1986

Instead of muscles and money, we
wore our guts on our sleeves
Open and ragged, bleeding and raw
Our strength was in our difference, and
With razor cut arms we pledged our allegiance
to all of the gods of
“not one of them”, and with
boots laced high, and
hair painted and spiked, we
stood aside,
while the parades passed by
mocking the band with our
own frantic beat.

A Transwoman's Declaration of Solidarity

A rare introduction: I wrote this piece, when someone accused me of trying to "cash in on female privilege", because I told them I'm transgendered; oh, that I thought fast enough to let this roll off my tongue at that moment, but oh well:


Female privilege?
Tell me all about female privilege, because
my sisters and I would love to know;
You mean like
getting dry humped from behind during rush hour on the
6 train, or
Paying more money for
haircuts and clothing
all while making
33% less than our male colleagues for the same exact work,
for the same exact job?
Or,
that patient condescending smile we get
when we
go to the auto parts store, and
actually know what we're
talking about?
Or how about
year after year
sitting in a cubicle
while some
20 something Jack or
Johnny-come-lately
suddenly gets his own windowed office?
Tell me,
Tell me about female privilege.
Tell me again how most
any woman could go out to a bar, most
any night, and
never pay for a single drink,
or
How lucky we are, that
even on a frumpy day
we can get laid,
whenever we want,
I'll counter your assertions by telling you that most
every day,
some poor woman who let some strange man
buy her a drink, gets
drugged and raped
and sometimes worse,
but never mind,
You were saying,
You were about to tell me
all about female privilege,
Because really,
No, seriously,
I'm pretty sure I speak
for my cis and trans sisters alike
when I say we'd
love to know
what it is we've
all been missing.

Caution

Pronouns are
heavy blunt objects.
Falling pronouns
may break your bones.
Swinging a pronoun
in a crowded room
may result
in grievous injury.
Beware of pronouns:
Use with caution.

Bitch

St. Mark's Place
Crowd of male voices
teenagers chanting
"Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!"
A young woman's voice breaks through:
"Let me go!"
All of this happens
out of my sight
Behind the protection of a
parked box truck.

How Blessed

How blessed to feel
at home in my own skin
For years, so worried
over minutiae, like
the proper way to carry schoolbooks, and
the masculine way to walk
How I covered up my body
in the South Florida heat
Covered my soft curves
in denim and leather layers
Now how blessed
not to hide
unembarrassed for my soft hands
and to no longer fear
the natural sway of hips
to take off the mask
To become
unstiffened
How blessed it is
to be myself.

Please Don't Ask

Please don't ask me if I'm going to
"cut it off",
it’s none of your damned business, and it
reduces me to
an object of
“genital dissonance”.
Don't ask me who I'll be tomorrow,
I barely know
who I am today.
Ask me instead, how does it feel?
What was it like to be
forced into boyhood,
(then manhood,)
to have been made to don some kind of
learned masculinity,
all the while fearing the fragilty of my disguise.
Or, ask me what it's like to be a
double agent
a secret spy in the
war of the sexes;
I'll happily give away all my learned secrets,
see, I've always been kind of an antiwar activist!
Ask-
what was it like to grow up in a world that told me
time and again that it's
better to pretend,
rather than to risk anyone finding out the horrible truth.
And finally,
ask me what it feels like, at the age of 43,
to grow tired of pretending, and I'll gladly tell you,
it's like
taking off a pair of someone else's shoes,
shoes that have always been 2 sizes
too small.

When I'm An Old Woman

When I’m an old woman, I’ll wear denim shirts

and big turquoise rings on my

tanned, knotted fingers

When I’m an old woman, I’ll paint in my garden

mixing red dust from the earth

into oil, and light

I’ll grow out my gray hair

way down past my ass, and be

“that strange old woman, who barely ever comes to town”.

When I’m an old woman, I’ll laugh about the time

when everyone around me, thought that I was a man.

When I’m an old woman, I’ll smile at the mirror,

because the woman smiling back at me, knows

who I am.

I'm Trying To Invent A Brand New Language

I’m trying to invent a brand new language
to tell you about the place that I’m from
but I can’t use words such as
female, or male,
you’d never understand how they don’t apply.
So I’ll tell you instead how I
come from a marshland:
a soft place between
two fortified nations with
impassable borders and
natal requirements for citizenship.

If I tried to explain how I’d been handed
the wrong disguise
by the border coyotes when I came to this place, or
if I told you I don’t have a green card
and that I feared discovery
every second of every day,
maybe you’d see,
maybe you’d understand, how
try as I do just to fit in,
and try as I have all of my life,
none of that matters.
I’m just not from here.

