kings speaks

THIS IS POETRY

[kings-speaks]

Pride

When I stand inside the crowd of happy people,

Feel the pulse pounding under my feet

And the humid heat on my face—

See the Satanists un-baptizing in glitter,

The clergy handing out blessings, and the sign-holders chanting,

And I rub a piece of glitter in my eye—

When I breathe in the scent of funnel cakes

And take in the guys in pup masks pushing past me,

The leather freaks, and the ethereal goddess in six-inch heels and drag—

The flag-wearers, the flag-wavers, and the middle-aged dykes,

The kids with the rainbow hair at their first ever pride,

And their parents wearing t-shirts that promise they will be there, they will be here with us now—

When I take my partner’s hand,

When I follow her through the crowd,

When I hold on to her, hoping—

When the rhythm of the song gets into my feet,

And the sweet cold juice is flowing,

And the sun is reflected off of every shining thing—

When I think that maybe we won't be okay, but we are here, now,

And maybe we can hold on to each other—

When I think, maybe we can hold on forever—

[kings-speaks]

Sunlight

The sunlight stirs in me and makes me think of summer—

that summer five years ago when everything changed.

Apollo's arrows are falling swift and thick now as they did then,

same warm shadows, same waiting, same empty sky.

Horror lays a kind of shell-shocked silence over

the mundane and peaceful world. We sleep

into the cool, blue afternoon and lie awake at night

with itchy eyes and ears pricked listening.

In our sun-drunk stasis, we hold our breath

hoping if we do not jostle the world too much, it will not take

from us what we cannot bear to lose. We pray

for those we cannot save, and yet we make no move

from where our horror planted us. Still the rains,

the driving rains of winter veer off east of us

and leave us smiling dry—like desiccated corpses—

like sun-bleached bones—no rotting reservoir—

no stirring, sluggish movement, no contracting pupils, no horrifying cry—

just the endless days of summer counting down.

[kings-speaks]

becalmed

You didn't drown when you were supposed to. Less the gasping work of bailing water, Where are you supposed to put your hands? Where the heavy raincoat, soaked with fear, Where the battered prayer book that you held When it looked like you were going under? You float now on the warm swells of summer, The becalmed smell of sun-riped oranges.

Where do you put your hands? That were so lately poised for sailing? Where the heavy prow? The ship doesn't know how to come home to harbor. Your callused hands don't remember wooded fields or sun-warmed flowers. Your sick-wrapped stomach doesn't know hunger, Or how to greet new fruit like an old friend.

You bob uneasy on the shifting water. You are at anchor but not at rest.

[kings-speaks]

baptismal

my heart shivers when I walk into the old church with its drowning font and pews, the aisles gutters guiding tears from the weeping statues, tears from the dripping parishioners as dead as their emaciated lord strung up at the front.

once I knelt here and turned my heart out into this breathless air: my fault, my fault, my fault. the quiet music repeats and repeats the refrain: grief inside a mask of shame. once I wore that mask, the stone heavy but not yet cracked— once I sang that song, tasted it, rolling sweet across my tongue—

over the baptismal font looms the baptist. his face is alien but stern, his hand outstretched: an offering or a benediction? I grip his iron hand, and he helps me into the water. slowly, I sink down. the water swills around me: shed prayers and empty tears.

guilt is a cold vice.

when I try to rise again, that’s when I feel him. iron hands anoint my head. he holds me under. I try to scream, but all I taste is water. he holds me under he holds me under

[wiremothers-deactivated20230129]

god calls me on the payphone, tells me there aren't enough magnolia trees in the garden. asks me a question. i spend my whole life answering it.

[fromthemouthofkings]

The Treachery of Language (ceci n'est pas une fille)

Femme boy. Creature. Fairy. Elf. 

Genderless void. Butch. Top. Gentle dom. 

Prince draped in a thousand stars. Cat. 

Theyfab. Trender. Toothless. Queer.

They are a shifting question mark,

even to himself, and the words

won't stay still long enough

for xem to get star’s footing. 

Me. That one. Her. Her?

She he is a fairy rising up out of the lake, 

and his her dress is like a thousand stars, 

and she he always wanted to wear 

something like this but they're not a girl 

they've fought so hard to distance themself from

the place where they buried that name

and put down that blade and they're a pretty boy, fujoshi, enby, trespasser, 

women and femmes, 

women and nonbinary,

women and fags

and they aren't and they are but they're NOT

I just want to be a boy in a dress, but I was given the body of a girl.

