Isn't it Queer?: Poly-Ponderings on Love, Sex and Connection in Abundance

Hello Vibrant Souls! Today on Isn't It Queer? I bring you thoughts, ideas, dilemmas and revelations from a queer, polyamorous, purveyor of love, sex, and connection, Dia Davina. To preface our plunge into that sparkling can of omni-sexual worms, watch this incredible spoken-word piece/delicious real talk, from Dia Davina about the challenges and rewards of poly-life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smfk1JyQ9H4

 The Polyamorous Mating Habits of the North American Red Squirrel

Dia Davina's piece rocks my fucking rainbow socks, not to mention, they are so attractive, charming and articulate, it nearly blinded me. Hey Dia, I know three lovers is already a lot, but hit me up. Their piece illuminates the unique challenges that poly people take on when choosing to live an alternative lifestyle: the social pressure and frequent questioning from outside parties, the lack of support from family, the lack of good poly role models to learn from, the daily face to face battle with jealousy or possessiveness and the negative impact those emotions can have on relationships. Davina's piece gives poly folks the gift of not romanticizing or glorifying poly relationships. Speaking anecdotally, there is a tendency in groups that live alternative lifestyles to feel pressure to depict their community as having chosen the ideal, revelatory, revolutionary, and flawless life style choice and the one with the most benefits, rather than just a life choice. When the reality is, people with multiple lovers, partners or spouses, also come with childhood trauma. They are also prone to feeling jealous, not feeling worthy, struggling to keep promises, and a whole assortment of other very human behaviors. Because -crazy concept- poly people are human, as fickle, inspiring, and full of potential, as is implied.

Davina's piece, boldly and honestly, shows the challenges that poly lovers face, touching on everything from having to remember the precious details of each interaction with each of your lovers -citing emotionally fatal text message errors- to the revelation that having a plethora of partners, does not numb the very real pain of heart break, no matter how much incredible support our abundant community lends us. My favorite point Davina makes, remarks on the dilemma that poly life and successfully navigating multiple love relationships has no formula or road map. Making it perhaps one of the scariest life style choices in love, sex and connection. A majority of poly folks do not have parents in the lifestyle to model their practices on, and in all reality, a large number are attempting this lifestyle in order to escape some of the emotional stagnation they saw in previous generation's monogamous tendencies. Making our "best practice" a brand new uncharted territory, that is frequently debated. "How do I tell my partner I need to spend time with my other partner in their time of need?", " How do I explain that I am not interested in the same sexual practices with one partner as I am the other?", "How do I ask my partner to take responsibility for their jealousy?" "How are all of my partners having their period on the same day?", "How do I process feelings of jealousy around my partner's new partner?" Also, most prevalently, "what the holy fuck am I doing?"

Being brave enough to take on your jealousy and apprehension in order to obtain abundance, is stressful. It is hard to take on a lifestyle that is stigmatized by the predominant culture, and equally exhausting being called "greedy" or "damaged" and having your relationship choices be repeatedly invalidated. It is refreshing to hear a piece that does not spend it's time justifying our lifestyle to monogamous individuals (which is necessary at times) but instead validates the experience and struggles of those seeking their abundance despite great struggle. The piece is cathartic to listen to, hysterically funny, and as a political piece of art, it does justice to the poly-lifestyle, by portraying poly individuals as the diverse, emotionally complex, humans that we are.

-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

de

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**ATTENTION ALL RED SQUIRRELS** COM|PASSionate REVOLT will be at the Contemporary Relationships Conference in Austin, TX on May 15 + 16, 2015 doing a workshop on Queering Consent: Navigating Consent Outside of the Hetero AND Homo Normative.

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There are photographs in this post that were borrowed lovingly from the internet and do not belong to us. All are linked and credited to the best of our abilities in hopes of attracting more traffic to the photographers and websites who have blessed us with this imagery. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the subject’s or artist’s identity or beliefs. If there is a photo included here that belongs to you and you want it removed, please email compassionaterevolt@gmail.com and it will be removed promptly, no questions asked.

