with my legs stretched long, taut and just shaking,

one muddy knee, one airy foot

no home here on Earth, or up in the sky.

.

The honor of the step is the grasp on the map -

the intention and course, the skill of execution.

Knowing write from wrong, and still

choosing to do it.

.

The choice is made three times – mind, heart and hand -

and then echoed against bricks

along every street we glance down

on our way past.

I teach poetry and have a few baby genderqueers listening. I am at a loss when it comes to really teaching them how to express themselves.  I was wondering if you had thought about ways to pass on your writing methods, because I would love to use it in my classes.

Grinning like crazy, and feeling a mixture of honor, humility and bashfulness, I set out to write out something that could be construed as a method, considering that my writing process usually looks more like exorcising a demon than an art form.  Here’s what I wrote to them:

Wow – I’m honored and humbled.  Thank you so much.    (Kyle, my partner, is especially fond of the image of me throttling the femme identity.)

I’d love to share my thoughts, in case there’s anything here that would help someone else.

The first thing is to write a LOT of bad poetry.  Write boring poetry, write poetry that makes you cringe.  Write everything that comes out of your gut, whether you’d ever want to share it with anyone or not.  The thing is – the more tuned in you are to listening, the better you’ll be able to hear when you’ve got something really beautiful to say.  I have the digital equivalent of reams of abandoned first lines, awkward imagery, and truly terrible word choices that have hit me at 3 in the morning as “the most important thing that has ever been written down and must be written down NOW”.  The trick is to honor your gut, even when you’re not sure you’d ever want to share it.

A note that goes along with this is to read a lot of good and bad poetry, too.  Song lyrics, cereal boxes, novels, Shakespeare, children’s books.  Read as much as you can so that you can hone your sense of what fills you with passion, and then keep little snippets around for inspiration when you get stuck.  (Chris Pureka, ee cummings and Pablo Neruda are my personal favorites for this.)  Whatever it is that fires you up, write it – bicycles, oceans, waffles with syrup, American Idol.  Some of my own favorite pieces have been written in praise of my morning coffee.

The second thing is to find a thesaurus you love, one that inspires you.  It’s not a matter of learning new words, necessarily, but of keeping your mind open to new possibilities.  Sometimes when I’m writing I’ll use a stand-in word to hold the space – “strong” for example – and then use the thesaurus to help me narrow my focus.  Do I mean forceful?  Tenacious?  Intense?  The thesaurus helps me refine what I want to say so that I’m able to paint a richer picture for the reader.  (I happen to use thesaurus.com because I write exclusively on a computer, but there are lots of bound versions available.)  When I’m looking over a poem I’ve just written I listen to each word carefully, to be sure it’s holding its place well.  Every word should serve the rhythm and the meaning, paint the picture and, sometimes, surprise the reader.  Surprise is my favorite tool for opening minds and getting some good thoughts thinking.

The third thing is to be really, really, REALLY brave.  When I started posting poetry on my blog, I had never seen anything like what I wrote.  I was terrified that I wasn’t writing real poetry, that I was just a weirdo writing stuff no one would ever want to read.  Now I realize that being a weirdo is a very good thing – people love originality, and you don’t run the risk of repeating someone else.  You have to trust that, no matter what you’re writing, if you can be courageous enough to write what’s inside you – all the chaos and intensity and passion and fear and love and laughter – someone will read it and say, “yes, that’s exactly what I feel, too!”  When I first started writing poetry as a kid, I thought it was all about expressing myself, but now I see it also as a way to connect with other people.  Being someone who doesn’t fit into any of the gender/sexuality/personality boxes, I feel compelled to write as a way to encourage the other members of my tribe to trust in themselves.  I feel a sacred duty to reach out and connect with the scared, small parts of others who don’t feel like they fit in, either.

