I Gave It a Try, But you Just Don't Let me Touch you Like you Used to

the thing about getting older is you're less inclined to fit
the thing about being a cog is that you must
we are all pieces of wood awaiting the flame
and you're only saved if nobody knows your name.

Did Faustus have such quibbling with strife?
To not embrace his nature; trust his life?
Did Marlowe conspire
before the fall
to fuck off and retire?
I do not know the answer,
but the question raised my ire.

I am a pair of scrabbling claws.
A note played in sequence or not at all.
A seed that grows when all else is to fall.
I am a pair of disquieting noises,
I am a pair of talons poised
to gut you unaware
I am, We are, and I am not uncertain.

I do not know what lies beyond the curtain.
Much has been survived as mystery.
I do not know, and that much leaves me screwed,
no attitude, or being rude,
or potential to express a faculty.

Who knows?
Who will ever know?
Who will have the certainty under sea and sky
look my misapprehended flesh in the eye and say
'No,
You were Wrong,
This Is Not The Way'.

There is a myriad of them, and they commit sin
Every single day,
in every single way.

But I will not bend.
I will not bow.
I will be a force for words, and for the flow,
and I will wield together words and voice of deadly force,
and all who get too close will say the light is much too coarse,
and I flare unrefined.
I will not bend.
This will not end.
I will stay the course.

And should it prove that nothing has remorse,
and all that stunts me under blood and bone,
and all that I chase in the cups of cones,
will leave this thirst unslaked?
The worst is knowing nothing can be started,
And knowing that those words are lies with stakes,
and should I pay? the words will float away
and leave my flesh a smoking ruin
in the shadow of the newly shadowed day.

Loved One in the Blast Zone

what are you when you're invisible?
divisible?
the summation of your parts ignored
beyond threat, beyond het!
beyond reproach.

what are you when you're concealed?
a rusty mess of feelings,
a rising crescendo.
you'l come crashing down,
and you'll be sure to keep it quiet
when you convulse

there's a handful of rooms.
there's a scattering of wounds.
we pick across the landscape with great care.
drawing breath sharply, not unaware.
there's a ghost with the most who's got your number in the post
and it'll never arrive and that is never going to be totally fair.
the solution is simple; do not despair.

what am i when i'm poked?
what flames will billow forth from my maw when i'm stoked?
there's a high, there's a low, there's every which way we could possibly go
and I'm stuck, given up, not quite sure if this is enough.
it has to be enough.
i'm about to flare.
i'm about to flare and it has to be enough.
there's gonna be a blast wave, a ginger haze,
checking my mileage by clocking my top speed
reeking of weed
and leaving you flailing and complaining alone in my blaze.

what are you when you're invisible?
what am i when i'm divisible?
 it's not debatable that i'm imitable!
i make the illegible accessible, the archaic is defined;
i'm the tower of course, a tour de force, and i'm sight out of mind.
what are you when you're despair?
what am i when i flare?
and what will be left of any of this?

we shall see.

Every Thought a Future Arrowhead

There's a corner in a white box room that's seen a lot of me,
Especially the parts that I don't want you all to see.
There's a cupboard that I live inside as if it were analogy,
A place to hide, a place to lick my wounds and wait until I'm free.

But that's a narrative that I don't think you get to walk,
The human garbage locked in limbo, waiting to emerge.
Like Sisyphus who rolled a rock until he stopped to talk
With some unearthly hero who wouldn't help him stop.
"How are you, who are you, thanks for coming down to Hell"
as if he owed a demigod bastard anything.

I'm supposed to hide away if there's a fire,
I'm supposed to close my eyes if there's a cry.
It's too much to risk, too much to risk,
The life of a trans woman isn't worth piss.
They killed our kin with poison pricks
- and if that isn't a sign of the times!
They're still doing it for kicks.

I don't think that I can be helped in the head,
and I know I'm in trouble when I'm out of bed.
It's a fine state of features when dangerous creatures
are lurking with sharp stones,
and there's a rhythm in my bones
and a corner where I dump my woes.
Nobody knows.

Getting respect when you feel like a beast in this heat,
When the mothers of brothers who spit in the street will assault,
and revolt at the sight of your eyes, your hairy thighs,
your "mutton-dressed-as-lamb" lies - surprise!
If I don't make a move then none of you assume
that I'm in this room, this room, this societal womb that is the hidden place
that everyone expected me to go to, to throw myself away to and to conform
or to absorb and perform and eventually settle down -
to calling myself my birth name, to choosing a home town -
to marrying or not marrying; but knowing why and knowing how
to having a gender
to not being an offender, scarlet-lettered and wavering,
to being repaired and no longer impaired and no longer a rabid dog,
a grunting hog, a pillar shaker, a Quaker who abstained from bullshit training and complaining.
And what's the deal with the constant simple explanation?
And the little expectation?
Better to do away with it.
That's the pathway to respect.

