poem: my job to get rid of the body

Okay, edited to oblivion now, but tighter and tougher, I think. Stylistically, I like for my poems to have a certain formal cadence with the syllables, and then lyrical offbeats for emphasis. Dunno why it feels right to me. Feedback appreciated. I hope to publish a chapbook this year.
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my job to get rid of the body

once a stout and stubborn hero
old self
forever survivor
clutches as if to drown me

I tape my mortal mouth
to silence useless truth

stuff what i knew of love
under calloused floorboards
rug rolled over the body

lay down your arms, warrior
yield your yearning to ghosts
let the hollow take yesterday’s eyes
let eulogy be your lullaby

soon willing flesh will loosen
straining grit and marrow
soot of recollection
let bones be seeds of tomorrows

it’s my job to get used to
the smell
the grip of phantom heart
the tears in my food

for these too shall pass
so they tell me

——————–

rhon drinkwater © 2008, edited 2009

Rut roh. I knew there was gonna be backlash for Sinclair Sexsmith. S/he decided to  remove all the transmen because of dissenting comments. What will Sinclair do if some of the Butches transition? Who is going to check i.d.s? Apparently none of these people were contacted about their inclusion. Aside form the usual uproar from those who want to make sure transfolk stay outside of dyke space, some transguys are upset over the appropriation. What a mess.

TOP 100 HOTTEST BUTCHES

AND TRANSGUYS

Our liberties are bound, and tolerance is the key to all our freedoms. TOLERANCE has to start with all of us. Early on with Butch-Femme.com, a large number of the members organized a petition asking me to make the site exclusive only to Butches and Femmes and to kick all the transguys out. Some of those people who signed the petition way back when have since transitioned or gone on to partner with transguys. I’m reading some blogs where Butch Voices is also suffering from such a divide. With my next project, I hope to build a bridge for all my brothers and find out what our differences really are.

We are in a revolution together, people. Open your arms and your eyes.

quickie update

Court with Christine on Tuesday. I don’t know what she expects to gain further but she’s all revved, sending threats that I won’t know what hit me. The truth is we made a sensible agreement long before we broke up. She reneged on our agreement and packaged a complex lie as a lawsuit. I am not hanging any hope on justice, however. I’m just going to suit up, show up, and tell the truth as I have all along.

SHIT! Just as I was writing that, her attorney called and said Chris wants to ask the judge for anotherrrrrr extension. Apparently she is too ill to fly. The last time she used that excuse, I checked her myspace page and read she was looking for dancing shoes for some hoedown western party. I just checked her page right now and apparently she is throwing a party for Pride this weekend. I hope she isn’t sick, but I really would like to get this shit over with already… Christ, she has been dragging her lawsuit out for almost two years now. She never even shows up for her own continuancy hearings and at this point I think I am better acquainted with her attorney than she is! I already grieved my losses and really want to move on without her hands on my throat. I don’t have anything else for her to take. Seriously.

The price dropped by 20% on that adorable little cottage I fell in love with. I wish like hell I had $37k. M wouldn’t even have to switch schools, and it’s in a really sweet little neighborhood. Lookie.

M is having a pretty good summer. She is in folklorico dance class and a drama troupe. learning guitar from a book I gave her, and studying tarot with me. She reads alot, which is a MIRACLE. The meds have evened out some and I’m really seeing some improvement with her helping me and babygirl out around the house. Since she was so often in charge before her momma died, sometimes she has a hard time understanding that she aint running things. The chubby little girl who came into my life at age 11 is now  leaning on 14, so an overcompensated pull toward independence is to be expected. I guess. I just buckle down on RESPECT and don’t tolerate anything less. It’s exhausting sometimes, but my girls are the biggest blessings in my life.

babygirl went back to work today. Yay! Now let’s hope this poor lady she’s caring for lives for more than a month.

Me? I am working on a big site for a writing institute, a site for a chef that’s on hold for the moment, and finishing up a site for a chiropractor friend this weekend. There is a 900 pound box of files I picked up from my old attorney that I need to organize to defend against this lawsuit. Hate that. The judge already said he won’t grant her another extension so hopefully this will be DONE soon.

MIss all my faraway friends. I think I am gonna fly up to California inAugust while M is in camp. Got some flyer miles I need to use!

I am so lucky.

Sometimes those of us who don’t have a boy outtie get no recognition on this day. With no babygirl this time last year, my friend Anton texted me warm wishes and it meant the world to me. So happy father’s day to all the Dads and Daddies out there in El Jay land!!

Such an enjoyable party last night. There must have been 40-50 people in this big house where I have always felt so welcome, and I was blessed with squishy sincere hugs from almost all of  them. I appreciate the sweet handful of internet friends who stayed in my life more than I can say, but I hardly knew a soul in Dallas when C left, so I feel so fortunate to be part of a real time local community now. I’m in the market for a few heart friends, and there are a few receptive special ones I’ve been scouting. I think I might be ready to trust again soon and learn how to be open and roll with the chances that go with that.

My prissy little babygirl was in pure joy mode, which is the most glorious thing when she is free to be her adorable childlike self. I held her in my arms, swirled her around the pool and laughed at all the cuteness that comes out of her pretty little petulant mouth when she feels cherished. Her friend told me, "Dang, babygirl got hotter since she got with you." heheh. It’s true — the little one is glowing. I discreetly dated some very fine Femmes after my divorce, but knew I wasnt ready. I didn’t know I was ready for babygirl either, and kept pushing her away. There was a moment I was telling her goodbye for good, giving her up like a habit for sweets, and I looked at her face and my biggo Daddy belly turned to ice. She felt it too, made a little noise and put her hand there on the cold spot. I was still such a mess, didn’t know if the ice was the warning sign I surely missed last time I opened my heart… or just arctic dread after such a painful unraveling. I’m so glad I didnt lose this girl. So glad.