New Queer Tarot!

Happy Tarot Tuesday, friends! I'm on the road today, but I want to draw your attention to what promises to be an awesome column over at Little Red Tarot:

Queering the Tarot! by Cassandra Snow

I love how she digs into The Fool's more traditional meanings, opens space for what else this card might offer queer-identified folks in a reading, and moves playfully into more generally queering it, offering alternatives for interpreting a message from The Fool that speaks to navigating oppressions, community activism, and more. If you're looking for more in the world of queering tarot (are really, who among us isn't looking for that?), check her out.

And then, DO YOURSELF A GIANT FAVOR and check out Slow Holler's kickstarter for their tarot deck collaboratively illustrated and imagined by 29 artists and 3 writers who have Southern ties, identify as queer or both.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LORH8yl3Qps[/embed]

It looks astoundingly beautiful, and a lot of folks are whispering about it carrying the legacy of our beloved Collective Tarot. I ordered my copy - I think you're gonna want one too.

<3

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Kaeti is a therapist, teacher, and dreamer based in Long Beach, California. All of her work (and play!) is interested in dismantling intersections of oppression and breathing magic and radical healing into all the daily corners of her life, into all the spaces of community she helps weave.

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There are photographs in this post that were borrowed lovingly from the internet and do not belong to us. Photos in this post are attributed to Kaeti unless otherwise specified. All are linked and credited to the best of our abilities in hopes of attracting more traffic to the photographers and websites who have blessed us with this imagery. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the subject’s or artist’s identity or beliefs. If there is a photo included here that belongs to you and you want it removed, please email compassionaterevolt@gmail.com and it will be removed promptly, no questions asked.

MHM 12: Activism + Self-Care

Happy Monday REVOLUTIONARIES!

We hope you all are well. We had a fun AND busy weekend! Most notably, we got to hang with our COM|PASSionate REVOLT family (our favorite dream worker and tarot-ist, Kaeti Gugiu,) catch Sister Spit hosted by the Long Beach Center and check out the drag show at Hamburger Mary's new location (not that new- we're just getting old and don't get out as much as we used to.)

We giggled a lot, saw some great drag, ran into some familiar faces and got to give hugs to some new friends. All in all a lovely night of community witnessing and reflection. As often happens when you're at a non-work related social (but community) event, hanging with folks that work in community (not at the event,) the talk turned to "the work." It came up over the course of the night in several different scenarios and incarnations and it got us to thinking about the healing but also, at times, insidious way "the work" itself becomes tied to our own healing, survival and flourishing.

It's an interesting dilemma that those of us that are the most passionate (often because of personally driven volition) are often getting paid the least or not at all for the work we are doing. Whether or not we have paid positions we are also often doing other unpaid work or activism in the community and when we take time off we often fall into commiserating about the depleting nature of the work/activism/community navigation. We talk about how much more work needs to be done or how ineffective the structures are we're working within. One action may feel like it's gaining movement while another seems to be falling behind. We're tired but another group that collaborated with us earlier in the year is having an event. Our advocacy group is in between big events but our partner is having a shitty time at work/with family/the sometimes uphill battle of everyday life. We organized an event that went well and didn't realize how much it would trigger for us personally. An event doesn't go well and (because our identities are personally invested) we feel the weight of failure, not just in the eyes of others but in the fear of a present and future that continues to not hold and nurture us. While we're all doing our best to give our all to causes that need support, it's a slippery feedback loop-- a cycle that doesn't lend itself well to breaks, self-care or, in actuality, sustainability and success of our movements.

You know the directions they give on airplanes before you take off. They show you the little air mask and remind you to secure yours first before you help anyone around you?? It's because you can't help anyone around you if you're passed out!

That's something more of us need to institute into the work we do with our communities. Aftershock, by Patrice Jones, is a guide for activists and allies confronting trauma in a violent world.

We think this is a great start to understanding the effects and care we need to take of ourselves when working in our communities-- after all, if we pass out from exhaustion the work doesn't get done anyways.

