Still

glass and notebooks and blood and phone calls
text messages and secret plans
broken bodies and hearts and trust and homes
fear
excitement
hope
loneliness
anxiety
love
cuddles
puzzle pieces and night clubs and couches
friends and ex-friends and everyone else
tears and music and diamond rings
hotels
voices
teddy bears and crayons and sex
466 miles, sometimes
cold pillows and puppy kisses
empty water bottles and Family Guy and journal entries
sweat and protein
wild and wonderful
buses
headaches
naps
money and time
anticipation
still fear
but still
hope.
still love.
still time.

Sheets

It's the blueness of the sheets that hits me every night when I struggle to let go of the fears that keep me tied to the conscious world. That blueness seems so far away now, like those memories of visiting the ocean--letting it speak to me one last time--before driving back into the wilderness. I'd give anything to be wrapped in that coolness again, smelling all the smells that signal life is somewhere nearby. Instead I face the redness each time I walk into the room and it's like a stop sign flashing in my mind. But stop signs don't last forever. Eventually, you take your foot off the brake. You accelerate. You leave the redness behind.

I sit here idling, dreaming of the day I can see and feel and smell blueness again, once and for all and forever.

Thinking Trans

Sometimes you forget how people would overlook you--how they'd stare and try to figure it all out in the twenty seconds it took to cross a crowded bar. They want to see which door you choose. Either way, you've lost.

You forget how hard you had to fight to be taken seriously as a man in this world, and you forget the price you had to pay for that respect. Some wouldn't call it that at all. Some may say privilege. And they may be right.

You forget the angst and the activism and just start living. The weeks pass and you pass and you finally get everything you've always wanted, along with a whole new set of misunderstandings. The assumptions may be different, but people claim you as their own, trying to squeeze juicy answers out of you until you are shriveled and worn. 

I still haven't lost that fear that someday there will be a problem in the locker room, a situation at the airport, a confrontation at the gas station. But I'll be damned if you think you can make me stand up to pee. 

Today, I remind myself how hard it still is for people who don't look like me. I've never had to worry about my chest--even though I do--and the color of my skin doesn't exponentially increase the chances that I'll be beaten bloody and left to die. 

I understand that I have become somewhat complacent, and I cannot be ashamed of this. But I can work harder to make sure others have the same luxury . And that's the road I have chosen. 

Untitled Poem

All the love in the world will not make

My chest any smaller

My face any clearer

Standing by the mirror

I see half a human 

The other half 

Looming in the shadow of 

Someday

And all the squats in the world 

Won't matter in the end 

When I can't look at myself

Without wondering 

how I got this way

Inside my head

There's no exercise 

In any book I've seen

That can fix 

All that can't be seen 

All the time in the world 

I hear less often 

A mind gone mindless 

Is dead

Trying to Decide if I Should Perform This

Do you know what it’s like when your eyes hold their breath?

I’m sitting here in this blue box built for a boy who’d rather build his own--perfectly pink, plastic-people-populated and perched perpendicular to my past, our lives intersecting where mine became his. Where pink became blue before either of us had ever been born.

I have fumbled my way through a series of pendulums, dodging left and right, falling face first in the mud and failing to see them swinging right for me each time I rose my head to breathe and I breathed in genderqueer and choked on an indecision that felt like sitting on the fence.  With a post up my ass.

And I wiped the mud away and fell backwards in time through the dirt and the dust of trying to forget years of looking at my body betraying every move I made and every pound I benched and every mile I ran, and I coughed up the night I first saw my chest flattened against my skin with her by my side

And before I could inhale that moment one more time the smell of my past caught up with my plans and I puked up the five-year-old, naked and peeing outside

And in the puddle before me I saw the second-grader who didn’t understand why her middle name couldn’t be Matthew and the fourth-grader with a rope around her neck and a knife in her lunchbox and the sixth-grader with a pen in her cheek and a face that never saw the light of day again, throwing fists and throwing chairs, and locking doors and running away into the seventh-grader who found music and got lost in the notes of sad songs, black clothes, and the chorus of “You’ll grow out of it eventually”

“You’ll grow out of it eventually”

Eventually. Eventually.

Eventually if you say a word enough it stops sounding like a real thing at all, like the sound of my birth name

bleeding out the mouth of the boy whose ex-girlfriend’s lips bleed for no one not even God anymore.

(Because she’s a man now.)

