Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day

Don’t look now
I’m fading away
Into the gray of my mornings
Or the blues of every night

Is it that my nails
     keep breaking
Or maybe the corn
     on my second little piggy
Things keep popping out
     on my face
          or
     of my life

It seems no matter how
I try I become more difficult
     to hold
I am not an easy woman
     to want

They have asked
     the psychiatrists     psychologists     politicians and
     social workers
What this decade will be
     known for
There is no doubt          it is
     loneliness

If loneliness were a grape
     the wine would be vintage
If it were a wood
     the furniture would be mahogany
But since it is life          it is
     Cotton Candy
          on a rainy day
The sweet soft essence
     of possibility
Never quite maturing

I have prided myself
On being in that great tradition
     albeit circus
That the show must go on
Though in my community the vernacular is
     One Monkey Don’t Stop the Show

We all line up
     at some midway point
To thread our way through
     the boredom and futility
Looking for the blue ribbon and gold medal

Mostly these are seen as food labels

We are consumed by people who sing
     the same old song          STAY:
                                                     as sweet as you are
                                                     in my corner
Or perhaps                                    just a little bit longer
But whatever you do                     don’t change baby baby don’t change
Something needs to change

Everything     some say     will change
I need a change
     of pace     face     attitude and life
Though I long for my loneliness
I know I need something
Or someone.
Or…..

I strangle my words as easily as I do my tears
I stifle my screams as frequently as I flash my smile
     it means nothing
I am cotton candy on a rainy day
     the unrealized dream of an idea unborn

I share with the painters the desire
To put a three-dimensional picture
On a one-dimensional surface

Happy Valentine's Day

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!
I hope you will find this here mail
Because if this world was just
And the highest is what is sought after the most
Your mailbox on this day should be flooded
With letters of adoration
With images inspired only by the divine
And with messages fueled by a spiritual revelation that could have only come about by a deeply transformative opening of the heart
And if this is not so?
I mourn the state of this world
And I grieve the fact that our evolution has only come thus far
But I must admit
There is joy as well
Joy over the fact that the world has not caught up with you just yet
And knowing that I can acknowledge you here, in this moment ...
Hi!
Greetings,
Even if my letter is the only one, or one among the few?
Know that I speak on behalf of the plenty
Because plenty of talk takes place about you up in the heavens,
and the divine beings that dwell there participate in these talks with the upmost regard
"She's tried and true" they say.
Which in their terms means
one who is not only gifted, but can also hold those gifts with ease and grace
Even when times are trying
For example
Imagine one is gifted with the greatest of beauty
which in your case is not a stretch of the imagination at all
Now I'd like you to imagine also, that ones abundance of beauty can be overwhelming
for it can easily set a precedent in how one maneuvers through the world
See, the world honors beauty in a particular way, but the heavens do it in their own way.
And it is the later what you have accomplished
Which is just hearsay.
But isn't everything hearsay.
Even my own words are but my hearsay from my intuition or gut,
And these words that you read here right now in this moment of reading
Could easily turn into mere hearsay as well,
And I would like you to keep that in mind
When I say the following,
So try not to filter these words with precedents that were set in the past
If when we speak of the perfection of your beauty
try not to think about that what you find imperfect about your self,
This here is not science!
Or, in fact it is science
but in the ancient kind of way
where all the sciences are studied at the same time.
Unfortunately modern science looks at the details,
it isolates things
And just like when we get isolated, and lonely
we don't shine, and we don't thrive.
The only thing we need to look at when we see anything in detail
is its interaction with its environment.
So when one was to speak of your eyes?
One could talk about the individual coloring they posses,
or one could mention the transcendence they clearly harbor,
Because in my view the eyes are like saloon doors
they open both ways,
You see the world through them
and the world sees you through it.
What then is there to see in these eyes?
There is lots to see.
But one thing it is not.
It is not the heart, its definitely not that!
Everyones heart is supposed to be the same,
No, what we are looking at is the interaction of the heart.
When we walk through the world and things come our way
Our hearts interact with all that we see
And yours doesn't just interact, it touches
It touches everything that comes your way
So if you feel overwhelmed sometimes? I understand
That is a lot of work.
It would make sense, that
On this day it would be nice to receive some recognition for that
Because if this world was just
And the highest is what is sought after the most
Your mailbox on this day should be flooded
With letters of adoration
With images inspired only by the divine
And with messages fueled by a spiritual revelation that could have only come about by a deeply transformative opening of the heart
And if this is not so?
I am here to make up for the shortcomings of this world.
If in that, I was to put you on a pedestal?
It might be that I think the world you walk on is not worthy to even touch your feet
It might be that I'd want to show you of to the world, for the great being that you are
And it might be that I'd simply want to make it easier for my tall self to whisper a couple of things into your ear
So listen,
There is women, and there is women.
And you? Oh, special one, also known as Sophia
Wisdom,
the feminine side of Gods presence
Hear me out?
You are an embodiment of all that.
What I was told is this.
Your heart ...
Those four chambers in your chest that open and close,
open and close.
And open ...
That heart of the feminine, is like an opulent flower
but in order for it to grow it requires a great bounty of light
and a purity of light that unfortunately for us is so rare
It hasn't been seen for the last 1000s of years
Not since atlantis anyways
Not in this galaxy
Not on this planet
Not under these circumstances
Not even in moments of the most heightened pure bliss.
I'm sorry its just not possible
These here are facts.
I was shown the numbers, and how they add up,
or should I say don't add up.
But rumor has it.
Your four room boudoir, the core of whom you are
have their widows wide open
a fresh breeze runs through them
Causing the veils to blow in the wind
with a breath of fresh air that flows through it.
And a spaciousness ...
unlike any other.
How you did this? I know not.
But I was told to tell you.
One way to bring back that light for every woman
Is to have women powerful enough
To have their hearts be of a size so large
it entices that light to come out from a planet just like venus
2 galaxies removed
and four times as big.
Word is,
That light is on its way.
Because of you!