I am done with trying to convince myself or anyone else that I am a good, caring person. I didn’t steal anything or do anything at all against my wife or my community. This is how irony works so poetically in my life. That my meticulous process of labeling and cataloging my emotions in all this divorce mess has brought me at last to this place where I am unwilling to defend my character any longer. Yet that is exactly the task that is on my calendar for next week: COURT. lol Whatever the outcome, it’s in the hands of a judge so all I gotta do is suit up and show up. I go see legal aid tomorrow morning.

My mom should be here soon. I love her so much, but she is completely disassociative about my traumatic childhood and thus is far too brittle to ever acknowledge any of what I deal with straight on with my eyes wide open. As a means for my own mental health, it’s like I have to take in a gasp of pure oxygen and hold it and just nod until she leaves. She’s the only mom I got, and I have learned the hard way there is no other means to have a small part of her in my life. So a few times a year, I gasp for my aging mother, even if she hardly knows me at all.

With the house all cool and clean again, sheets smelling delicious, I feel like a king in my castle again. I realize there could be more unraveling in store, but I feel so free and so hopeful that I will survive and thrive. I have found my center and am so ready to swing my axe again, to be the solid rock I always was. Not just throw love like confetti in a parade in the way that comes so easily for me, but to be brave enough to allow people to actually love me back in real ways. There is so much work I want to do!! I don’t even know where to start.

Gottta go~~~~~~~~~ peace!!!!

A/C: FIXED!!! Yay.

HOUSE: Disgusting!!! Hasn’t been cleaned all month due to the heat.

MOM: Coming to visit tomorrow. Oh, that is not good news

TIMING: terrible

MEESHA: In her room howling because she aint done yet testing the posted rules.

COURT: in nine days

WORK; all behind cuz I been holed up in my room with the window unit and away from my desk and all the content I was waiting on from clients came all at once

BIG PARTY: Tonight at my bud’s house… so need some social time!

BABYGIRL: On some new job leads

ME: Frazzled and trying to hit the high notes in my inbox but making a huge realization this morning that puts so much in prospective

MY SWEET FRIENDS: the best

miracle of life n awlllll

I thought it was cool the two pigeons living atop the brick column on my balcony didn’t fly off when we moved in. They stare at us as much as we stare at them. I thought it was *AWESOME* when he picked a new mate, and the old wife stood on the railing pleading with her wings spread and her mouth open as the other bitch moved in with her man. Meesha thought we had National Geographic right on our own balcony when they laid eggs. And more eggs. And now we have too many pigeons But survival of the fittest has its purpose. Two or three scattered twigs on my porch rug do not a nest make. So babygirl’s little pink dog ate one egg. One dumb one hatched and went to live under the bench by the front door cuz he aint got no idea what an actual nest is, and another dizzy one looks quite silly clutching to swaying wind chimes and eyeballing me sideways. Now there is another bald little hatchling on the rug under my chair. Lil booger is so pitiful with his little bump of wing and bulgy eyes.

I just asked babygirl what this new one’s name is, but she says he aint told her yet. He’ll be shitting all over my BBQ grill soon.

Protected:

Protected: an awakening … sprinkled with gratuitious metaphors

this is so beautiful

Its no secret to anyone who knows me even a little bit that I am wholly right-brained. I sense emotion in technicolor and am very connected to energy. That’s what makes me highly creative and it’s why I always see the poignancy. The left side of my brain is puny and full of cob webs, however, and I can’t remember dates without alarms to remind me and numbers are like foreign objects. It is why my desk is a mess and I remember faces and not names, why I am always struggling to be more structured. I can do repetitive brain tasks based on rules when I have to, but that kind of focus is forced and always makes me feel very frustrated and sad. Some people find comfort in methodology, but it literally makes me feel like I’m dying. When head chatter is silent and I am in the moment, *all in*, the intimacy I quietly experience with the universe easily moves me to tears, not of sadness, but more like a heavy, low vibration of sheer joy, intensely exhilarating and beautiful. My own hands feel delicate and potent, and I want to paint and write and capture the hum so that others can hear it, too. Because it is the hum of all of us.

I think the right/left brain concept is so well illustrated by a left-brained scientist who had never experienced the state so familiar to artists and poets. In this video, she explains what it felt like when she had a stroke and lost most of the function of her left brain<. She was so moved being in her right brain experience that she sobs and explains it as a miracle. The world really isn't a safe place to feel so intensely, so right-brainers spend our lives trying to dull our emotions with will or with chemicals, trying again and again to learn algebra, trying to fit into linear time. When she is talking about being in the moment and experiencing everything as energy and pure emotion, that is how I feel when I am absolutely healthy and connected, and free. It's like a simmer of love bubbling over, and you can feel the fragility and courage of all the human condition. The only other way I have seen my essence illustrated in way that made me say "YES YES, it is like that", is in the movie American Beauty when that boy next door is crying over a video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind. lol

Here are a few left-brain/right brain tests, but I don’t know if they are accurate.

Hemispheric Dominance Inventory Test

Mind Media Brainworks’s Left Brain vs Right Brain

This one flips back and forth on me and I find it disturbing that I can’t force her one way or the other by staring….. spinning dancer illusion.