I lay there night after night, sweating out the years I spent as a genetic fraud, broad shoulders tucked tight, sleeping tight, breathing tight and then

I swallowed the pink and blue and white flag-shaped pill with a capital T on the back and a blank slate on the front,

Hoping to finally be able to fall asleep with a blue blanket pulled over my head and an empty needle in the can

but then came the side-effects.

I woke up in the mud again, just like now, coughing it all up, layer by layer

Unexpected expectorant, the not-this-again guanifisan,

Warning: Never change gender on an empty stomach.

Mucus covered labels no longer stuck to the inside of my lungs, no longer clinging to my alveoli like the child who became the girl who became the boy who became the man who clung to a blanket of blue and shut out a world of rainbows

And there they were, covered in snot, just lying there.

Genderqueer. Freak. Shim. Faggot. Sped. Retard. Butch. Twink. Nerd. Woman. Princess. Liar. Tranny. Female. Male. Lesbian. Gay. Asexual. Bottom. Top. Girl. Boy. She-male. Dyke. It. Masculine. Feminine. Nothing. Everything. Whatever you want already as long as you stop asking me what’s in your pants,

 does your family hate you?

 so what are you really?

What’s in your pants?

When are you going to get surgery?

What’s in your pants?

What’s your real name?

Oh and by the way what’s in your pants?

I’m tired of picking up snot-covered pieces of the people I tried to become—the identities I snorted so that I could just learn your name before you said you only dated real men and too bad you don’t have a dick and well I can still see the girl in you and you know

Sometimes it gets really old doing trans 101 when all I want from the woman whose name tag says becky is my fucking chicken quesadillas.

That’ll be 8.66. Please pull ahead to the next window and have your genitals ready.

Here’s your receipt.

So what’s in your pants?

Fine.

Four years and a lot of awkward conversations later, I can tell you that It’s pink and blue and people-shaped. No. Pink. Blue. A mixture of the two. Somewhere in between like the infinitesimal cracks between visible and invisible light, indivisible, no gender, under God, with liberty avenue and gender justice for all. A man. A-fucking man. Fucking men. Sometimes. Fucking women sometimes. Fucking sometimesmen and sometimeswomen and sometimes no times fucking at all.  

the earthquake

Let there be enough stillness around me for me to recognize just how I exactly I am supposed to move because right now it feels like I am

skateboarding in an earthquake

Upside-down and with my hands tied behind my back like harry Houdini in that big glass fish tank with thousands of people just waiting

Hoping

To watch him die

Let me grasp at the straws of juice boxes

To drink from

Not to breathe from.

If you’ve ever set foot inside this room, then you've seen the things that no longer speak to me or about me but just sit there 

like the walls

watching me bleed to the beat of my own drum

and I almost think each downward stroke will shoot this pain from my system shoot this life from system shuddering 

swimming 

shimmering

splendid.

i used to hear the voices of my past just like when she'd sit by my side on the couch

all curled up 

in my world

and whisper in my ear that she'd never leave that this time it would be different that she would be different and that we would be the same

forever. 

now the voices are corpses piling up inside.

and i'm watching them rot.

but somehow i'd sooner throw away

this computer these jeans this phone these games that letter on the wall that green box under the bed with everything in it and that book and this crown and i'd stand naked in a crowd 

if it would all mean that i could hold on

to that voice

and not have to throw it away with every other lifeless piece of shit 

with which i am surrounded.

i'm going into that place now where i see every letter on every label like a disco ball reflecting the sun,

where keystrokes shoot like lightning i can trace 

across the vascular highway that leads to the place

that makes this all possible.

the good and the bad.

the place that makes me a better friend to words than people and the place

that knows that normal people don't feel the different personalities of the words 

"pleasant" and "peppy"

and that maybe they don't see pleasant as green and peppy as red and that maybe the reason i see pleasant as green has to do with how it reminds me of forests or maybe because i've been staring way too long at this stupid green jug on my desk that's supposed to hold money or pens or something but is completely useless because i already have a container for money and two for pens and three times as much shit as is comfortable in this place because well

you never know.

but this place.

this crazy place.

inside my head 

where the earthquake never stops

is where i still have you

and him

and me

through the years.

this crazy place inside my head where the earthquake never stops 

is where it all starts

when i have those days 

where i just feel

that there is something inside

that is made

of 

true

magic.

