"Being trans is a gift"

you say, and I agree: it is what it is because it's given

(but never freely).

like how calling you a poet refers to the making you do,

not the having, keeping or losing.

like how we in our fits of poetry

might yearn for the tissue of words 

to weaken, permeated with light it sought to hold, 

and finally give way.

like how those birches were just wood, until

we wandered into them.

How no one quibbled over the placement

of a mushroom, the significance

of an owl pellet, or whether every love needs a name.

the world deals beautifully with exceptions, makes none 

of its own. not even us.

the why...

because wrongness needs rightnesss

because I know I can be good

because I need reminding.

because I wanted one thing I couldn't lose

because I needed to let go

because I have nothing — none of us do.

because I was no longer content not to be

because I always have been

because I'm afraid I never will.

because I was ready

because I wasn't

because I was made to.

because 

because 

because 

because I kept your book

and it kept me from giving up

so, thank you

  for everything.

I've been waiting to wait for you

Been hoping to hope for you

Missed missing you

Cast sidelong glances at sidelong glances

The mirror dance we stumbled through as though blind

Was a sketch of an idea of an attempt at a prelude

But the second act is much better than the first

Friend, will I catch your eye across a crowded, hushed room,

See it shine with laughter, like radio on our private channel?

Who else has this frequency? Join in! All together, now

In this love of love

Joy that has no beginning

How could I imagine an end?

What is a leaf to the tree?

What is the leaf to the leaf? 

What is the leaf to one chloroplast in one cell? 

And what are you and I, God knows, 

In this tree with roots so deep,

trunk so broad, 

canopy so high, 

that we all fit… 

somewhere? 

How can it be,

when the tree 

is nothing to it,

nothing without it, 

that the light loves it, too?

Wash my heart in grief, you

whose love comes before love.

Plunge me into shame, soul

of joy. Touch me,

Only to show how untouched I am. See me,

Only so I curl in on myself. Wrung 

with loneliness I drip into the ocean. Fired

with despair, I am a speck of sand flowing into glass. You, 

you cannot be so far that I won't reach for you. And I,

in the dark, don't even need to close my eyes to see your face.

Is it in holding the pen,

a stork's beak tracing in air,

awaiting the feeling of fins underwater,

as still a gaze on the ground before prayer?

Or sighting and limning a lightness with ink,

and draping the blankness about as a veil,

eyes shining with secrets revealed,

and voice cradling verses inhaled?

How often the first voice is silent,

and in silence we raise up our own.

Is anyone speaking? Or do we just hear

what is and is all and alone?

Snow Owl

John Darnielle [c. 1997]

You came down from heaven to the branch outside my window.

Your feathers were the color of snow.

The dice were loaded against us ever seeing each other,

but one of us had nowhere else to go

In your eyes were all the colors that the rainbow forgot.

Your wingspan was four foot wide or better.

With your voice practicing notes from time's own beginning,

you took apart the alphabet, letter by letter

And here, where it all stops for good,

where the cool waters run,

thought I saw a mouse kicking in your beak,

it was only a skeleton

recording with bare accompaniment:

On Moments Gone Astray

I found this poem "I" wrote. Old photos are easy enough to look at now — the "boy" in them is always someone else, not me. In the secret place where I used to hold bottomless grief and hate for "him," now there is sorrow and compassion, because I know how ashamed and cut off "he" is. Each old poem, though, comes with imprints and echoes of "his" desperation to escape "himself." The best of them hold a little gleam of the light that kept "him" sane for the decades spent in that dark little hollow.

I didn't always write them well. Fair enough. I've already removed most of the pieces I didn't think had any merit at all, but I gave this one a second look and read the line I'd quoted at the end (without attribution — "mysterious" as usual). I had to look it up. Tolkien? I never liked Tolkien, but it was a good line. I re-read the piece in light of it.

I don't know what the title and opening lines were supposed to mean. You'd have to ask the author, if you could find them. My guess is the imagery was meant to allude to crossing an event horizon and muse on some convolution of spacetime. That seems about right, and it certainly didn't work.

