Adversarial

Written for and presented at the September 30, 2021 chapel service at Drew Theological School. Video / Order of Worship.

A poem in 7 movements

Every Day

Every day you decide to get up and try again
Is a victory

Every day you choose Life
Possibilities open before you

Never Enough

I am never going to be man enough
Or woman enough
Never going to be butch enough
Or femme boi enough
To play the game
As anything more
Than an imposter

Ghosting in Place

It doesn’t start out
That way
It doesn’t start out sour at all
It turns slow like milk
That you thought you wanted
But wasn’t needed after all

It starts out with love
It begins with intimacy
However that came to be
Finding someone
Who can really meet me
For real

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What I Really Want

What I really want
Is to be
Free
Of certain compromises
Required
To function in “civilized” society

I just want to
Be
With people
That I can love
Without subjecting us to
Expectation and obligations
That twist so easily
Into contempt

Sentenced

Gender is just another language
We teach our children
To be
Boys or girls

Roles liturgically
Played
Out
Practiced and
Performed
By tender pre-verbal bodies

Poetry

I thought maybe I would write a blog entry
about what’s become of this blog,
about how pairing the pictures connects to walking the land,
about how writing poetry became a spiritual practice.

I was going to
Explain about
My decision to use only
Pictures I’ve taken myself
The world through my eyes.

Stories

So many
Stories
I have told
Myself

 

Gentle stories of comfort
And gratitude for shelter from the storm

The Lie

Stories of desire
Always seemed
Cloaked in antipathy

Bearing no resemblance to
My reality

Learned too early
I was simply
A Mystery

Duty

My ancestors
By history and hymnology
Require me to subjugate
Poetry and intuition
To the calculus of legislation
A legacy of
Disembodied
Attorneys and mathematicians
Crucified in forgetfulness
While the organ roars
Victory