Sacred Catharsis: Some Writings from The Butch Goddess
Creative writing has always been my outlet, it's been my emotional fuel for every major life transition and it will always be my primary partner. My first journal, at age six, consisted of malicious, poorly rhymed, spells against my 1st grade enemies and poems that misused archaic Shakespearian terms like "doth" and "thou." So today I will share my queer-poly-kinky-radical misadventures in the hope that it will entertain, inspire or educate anyone who is open to the experience. Enjoy!
The Orchid Graveyard
Go ahead, use the graveyard
of our relationship as your fertilizer.
Let her fuck you
in our spoiled soil bed,
amongst the lilies in the kitchen and yellow anniversary
roses, hung upside down on the ghost blue wall,
like a pagan offering to a god that does not care
about us.
You can let her quiet introverted bones be a playground for your absolute refusal
to grow.
Your smile has grown root rot, my dear.
I could never,
despite trying,
require you not to stagnate, as a pre condition for our -now historical- gardening affair.
And you are a perfectionist avoidant,
like the finest stubborn orchid,
who surrounds herself with succulents,
and wonders why her landscape looks so much like a desert.
And wonders why she is unwaningly wilting.
You've deserted me,
but I should be a well,
a gushing laceration of gratitude,
that you no longer make regular deposits of your worry into me.
I am not a porcelain maelstrom.
I am not your abandoned landscape hungry for anything.
You wish that my fluids be flushed
out of me and my entirety
become an indigo expanse of insatiate cacti,
lit only by a faceless silver sliver,
who would be-and has been- my only companion,
while I lived as a stitch
woven into your safety net.
So go on my little graveyard,
fill the void in you, that could have held the universe,
with the smallest of words,
and a pallet of banal affections.
She too, will learn to cope with the decay one day.
Old Hollows
The spittle flecks
from his mouth are sallow as they land uninvited on the man's
napkin. The yellow monotony of brittle conversation aches
in their cheek hollows. The man with the assaulted napkin
reaches old bones across the stretch of negative space
between the two men, past the acrid liquor in his glass,
the wood grain on the mahogany bar, past the angry shine
of the Rolex, unbuckled, on the napkin assaulters napkin, beneath a foggy
paper colored drink,
and touches the face of his old friend.
Two pairs of deep brown joy
beneath crate paper crows feet and yellowing teeth.
The ache of his blocky knuckles as he held them to his salt and pepper
5 'o clock prickle. Warm dark chocolate smile, beneath tart olive hands.
How they longed for this radiant moment.
How their chests palpitated sorely in each other's absence.
They had been deeply in each other's absence
and also in each other's distance. Stacks of reports, invoices
and contracts, created miles of paper between them. The callous beneath
which the napkin assaultee had hidden this disruptive longing,
this pained severance, ripped from off his eyes and
beautiful tiny rivers followed the earthly crackles that trailed down his face.
So sacred are the tears of those brave enough to defy their own fate and sacred are the ones who hold them.
So olive took chocolate, in their un-precedentedly odd combination,
into his chest and held his alchemist palms,
line to line with his own.
To see if they could turn paper work into gold,
and red tape into ribbon. Maybe, they thought, they could tie themselves a bow
and marry their hollows
and longings
under the cruel red Los Angeles sunset.
Unfortunately for our men, Fate lacks
interest in the hope of old alchemists.
On The Repressed Sexuality of The Great White North American Male
In the carved open palm lines of your deepest depth
rests the open legs of every itch you've ever traversed
to find sexual authenticity.
Into the spineless sour
of your abandoned cavities. Enamel
laced with alcohols and acids.
You stand. You paint dry pictures on barren air canvasses,
taking your white collar only one button down.
Taking your desire only one button down.
You taste it only occasionally: hardened, blasé, heaving deeply, begging to be summoned
by some ungodly force of pig-tail-hand-holding-
romance, which does not exist, and you know this,
to save you from the seeping.
But you are breathing.
The desolate pink within you screams.
Your outsides sliding with the gasoline frolic.
You sit. You cross. You uncross. You browse.
Sleeping inside of your own living.
fucking, greasy, body.
Tapping shining black boats on the pavement as you rush to stare at a computer.
All.
Fucking.
Day.
You are held, like children seduced by creaking glorious swing sets, to the green paper gown covered in faces and the plastic handheld faceless connection
and every app you jam up your ass in search of a cantankerous convenience.
Ooooh, gurl, I like the way you ride my bourgeoisie.
Slippery and Cancerous.
Thank you for taking the time to read my writing. Sharing my poetry is a sacred catharsis for me and I hope that you have been excited, enraged, aroused, or that the poetry has in some way inspired emotion in you. If you have poetry, writing, art, music or performance that you would like Isn't it Queer? to share, we would love to see it! Feel free to link your work in the comment section below.
-To your personal revolts and riots and especially to your learning,
Cory
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Cory is a poet and novelist in the Los Angeles area. They have worked in mental health, education, social justice and fashion blogging and they aim to lead by example by bravely living an examined lifestyle.
"The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot."
Audre Lord
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