“When was the last time you did stage work?”

my friend(?) asks me,

as if she doesn’t know the answer is

with her

ten years ago.

I don’t understand if it is

an innocent question

or a cutting insult,

a judgment about me

leaving the stage

(temporarily?)

and a theater group

that soon disbanded afterwards

anyway.

And I can’t tell her the real reasons

i never perform anymore,

how the chronic pain

was not only harsh

but also scary

and embarrassing.

If I finally got a lead role,

would I have to forfeit it?

Or shyly ask to have an understudy?

What would I do

if blinding pain

behind my eyes

struck ten minutes

into Act I?

Maybe I would have been okay.

Maybe I would have persevered.

Maybe I should have tried.

Or maybe I would have ruined
a whole performance or
even an entire production.

How do I tell her that I no longer wanted to play men

or characters with facial hair,

that there was no room

on small town stages

or even in comedy clubs

for me to express

my queerness

to express

my trans-ness

to express my

me-ness?

How do I tell her

how much

the magnets on her fridge

that say

“straight but not narrow”

meant to me?

Or how I was still afraid to come out to her

anyway

(so I never did)?

How do I explain

there is more freedom

on the page for me,

more so than

even if I had won

the female lead role

I almost beat her out for?

How do I tell her

when I crossdressed

for Greater Tuna

and the director said jokingly,

“You three make the ugliest women,”

I had to bite my tongue

until it nearly bled

to keep from saying,

“Wait right here, bitch,

while I grab my wig and makeup

and a real dress

and show you

what true feminine beauty is”?

I wish that

my friend(?)

had phrased the question differently.

I wish that she had asked me nearly anything else.

If she had said, “Do you still act?”

I would have chuckled

while thinking of my

every day cis straight male good Christian boy persona

and said, “Every fucking day

(I pretend to be someone else).”

How

The rain dazzles me half-unconscious 
and I dream fevered of haunted things:
the blue Connecticut woods, my body 
rolling under a gap in a barbed wire fence,
catapulting hellbent through a thin river 
in the dead of iced spring, running fire
up the bank, a wolf nipping my heels,
kicking her downward as we both fought
teeth and scream and spit, skin to skin,
until I fell back into the frost and she stood
above my head with her hands on her hips,
and the cops yelled in the blue distance,
cut off by the arms of barbed wild roses,
as ticks crawled a halo around my head,
while the trees swam spirals above me,
and the light cracked open my cold veins.
When my eyes unsheath like daggers
aimed at my bedroom ceiling, I wish
it was all a dream. I wish it was all a dream.

My grandmother calls me over and over.

Pain rattles in my pocket to the tune of do not disturb.

My phone is set to allow repeated calls through, assuming that someone so desperate to reach me is always worth answering.

I check my voicemail hours later when I trust she has forgotten me again.

She does not know how to hang up the line anymore.

I hear her worried feet shuffling and pacing.

She tells a nurse she wants to check on that little girl.

She wonders how her dance class went today.

Her persistence so close, I feel her lips on my cheek.

The smear of oily crimson, the smack of her doting mouth on my skin.

“I’ll kiss you to the bone so you can’t rub it off.”

i’m too tired to write a good poem. but even if i was awake, who knows if it would be good?
i know how i want to feel when i read it. but i don’t know how to make it happen.
this is not poetry. this is writing stuff down.
i don’t know how to interact with the page anymore.

i don’t know how to approach the page anymore.
i don’t know where it is.
when i find it, i don’t know what to do, or where to go from here.
i don’t know how to interact with my own mind. i don’t know where the good words are.
i’m surrounded by cacti and tumbleweed, but i’m not from here. i don’t know what to do with it.
i don’t know how to respect the desert.

i used to keep a diary just for me. maybe i shouldn’t have stopped doing that. i want to get back to that. but i don’t know how.
something just for me. not for self-improvement. not to prove to anyone i can. not to prove that i’m okay, not broken. just for me.
so i can remember.
i want to remember the good things that happen to me. i used to cherish them by writing them in my diary.
i don’t have to forget, but i don’t want to remember. it’s too painful.

i’m not as extroverted as i thought i was. i’m tired. i want social connection. i don’t know where to go. i don’t want to miss out. i’m scared. i’m exactly where i need to be. help.

backlog. i have to get current.
i have too much unexpressed.
i don’t know where to start.
it’s not fair and it’s too overwhelming.
bookshelves double- and triple-stacked, vertically, horizontally,
but there’s too many stories.
i can’t see what’s behind there without a lot of work.
i learned to obfuscate from my parents
and now, i can’t be transparent with myself.

I’ll be happy if
My emerald tomatoes
Turn into rubies  

Experiments in Refabrication,

It was her dog…
We never wanted it,
Discouraged getting it,
But she promised
To take care of it
With no help from us.

But as we all expected,
She often didn’t.
An emergency call to 911, 
Her radio screams,
And she races off.

So we took him out,
Fed him,
Took him to the vet
As needed.

We helped take care of him,
But she was the one loved him,
And her kids
Loved him.
 
This huge puppy
Who zoomed and bounced off the furniture
And chewed up the shoes and toys
And loved to lick the faces of the unsuspecting.

But unexpectedly,
Tragically,
Our daughter is gone,
An infection she never knew she had
Attacked her organs.

It was my wife who made the 911 call,
And Suz’s colleagues showed up, 
Shaken, but on task,
To try to do that which could not be done.
And our world came to an end,

After the sobs,
The hugs, the rites of passage,
The grief beyond words,
In the midst of the endless sadness,

The dog we never wanted
The dog that she loved,
That her kids love,
That tries to lick me on the face,
Remains.

As does the mundane question,
That must be asked
Over and over,
What do we do now?

i feel the vibration under my feet

the loose bones rattling

the quick cadence, quiet rattlesnakes

overtaking me slowly

i find myself here &

feel the fast succinct

breath of panic unleash itself on me

hot & heavy

I cannot give away 
My birth–I came.

I cannot give away 
My body–it carries me.

I cannot give away 
My experiences–they built me.

I cannot give away 
My memories–they layered me.

I cannot give away 
My future–I have to go to it.

I cannot give away
My death–it preordained me.