There's a corner in a white room that's seen a lot of me.
It eats up that desire to remain in mediocrity.
It eats the memory of names and faces
and far away places
and I will never return to myself.
Assault, revolt, disrespect, misdirect,
Lock up your binarist families as I walk by,
a dagger in the heart of St Paul.
All the better, to assist his permanent fall.

I Hate My Gender But Yours is Worse

flesh crawl, alcohol,

will not wait a million years,

not right genitals!

time to switch the body's gears,

rough ride, come inside,

strip your bones of all those fears,

soul sell, empty hall,

they have their eyes but have no ears

i will be reborn.

we cower in thousands of corners.

thin-thought, bold court,

on the brink of what you wrought.

there is no place for those like me

no man or woman destiny

no place for gender binary

so come! come!

let us be free!

let us drum out the ghosts that we

fought into the ground as quietly

as desperate kids could - and I agree

that everything's coming apart

this isn't art

this is what happens when conservatives fart

and force us to live in the cloud

living it loud

and nobody ever says 'what's that smell'?

it's practically hell!

but eventually somebody rings the bell!

times us out

thin-thought, bold court

on the brink of what you wrought

tired out warriors from the fight,

heading out backwards into the night

so as not to turn our backs on foes

and nobody knows

where we head off to to lick our wound.

and madness might bloom,

- but it isn't more mad than having to pretend -

- but we have changed and change again -

and nobody's friend

and it is a slaughter

so we cower in corners.

nobody's son, nobody's daughter

and we will be reborn.

Ninety Degree Angels

Like a fire sent from Heaven and then pissed upon all day.

I saw what made me real.

It wasn't lack of dignity that made it so dramatic.

It was just that I didn't get a say.

I'm gonna change the world another day.

For now I'll hide my face away.

And there's no way that you can tell me,

that I will belong.

A life shackled upwards,

Every time.

Keep your eyes skyward.

Form a rhyme.

You won't have to see them,

as you crush them underfoot.

There's no room to climb.

I am afraid and I don't know how not to be.

I smoke too much and see things that I am not supposed to see.

And there's a way to escape,

there's a way to be a true machine.

I guess I can't be sure of what I mean.

But I do know what to say.

"There's people on the silver screen that tell you what to feel,

And lies are lies and truths are truths and both of them are real,

Illusions can kill and healing can thrill,

and you are falling,

and I will not be able to interfere."

Like a stone dropped from Heaven, just to watch the impact.

I saw what made you real.

It wasn't lack of foresight that made it so dramatic.

It was just that I couldn't simply melt away.

Like the one you fell for yesterday.

And you know that there's no point, but pray.

You know it does no good, but

God might not listen, anyway.

This isn't real, not for long;

I have to be weak; so I can be strong.

And there's no way,

to say that I'll belong.

Here I Am

Stir, shudder, jerk awake.

I cannot be found.
I cannot be found and here I am.
I have been termed mistake.
But that's all in the past and here I am.
Here I am.
I cannot be found.

And nothing fell apart whilst I had slept!
Though sorrow into signals softly crept,
And I found that I could sleep no more.
Here I am.
Here I am.
I cannot be found.

There's no one left to find.
Nobody left, shadows lift,
The constructs only linger in my mind.
Here I am,
here I am.
My heart and soul a rift.

I had no voice,
I had no voice,
and for a time I did rejoice.
I was for the taking,
the world was for the shaking,
and nothing wasn't a result of choice.

Here I am,
Here I am.
I have found my voice.
And yet it rusts,
orange-red in the moonlight,
spilling out
for ears long since closed
wrong in repose
but right for shaking shadows I don't trust.

I have seen such things, whilst I slumbered.
Whilst my fleshy body softly lumbered
About the business of presumption
Without the cleansing touch of gumption,
and thus it all decayed.
I was borne away.
Perhaps I assumed that everybody went this way.

But still I linger.
In the places that are at once familiar,
and echoes.

and though your eyes may never fall this way again,
(though they rove through cybernetic halls)
and I am not in danger of the hunt,
I feel a need to buttress up with lies.
I know that we expected me to fall,
I know that we expected life to call,
I-
I-
I...don't know what I expected at all.

I live here, with the shadow of who you were.

but who's really a singular

Let us go then, I and I
(for the world has turned away,
and left us dry)
out into the city.

Let us tune up,
Turn up,
Fuck up.

Let us be multifaceted and unconfined
In a world that's turned for purpose out of mind,
Let us be real, let us be raw,
and let us sound the call to arms
and prepare the vessels for harm.

Let us go then, I and I,
(forced to toil under patriarchal sky)
Let us go and turn down unfamiliar streets,
The possible retreats
Of others lost, with nothing left to lose.

(Dear God, let us not be refused.)

Let us clad ourselves in robes of gold,
and hope that truth is valued half the much.
Let us try for blood until we're old!
For they have everything to lose,
and we have everything to gain.

So.
Let us go,
I and I.
A commodity to sell - or buy.
A joke, a change, a shifting mess,
A bot/a ghost/a dude in a dress,
Synchronized rather than die,
I and I.
I and I.