- Arno Sphere

Dear Ex-Lover

Dear ex lover,

I promise I'll stop chasing your memory in my dreams.
I'll stop bringing your name up over cups of coffee. muffins, and loneliness.
I will marry a man, and I will lay my heart on his chest,
like red roses on mahogany caskets.
And I'll have his daughter.
And she'll have eyes reminding me that God still believes in second chances.
And if she ever decided to date a woman,
I will love bravery down her spine.
I will be reminded of all the times where we loved like there were expiration dates tattooed on our inner thighs.
If she ever comes home with eyelids like cracking levies, bruised kneecaps, and a heart full of question marks,
I will hold her like my mother never held me.
I will clasp her face in my palms like the New Testament on judgement day.
I'll tell her that love is the passion that allows you to do the right thing.
And no woman can play coaster to half-empty heart.
And if she ever feels as if she's alone,
As if she is not a hand-me-down fabric pulled out of the depths of mommy's closet,
I'll remember your name and I'll mumble it under my breath.
And when she asks me what did I say,
I'll tell her that I know what it's like to drag a woman out of a cold war,
And then being too worn to clean up the battle field that it has made of you.
I'll tell her that your heart sounds like gun shows tripping over battered cement.
I'll tell her I know what it's like just to want somebody to remember you.
And that some women are as foul as expired men in produce aisles.
And that apologies are like oxygen masks on hijack planes.

Forgive yourself before you ever forgive the person that's sitting next to you.
I'll tell her to never regret loving in permanent ink.
And that scars only give your stretch marks something to gossip about.
And that hearts and stop signs are fraternal twins,
Lost in open roads and hollow chests.
If my daughter's mirror is ever unfamiliar and she is too embarrassed and prideful to run into mommy's arms,
I'll pray that she has friends with hearts filled with thousands of fireflies.
Who are not too cool to pray with her.
Who will tell her to stop looking for the light at the end of the tunnel and find God in the darkness.
If my daughter ever walks in my house like shattering class,
I'll tell her about you.
I'll tell her that we hurt like C-Sections birthing dead babies.
And that we cried together.
And that we prayed together.
And that we laughed like our smiles were the only ones that mattered in this world.
And that we hurt,
Like women who loved women,
Who loved people that did not love us.

Dear Ex Lover,

I hope my daughter never knows what a goodbye kiss feels like.
I hope she never knows what "I'll see you later" really means.
I hope she never memorizes the dial tone of a last conversation.
Because a broken heart feels like poisoned butterflies taking their last flutters in the pit of your stomach.

Dear Ex Lover,

I hope my daughter never bears her soul at a poetry showcase,
With her first love sitting in the audience-
Knowing the same hands she'll use to applaud her with,
Will be the same hands that will never hold her again.

https://youtu.be/tpVLLq7KQyE

The Gift

Snow began falling late last night. Wet flakes
dropping past windows, snow covering
the skylights. We watched for a time, surprised
and happy. glad to be here, and nowhere else.
I loaded up the wood stove. Adjusted the flue.
We went to bed, where I closed my eyes at once.
But for some reason, before falling asleep,
I recalled the scene at the airport
in Buenos Aires the evening we left.
How still and deserted the place seemed!
Dead quiet except the sound of our engines
as we backed away from the gate and
taxied slowly down the runway in a light snow.
The windows in the terminal building dark.
No one in evidence, not even a ground crew. “It’s as if
the whole place is mourning,” you said.