Trust in the awkward, and the rough.  A “perfect” poem can be too slick to grasp onto – it’s good to leave little bumps and crags in the mix.  Real life is clumsy and unrefined, so it’s fine if your poetry is, too.

(I’m not sure the age of your students, so it might not be appropriate to include this:  The first of my pieces to be accepted into an anthology was a longer story about playing in the dungeon with my partner, who is multigendered.  I wrote about his cock and her pussy, and was absolutely terrified I’d be turned down in disgust, because I hadn’t seen anything like that before.  Turns out, that’s exactly what they were looking for.)

If there aren’t words to describe what you’re feeling, invent new ones (like handsomebeautiful or sexydangerous.)  Use punctuation and spacing to create the rhythm you hear in your gut, and ignore the rules behind them.  Write a poem vertically, make a collage, play with font.  Get a box or a folder or a book where you can put the really meaningful, dangerous poems, the ones that come directly from your heart to the page, and keep them secret, if that’s what gives you the courage to write them.  The trick is to write and write and write and write, and be as daring as you can when you do.  I’m not really sure it ever gets easier, but you will get braver.  My poetry still comes at me in the middle of the night, clawing up out of my throat, demanding to be birthed…but now I feel more confident that I’m not just shouting into the dark.  (Although some of my more personal pieces still scare me to death.  Seeing the piece I wrote about my first night with Kyle in print almost knocked me to the floor – it would’ve honestly been easier to see a photo of me naked in that book, because I felt so exposed.)

If I could give you one thing, it would be the confidence to write.  I would grant you the belief and knowledge that your passion is exactly right, and gorgeous and absolutely deserving of a voice.  Writing is the process of sharing a particular experience with the reader, but poetry is an instrument of inspiration.  You’re not just telling your story, you’re also telling theirs, and what you have to say could inspire something that is truly profound.  You’re the only one who can say it, who can inspire that, but if you don’t write it out, that opportunity is lost.

So, whatdya think?  Did I hit it?  Miss something?  Leave anything out?

Sadly, because it’s a busy weekend, I’ll be flying into Sea Tac, racing to the show, and then pretty much flying right home after a little “sleep” with Kyle, so I can head off on a camping trip with the scouts on Saturday.  It’s gonna be exhausting, but I get to see Kyle, and y’all know I’d do anything for that.  With any luck, I’ll also not embarrass myself completely in front of a crowd of fellow perverts (and you know I use that term lovingly.)  But, again, I get to see Kyle, and, even if it’s only for 12 hours, it’s still worth moving the Earth and Moon and all the stars to do it.

Happy Birthday to me!

When I entered my pieces, the information on the website was this:

Yes, you always retain all rights to your work. You will be asked to authorize us to publish your work in our catalog and on our website, and we only have permission to publish in a limited capacity. You may submit your work to other festivals and events without restriction.

However, this morning I received an email that they were going to print an anthology of the works included in the Festival, and that we needed to sign a contract.  The contract stipulates:

This Agreement shall be for an initial period of TWO (2) years from the actual date of publication. After that time ends, the AUTHOR and PUBLISHER have a non-exclusive agreement for an additional THREE (3) years. A non-exclusive agreement allows the AUTHOR to place the work in additional anthologies or other publications, with other publishers, without voiding this contract.

and

AUTHOR agrees that AUTHOR will retire any extant contracts with any other publishing entity AUTHOR has outstanding for the WORK immediately upon acceptance of this Agreement. If the WORK goes into film/motion picture/television/video/DVD, FSPC must be accredited in the credits as being the publisher of the book version, and our logo displayed.

Now, I have no plans to make my poems into major motion pictures, but, still, it’s important to read the fine print whenever you sign something.  Not only would I be promising exclusive rights to my poems, but I would have to pull them back out of any other contracts I had signed for them previously (which was the killing blow for me, since I had entered one of them for consideration for another anthology.)

