An Ivy, Language.

Language is the ivy vine
I wrapped around my
ugly seeming walls
in my early days before

I knew my foundations
are like many sedimentary
and amalgamated large
and small, varying poracity

bound together from parts
that the soil would be in
a thousand years under
pressure and heat.

The tiny tendrils suck
to dig into me, and
I would not let my hands
brush away the tiny hurts

until they'd long since
laid the cracks that
would make it easier
to crumble my foundations.

It's ok,
I've known for a
long time that
I'll end up
without a pair.

There's something
inevitable about learning
that even your most basic dreams
are flights of fancy.

And girls like me
aren't meant to dream
(Girls like me
are meant to bleed)

My Orientation Manifesto

your Consent is more relevant 

to me and what I want and

how and if it goes beyond 

my appreciation of you as

pleasing to behold

than your gender, sex, or

identity. Your consent is

more meaningful than what

pronouns we use for each other-

and damn they best be pronouns

you've consented to in the first place,

Anyhow- or who you have or haven't

fucked or wanted to fuck before. 

Our consent is more important here

than what we call what we are doing

touching fucking loving abstaining or

any one of a number of other intimacies

that we grant each other permission for

named or unamed. Our consent is ours,

is our time together whatever we do

whatever we pretend or build- our consent

is what builds our safety, the foundations we

elaborate on in building today's "safe sex"

whatever else we add to make our intimacy safe. 

I want your consent to engage in our

tenderness, our aggression, our dances and 

fights and how we act on what intimacy we

each agree we want. The rest is stage dressing

for the best play to act in/on/with, the

endless variations of what

intimacy can look like. 

You want some word for my desire

beyond the ambiguous "queer"? My

desire is for consenting partners in

intimacy and that is as close to

specific that I can ever fucking give you. 

because that is as specific as I can get.

Something needs to happen
before I feel the
rising balloons
pop beneath
my fingers.

I am up way past my bedtime
and I can't manage to go to sleep-
my stomach is full of nausea and
there's the chicken I meant to cook
in my fridge and yet I couldn't
bring myself to get around to cooking
it as there were a thousand steps
between here and there and
I don't have it in me anymore.
The air that ballooned me
on memories of touch
has hissed out
flat and now
empty

I don't think that
I am being too
specific when
I say all I
want is someone
whose views and ideas
political
do not disgust
me, who wants kids
someday if we
can, is Jewish
and tolerates
me for more than
a few weeks out.
Hopefully and
attractive to
me enough for
things to work well
in the bedroom.
I don't even care
what this person's
gender might be
though I know that
if they read as
a dude it will
be easier
sometimes to find
faith community.
How is this at
all asking too much?

This is not a
narrow range by
which to look so
don't tell me that
My scope is too
narrow when I
worry that I'll
be forever
alone. Again.

I Love you mom.
But this really
does not help me.

I become more and more aware
as time goes on that
I don't have much to give when
it comes to finding
another person to spend life with.
I have piled against
me disadvantages like raw rubies
and nothing polished
to show to the prospective lover.
Who would want the
girl whose treasures when polished
shrink down to a single
rope of pearls out of a mountain of
the raw materials?
The weight of the raw becomes a
burden, and to polish
them to a shine I would need help.
seeking a helpmate
when you actually are needing help
feels next to impossible.