with a jar

hunting for fireflies

flitting through high grass

From a stage

I did my best to sneak up

with surprise,

to lure it out

of hiding places

burrowed deep in the chest—

sometimes it sleeps

at the back of the throat

or nestled in the stray hairs

of the nasal cavity

It’s not easy to coax it out,

that takes skill.

You can’t capture it,

but, if you’re lucky

you can catch a room full of it

and it’s beautiful to behold

I called you in as salve

for my loneliness

and you appeared to be

a gift from the powers—

the intercession

of spirit pulling strings

You wanted me

to dance with you

brow to brow

cheek to cheek

hip to hip—

in perfectly balanced flow

cycling within an insulated circuit,

orbiting each other

in some far off

pocket dimension

I did not recognize

this part of the cosmos

and began to pitch

and pull toward my own orbit

You were stronger than you looked

I called in debris and asteroids

to knock me off

the course you plotted

you clung more tightly

and whispered,

“Now that I’ve found you,

I’ll never let you go.”

You called out first

to the powers that be

with forever on your lips.

A sweet dream of easy love

curdled in my stomach

as I found myself to be

at the tail end of an ouroboros

perpetually caught

in the teeth of your yearning

for someone to hold onto,

not unlike mine

The pain of the pinch

shook the glamour from my eyes

and I awakened gratefully alone

Go dance your eternal dances elsewhere,

frolic away in faerie land

make your wishes, but beware

things don’t always end up as they’re planned

When I was a child,

playing in the backyard

the air smelled of cookies

from the factory to the east

I thought of tiny Keebler elves hard at work

I never thought to ask

if the elves received benefits,

PTO, or if they were unionized

I was a child then

all I could smell was the sweetness

of chocolate chips heavy

in the muggy Virginia heat

Until the winds shifted course,

and the confectionary incense rescinded,

voided by a swift, sour

olfactory dissonance

sweeping in, wretchedly,

from the nearby landfill

This early lesson

in impermanence

demonstrated acutely

that life is bittersweet

A single aspiration flickering in the dark could set the world on fire,

leaping from you to me to the next, until it finds the one to tend it.

First, catches the sharp edge of the mind with wild imagination

And at the thought of what could be, the heart leaps and catches in the throat

eager to taste the sweet juice of a new idea

And if there are no new ideas, I will gratefully receive this as a hand me down,

mending it with the scraps I have hidden away just for the occasion

I will clutch the next one flitting by and convince it to stay with me.

Imprinting it with the lifelines etched into my hands by time.

Anything can happen when the mind briefly escapes gravity in parabolic flight—

a single aspiration flickering in the dark could set the world on fire

And if there are no new ideas, I will gratefully receive this as a hand me down,

to prompt me, push me into the labor of crafting new dreams and

in my will, bequeath them to the living to shelter and raise.

If there was not someone just in front of me holding out their light

I would not be able to see the path ahead.

I went to see

a bizarre, fierce thunder

framed by

cinematic flashes of

monkeypeople on bikes

and strobing mushrooms

followed by thumping chuck chucks

and the squelching growls

of tightly coiled wires

bleating out

the rawness

just beneath my skin

wriggling

uncomfortably

at my own strangeness

eager to break

and lay itself open

I have been the monkeypeople

attempting to fit in,

ritually tipping my hat

in polite greeting

to disinterested passerbys

and failing to avoid

oncoming traffic

I am still a diver suspended

in midair

always waiting

for the water

to rise over my head

and drown me

in my own weird sounds

I am in good company

So, what have you done with them?

Everyone I gave you?

What did you do

with Wynton Marsalis and

Herbie Hancock?

Show

me

what

you

know!

1e&a, 2 e&a, 3e&a, 4—

For fu-asdfugghjkl (grrrr)

You’re better than that.

There’s life beyond fours.

I taught you to count

in five to Brubeck.

Get out of the box

and into the pocket!

Riddle me this, Davis—

Where have you given

Miles room to live

in your bones?

Find your own fire—

your kind of blue,

then say something!

Don’t get stuck walking

when you can swing

all the way off the page

Listen to each one again

I still expect you

to show me what you know

about becoming music