Rereading is the most important work we do as human beings. Through it we perpetuate and adapt — our DNA, our youth and histories, our community and laws. As time and progress move us forward we pivot to face that eternal centre, compasses seeking the pole as we're dragged along the azimuth.

I've given it a new title as it pivots to look in a different direction from a different place toward the same origin, and kept the lines I thought mattered.

Strong 18 Strong

Falling in a whole sky, your small elongates, and perspective webs sticking out from yours, radiating higher is dropping.
like a long head stranded across belly, knees, feet and hungry and innerarms.
you,

Oversung, you did, to reach here, or--
                  Now it's a cloud white undertow every smallest vaporshape scaling visciously up the outs lowing from your skin. How freezing in your aw.
--overcold? Outerthought? Bubbled, as in the

was there in this a

seed hatching in the fruit?

And in the blank behind the season [                  ] wasnthere.

Wondering your gravity...

or the equivalence of the distinct principles

that must be the same, but only in a

small enough space

and your form always escaping forever

into form

—

"And far away may find a land where both our hearts may rest."

(originally published October 10th, 2008 under a dead name)

Right before the dawn

the lake and sky joined, hmmm, then —

life's turbidity

Waiting till 1:25 pm (Toronto)

I'm struggling to live with my limitations, and knowing when to adapt to them, and when to push. Honestly, it's been rare for me to feel any other way but a bit seasick from all that rocking, the past week being a great exception and relief. 

I woke at about 8:15 this morning. The sun was already high, and I was tired, disregulated, and had those mental and physical aches and spins of exhaustion. I deal very badly with sleep deficits, even though I'm properly medicated. I've been much healthier since I began working fully remotely and could give myself some extra time to let my body decide when to wake up. But now I've missed the morning and am supposed to wait until past noon, I think, to try again for that balance and peace.

I'm unsure what to do.

"Presumptuous" is the word I've used several times, in a particular context, for the opposite of my timidity. Being unsure of the boundaries of what's acceptable, especially for someone like me, I've chosen many times to err on the side of caution and reserve. I don't want to do that. That is not me. At least, not quite so much for so many things, and not all of me.

The past week, and yesterday especially, felt like being carried a on river as it branched from its watershed down a new course. I'm floating on the same water as before, but it's calmer as though purposeful, and incredibly untroubled by the rocks, rapids, and vortices that seemed inherent to it just a little upstream. I am afraid, from being long accustomed to those hazards, to let my guard down, afraid this gentle part can't last, and that I'll mess it up. I'm really, really unsure.

I try to try my best. I will continue.

Keep your head above water, but let the stream carry you.

Turning around

never felt exciting before,

in the many, many times I've changed direction.

Maybe when I was little, and

    spun, and

        spun, and

fell over giggling (one time I threw up!)

but this — is different, this is new,

and I am giggling.

I tried to do it right, and shook a little,

part from trepidation, and partly 

    like a speck of iron quivering in magnetic flux.

This way, this way, this way. So many lines of force,

gentle, continuous over vast distance, converging: there, here.

I shook, I was giddy, I was afraid, I was awash

in the strange sense of being headed

in the right direction.

    Nothing could be simpler.

There was an old green trampled mat,

draped over the porch steps getting sun-beaten dry after rain.

    I'd taken it. It would do.

And when I opened my eyes

facing it and my splayed hands, everything looked just

    like new.

It's not so much that it is hard

as easier to seal into,

in secret dark, a cellar barred

away, the wants I knew I knew

would always be, and tell myself

the better thing would be to will

them gone. But bowed, a burdened shelf

within me creaks beneath them still.

And days are long when measured 

in regrets replete with years

of gifts I should have treasured,

turned to moldered souvenirs.

I know this lesson now, I say, 

but still I take my time,

and lose in a despondent way

what left of it is mine.

My body says "I'm tired,"

"You tire me," retorts my spirit,

and hisses, "Damn you, cut me free."

I struggle not to hear it.

And maybe it's the weight of what

I shouldn't say that bids me seek

a rock to whisper to the things that

I had lacked the grace to speak

when there was time — I know there never 

was a possibility 

but also know that it were better

had I mourned, then, and honestly.

