Dishonor

Dishonoring my emotions
Holding them in my mouth
Clenching my jaw against them
Swallowing them deep into me
Where I can't see

You know me best
But sometimes it's like you hardly know me at all
Because I couldn't ever let the needs inside me
Come tumbling out around you
And that's why this will end

When I met you, I thought I could live without myself
But I transformed because you helped heal me
Making me feel safer than I have before
I could embrace what I thought I'd killed when I buried it alive
But now I'm burying myself for you

It feels wrong to do wrong by both of us like this
But I feel such shame and fear
When I think of telling you who's really there
Sleeping next to you in the bed we share
I wish I could control my thoughts and feelings, but life is never fair.

Arroyo

Your love is a dry arroyo that for years sustained me 

And quenched my parched heart with your flashflood adoration

But now crumbles under the footsteps of my words

Greedy for traces of you.

Call Me Frank

You burnt the mercy out of me
With your poisonous energy
And for years you haunted me
Hunting me in the night like an enemy
But now I've died and risen, I'm a zombie.

Life with you was absolute mayhem
And I'd kill you before I'd do it again
You always acted like you had some plan
Until I had the bright idea to time your attention span
And I realized I had to become a self-made man

Spent

How can you ask me to spend my life here
Always asking for permission
For space, for rights, for my vitality

Alchemy

It's difficult to say
whether I'm dissolving or here to stay
Assessing my own deliquescence
Before a second pubescence
Seems to me more than a little verbose
With this body still so pilose
But I find it impossible to resist
This dichotomy seems always to persist

And I am left here soliciting
Someone without an alchemical conditioning
For permission to transform from dissolute 

To precipitate, and understand I am most resolute,

In this quest I am destined for success

I will transform, my body I will repossess

Transitions: Two Hands

i reek of desperation
that's my prayer
a quiet whisper between two lips
through my skin and two hands pressed
for a life of peace without fear
without pain and without shame
to transition discretely
without unnecessary trauma
i'm so angry all the time now
and i haven't even started
so i ask dear goddex up there
to please help your lost lion
take the thorns from my paws
and lead me home to my pride
because i'm losing it down here
and i want to come home
send me soothing comfort
and your infinite patience
because im drowning in the way i feel

Transitions: Goodbye

I left some part of me
When I stepped off the platform
And disappeared into a subway car
To disembark at some unknown station
And she feels lost to me now
But I don't think I'd want her back
Her long green hair fluttering
And two hissing doors closing
That was the last I saw of her
The last bit of her to see.
Now it's just me.

Stationary

I'm gonna get on that train
And I'm gonna ride it
Wherever it takes me, I will go
All that matters is that
I get far away from here

Slippery

I keep seeing movement at the edges of my vision
Perhaps that movement is just the reflection
Of the movement of my mind
None of this is sustainable
Because all things change inevitably
And never has my identity felt more slippery
But I think, I think revelation is near

An Urgent Truth

My propensity for self deceit has always been adept
So how can I trust my feelings in the past
Or even the ones I have now
Who's to say that I'm not deceiving myself again
How long this time will I force myself to wait
When I can see the truth
That I am struggling in the same ways I always have
And I find myself wondering
Did the caterpillar yearn so hard as I
When they saw a butterfly gliding and unshy
Because I find myself obsessed with a fantasy
And opportunity for it to become reality
And now each day is filled with activity
Frantically trying to find my way out
Of this constrictive cocoon

How do you know?

My body, notoriously disloyal
But how could I possible return with an act of betrayal
And am I wrong for internalizing like this
Perhaps this is my ticket to long awaited freedom
I smile when I imagine myself differently
How long do I have to wait
Before I say this is more than a passing thought
I wake up thinking about it
Fall asleep thinking about it
Dream all night about it
So how do I know?
How do I know?
How do I know?
How do I know myself?

The Bat

Creature of the night
I like you cannot see the light
I am comfortable in this darkness
Eating morsels of my sins
Upside down in my own identity
I slept for so long and like you
I have awoken without a dawn
And flown into the darkness

1011100010110010000101

Those feelings when
You realize how completely
You are trapped in the binary.
You thought you'd escaped;
But all you did was wake up
from a dream within a dream.
You were never meant to be part of this,
And here you are, immersed completely, drowning
In a toxic way of thinking about reality
And your own transexistence.

On Being Out

Coming out is like
Taking a deep breath after
an exhausting run.

Am I trans

If you are asking
I will just tell you right now
The answer is yes.

Fern Gully

I drove a railroad spike
Into my heart
In order to break the chainsaws
That tried to cut me down.

On Coming Out

So that I may start another year as myself

Mazes

(11/18/2015)
Why is coming out such a process?
An unending, continuous process?
One that never seems to get easier no matter how much practice you've had or how many times you've done it?

I'm sorta in the closet.  Sorta not in the closet.  To some people I'm out.  To others I'm closeted.  Feels like lying by omission.  Feels shitty…
But there's so many barriers (not even including fear) to knock down to get out of the closet.  Saying "in the closet" implies there is only one door, without a lock, to be opened.  Then you step out and it's just that simple.  But it's so not like that at all.   It's many doors that are often locked.  You find yourself crawling out windows you stumbled across in the maze.  You learn to be an expert lock pick.  You draw maps in your mind with explicit protocols on how to escape.
It's uncomfortable.  It's like being stuck in chrysalis.  You know you've transformed into something better, but how do you get out?  Where is the seam?  Where is the weak point through which you'll force yourself?  Force… That's exactly what it is.  You push and prod but rarely do you cajole.  I can't seem to be that tender or nurturing with myself.  I am too preoccupied with remembering my map and how to pick locks…

Orator

Maybe if I shout it from the mountains
and everyone hears it all at once,
then I can stop telling my story.

Two Spirits

Made in the divine's image,

I am both; I am whole;

I am undivided;

I am divine.