The Depot
The morning sun begins to peek,
my shaking knees are feeling weak.
With heavy baggage in my hand,
it takes my strength to simply stand.
I am so numb the silence roars,
I have survived my endless wars.
Gazing at the train platform
remnants of the passing storm.
The grass glistens in the breaking sun
oblivious to the battle won.
Crowds disperse, the platform clears,
the whistle echoes in my ears.
To be alone at last, I breathe,
I'm taking in the autumn breeze.
My first steps forward, timid ones,
the light of day finally comes.
For I'm unsure what lies ahead,
will they love me now, wish me dead.
It matters none from here on in,
I fought the war, I fought the sin.
My body's weak but I am home,
my weary soul will cease to roam.
Debra
The first man
The first man to ask
“What is a woman?”
Without ever feeling the touch of one
The first man to call a doll
“A deluded boy in a dress.”
The first man to make you hate me,
The first man to make me hate me.
The first man with no degree,
To declare the binary of sex.
The first man to demonize us,
The first man to divide us,
Claim his hatred to be fact.
The first man to deny our genocide,
The first man to dismiss Brianna Ghey,
A trans girl who was stabbed
twenty eight times.
The first man to talk fast so people mistake his ignorance for intelligence,
The first man to hate women under guise of protecting them.
The first man to ignore our suicide rates,
The first man to increase our suicide rates.
The first man to encourage those boys to follow me home,
The first man to justify trans deaths,
The first man to convince those boys it was okay to plan my death.
I hope the first man hears this,
“you were the first man to hate,”
I’d tell him.
“And your hate spreads like wildfire.”
The first man’s fire is catching.
The truth, the passion, and the Poet
Ridin' high, the truth is told, passions and poet collide,
Igniting the shadows with fire and light!
My heart is open, free to decide,
I break to the open and soar with the bold!
Passions collide with the woman I know,
The fire is rising, I let it ride,
No longer walking with stories untold!
I've crossed the wild and rocky range!
The fire is lit and I let it glow!
My heart is free and it feels so strange,
Untied from the stories of my former age!
Passions collide as the high winds blow!
Feeling the heat as my fires rage!
On top of the world I fly,
With every heartbeat I feel the pride,
Kissing the past a sweet goodbye,
The truth, the passion, the poet and I!
— Debra
The paws of a dog, the sun in the sky
An outlaw's tale, the grief of life
The dirt under my feet, the emptiness of space
The lace of my nightshirt, the soft pink hue
Ribbons and frills and doilies
Angels with wings of white soft down
How can I pick one
When both are home
How can I fit in
When no one else seems to wonder
What life would be like
As the cowboy or the princess
They accuse me of cutting of my cock
Just to wear a frock
And hang about in bogs
When all I want
Is the peace to piss
Or to piss in peace
Just another of their
Disgusting spiels
Designed to turn me extreme
But hate is there language
Not mine I just rhyme
Im happy it’s gone
My meaty schlong
It just hung there all flaccid
It was always so wrong
But it never once said
Get this straight in your head
That off I should go
On the chance
A women to catch
In the stench of the lavs
I mean
Who’s idea was that
What warped mind
Full of hate could create
Such absurdist disgrace
Or maybe they reveal
A piece of them selves
All twisted and dark
So self loathing and reviled
Then push it out on the world
Rather than live with their shame
So as billionaires burn the world to the ground
And presidents and princes
Abuse kids with no charges
Of course they want you focused on me
Cos I’m the real threat
Cos I cut of my cock
(“Perception and Reality Merit Badge”, 2015, original oil)
It’s not enough that the Emperor was fooled
Now the media is insisting we be too.
But everyone has that innocent child within
And that child can see the truth
And all too often simply speak it.
The latest trans shooting,
And it seems all the mass shootings now
Are done by trans,
Has the media all over the world
Repeating the Canadian’s lie that it was a girl.
But anyone who looks at the actual story
Can see immediately what is true
And what is nothing but a bald faced naked lie.
The simple fact is a mental illness doesn’t become sane
By merely wishing it so.
And a mental illness which so readily murders
Is at its core Life-destroying not Life-affirming.
Boys are boys and girls are girls
And although the twain shall meet
They will never become the other.
(2/12/26)
SHOOTER HAS A NAME
NOW THE POLITICAL GAME
ARE OUT TO DEFAME
Is the tangerine tranquility
of divine signature—
a chlorophyll sanctum
for kindled minds,
where identity softens
into its sovereign form.
Uniqueness glistens
like diamonds in agate woods,
flowing like a brook
through silenced seastorms,
casting resilient ripples
of peace in chaos.
Kaleidoscopic hues
lather liberation
in lilac breath,
woven through rose-glazed silk,
layering thy self
beyond binary divides.
Weaving a raspberry mirage,
condensing orbits once defined,
gravity kneels to lucid silhouettes —
where polarization, veiled in vines,
drifts through phantoms of shadowed memes,
labeling itself among quiet captives.
Appearance deceives—
a haunted massacre,
gnawing at edges
of borrowed illusions,
trapped in the coffin
of jinxed confessions.
Still, I yearn for that foetal light—
a harlequin armour
on mannequin soul,
held by the thinnest threads
of clairvoyant defiance,
tethered to becoming.