And I wish I could tell you
how lonely it is here
when nobody else can
speak my language:
a language that
even I have yet to learn.

if truly

If truly I hated you, I'd
roll you in sugar, or
douse you in Tabasco,
whatever I had to do
to make your bitter taste
easier to swallow.

Finding My Place Of Strength

There was the time when, walking across my high school's courtyard at seven a.m., there was a loud noise- a thwack, and I was down. I’d been hit in the head with- a rock? And there was something wet dripping on my left ear. Was it blood? A searching finger revealed it to be albumen. I'd been hit on the side of my head with a raw egg, hard enough to knock me to the ground.

I was 17.

There was the time I was cornered in the boy’s room at the point of a switchblade, and called a “Faggot”. No, "worse", (in his eyes,) I was a “girl”.
“What’s a girl doing in the boy’s room? Take off your clothes, girl.”
My button down shirt and orthopedic saddle shoes ended up in the toilet. Only my blue J.C. Penny pleated cords were spared by the timely entrance of a teacher.

I was 8.

Then, there was the time I was surrounded on the P.E. field by 4 bigger kids. They called me "fatso" and "faggot". They violently kicked and shoved me as I tried to get away. When finally they pushed me down, my wallet fell out of the elastic waistband of my polyester P.E. shorts, and as they taunted me with it, one discovered the condom I’d hidden within, stolen from my father’s drawer, but worse for me, he also found something to really get me in trouble about: a baggie of small red pills I’d taken from our home medicine cabinet.

The pills were nothing but Sudafed, I’d carried them months as some kind of ill conceived exit strategy: In case things had gotten so awful I couldn’t stand another second, I would swallow them all in a bathroom stall.

When Mr. Fontana, our school's vice principal got a hold of the pills, I wasn't sent to the school counselor, nor was I asked what they were, or why I had them hidden in my wallet. The school rules were firm, and instead of a sympathetic ear, I was bent over his desk, my pants pulled down. He pressed his large, hot hand on the back of my neck as he stood over me with a heavy perforated wooden paddle. It was three strong strokes. (It could have been five, he'd warned, but he was being "lenient".) The four bigger kids, who'd bullied me didn't even get a detention.

This was at Highland Oaks Junior High School in North Miami Beach, and I was 14.

I’ve never been what you'd call masculine. In fact, there was a period in my early twenties when after years of living in a body I'd always felt sentenced to rather than gifted with, I’d finally decided to pursue gender reassignment. At that time however, the fact that my primary sexual/romantic attachments were with women, led the inept therapist to whom I’d been sent (the only one in Miami at that time, who dealt with the Harry Benjamin protocols for gender/sexual reassignment,) to concede that I wasn’t truly “gender dysphoric”: I was merely “confused”.

Not that any of this is truly pertinent to the above, but I am, and always have been quiet, sensitive, interested in things like fashion, (which, believe it or not, before the whole “metrosexual” thing, was thought largely to be the province of women and gay men,) art, philosophy, literature, music, etc. I've never had a bit of interest in sports, (though, if I'm being really honest here, and I am, I’ve occasionally enjoyed watching them under the right circumstances,) war movies, or fixing cars. In fact, I always preferred the company of women with intimate conversations and sisterly relationships, to that of men with what I always perceived as its brevity, lack of depth in bonding, emotional honesty, and "pissing contests”.

Beyond the whole masculine/feminine thing, I was always more of a creative person, and this came out loudly in my personal approach to fashion. As a teen, I was a regular punk rock peacock. I eschewed the popular mall bought fashions for thrift store treasures such as a bright orange plaid over sized suit which I’d customized with safety pins, scissors and patches, cinched at the waist with an extension cord, and roughly cut off just above the top line of my extra high combat boots. I wore a mohawk, (the only one in North Miami Beach,) and spray-painted it fire-engine red, and, at the height of my piercing fascination, I wore 26 earrings in my left ear, 12 in my right, and two tiny gold wire hoops in my right nostril.

Had I grown up in the East Village, it's likely that none of this would have so much as raised a pierced eyebrow, let alone inspired the violence I was so often subjected to, but this was the mid eighties, and I didn't live in New York. I lived in Miami, that pastel bastion of Miami Vice machismo, and all things conservative conformity.

Even my parents would ask me almost daily, why I couldn't "just fit in", why I felt the need to be so "weird”, and at the time, I didn’t have an answer. In retrospect, I know that they were pained as I was by the way I was treated, that they were worried about my safety, and that they were doing their best to protect me. At the time however, it felt like criticism, and to my fragile teenage ego, it amounted to little more than another egg upside my head.

