Apologia from a Bigot

"I'm sorry 'sir'...

I know you'd prefer,

some pronoun other than him or her."

"But I self-appoint,

my self annoint,

myself judge and barrister."

"Convenient, yes?

Comfort to my laziness,

to strip you of name and dress."

"In the end, you see,

it's all about me,

I don't say these things to oppress."

-o0o-

Purple Pt 2

...also it's my birthday :)

-o0o-

Purple

-o0o-

and the text:

I grew up pretending to be blue.

Pretending to be Apollo with his sky’s hue.

Daddy’s favourite. Because maybe...

...maybe if I stole a leaf from a man’s book,

I could become the things I took.

Not queer as one as they 'mistook'?

But I’m not him and that’s not me,

so I threw myself at red.

Queer as blood. Dense as lead.

Unmoving anger that flung me there,

burning passion inside my head,

that ate me up and left me dead,

a shell used up, naked and bare,

and I twisted,

queered,

unbecame the expectation,

and embraced the fault,

became the in/between,

unman,

unwoman,

thing,

I named myself whole.

With incantations that roll,

off my tongue with spit,

off my pen with inks,

and became the hex, the jinx.

And as for what Apollo stole,

who cares what that fucker thinks.

-o0o-

Me and Your Me

I struggle to split
the convenient me for your easy consumption
from the genuine hard pip
I struggle to divide
find the cruel line that sets me aside
myself as opposed to the me that is yours
we cruel carnivores
that eat at the buffet of souls
that taste of our friends
not they who they are
but they who we'd like them to be
pick and choose
but it's different for me
when all I do is lose
when I'm all stone in the centre
unfit for popular consumption
because I'm not prescribed assumption
coded as affectation and presumption
I became wholly spat out
because I'm not that or this
neither bite nor kiss
blue or pink
swim or sink
pot or pan
wo or man
I guess we all need our provinces
but I don't export from there
I'm not apple or pear
I'm oranges ripe and acidic
pick me up where I lie
burning the little cuts on your lips
difficult to peel for eager finger tips
treat me wrong and I'll spit in your eye

-o0o-

In- -between

"daddy" and "mommy" - it bothers me

and "parent" is cumbersome

because it doesn't have that familiarity

"brother" "sister"

"aunty" "uncle"

"grandma" "gramps"

"daughter" "son"

words that denote closeness seemingly hard-won

but slippery and slick

hard do grasp at

that closeness, that click

the natural feel of a child tugging at your apron strings

there are no words for me if I have a child

there are no words for them to call me

I'd just be "parent-like-thing"

"mamma" and "pappa" - all the same

a rose by any other name?

a "son" who never was

and could never reach "daughter"

I guess for cis folk: a non issue

your currency ubiquitous like a fish in water

because you have it

you have the words

a problem that seems, at least to you, patently absurd

so I guess it's easy for you

to dismiss this as

"we don't need labels"

you rub it off

forget it

shrugged

dust from your shoulders

of course it doesn't matter to you

because you have the words

while transgender nonbinary folk don't

we're just

in-

-between

with words we crave out of our bones

to grapple purchase with familiarity

with a language that doesn't serve us

it bothers me

this "this/that" mess

that wears pants or a dress

here/there you

and nowhere me

who shouldn't exist, so you don't really see

how we struggle for meaning in our words

"mommy" and "daddy" as fleeting as birds

-o0o-