Dusk drapes the horizon
in crimson hush,
penning butter-paper dreams
into the murmuring breeze,
where buried silence exhales
fractured fragments of valour.
Opal was a fine young woman,
Woke up with the sun,
Everywhere she walked were rainbows,
So, she held a gun.
She was tall and she was strict,
And we did all that she said--
Not because we feared her--
But feared that’d make us rebels, instead.
She was free and she was brave,
And she fought for liberty;
Strapping on her rebel boots,
“Are you ready?” She asked me.
She marched down at Times Square,
All alone-- “...Wait, where--?”
As she carried through,
Oxisol raised his dark revolver,
And shot Opal at 5th avenue.
73 years ago
A kid my age steps off a curb.
And, in the motion of falling, he believes he can reach heaven.
He has the thoughts of someone
with an inverted ribcage
And he’s sick on cigarette smoke and hypocrisy.
A kid my age, 73 years ago, calls me a pervert.
Through the thin veil of time and space
We lock eyes.
I say “I see you.”
He says “You’re sick.”
But that’s wrong and he knows it.
I am not the sick one.
He is the kid with the killing hat
And the giving hands
That despise the people he gives to.
He is the kid with filthy thoughts and phony smiles
Who sees the hollow spaces between his ribs
In the innocence of a child’s eyes.
And despite the filth beneath his tongue
And the alcohol stinging his throat
I cannot bring myself to
Feel anything for him
other than
Pity.
"You may now not serve this country
Though you may be fit and kind
I tell you this quite bluntly
I will suppress your kind
Petitions and the public
Shall never hassle my laws;
Amist a starving republic
They believe me
When I tell them you are the flaws
For I've convince them all the bathrooms
Are threatening where you lurk
I've convinced them all your schools
Are full of your witching work
So drink up; sweet deceit tastes good
I shall convince them you are a crime
My plan has made it thus far
And continues
One sip at a time."
You who throw stones
Held so tightly in your hand
Like it is your all
Your pride
Your hands are bloody
Because you are a sinner
You are a sinner, and you throw the first stones
Stones that come in words and pain
Whether you were the ones who shouted total trans death
Or the ones who wish pain
Or the ones who support a militia divided
You thereby mind me as level with the pigs
And it is sad
I pray for you
For my God said love thy neighbor
To you who hate so many minorities
A sad message I unfold
For those who wish to make decisions for my very own body
And those who are so bold
Racists or prejudice, those guilty of misogyny
You yourselves
Are the faulty minority
Conservatives’ banning’s apropos of nothing
At twelve when he delt with this
shouldn't have to jump through hoops
should’ve been able to explore when a teen
But because of many conservative groups
The Ire excessive was the coming of age
Juvenile mistakes made in adult years
Denied the ability to pick up social skills
Sexual assault and sexual awaking
considered pornographic
Q**r’s often live a second adolescents
This is a guide for the coming of age allies
States have taken off the shelves
Intersectional as his life
Chapters are a collection, four acts
referred to as “parts” in this guide
self-contained essay’s
The memoir progresses through Johnson’s life
Two letters appear alongside
the chapters for mother and brother
Conditioned to think what’s the truth
Indoctrinated in us
Stop crying, racialized
School bullies
The flee market incident
Institutionalized violence
Family structure marginalized
Community –college fraternity
And black joy
Tells the truth
A black and q***r boy’s experience
Gender identity
Toxic masculinity
Brotherhood
A transgender child
does not not exist
just because a white man
says that that is so
as two spirited
third genders
and others
(eight in the Talmud! that I didn’t know)
exist around the globe
as in the
hijra of India
fa’afafine of Samoa
burrnesha of Albania
quariwarmi of Peru
guevedoche of Dominican Republic
muxe of Oaxaca
sekrata of Madagascar
fakaleiti of Tonga
lhamana of Zuni
winkte of Lakota
bakla of Philippines
acault of Burma
xanith of Oman
and waria of Indonesia
just to name a few
gender is as binary
as is the world is flat
asserting so otherwise
is simply spewing scat
If our love is a sin, then heaven must be full of such tender and selfless sinning as ours— Radclyffe Hall
Explore themes of love and identity
Of Stephen Gordon’s innate sense of masculinity
Since a child, her desire, ‘women’
The idea that if love is considered a sin
The unfolding of a female sexual invert
The act of loving must be a tender selfless act, revert?
Love itself is not inherently sinful or
complexities of love, we shan’t ignore
But rather the circumstances surrounding it
Misfits from Malvern to London and then to Paris!
Ira furor brevis, the frailty, taboo and strife
Fellow q***r characters, all walks of life
From the *sapphic salon hostess Valérie Seymour
To the 'miserable army' and more
of outcasts that frequents the 'merciless
Drug-dealing, death-dealing' bars of Montmartre
Written in another time, still support and solidarity to
generations of LGBTQ genre
*Sapphic is an umbrella term for same-gender loving women or woman-aligned people, including lesbians and bisexual+ women. It is used to describe topics, activities, and ideas related to same-sex attraction among women. The term can also refer to the Greek lyric poet Sappho.
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