The truth is, there was little I could have done to fit in. I just wasn't like those I was surrounded with. I couldn’t have cared less about homecoming or prom, high school football, or “banging” the hot "J.A.P. chicks" at North Miami Beach Senior High, had no interest in hanging out on the Ft. Lauderdale Strip and getting trashed on Friday nights, and I wouldn't have been caught dead in Guess, Sasson or Sergio Valente. I wanted more.

The morning I turned 18, I walked into my high school at just after ten. My mohawk which was usually more poodle like than fierce, was responding unusually well to the half a can of Aquanet I'd shellacked it with, and I felt celebratory and resplendent in my tattered thrift store jeans, brand new Docs and motorcycle jacket. It was the best "fuck you" outfit I owned. Rather than going to class, I walked into the principal’s office, and declared I was dropping out, and just two months later, in February of '87, I got my G.E.D., and was ready to enter college.

Once at Miami Dade Community College, (and later Florida International University,) no one said a word about my shaved head, piercings or carefully tattered rags. I found that as long as I contributed well thought out arguments in class, turned in fresh and interesting papers, and was generally just myself, I was rewarded with nothing but appreciation from my professors, and acceptance from other students.

Before I’d discovered my source of strength, (which maturity and experience have shown me to be nothing more than living within my own truth,) the years of bullying had left me a raw and bleeding nerve; I was weak and afraid, and— although I’d found creative ways to hide (such as dressing in what I now call “guy drag”), it usually took all the emotional energy available just to walk out my front door.

Now I live in New York. I am an outspoken, (and just plain "out",) transgender lesbian, a spoken word artist, writer, poet and activist. I’m in a committed, long-term relationship with a wonderful woman whom I love, who in turn, loves me as I am.

Being out as transgender affords me a kind of power I've never felt before. I am for possibly the first time in my life, genuinely unapologetic for my existence. It's wonderful beyond words to feel unconstrained by others' expectations or imposed definitions of who or what I should be, and I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to, I could walk down Fifth Avenue in a pink prom-dress and Doc Marten’s and no one would look twice at me, except maybe the tourists who would ask to take pictures of the "wild, crazy chick who's just so very New York!"


*Note: Mom and dad, don't worry, the pink prom dress was just comedic hyperbole; I'm so much more of a punk rock, black t-shirt, jeans, 'n' Converse kinda chick!

Danny

You write of adventures in a
brand new home
(The land of your father, who’s re-
turned with a new beard)

Climbing Masada
you hiked up the “snake trail”
On a tour through Chevron you
donned your new pride like an
olive green shirt

I can see them indoctrinating you
Twisting you into them
Why am I so worried about you, you say?
Because you’re sensitive and kind
And I know that world well
how they think of these things
as weaknesses, or worse-
(they’ll call you a frier, and
knock you down
until you develop
your tough new Israeli scars)

so you stand up straight
and puff out your chest
and dream of the day
of your giyus
where you’ll lace up stiff boots
and look serious for your ID

and again you ask
why I'm worried about you?
Because it’s apparent
they’re already scarring you
And can’t you see? I bear
those scars too.

Walter

Your family looks for your ghost in corners while
nightly, you visit me in my dreams
We invent a language to
connect over you, not wanting to be trite,
(but who am I kidding?)
And now, each time
I leave my apartment, I carefully step
'round the stain on the walkway, which
might afterall, be from
your spilled brains.

On Writing (Modern) Poetry

Numerous are the legions of "poems", whose well rendered words are perfectly metered or rhymed, and maybe even chosen with such care so as to defy any suggestion of triteness or triviality, but who lack any real anima or soul. A "good" poem however, exists beyond the mere confines of its language.

There's an almost mystical quality to the process of writing a good poem; one might even assert that in fact, a poem isn't so much "written" as realized. I'll explain by personal example: When I sit down to "write" a poem, I pay little attention to the words I'm going to use, the form it's going to take, etc. Instead, I open myself to the soul of the poem; "what exactly do I need to convey?" Believe it or not, this is usually an almost painless process. When a real poem is ready to be born, it just won't be denied!