At night when I am smallest

and the crater walls are high

the stones run fingers down my back

and press me up against the black

and I could swear I hear them cry

at night when I am smallest

I've begged you then to let me die 

and sometimes feigned a sudden slack

as if this grief were just a bear.

I'd never thought of it as prayer

when being shaken limp with lack

I begged you'd let me die

I've not consulted zodiac

or wailed at empty air

but, bent beneath remorse, confessed

as though a judge were standing there

who doesn't speak but echoes back

and in the silence after, I

can see the crater filled with sky

at night when I am smallest

Could we be sisters? asked the tree

her scraggly crown abuzz in thought,

If spinning on my seedwings, I'd

not landed in this little pot,

but grown amidst your tangled roots

and known what things they say

and learnt the lilts of choral chems

and shared the songs, the dance, the day.

Would now it be presumptuous

(if only I could stand)

to pull myself from this thin mulch

and try to root in righter land?

"She does not know our languages,

what could she take, what could she give?

Her cankered boughs won't bear the sun.

We do not think that she will live."

They're right, I think, to rule it out,

abide what cannot be unmade.

But I would wane the sweetest season

nodding in your shade.

for an Old Woman

The first meagre minutes of the day

can’t tempt me from bed, but something from my fever years drives me

out and I am 

in a low, peculiar vantage point,

the screen window above me

catches nettling light I squint through, looking

for the sick heat of other days

for a way out not through this gouged place

for roots not split shells, old names

or chastisement for a fool returning —

my gaze has drifted.

again I look slantwise up. from nowhere

an impossibly opal sunrise

circles the world in pearl ember,

look! I close my eyes and miss you

I haven’t written from this place for years, barely read.

that part of me doesn’t want to eat,

knows like old cats and toothless elephants

know, that sustenance is not the answer,

know to look

elsewhere, but not anywhere I can find

the wind

ruffles the sky,

            listen

are you listening with me?

as water runs softly over my face, falls in tiny thuds

to the wind

tousling

the shifting sides and secret nooks

of that bright unlikely expanse…

a white tarp, of course, stretched over the neighbours’ roof

eyes pushing forty have grown no wiser

and lead me no better than before,

but what did they see for that moment?

somewhere beyond a membranous surface

I took for the sky

I shouldn't have been surprised, but was unprepared for the cruelty of the Toronto Sun's libel against Asmaa Hussein, whose husband was killed this Friday at a peaceful protest in Alexandria. Insinuations that her one-time employment at one school within a global institute through whose doors a handful of notorious men drifted, in disparate times and places, could be grounds for condemnation or a withdrawal of sympathy, can only appeal to a degenerate mass. They are a reminder that doubt can be spread dumbly, perversely, for the sake of insulating prejudice as much as for spurring inquiry that would reveal it.

I knew Asmaa in undergrad, not well at all, but well enough to be dumbstruck with horror at what has happened to her young family over the past five days. I took a poetry class with her in second year, and while I was an editor at the Varsity she was working in an office directly above mine, editing the Muslim Voice. We attended one or two events with the same party, knew one another through mutual friends, and understood each other a sight better than strangers would. The hideous crimes inflicted on her late husband, her, and their 9-month-old baby, which have been followed by inhumane insults in Egypt and here in her home, I have watched her bear with unimaginable grace, courage and articulateness that have left me shaken by her faith and understanding of what it is to be human.

To those insufficiently concerned with such things, know that you make yourselves apparent when you fling stones at people in her position who happen to fit profiles you've chosen to hate. Her friends, I am sure, are needed as few people ever are. The rest, including those at the Sun prone to feeling deserved guilt, I would suggest should back off. And imagine themselves in her situation, rather than grasping at reasons not to.

From this valley they say you are going

My grandmother died on Saturday. I heard this Monday when I went home to meet mom on her return from a trip to Anchorage to be with the family. It was good--and unusual--that almost the whole immediate family lived there, especially considering how much they all moved around and have no roots in the area other than those they quickly fabricated. When they have no history, my maternal family will quickly stubborn one into existence.