*  *  *

Now, I was going to write the rest of the post about what a bummer this all is, considering how excited I had been about the Festival, and how important it is to always, always read a contract a few times before signing, but as I was writing, the Literary Art Director contacted me by email and told me that they really liked my pieces and would be willing to amend the contract for me.

Let me pause here for a moment to make sure y’all heard me right.  They wanted me enough to change the fucking contract.

Right now there’s a grin as wide as the Pacific on my face, and I’m not exactly sure what my next step is, except to sit here grinning while my head blows up like a balloon.

Probably a good time to ask if anyone’s got a bleed valve I can borrow before things get too ugly.  Until then, I’ll be over on cloud 9 if anyone needs me.

When we are apart, her soul curls around me and carves out the spaces where she would walk, laughing beside me, caressing my heart in her beautiful grasp, holding me close while my soul wanders with her.

And then we are reunited, and the stones beneath our feet dance and play as we sing our songs of love, souls together with voices saying, once and again and one time more -

This love is a miracle, this love is good.

When we are together, we gorge ourselves on lust and butterflies, walking in the streets like there’s no other truth save the way our palms fit together and my effortless love for you, drinking in even the cruelest stares because they show us we’ve been seen, and the seeing proves we’re here, mother fucker.

And then we part

and mourn with the force of continents crashing down over Angel Falls, crushing everything beneath them, the world suddenly too big for something so precious and small as two people struggling in the rapids, clinging onto one last day.  All the good washes away, leaving craggy rocks and crying puddles, too far down for those heavenly feathered ears to hear.

We live between, while you tickle and grill and I bandaid and tutor, we paint, wash, dust, build, eat, sleep, cry, and pray in separate worlds held together with postcard stamps and plane tickets, and we live like it’s easy, though it rarely is.  The wanting is ugly, romantic as battery acid, but we trick it and tame it and squint our eyes so it looks like heaven’s waiting room, shiny and full of hope.

When I am brave, with an open heart, I know that while you’re away, you’ll be living half of my life and I’ll be living half of yours and together we will build sand castles that dwarf our past lives’ imaginations.  You and I, my love, we are entangled in one another like hot summer days in July, fast and full of ecstatic wet memories of frolicking in the gentle waves, pushing away a darker future

when autumn comes again.

to promote a greater understanding of masculine of center gender identities, expressions, and presentations, through encouraging: 1. visibility, because we feel alone; 2. solidarity, because there are many of us out there, but we don’t always communicate with each other; and 3. an elevation of the discussion, because we have a long history and lineage to explore and we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

What is butch? How do you define butch? What do you love about it? What does it mean to you?

Butch is that red-and-white, candy-striped, aftershave-and-razor hair cut, the hand you wish you dared reach out to feel those strong, ripped shoulders, that neck that slides up, close-cropped, under the fabric, like she was born with that cap on, like they were made for each other, lookin out at the world like it’s one big fight or maybe just last night’s lay.  The way she shines those boots that have known the ground, walked miles outside this town, out of her house and never looking back, marching and dancing with her girl, but always easy, hips that were built to press up close when her girl sways and leans her head back, stretching out her neck, long and graceful, inviting her inside.

It’s the jeans that leave a little, or a lot, to the imagination, but never tell their secrets, like a well-worn friend, with a belt thicker than your arm shoved through the loops and a buckle from mom on Christmas that says “I get it.”  It’s the bulge of a brown leather wallet in the back that’s been shined with every step in those ground-knowing boots, the one that fits the shape of that damn sexy ass almost as well as her girlfriend’s eager hand.  It’s the pocket knife that waits at the ready, heavy in her hand and full of power, the shiny chrome chain that hangs down like a challenge, the flask of tequila on her hip, the old pocket watch that used to belong to somebody’s grandpa, the plaid/flannel/seersucker/denim/tweed that says, “no, I meant to look like this” as she walks down the street projecting hard-won courage, meeting gaze for gaze, never missing a step.