I opened my eyes. Your breathing said
you were fast asleep. I covered you with an arm
and went on from Argentina to recall a place
I lives in once in Palo Alto. No snow in Palo Alto.
But I had a room and two windows looking onto the Bayshore Freeway.
They refrigerator stood next to the bed.
When I became dehydrated in the middle of the night,
all I had to do to slake that thirst was reach out
and open the door. The light inside showed the way
to a bottle of cold water. A hot plate
sat in the bathroom close to the sink.
When I shaved, the pan of water bubbled
on the coil next to the jar of coffee granules.

I sat on the bed one morning, dressed, clean-shaven,
drinking coffee, putting off what I’d decided to do. Finally
dialed Jim Houston’s number in Santa Cruz.
And asked for 75 dollars. He said he didn’t have it.
His wife had gone to Mexico for a week.
He simply didn’t have it. He was coming up short
this month. “It’s okay,” I said, “I understand.”
And I did. We talked a little
more, then hung up. He didn’t hate it.
I finished the coffee, more or less, just as the plane
lifted off the runway into the sunset.
I turned in the seat for one last look
at the lights of Buenos Aires. Then closed my eyes
for the long trip back.

This morning there’s snow everywhere. We remark on it.
You tell me you didn’t sleep well. I say
I didn’t either. You had a terrible night. “Me too.”
We’re extraordinarily calm and tender with each other
as if sensing the other’s rickety state of mind.
As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don’t,
of course. We never do. No matter.
It’s the tenderness I care about. That’s the gift
this morning that moves and holds me.
Same as every morning.

Demeter's Prayer To Hades

This alone is what I wish for you: knowledge.
To understand each desire has an edge,
to know we are responsible for the lives
we change. No faith comes without cost,
no one believes without dying.
Now for the first time
I see clearly the trail you planted,
what ground opened to waste,
though you dreamed a wealth
of flowers.

There are no curses–only mirrors
held up to the souls of gods and mortals.
And so I give up this fate, too.
Believe in yourself,
go ahead–see where it gets you.

Queer Poetics: How to Make Love to A Trans Person

Forget the images you’ve learned to attach
To words like cock and clit,
Chest and breasts.
Break those words open
Like a paramedic cracking ribs
To pump blood through a failing heart.
Push your hands inside.
Get them messy.
Scratch new definitions on the bones.

Get rid of the old words altogether.
Make up new words.
Call it a click or a ditto.
Call it the sound he makes
When you brush your hand against it through his jeans,
When you can hear his heart knocking on the back of his teeth
And every cell in his body is breathing.
Make the arch of her back a language
Name the hollows of each of her vertebrae
When they catch pools of sweat
Like rainwater in a row of paper cups
Align your teeth with this alphabet of her spine
So every word is weighted with the salt of her.

When you peel layers of clothing from his skin
Do not act as though you are changing dressings on a trauma patient
Even though it’s highly likely that you are.
Do not ask if she’s “had the surgery.”
Do not tell him that the needlepoint bruises on his thighs look like they hurt
If you are being offered a body
That has already been laid upon an altar of surgical steel
A sacrifice to whatever gods govern bodies
That come with some assembly required
Whatever you do,
Do not say that the carefully sculpted landscape
Bordered by rocky ridges of scar tissue
Looks almost natural.

If she offers you breastbone
Aching to carve soft fruit from its branches
Though there may be more tissue in the lining of her bra
Than the flesh that rises to meet it
Let her ripen in your hands.
Imagine if she’d lost those swells to cancer,
Diabetes,
A car accident instead of an accident of genetics
Would you think of her as less a woman then?
Then think of her as no less one now.

If he offers you a thumb-sized sprout of muscle
Reaching toward you when you kiss him
Like it wants to go deep enough inside you
To scratch his name on the bottom of your heart
Hold it as if it can-
In your hand, in your mouth
Inside the nest of your pelvic bones.
Though his skin may hardly do more than brush yours,
You will feel him deeper than you think.

Realize that bodies are only a fraction of who we are
They’re just oddly-shaped vessels for hearts
And honestly, they can barely contain us
We strain at their seams with every breath we take
We are all pulse and sweat,
Tissue and nerve ending
We are programmed to grope and fumble until we get it right.
Bodies have been learning each other forever.
It’s what bodies do.
They are grab bags of parts
And half the fun is figuring out
All the different ways we can fit them together;
All the different uses for hipbones and hands,
Tongues and teeth;
All the ways to car-crash our bodies beautiful.
But we could never forget how to use our hearts
Even if we tried.
That’s the important part.
Don’t worry about the bodies.
They’ve got this.