Something Cute From Paper-Gender Math

I am thinking of a gender between one and three
An algebraic mosaic of x and y like sex
and why
do I write stories of my life between the valleys of my veins
Carve the dreams across my body
Starve the soul only a mirror can love
A numerator standing stop a vinculum of uncertainty with nothing underneath,
undefined and falling
searching for the common denominator that binds me to the x's I can never see
To the y's I can never know
Negative me plus or minus the square root of every lie I've ever told and ever smile I've ever faked
and every excuse I haven't even thought to make
I'm thinking of a gender between one and me
That isn't just a symbol of values long forgotten
A gender with ups and downs
Curves and swerves like the sine wave
that was my very first road
into the blankness of queer.
Every calculation became a question with two answers
Equally valid and to an equation
I can't even remember
Like the calculus I learned to forget
when they asked me to integrate. I laughed
and lived
and left the note in a bible in a motel six
in a town that couldn't even count that high
The hated (per)mutated masterpiece
that is the variable I.
Imaginary and unwilling to accept my fate,
I have taken to the Cartesian sea,
hoping to one day drift right back to the origin
where x and y meant nothing and it was all the same to me my mom and the boys next door.
Up the slope I go,
the letter m.
Acceleration made flesh.
A force to be reckoned with given enough distance
and time.

standing still

i want to burn up from the inside out and bleed fire
i hear nothing when people scream and want to scream in my own silence.
i feel like the scraping noise a dried up pen makes against paper on which it wasn't meant to write and every line i see reminds me
of how far away i am
and every face i see is meaningless
and every face i see is a mirror
that i'll never understand
i love the movie that never changes but hate my life
that never changes
except that i don't and wonder if i should
be doing something else.
i feel like every word is a secret and every day
is a joke that i'll never
understand.
and you make me
stand here
and i say nothing
about how much it hurts
because it hurts
much more
to do nothing.
and so i write.

T

It's the distance between myself
and my thoughts
that got
me coming back.
I'm this.
That.
His life is this life because of the "t"
and the difference between
vial
and vital.
the one letter
that changed my face
into the finest facet
of my life.
it's nice.
the difference between a lie and the light.

Necessary Nonsense

My brain is my illusion. My body is yours. I am an action potential whose potential lies in potential actions in parallel systems. Mirror neurons, me and you. My every cell jumping along with you before I can tell myself no. You are all in control of everything within me. And I you. This tug of war between forces we cannot see. Horizontal gravity.
And the white hot fork in the eye that changed my life forever. Changed me forever. I lost the connections that made this all make sense. I fill the blind spots of my consciousness with facts and figures, books and games, endless things because you can’t fill can’t possibly fill a space that doesn’t exist.

Visceral. Say it again. Visceral. A word that slithers along. Entrails.

Yes. Just like that. Cauterize me. Make it white hot and blinding. Erase everything. The facts and figures toys and books and games and names I understood. I won’t feel a thing. The gate is closed.

Names

Shot in the soul by a pointed word
the arrows of your curvatures
each little letter alphabetical icicles melt me freeze me in place freeze me in time in a time when that word was meant for me and I
see my blood and yours all tangled up in liquid knots
and solid, coagulated, dead, dried, useless, old, dead nots.
My tears
and body just as wet as the day we met
The humidity of humanity.
The urge to breathe.
To fight the suffocation and just keep pushing keep pumping keep bleeding on the inside.
The effects of gaseous reason cannot be seen. Cannot be smelled, felt, tasted. Only the dead benefit from reason.

And it is rage. It is sadness. And they are the same.

Line

These hopes and dreams are basic needs for those who sing instead of breathe.

Necessary

When I look at myself in the mirror, I don't want to see the atrocities
written on me
like streaks of tears
flowing from me.

Brown eyes. And I used to hide them.
Brown eyes underneath convex blue.
Brown hair growing into red. like blood.

I gave up hiding like I gave up my right to bear a child.
Bittersweet.
Necessary.
Painful.
Necessary.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I don't want to see things I have lost.
But I do.
Eternity is keeping score
and I just feel like cheating.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I see the past standing behind me.
I remember how each one of them felt.
And how it felt Real each time.
When I turned around, I saw my future
running away from me.

But I heard her whisper
as she dashed ahead, full speed
like a thunderstorm trapped
in a tin can.

"It was never going to be
easy."
And so my chase began.