It’s that hard leather jacket, pulled up with a shrug and zipped up tight to hold in her shape, that zipper that lets your mind wander to what’s hidden underneath, not just a guy, but something beautiful and dangerous all wrapped up in gasp-with-your-mouth-open handsome.  It’s a steady hand, that practiced lean, the wink that melts you, those arms that can hold a soccer ball or a baby with the same tenderness and strength, that subtle nod of recognition in a passing crowd.  It’s the mouse-catching, spider-moving, shelf-building, oil-changing young James Dean that blushes with pride when his girl asks him to pick up tampons at the store.  It’s the strong arm around your shoulders and the warm, sure chest when the night is dark and the walk home is long and cold.  It’s a thousand brave acts that challenge the world to keep up, to see what’s right in front of them.  It’s a swagger, an affront, a tribute and, at the end of the day, a drink with the guys in that little corner bar that’s no bigger than a postage stamp, where the beer is cheap and the company is certain.

It’s a look and I’m gone, baby, gone, a growl in my belly, a second and third and forth glance back because I can’t keep my eyes off you hunger that I can’t deny.  It’s that attitude that gets my attention, and the grin that knocks me to my knees.  It’s the most beautiful sight in the whole damn world and everything that I’ve ever wanted.  It’s the butterflies in my gut, the thanksgiving prayer to god, and the shy smile I can’t help when I say hello.

It’s butch, and I’m thankful every day of my life that you were born to be that way.

Outside your window

So we would always be close enough for a tickle fight

.

My eyes want to live on the other side

Of your glasses

So they could gaze back at those deep green seas all day long

.

My ears would wait forever on the windowsill

In your bathroom

Just to hear you sing every morning as you soaped your knees

.

My arms want to wait for you

In the closet

So they could slip up under the covers when the house was dark

.

There isn’t a part of me that doesn’t want to be with you

Every morning, every day, every night

In anyevery way possible, I would cobble together moments

To have you, with me, in my life.

.

***********

I took this picture this morning, evidence that Kyle is so sexy, simply thinking about him causes the trees around me to burst into flame:

goodbye,

This was something worse

Brown and

sticky

like flypaper, dotted with footprints

as the years passed,

lying face down on the floor

.

She couldn’t stop talking,

his eyes never left that screen.

What compelled them to dance like this

every night

Every night

Didn’t she remember skin?

Didn’t he remember the way her eyes lit up for him?

They pushed it down,

under the meatloaf and the scotch,

“Did you hear that story on the radio?”

and she always had.

.

But that glue tugged at their bellies,

whispered cruelly in the dark

The pictures and parties continued with a life of their own

and the little stone wall out back

stared at her in anger,

Where is my romance?

.

Stuck to that paper,

fighting

together, apart, together

.

In the morning, when it wasn’t forgotten,

all they had learned in the night -

The milk was out

and

saltwater stings

if you stay under too long.

She’s a scientist, a writer, a night-sky-watcher who’s got it all in her head – details and dates, a passion for flight.  Her shoulders have held off a hundred battles, right near where she keeps her heart on her sleeve, and she’ll face you with her chin raised and her wits ready.  She’s a poet when she’s brave, and a comedian when she’s not, and she has a way of making you feel like you are everything when you tell her what you believe.  She’s generous with praise and willing to play the fool for a good cause or a good laugh, and she doesn’t give a fuck about what you think you’ve already earned – she’ll make you earn her respect no matter who you are.  More devil than angel, her voice with that edge-of-night passion would bring a holy man to his knees.  She loves like a warrior, cooks like an artist, and plays without fear.  She knows how to look into my eyes and peel me open, leaving her mark before we ever touched.

She’s more of a man than most, more feminine than many, and able to ride that divide like she was born in the saddle.  She is right at the cutting edge of exploding onto the world in all of her transcendent strength, and I am so lucky thankful and praise the goddess thrilled to be able to say

she loves me.