- Gabe Moses
http://wildgender.com/queer-poetics-how-to-make-love-to-a-trans-person/2401

I.35

i watch him touch him                     self over a screen
and pretend                                    it is with my hands

how you pull a quiver                          from an arrow.

he moans and i grow               jealous of the satellites.
their capacity for translation,           to code his sound
in numbers                         unbraiding in my speakers
lucky metal                                      audience of cables.

i know the wireless signal is all                   around me,
that i’m drowning in his                   unrendered noise.

how from a thousand miles away                 i can dam
myself                with the light spilling from his hands.

what magic is this?                           distance collapsed
into the length of a human breath.   what witchcraft?

six years ago a bridge between us                   collapsed
the interstate ate                            thirteen people alive
asphalt spilling                             like amputated hands
into the dark below.                  what is love but a river
that exists to eat                       all your excess concrete

appendages?                what is a voice but how it lands
wet in the body?                                    what is distance
but a place that can be reshaped     through language?

how i emulate and pull a keyboard       from the ashes.

how i gave him a river             and he became it’s king.

how any thing collapsed                           can be rebuilt.
take our two heaving torsos                           take them

how they fall like a bridge into the water
how they rise up alone from the sweat.

- Sam Sax

On PrEP or on Prayer [“when i say pre-exposure prophylaxis”]

when i say pre-exposure prophylaxis

you think

easy fix. greek in origin. an act of guarding.

east of here a small temple.

inside parishioners strip nude

as armless statues, their stone

genitals hardening under a chemist’s glare.

the garden out front fecund & tended.

the garden inside bare.

when i say tenofovir disoproxil

you think

chemical names. saint names. names without origin.

an unpronounceable string of letters. the generic names

of petty angels. the drug’s molecular makeup applied in

& around the eyes & lips. the names of viruses & blind trials.

the kept-vial of love. the unknowable side effects of blood.

when i say oral emtricitabine

you think

once a day swallow a small sun

& all hymn in you comes undone

the way a lit match deads the smell

of a public bathroom

when i say nucleotide analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor

you think

thirsty epidemic

you push the blue pill through its foil

you know each new medicine trails

our dead behind it like wedding cans

listen

you can hear them now can’t you?

- Sam Sax

On PrEP or on Prayer [“spare us your burial rites”]

spare us your burial rites

spare us the first rib

the flood, the resurrection

spare us your dairy & meats

your belief in a life after this one

heaven’s a city

we’ve been priced out of

our mothers fled

for more affordable children

for the price of liver

heaven wants nothing

to do with pleasure

on earth

on this

the occasion of my brother’s wedding

i need something awful

done to my body

heaven’s a boy

who wants me to crawl

through his mother’s midnight-window

heaven’s the condom splitting into light

heaven’s not a place

more a wound i make & pass through

when we’re done

he asks how many men

i’ve fucked this month

& not loved

spare me the quilt & blankets

spare me the look

in his eyes when he takes me

careful as a poison inside him

spare me the lecture

on the survival

of my body

& i will spare you

my body

- Sam Sax

The Hitter

he hit good
at all the right times
in all the right places
hitting so hard i’d know
he meant it

to redirect me
to shock me into love
to make me covet
those pangs of missing
and needing him hitting
at all the right times
in all the right places

hitting to make me remember
and never forget hitting
to make me want more
and never be fulfilled or
hardened against his hardness

of love for me hard as
muscle and muscular as love
hitting direct and meaning it
in all the right times
in all the right places.

- Brad Johnson

I Want To Love You

I want to be the door in your jamb—
always to close to your strong members.
I want to swell with our humid love
so we will be stuck together.
Love-locked, your frame around my
solid core, we’d never be jimmied apart.

I want to be your vanity drawer,
to hide my treasures in you
I want to be the nail driven homeward
to my life-purpose by your blows.
I wish to be the foil embracing
your dark stone—together a gem.

I want to love your gold shore,
to hug, caress, and kiss your shifting contours,
to batter relentlessly against
your changeless self during my storms,
to bejewel you during high tides,
and reveal your secrets down low.

I would be a fish to spend and draw
life swimming through and breathing you.
I’d be the white to your plump yolk,
to surround and nourish you as you grow,
to help you rise if you’re beaten,
to be each figure and ground for each.