Voice

I hate it when I leave my voice at home. Sometimes it’s really just in my pocket, but my pants are really tight, and I don’t want to embarrass myself by trying to get it out in front of all of these other people, so maybe I’ll just go over there by myself for a little while to make sure. But what happens if I don’t find it over there? I can’t go back. If I go back, they’ll expect me to have found it. What if it’s broken when I do find it? How do I fix it? Do I shake it? Do I send it back? Do I use gorilla tape? Gorilla tape fixes everything. Maybe if I just cover it up with enough gorilla tape, it’ll be okay for a little while. Things will be okay for a little while. I’ve done this a million times before, and now I can get away without using that much tape because I’ve gotten so much smarter about it.

Untitled and Possibly Unfinished

When I wake up in the morning I am poison to myself the bottles on the shelf self-help in a helpless jar empty like I want my head to be dead to me bled for me but the wound pours when I snore I miss going to the store and picking up chips and soda and assorted fruit snacks and toilet paper because you know you always seem to use up what’s left of mine. You always seem to use up what’s left of mine. You always seem to use up what’s left of mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. I don’t mind. No I don’t mind anymore I can snore as loud as I fucking want because there’s no one there to judge me in the night nudge me in the night or remind me to turn off the lights and check my pockets so now I always forget my God damned keys. The books in my bed become the books in my head and I sleep next to them and a pile of my dirty clothes and only I know just how long they’ve been sitting there. And I don’t have to move this and I can just step over that and I don’t have to move this and I can just step over that. I want to have to. I want to have to have to have to do something. Make me. Make me. Make me want to not want you make me because I just want to. I just want to. I just want.

Disruptions

This is the self-helped boy who helped himself to whatever he could except whatever could help him help himself escape the recursion of relationships with other selves.

This is the man-made man who made men make mis(s)takes.

This is the underhanded [under hand] of the handsome handyman whose hands had a hand in asking your hand.

This is the brain of a brain that thinks in rhythm and rhyme, meter and time in a musical mind, and this is the problem:

Any line, any time, any rhythm or rhyme
Any boy, any man, any
hand
mistake or
relationship
can
be disrupted.

The Keeper

He's going to hurt himself.
You can see it in his eyes the way he plans to take you by surprise, and I'm sorry.
This is how it dies.
Your glare isn't much of a disguise.
but Who needs lies when you've got those eyes?

I'm lying too and prying and trying and kicking and sticking to what I've been told I'm supposed to do and hoping you are too. Breaking through. And something new,

nice advice think twice lame ass excuse for unwarranted abuse
and we're both engaged
to this pain

brain stuck no luck moving past dead last dead beat that's me
me one me two me three
three times over three times three the math has gotten the better of me
and so have you

superficial pausing causing you to misread mislead misneed
me
me
me
and who's this really about shout it to
me

keep shouting keep kicking and biting and inviting
me
keep looking and taking and making
me
keep me
me
me
keep
me

Sometimes

sleepless night sleeveless shirt feeling tight
forever
ever-fading
voice caught on tape

we moved away from one another
and i don't recognize her

only
sometimes

speechless toy seamless boy just feeling
forever
ever-feeling
boy by himself

only
sometimes

Rhythm Writing

You're different now, on the other side, allied with my enemies, sentries keeping me from sensing inner peace, happiness. Feel the inner beats, listen to the e's, feel me feeling me through a sea of unfamiliarity. There's clarity to be found in the sound that only the trained ear can hear, but you'd rather be deaf than pause for a breath to study the science behind the music of my existence, my insistance on marching in time to the rhythm in my mind.
You're stuck in a dead step not knowing which foot goes forward and which one stays back and you can't take the weight, metal plates on your shoulders. You're older and that's your excuse to justify the abuse you feed me, need me to know that I need you, need me to know that I am nothing without you, the gods that you think you are, far away from me and that's the way it'll stay.
Don't play with me, already failed me, impaled me upon words mailed to me, and it's great to see you defend your son that isn't me that might need to end me, bend me until I am the one who breaks myself and then you'll all say that my gay friends made me crazy, that they did this to me. Listen to me, blissfully aware of the love for me that lies outside of you, in spite of you, untied from you who lied, who cried, who never once tried to see the happy in me.

Something

I am full-fledged masculinity

with just enough--

a splash of femininity.

faggot.

words are my weapons

too.

bigot.