The next step is somewhat harder: getting out of the poem's way.
Anyone who has sat at their desk, a cafe table, on the edge of a cliff, etc., wishing to "compose a great poem", will have no doubt found themselves painting with broad strokes of ego. This is annoying, and almost never results in an enjoyable, interesting or enlightening poem. That's not to say that one can't write a great piece that exhibits his or her own point of view, (think "Two roads diverge in a wood...",) but it must not come from the desire to "prove something", or force something down the reader's throat, otherwise it'll result in little more than a self indulgence at the reader's (or audience's) expense.

Try instead, to allow the poem to be organic. I've found that thinking of it as a living thing, with its own set of needs and desires, helps me do this. This is very handy when it comes to the next step: editing.

When I edit a poem, I do my best to remove any extraneous content that might interfere with its purity. Usually, I begin this process with a chainsaw, and only later, when I’ve hacked off a sufficient amount of “fat”, do I go back in with a scalpel, finely trimming here and there, surgically shaping it. A good poem is, if anything, distilled.

Adjectives and adverbs are poetic potholes!
When Gary Snyder wrote "The Dead By The Side Of The Road", he relied on the cleanest prose:
" Zac skinned a skunk with a crushed head
washed the pelt in gas; it hangs,
tanned, in his tent"

He could have expended great energy on adjective laden descriptions, but instead he allowed the events or the moment to move it forward. Therefore, it has energy and immediacy.






This is equally true of both Raymond Carver's and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's work. Neither provokes inertia with wasted adjective or metaphor; When Ferlinghetti writes

"Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass
Kids chase him
thru screendoor summers"

there's nothing unnecessary; in fact, the only adjective employed- "screendoor", is so new and specific, that it almost disappears, or takes on the same quality of motion as the rest of the poem.


Lastly, don't impose some artificial format on your poem. A poem, being organic, and having its own needs, tends to grow into its own form. This is not to say that there aren't some great and very enjoyable formalized poems; the dusty world of "Poetry" (notice the capitalized "P") is littered with them, but modern sensibilities tend to relegate these to the realm of the "quaint", and (rather unfairly,) the boring, so while I very much enjoy work by the likes of Donne, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the type of writing I'm discussing here is more akin to that of Snyder, Carver and Ferlinghetti.

Early readers of these three must have experienced one of three possible reactions:
"That's not poetry!",
"That's poetry?" -or-
"That's poetry!" .
All three largely disregarded earlier Western notions of what a poem is. Snyder studied and emulated Japanese and Chinese poetry with its pared down sensibilities. Ferlinghetti tuned into the music of the world around him, and Carver wrote almost as if he was writing fiction, which just happened to be readable as a poem. Whether one enjoys any of these approaches or not, it’s undeniable, that these three did something new, something interesting, something enjoyable, and something irrevocably poetic!

ארצנו Our Land

ארצנו
בנוי מאבנים
ארצנו
בנוי מכאב
ארצנו
בנוי מהבטחות ומפיוט
אחרי מאה שנה,
רק הפיוט
לא יהפוך לאבק


Our land
built of stones
Our land
built from pain
Our land
built of ​​promises and of poetry
after one hundred years,
only poetry
will not turn to dust

ערב שבת 2

אני נכנס את הדירה מהקריאת הפיוטי
בחוץ, זה כבר חושך
ובפנים, זה חם בתוך ההילה של הנרות השבת
השבוע המטורף, היא היה לעזאזל
העכשיו הזה,
הוא שלנו

I enter the apartment, fresh from my poetry reading
Outside, it's already dark
but inside it's warm in the glow from the shabbat candles
Let this crazy week go to hell
This now, is ours.

erev shabat

at seven o'clock you sweep
through the front door
your mood drags behind you like a
dusty bridal train
now thrown by the tempest of your
chaotic homecoming , it gets
caught in my hair
tangled in my curls
and now, I find that I
can't break free.

Y''m י''ם

אבני לבן על צלע ההר
היא מאירה את חום האבק באוויר

white stones on the hillside

she shines in the brown dusted air

exile

Some of us live in a per-
petual state of exile,
but exile is not always
imposed by place;
there are those who are left there
by the passage of time,
and those who were simply
born misfits into the world.
All who live in exile however,
have this in common:
we carry small pieces of our
native worlds with us,
like round, worn pebbles,
that are
sometimes in our pockets,
and sometimes in our shoes.

10.07:2010: Union Sq.

Come skittish bird,
return to your crumb; the
menacing feet have
gone away.

מולדת homeland

כאן,
בארץ אחי
ואחותי
הדוד
והדודה
הבית שלנו
הוא כל כך קטן
והמרפקים שלנו
הם חבולים


Here, in the land
of "my brother",
"my sister"
Of Uncle
and Aunt
Our house is so small
our elbows are bruised