…I want to love you…

- Craig A. Reynolds

Poem To The World

When lovers
on the brink
of
finding out
Recline on
fat illusions
of
their words
And utter platitudes
—instead of shouts
Forget
tender silences
they’ve shared
And all confession’s
awkwardness they’ve dared
Like
children peeking softly from their doubts,
There comes a time
of
darkness and despair
when moments seem
like hours under weights
Regret and fear
like
garbage fills the air
And lips of fondest memories
turn to hate.

When lovers
on the brink
of
coming near
forget
the
body’s swelled
and
aching cries
And
substitute excuses for their tears,
Something soft
and silent in them dies.
And
that, perhaps, is why there are old men
On benches
all alone
in city parks
And
bony-fingered spinsters with hard sad eyes
Knitting things for babies in the dark
And maybe why we’re lonely
in
the spring

When
all the earth her fat thighs opens wide
To show us all her pretty under-things
And
laughingly invites us to her side
To
kiss away the differences we’ve known
With the
tenderness
and
wisdom of her groans
Yet
We
lie beside each other
in despair
While
our bodies
make love
—in
the air.

- Bill Duke

The Occupied Territories

You are not to touch yourself
in any way
or be familiar with ecstasy.
You are not to touch
anyone of your own sex
or outside of your race
then talk about it,
photograph it, write it down
in explicit details, or paint it
red, orange, blue, or dance
in honor of its power, dance
for its beauty, dance
because it’s yours.

You are not to touch other flesh
without a police permit.
You have no privacy -
the State wants to seize your bed
and sleep with you.
The State wants to control
your sexuality, your birth rate,
your passion.
The message is clear:
your penis, your vagina,
your testicles, your womb,
your anus, your orgasm,
these belong to the State.

You are not to touch yourself
or be familiar with ecstasy.
The erogenous zones
are not demilitarized.

- Essex Hemphill

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BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA
TRANSLATED BY STANISŁAW BARAŃCZAK

I’m a tranquilizer.
I’m effective at home.
I work in the office.
I can take exams
on the witness stand.
I mend broken cups with care.
All you have to do is take me,
let me melt beneath your tongue,
just gulp me
with a glass of water.

I know how to handle misfortune,
how to take bad news.
I can minimize injustice,
lighten up God’s absence,
or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face.
What are you waiting for—
have faith in my chemical compassion.

You’re still a young man/woman.
It’s not too late to learn how to unwind.
Who said
you have to take it on the chin?

Let me have your abyss.
I’ll cushion it with sleep.
You’ll thank me for giving you
four paws to fall on.

Sell me your soul.
There are no other takers.

There is no other devil anymore.

Getting Your Rocks Off

Reading clouds beyond the road
I calculate our distance, survey
the space between our clothes
where rising curves and mountain
tug for air, touch, release.

You drive to the hairpin slope,
hesitate, turn up and in. We ride
on every naked fear you have
and discover that men like us
are not all granite, shale,
deceptive quartz, or
glittering layers of mica.

From here you see the whole world
differently: brownskin,
tufts of black grass.
And many times I have given myself
to summits like these.
Ride in, ride high.
Ride until the clouds break.

You will learn to read rain. You will
follow the white gravel it leaves.

Melvin Dixon

Poet Details

1950–1992

Scholar, novelist, and poet Melvin Dixon was born in Stamford, Connecticut. He earned a BA from Wesleyan University and an MA and a PhD from Brown University. Dixon wrote the poetry collections Change of Territory (1983) and Love’s Instruments (1995, published posthumously) and two novels, Trouble the Water (1989), winner of a Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction, and Vanishing Rooms (1991). Influenced by James Baldwin, Dixon wrote extensively about his homosexuality, specifically about the complexities of being a gay black man. Speaking on this topic at a speech to the Third National Lesbian and Gay Writers Conference, Dixon said, “As white gays deny multiculturalism among gays, so too do black communities deny multisexualism among their members. Against this double cremation, we must leave the legacy of our writing and our perspectives on gay and straight experiences.”

Dixon produced scholarship on and translated writing by several African American writers, including Leopold Sedar Senghor, Geneviève Fabre, and Jacques Roumain. Dixon taught at the City University of New York, Fordham University, Columbia University, and Williams College before dying of complications of AIDS at age 42.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/survivingandthriving/img/photo-exhibition-OB2269-home.jpg

“If you really love him…Rubbers—Every Time!” poster, Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, Los Angeles, 1985

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

In response to a pervasive myth that AIDS was a white gay disease, black gay and lesbian organizations created campaigns targeting black men who had sex with men. They encouraged men to protect one another, insisting that love—although not in the form of marriage or even commitment—and condoms were critical for AIDS prevention.