Hope is scrappy
and
hope is nebulous.
You can think
you’ve got
your fingers
around it
and then
get the
wind knocked out
of you,
and then
ultimately
later find
that others
were holding
hope
for you.
There is,
however,
a limited
certain number
of times
that someone
can be kicked
before they
make a decision
about it.
Continuing to
get kicked
is the result
of inaction.
Maybe you
never asked
to be
in this ring.
Still gotta
make
that
decision.
On the days
when I forget
to eat anything
but my
weed laced oatmeal,
sometimes I still have
Grief Pickles.
When my depression
or my disordered eating
grabs a hold of me
and prevents me from moving,
I can lift a Grief Pickle
to my mouth,
the temptation
to feel again
too great.
In a moment,
the tiny sweet gherkins
yield to my teeth,
meaty matter crumbling
into itself
along the structures
that created it,
and I remember
my Grandma.
I remember
every Saturday night
when she would
consider it
something special
to break out
a frozen pizza
and some
potato chips
and some
tiny sweet gherkins.
Not a balanced meal,
nothing like her
homemade roasts
or goulash
but she thought
it was special
(probably because
it took less work),
so I thought
it was special.
I bite into a
Grief Pickle and
I remember
my Grandma,
who kept the house
at 76 degrees
for two years
after my
Grandpa died,
never thinking
that she could
change it to
what she liked.
I remember
my Grandma,
who played
strategy games
as if she didn’t
quite fully
understand
everything
she could do
to screw
other people over,
until the time came
that she didn’t quite
understand
strategy games
that deeply at all,
not for the benefit
of others
or herself.
I remember
my Grandma,
who would
subtly rib
on my weight
by suggesting
things like,
“perhaps you
should check
the weight limit
on the chair.”
I remember
my Grandma,
complicated,
human,
trapped
just the same
in a society
and a family
with such profound
generational trauma
that we don’t
speak of emotions
much less feel them.
I remember
my Grandma
on the hospital bed,
looking lost and tiny,
a wrinkled fetus
abandoned in the
slow gradual breakdown
of the prison
that holds
our consciousness.
I remember
my Grandma’s
hand, small
and soft and spotted.
I take another bite.
My father says I can’t be a man because I express too much. I’m a slave to my emotions, and I’m using a gender transition to stuff my trauma.
I feel.
I sit.
I process.
and everything I make is steeped in emotion, every drip of paint or drop of ink or flash of flame or cut or weld or arc is sacred feeling encapsulated in a single moment on canvas or metal but then
I feel.
I sit.
I process.
and I abandon those loving harsh moment of truth in closets because they are past truths and they are therapy and they exist for me.
“I feel like I should be imaginary.”
I stop myself before I send the text. I can see that it’s not a fair thing to put on someone else and besides, underneath the words, I feel something else stirring.
Some people like to say that some emotions are secondary. As an example, you may feel angry that your cat knocked over your grandfather’s ashes, but what’s really under there is sadness and a feeling of guilt that you hadn’t put them somewhere safer.
Oftentimes this is illustrated with an iceberg. We can see those secondary emotions in the visible portion of the iceberg. Behaviors that come from it are obvious. But the true emotion is lurking underwater, invisible to the naked eye.
So in this vein, an emotion that gets expressed by “I feel like I should be imaginary” is like a klaxon alarm for the ship captain. There are big things coming. Listen to these feelings.
The void is calling.
As a trans man who has been raped, during this battle over Kavanaugh I feel like my voice is needed but I also feel obligated to pass the mic to women.
Every day my emotions eat my insides into a raw goo. and I find I’m held together by spite and optimism.
So I will listen to my voice, and I will listen to the void, for they give me warnings about what I need to work on next.
I will not fear speaking, for one more voice among millions is how the world is shaped by the resonance.
Here is a poem for Dr. Ford.
Viscerally
in the mucosa
of the brain stem,
somewhere in the
lizard brain,
I get it-
and I hope
she finds peace
from the memories
while we all
get to live in
the retraumaery
and the harsh grim reality
that speaking her truth
barely slowed
them down
except now
more of us see
and with
that knowing
comes action.
I don’t feel inspired to write.
But here are words,
evidence of slogging.
A pace of clacking
set to the the
music of numbness.
I don’t feel inspired to write.
I feel a clog in the
underside of my chin
and above my left eye
and probably somewhere
in a ventricle.
My therapist once told me
that these are called emotions
and I am to sit with them
and name them
and feel them.
They are leaden
and mucus slimed.
I don’t feel inspired to write.
But suddenly I am allowed to feel.
A man
once told me
the inside
of my skull
was like
a funhouse
filled with mirrors
so the
slightest
little laser
impulse
of emotion
would
bounce around
and
I r fractured
u refracted
split like concrete
served like pie
little slices
teeny splices
page at a time
all stories are lies
Rexicorn 