Douglas Felsch Poet Lyric

Notes About The Poem

This poem is about a turning point: to live or die, run or hide; ultimately, it is the climax of a broken man letting the woman within come to light.  As you read this poem, ask yourself: what does transgender look like to you?  I know there is a reference in the poem about God, for those that don't know me I am of God's family the line is there to simply portray the devastation in the soul,  This is a true firsthand account, not fictional; it is my coming out.

Bone Chiller

Bone Chiller

They strapped the dead man’s skin to me, and threw the key into the sea.
I played the husband, played the dad, while silently I went quite mad.
I built a life, I paid the bills, I ground my bones inside the mills,
A waking corpse in broad daylight, pretending everything was right.

I wept a thousand tears of blood, and drowned inside a silent flood.
I couldn't let my loved ones see the broken thing I'd come to be.
I swallowed down the vicious tide, to keep the agony inside.
Behind locked doors I broke alone, and ground my teeth against the bone.

So when the house was dead and still, the woven rope would do its will.
It wasn’t just a passing thought; it was a predator I had caught.
It waited in the bedroom gloom, a patient shadow in the room.
It breathed my air, it stroked my head. It offered me a vacant bed.
“Just take the step,” the fibers sighed. “I’ll hide the things you want to hide.”

I carried on. I worked the grind. I shoved the rope into my mind.
Until the day my body broke. The spine gave out. The demon woke.
My working hands could work no more; I bled my rage upon the floor.
The sheer, compounding weight of years erupted in a flood of tears.
It was set the heavy burden down, or let the rope become my crown.

I dragged the carcass to the light, and screamed the truth into the night.
I told the doctor, pale and grim, "I am a ghost. I am not him."
And for a second, I was free. But God, you have no eyes to see—
The horror isn’t in the lie. The horror is that ghosts don't die.

To clear the poison from my brain, I had to walk back through the rain.
My raw and unprotected mind drank every horror left behind.
The grief I shoved beneath the floor came rotting through the cellar door.
The midnight thief inside my head began to drag me to the dead.
And nightmares walked the midday street, the past wrapped tight around my feet.

But I refused to quietly break, to drown inside the blackened lake.
I took a pen of sharpened bone, and dragged the phantom from his throne.
I pulled the thief out from my head, and nailed him to the paper, dead.
I drove the ink like heavy spikes, to paralyze his midnight strikes.
I pinned his carcass to the page, and locked him in a written cage.
He bleeds in black for all to see—he lost his grip on killing me.

So tuck your children in their beds. Ignore the voices in your heads.
Go to your jobs, and fake your smiles, and walk your endless miles.
Keep burying the things you fear. Keep swearing that your mind is clear.
But if you wear a face that’s wrong, the dark will feast upon you long.
The rope is patient. Trauma waits.
The Reaper stands beside your gates.

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