Perloff – this poem is to make up for the class I missed on Tuesday. 

A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet,

And Nikolas certainly makes Perloff sweeter.

How refreshing ideas and abstracts, no ties to the physical.

A great mass of free floating language begs for poetry

Because it is human nature to give birth to patterns.

Or do patterns give birth to human nature?

Traffic has a rhythm and a pattern, reports turning

Drudgery into poetry.

Poetry needs a revolution just like art.

This is not a pipe and this is not a poem.

But it is the idea of a pipe and the idea of a poem.

People make poetry with more than just words.

Here we conceptualize the unimaginable,

The quiet daily life.

Alien

A friend of a friend who is an editing intern

Offered to edit my story. She shattered my

Fragile spun forgetting, my hopes that maybe

Someday I will manage to be normal.

She didn’t understand my story, editing it

With all the finesse of a bull in a china shop.

It clattered to the ground in pieces, the meaning lost

Because she could not put herself in the shoes

Of this lost little trans* boy. Her edits made him

Sound like a butch girl, a woman who he is not.

Sometimes I go about my daily life and I get to forget

That I am an alien. I am an impostor, a conundrum that

Shouldn’t exist. I am transgender, a transcender of

Cultural norms. So unique, a zoo animal.

And then something like this happens.

I will do this with my story many times, if it gets picked up.

I will shelter this lonely little trans* boy and keep him from

Being turned into a butch girl. I will explain myself

Justify my existence before anything will ever happen,

Before my writing will ever be more than a pipe dream.

It’s just so tiring. Surely somebody would understand.

But maybe if people understood I wouldn’t need to write.

I ask myself would I rather be doing anything else and the answer Is no.

I would not give up the muse of my gender for a normal life.

I just wish it wasn’t so tired a bargain.

Cancer

It is a beast that roars in the night, eating

The people you love. It is not so easily slain

As a simple beast. Radiation changes them, takes away

Who they are and replaces them with someone

More jittery, more cranky.

Their flesh melts away, they are not there.

Instead, they sleep. They sleep, they eat, they need.

They tire, they hunger. Oh, but they survive.

It is hell and it is painful, but they survive,

Flirting with addiction triggers, defying this monster

Ripping away at their insides.

But what if it ever comes back?

Chains

The quilt I never made for you, a double Irish chain

Weighs heavily on me today.

You never got a chance to add your quilt to

All of the generations that came before you.

Even when your body was broken you engineered a way

To make sure that you could still craft, could still

Make beautiful works.

You gave me a job, gave me a chance.

But you’re not here any more, stolen away

By multiple sclerosis. Even when your body

Was breaking down, falling apart

You had the best sense of humor of anyone

That I have ever met. Will I still be able to make the chain for you?

Something to hold you to this Earth now

That you can no longer hold yourself. I don’t know.

You left behind your children and husband

And a collection of quilts that would be the envy of

Just about anyone. On me you left behind

The ability to stand up for myself, even when people

Are family, that blood isn’t any thicker than the loyalty

That comes with it. You taught me your humor, your management

The ability to look at people and laugh. I miss you.

I will continue to miss you when I head home

And don’t have you to talk to about my mother,

Or her boyfriend, or politics, or sports.

I will chain you to the Earth with my memories,

With your quilts.

I hope you found heaven, because you certainly

Deserve it.

 Ink

I can’t read my own handwriting when I write quickly.

Which is a problem when I can only write by hand.

Eighty pages of chicken scratch to somehow

Turn into a story. The paper responds better

Than any keyboard, my mark left in the world.

My hands write better when they move, get rubbed In ink and marked.

I can touch the language here

It isn’t filtered by a screen or the perfection that is typing.

Here is where my drafts are born, because drafts are

Messy, imperfect and full of flaws.

On the computer, they will be edited and processed

Turned into something clean and pure.

This is  necessary evil, because in its raw state of ink

And flaws, my story is not what it should be to others.

It is a raw idea I mold much like a potter, working clay

Until there is something beautiful and functional.

Except I can’t read my own writing.

Always an exciting adventure.