This powerful bullheadedness is, as you might detect, a bit of a family emblem. Mom said that grandma died as she wanted to. She wanted only her immediate family there, none of her grandchildren, both to prevent us from having the memory of her dying and to draw in the most familiar people in her life while she waited. Mom also said she eventually wasn't even afraid. Though she still had bad stretches where she couldn't breathe and panicked, she was telling everyone that it was natural, what was happening to her.

So grandma had the death she wanted. She was the only person who still called me "Ani" (pronounce it "Onny"), a nickname my mom called me by when I was very young. Grandma always called me that--more the older I got, I swear. I don't remember the exact last time I said goodbye to her, and I'm glad for that. If I did, it would stand falsely as a summary of our connection. I'm left with a long and gappy memory of her. She was as stern and unbending a figure as I have ever known--more so, much more, than any other family member I can think of. But she wouldn't say anything against a view of yours she did not share. I know she was very kind and intelligent, perceptive and different, and worried. I miss my grandmother, and the question of when I, personally, lost her troubles me.

Her ability to find her good death leaves as strong an impression on me as the fatalistic sprit underlying all her wise deciding. She chose what was dearest and steadiest in her life to die beside, which is the first thought to almost bring tears to my eyes since the news began to hit. But she didn't choose to save her life when she could have. I'm unsatisfied we'll ever explain that habit well--is it unrequited curiosity that pulls you to die, fear and rationalization, disenchantment, disappointment, loneliness, weakness, shame, a complicated enjoyment of the object of your guilt, a simple act of mental avoidance? I don't know whether she reached any conclusion or was covered by an iron shield during the worst of it. I know my grandfather, who was exhausted, awoke magically ten minutes before she died, and she became calm when he came in to be with her.

If we have such control over the things we know about, if we can sweep away, more or less, the obstacles we'd hate to encounter even in the face of death, then why does it seem so right for everyone to do everything too late?


Love,

André

I'm not dead yet

This year will be hard. I'm not going to have any of my own time, and I'll have to be very clever to have enough time for the stuff I've committed to do. I think next year I'll go hollow out a boulder and live in hermitage, enjoying only the simple burdens and absences of a contemplative life, like crickets chirping, hunger, the inability to have odd bumps diagnosed or cuts properly treated, and the sense that those facelike imaginary patterns in foliage are actual people.

I'm not dead yet

This year will be hard. I'm not going to have any of my own time, and I'll have to be very clever to have enough time for the stuff I've committed to do. I think next year I'll go hollow out a boulder and live in hermitage, enjoying only the simple burdens and absences of a contemplative life, like crickets chirping, hunger, the inability to have odd bumps diagnosed or cuts properly treated, and the sense that those facelike imaginary patterns in foliage are actual people.

Prior thoughts revisited upon me unexpectedly

It is really unfair how I seize on the small recognizable things. I do it with you, all, I know no other way to know a person than to catch them with one of their own. And I work as hard to do it as to not realize that as soon as they don't show me their own, I won't know what's with no-one.

So this is an education?

This poem was in my head (no man is an island entire...bell tolls)
This poem was in my head (and light and labor past)
This poem was in my head (your cloud words...amoeba, sigh, divide, begin; So sorry I can barely say to be full of invisible words).

A great deal was up around me. I have been digging a while—depth equating with extent of knowledge, familiarity, commitment even, in a football-teamspeak. Being that it is impossible to dig across the entire surface of ground (without blasting the excavated earth into space), depth means high walls. Tempting to say I've dug an island, in light of the first poem, but an analogy is an analogy is an analogy and like us they only go so far before they give out.

I've not dug a moat around a little patch of ground. There, only, was air filling the cleared space between matters I have not disturbed. Is a hole the air or the walls, is a house the inside or the structure, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Yeah. What is the sound of one dumb question? Dumb meaning mute, is it the same as one dumb answer? If these walls could'a talked...

But a great deal has come down, and the thing to do isn't to frame statements, which will only come out asinine no matter how they sound on the inside; the thing is only to pick through the new-broken chunks and pockets and inspect, decide what what is, and where I want to put all this dirt.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying.