to a faraway muse

I want to hold you
bury my nose in that beautiful soft hair of yours and press you close and never let go and inhale the scent of your presence, your nearness
it’s a drug you know, I wake up craving your touch and your smile and the earthy sour-plum aroma of your softly-carpeted skin

I want to kiss you
tear your clothes off you and ravish you and survey your body with tongue and nails and teeth and feel you arch against me and cry out
those blossoming bruises marking you as thoroughly mine, so completely mine, before we collapse and cannot but give way to exhaustion

I want to caress you
lie awake in your arms grinning foolishly at the ceiling with your breath misting up my glasses and my fingertips skimming your muscle-corded thighs
memorize every tendon and every prominent vein and the texture of your very core beneath the buoyant cushions that keep me afloat on you forever

I want to show you
places that are cherished and wonderful and and just plain ordinary unless the sun catches them by the right angle with the right people passing by
and pace them beyond sunset with our twin shutters flying until we mourn for all the beauty we cannot cram into those poorly encoded bits

I want to need you
collapse faintly in your arms in the aftermath and shudder and rage and weep until it all subsides and the clanging is little more than muted babble
take those cringing moments when the streets are crowded and lonely all at once and something hurts more than it should and halve that pain

but “soon” always means many months
and “one day” many years
and the times I need you most are when I cannot stand your touch

Trans-action and Gender Floods by Atreyu Bat

genderfork:

Dear you,
you’re wearing a corset and vinyl leggings
and you don’t have breasts to fill in the pockets,
but you look great in it anyway.

Dear you,
sucking on star shaped chocolate
while picking out a pink strap-on
to make love to your beautiful cis-gendered boyfriend.

Dear you,
testosterone lowers your voice
but your face still looks like a doll
and that lipstick looks great on you.

Dear you,
You can’t be a girl scout
but you make tents in your backyard
invite all your friends
and you eat unroasted marshmallows
and braid each others hair.
Who needs badges anyway?

Dear you,
Mens or Womens?
Womens or Mens?
You want to walk between the doors
and find a stall just for you.
Instead go to Target,
they have unisex bathrooms and icees
and thats the best way to celebrate your gender.

Dear you,
you can’t join the mens club
and your sister wants you to be a brides maid.
You just want to grow out your beard
and braid the hair on your chin.
So you do,
and you look great in that dress,
even if your sister had to pick a friend to be a bridesmaid instead.

Dear you,
Throw out ‘girls only’ clubs
and who needs ‘boys only’?
When you can all go to the nearest sex shop
and buy harnesses and blueberry lubricant,
then eat tacos next door.

Dear you,
it won’t be easy.
No one ever said it would be.
Some people won’t recognize who you are,
and sometimes that won’t be okay.
And sometimes being who you are
also means being nervous, and being left out.

But don’t forget that you can make your own club;
your ‘boys and girls’ club.
Where your mustache can match your dress,
and you don’t need badges to be a girl.
Don’t forget that their second glances,
their questioning gazes,
and their confusion,
takes nothing away from your magic.

After all,
your lipstick is on perfect, and it matches your dress.
After all,
who needs boyscouts when you’ve got a vintage corset
and a great singing voice?

And you,
don’t forget,
that your different colours do not betray your beauty
but add to it.

(via genderqueer)

Source: genderfork

to the church

show, don’t tell.
it’s all very well to say
“the church isn’t as conservative as it seems,
there are members who think more like you do,
but they’re just quiet”
but that doesn’t make me any less alone.
silence is acceptance,
and accepting intolerance and ignorance
is rejecting me.

do as He does, not as it says.
you ignore the verse about mixed fabric anyway.
or shellfish, or women’s silence.
but our Saviour healed one who was but the
servant of an oppressive outsider,
and commended the centurion for his faith.
can you not see how your verse-stickling
is more like the pharisees?

ask, and you will receive.
i will open up, guarded as i am,
blossom like the flower you thought me to be.
tell you why i think how i do,
and why i am sure that
some things are just part of who i am,
and that God understands;
but ask knowing that you may not like
the answer i am bound by honesty to give.

it takes a village to raise a child.
and when that village is the church
and that child is gay
his upbringing teaches him to hate himself,
and that his elders
speak about him behind his back
in disapproving tones.
it teaches him that he were better off
finding himself a new village
to call home.

no one speaks of the interim

Once I was embarrassed about how freely I cried.
I said it was allergies, or dust in my eyes,
never that emotions bubbled to the surface
in damp beads.

