POETRY BY A LESBIAN
Poetry is the closest I come to non-fiction (unless you count my TEDx Talk). It found me when I was a teenager just beginning to realize my lesbian identity. It has always been a safe space to be myself and connect with others at the level of unconscious response. First, I hid in my poems, then rebelled in them, and at last they helped me unriddle who I was and find power in that.
If you are discovering your un-straight self or struggling to relate to those with a narrow, one-size-fits-all view of themselves, you, and their world, I hope these words will help you on your journey. Transcend. Choose your name over their labels. Be seen and heard. Occupy your space and grow infinitely. Be understood, supported, unhidden.
The Word in Progress
Sometimes we have to spin out / to find center…
Like a jack
A Jill, Agile, or a whirling dervish,
God is that invisible liquid steel in the middle
S(he) becomes flesh
The Word made visible
The winds of ecstasy and despair
Peel even the most aged redwood
Back to sapling in their cyclic turns
But the showing of the green
Is proof of life
The bending of the bow
Means it does not break
Our fluidity reveals our strength
As we toil and spin to the tune of loves and losses that only we can hear
The soiled soul standing tall in the middle is clean,
Omniscient, free, where sight is clear above the fray
Tuning In
Like a forgotten station / broadcasting for years with no one hearing…
Music bursts froggy through an old speaker
At first eerily, then pleasantly
Forlorn in the way it seems meant for only one
Mono not stereo but
Just the right mix of lost and found
Meandering through disconnected rooms
As if on a breeze not present
At times so quiet it is almost un-sound
Like underwater tides
Only visible as they stir the salted sediments
An unspoken request hour
Where every song, every pause
Is a sweet surprise because it is so anticipated
Unpredictable, but fit perfectly to the dream scale in practice
Finding frequency in scarcity
As if the radio were tuning in to the listener
Never off air but alive and seeking too
Instead of waiting to be turned on
No control(s) work
Or could ever hush
What sings out into these skies within
Paint It White
What do these snow-heavy leaves / And muted blues / Mean to me?
A kind of dull, smudged sadness
The electricity of promise
Crackling quiet beneath it
All hidden by re-virginity
And sinless nakedness
The ghosts of birds who will return
Flit black and fast past
My slow gold window
Why does white on warmth
Make it so much cozier
Make the orange to red
Then back to the bleached and dying indigo of the sky
The river’s curves gone as thick white as a Rubens woman
Her blushing roses only appearing at sunset
I sprint and dart in the vast
Like a house cat escaped
My green eyes slivered, seeking
On the mountaintop at the end of the world
The Otherside of the paint by number
On the bedroom wall is still wet and welcoming
Cold but not as cold as you’d think
When the cherries and violets
Plane the edges clean off the day
Obscured
Gray is a lovely color / When it reveals / Even if in erratic doses / Like fog slipping over / And under your covers
Better when it is shifty-eyed
Not starey, solid
Is not much use
When you don’t know what’s within
Variegation with an I toward the future is its best look
Always different, ever welcoming
If a little cold when you step inside
No gauzy warmth, but perhaps still wet
Anticipation
For to be discovered
It must be seen
Not only felt
Uncovered, breathed back
Only to come again
And show you the next angle
The next close
Awaiting you
With just enough warning
To prepare an embrace
Or an extended, groping hand
Here’s to the future
There’s to the when we were
Now we reach
With but the slightest idea
Whom we touch
Cry-bay-by
I do not say this is the only place / I can live / It is simply the happiest / And so saddest place / To have known me
It feels loved in.
With no demands but from the air
That wishes to breathe me
I have opened and closed several epochs
In these hills and bays
Each was longed for
Came along
And somersaulted with effort
Or without into the next
Though craved
None could have been seen
Before they dreamed their little dream of me
I stood there smiling in that same slant of sun
I cried there in anguish
There, there in peaceful epiphany
I shouted, sang, tasted, kissed
Ran to and away from
Up and down
Arms outstretched and in-folded
Wanted as a have
And a have not
I live and lived
As I her(e) and there’d
And I can see that
This is good
For me