We also think it's relevant to feel into the kind of change that best suits your individual personality, talents and person. Sure we can try to add temperance and self-care to our lives by decreasing the work we do in the world but the truth is many of us are intimately invested in the work we're doing. We don't want to stop because we want the world to be better for ourselves as much as we want the world to be better for others!

So, for example, if you're someone that gets an adrenaline rush from loud group protests go for it! Maybe you'd rather be involved in a letter writing campaign behind the scenes? Do you have natural charm and put people at ease so they can hear a new point of view? A lot of grassroots campaigns could use folks going door to door to connect. Maybe you're an artist? Can you design a shirt raising awareness/funds for a group you're involved with? Web designer? There are lots of small groups and non-profits that can't hire a big firm to build a website or do a bit of upkeep. Are you using your voice in blogging community? Drop us a line! Let us know if you'd be interested in being part of the COM|PASSionate REVOLUTION! The possibilities are endless.

We sometimes get stuck as seeing "activism" in only one light that benefits the sun energized, loud, confrontational group movements. Are these important? Absolutely! Would we, being the humans that "cry as much as some people pee" and have a lot of feelings be in any form of conscious state if we engaged in too many of these?? Not so much.

We often fail to question why these masculine forms of movement are valued higher than the quiet powerful ways feminine water energy has continuously and unrelentingly turned mountains in beaches one patient grain of sand at a time.

So, we know it would be silly of us to ask you, REVOLUTIONARIES, to stop making the world a better place by your presence, sacrifices and compassion. We do, however, encourage you to take the time to check in with what is the best, most fueling, most sustainable way for you to contribute.

We implore you put on your mask before helping those around you.

Until next time. Put your mask on.

In COM|PASSionate REVOLUTION,

Skye + Traci

 As always you can reach us at…

compassionaterevolt@gmail.com

www.compassionaterevolt.com

www.compassionaterevolt.wordpress.com

COM|PASSionate REVOLT FB

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Skye is a youth worker, educator, activist and white transmasculine human. Traci is a therapist, yoga teacher, educator and queer vegan femme-inist of color. They reside, practice, navigate, process, survive and flourish in the Southern California area.

Isn't it Queer?: Sacred Catharsis

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

e

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There are photographs in this post that were borrowed lovingly from the internet and do not belong to us. All are linked and credited to the best of our abilities in hopes of attracting more traffic to the photographers and websites who have blessed us with this imagery. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the subject’s or artist’s identity or beliefs. If there is a photo included here that belongs to you and you want it removed, please email compassionaterevolt@gmail.com and it will be removed promptly, no questions asked.

Keep Reaching: Star Poetry

Today, The Star wanted to come out and play...

as a poem.

It feels like a good way to connect with this card, which always holds so much power and mystery for me.

When you don't know what else to do,

pour it all out.

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Bound, trapped,

no way out but

overflowing.

-

The release of bondage

The contraction that births

The Star is

a safe word.

-

All of your containers cannot hold

your vision growing

the shining sky.

-

Do not try to hold it:

be held.

You are a body of water

learning the mysteries of river and sea.

I know you are tired of crying.

-

The Star is an asana.

The Star is a heart that keeps pumping.

The Star is kinky as fuck.

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Breathe in:

inspire.

Blow palo santo smoke on your open palms

and keep reaching.

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Kaeti is a therapist, teacher, and dreamer based in Long Beach, California. All of her work (and play!) is interested in dismantling intersections of oppression and breathing magic and radical healing into all the daily corners of her life, into all the spaces of community she helps weave.

———-

There are photographs in this post that were borrowed lovingly from the internet and do not belong to us. Photos in this post are attributed to Kaeti unless otherwise specified. All are linked and credited to the best of our abilities in hopes of attracting more traffic to the photographers and websites who have blessed us with this imagery. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the subject’s or artist’s identity or beliefs. If there is a photo included here that belongs to you and you want it removed, please email compassionaterevolt@gmail.com and it will be removed promptly, no questions asked.