Now I look back and wish I could remember,
bend double and retch up my rotting fear.
But it is only allergies, or dust in my eyes,
that can bring tears.

I’m coming out of a fairly awful episode. Triggered by a fucking anime I was watching. An animated penknife. This isn’t really a poem, but there we go.

on sticks and stones

Another one of my ten-minute sonnets: this one about verbal bullying.

I do not care about those sticks and stones
though break my bones they can—and well they might—
but I know I’m afraid of mocking tones,
of words meant to belittle or to spite.
They call me faggot, retard, asshole, queer,
a midget, fat, a chink, a waste of space.
I try to shrug it off, try not to hear,
but every word just adds to my disgrace.

I’ve sought out help—but adults think I’m dense.
“You should just lighten up and have some fun.”
Well, they’re sure having fun—at my expense.
And others’ too: I’m not the only one.
If they broke bones it would be deemed a crime.
But at least broken bones will heal with time.

standing on the street corner of your heart

You’d left me in the cold since long before
my teenage years arrived. You never thought
to smile at me, or question what I wore—
it would have been some solace if we’d fought.
No, I was always left to stand alone.
You passed me by with not a single glance.
The way you looked at me cut to the bone.
I found approval in your dark advance,
confused the father-role with what you asked.
(How different could intimacy become
from that in which a younger child would bask?)
I never breathed a word of it to mom.

I should have known you’d one day have your fill.
I gave my all and got a dollar bill.

what I meant

when teachers nagged me out of reverie
and I said “I did it in my head”
by ‘it’ I meant you.

hands, tongue 
urgently explore each inch of warm brown skin 
nails, teeth 
leave blushing marks on creamy white flesh 

when you reached for my hand, then stopped short
and we exchanged that longing look
I raged at our fear.

green eyes 
transparent, playful, endless sparkling depths
dark eyes
still pools framed by ebony fronds

when they said in jest “you two
are so close you could be lovers”
I ached to tell them.

hold hands
interlocking fingers, squeezing, soft and warm
lock lips
eyelids flutter shut, salty tongues and bitter tears

when doors were locked, our tangled limbs one frame
and, nestling in, I murmured against your breasts
I said “I love you”.

dark fear
caustic ebbing away at ragged passion
bright hope
peeking through the cracks

sonnet for a first love

I have become that which I once despised—
those lovers drowned in sentiment so bold—
for every single time I meet your eyes
I cannot help but melt. If I grow old
it would be heav’n to do so by your side,
to spend each waking hour in your arms
and many, many sleeping hours beside;
I love you. This I say and bear no qualms
For though I know the fickle heart of youth
I think mine true. In meeting your dear self
My life has changed forever—and in truth,
I’d pledge my love in sickness and in health.

If I have loved not wisely, but too well,
too late: my heart is yours, not mine to sell.

One of my earlier pieces. Rather classically optimistic, but I still quite like it.

things I love about you

your gentle smile; your unassuming air;
the way you brighten up when things you love
come into conversation; your soft hair;
your open mind about the things above;
your shyness and your out-of-closet geek
(not ‘inner geek’ at all!); the way you are
so easily distracted by my sleek
skin; when disconnected, how you “grar”;
your tender eyes so brown; your tongue, your lips,
your hands—oh god, your hands—how they caress
first lovingly, then longingly, my hips;
against my skin, your warm desirous breath;
the way you turn to smiles my every frown—
for once, with you, my world’s stopped breaking down.

the “you”s in my sonnets invariably are my lover and muse, who convinced me that something other than fucked-up psychopathy could flow from my heart to my pen, and helped make it a reality. Here’s to poetry and those who inspire it.