[kings-speaks]

LIST OF REASONS TO LIVE SAVED TO MY NOTES APP AT 3 A.M.

phone calls with friends

the sky when it rains 

pumpkins

thunderstorms

crisp autumn days

patches of sunlight

patches of fur

gardening

mint tea

cats when they purr

trees in the summer

waking up from a dream

strangers

the lakeside

coffee with cream

cracks in the sidewalk

birds when they sing

everything

everything

everything 

everything 

[blametheory]

[luthienne]

Wendell Berry

[wizard-alijah]

Hail Eve, full of Knowledge the LORD is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed be us all, children of thy womb. Holy Eve, mother of Wisdom, be with us as we continue to learn, and be with us upon our deaths. AMEN.

[kings-speaks]

monstr(ous)ance

You made me pour myself out like you wanted to drain my stomach and put up a new housing development in there. But what were you housing? You said it was Truth, that if I just threw up enough of myself in front of the altar, something holy would move into my body, would breathe inside of me like a second, hungry mouth.

Monstrance. Funny how that word sounds just like monstrous. The thing is, fasting did make me feel holy. It made me feel hungry. Hungry is good. Hungry is a lot like empty. A lot like suffering pleasure from pain, a blinding fire of self-righteous satisfaction. Joy from hunger, joy from pain, joy from the red blood running down my drain.

I asked you for the stigmata. You blessed me with pain. What good is a vessel if it’s not empty?

[kings-speaks]

monstr(ous)ance

You made me pour myself out like you wanted to drain my stomach and put up a new housing development in there. But what were you housing? You said it was Truth, that if I just threw up enough of myself in front of the altar, something holy would move into my body, would breathe inside of me like a second, hungry mouth.

Monstrance. Funny how that word sounds just like monstrous. The thing is, fasting did make me feel holy. It made me feel hungry. Hungry is good. Hungry is a lot like empty. A lot like suffering pleasure from pain, a blinding fire of self-righteous satisfaction. Joy from hunger, joy from pain, joy from the red blood running down my drain.

I asked you for the stigmata. You blessed me with pain. What good is a vessel if it's not empty?

[kings-speaks]

embodied

but what if your body hurts. where's the love, the new life, the self-acceptance supposed to be in that? I dare you to sit with my pain for an hour, a minute, a year. hold your breath and count. feel your heart racing to free itself, then tell me that my body is just how it's meant to be.

it sucks. there's no second way about it. and I pity that frightened bird of my heart, long to open my ribcage and free it to the air. give me my robot body, I'm ready, I'll just pity the poor thing left behind.

the revolution is too slow. she's all I've got. and she's trying, day after day to make me happy (something she was never built to do) just like me, I guess. so maybe everyone's right, and she's not all bad, and if we love each other, we can build a better world together.

for now, I'm stuck holding my breath.

[die-bi-the-sword]

just wait || bible blackout poetry for extember day 1 (The Garden of Eden)

original verse

[cacchieressa]

Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

[kings-speaks]

An Ex-Catholic’s Wager, or No Binary Can Hold Me, Including the Binary of Belief/Unbelief

Two years since the last time I stepped foot in a church, my friend asked me, “Do you still believe in God?” What an interesting question.

There is nuance to belief, I wanted to tell her, And belief Is not the same thing as worship.

Like Pascal, let me lay out my wager. Belief and unbelief, my lack of worship; Even when I gain I lose. God is, and is, and is, and is not

A church pew, a forest, A father, a stranger, an asshole, A street corner, a far-away star. I believe in four choices.

Choice One: If God is like the god of my childhood, Then he can eat my entire ass and balls. I was raised to love a god who hated me,

Raised to love the sting of fear, To breathe in the incense and the candle smoke And feel the hunger Lightheaded inside of me, and call that holy.

I was raised to love pain, To pour myself out onto the plate to be a sacrifice, And I would walk, knowingly and gladly, into hell Rather than worship that thing that almost killed me.

And I think I’d be right to. If the god of my childhood exists, He’s an abusive asshole, And I want him to lose my number.

Choice Two: If God is like the god of my adolescence, Then God is a complicated, numinous, And multivalent thing

Shining through the cracks In our universe like a star. God is the contradictory, diverse Infinite That we're all already looking for.

The capital-t Truth, A sun with a thousand different planets, A star with a hundred thousand points, And what I’m doing now

Isn’t any better or more imperfect a way to worship God Than anything else. If the God of my adolescence exists (in any comprehensible way), Then he knows why I had to leave.

Choice Three: Or maybe the Truth really is multivalent. Maybe God isn’t just one thing, And there are as many different spirits

In the wild, teaming universe As there are blades of grass, Not one path but a thousand thousand, curling Through the rich, wild

Insect-bitten and overgrown forest. Maybe each tree is holy, And the river that sings does not sing With another god’s voice, but with its own

And the gods are just as many and as different As anything else. If God is just one of many, Then I choose a different path.

Choice Four: And if God does not exist, Then all we have Is this one life, right now, that we’re living.

There is no perfect life, No perfect Truth besides the stuff in front of us. Doesn’t that make us The most important fucking thing in the whole universe?

Doesn’t that make every person And every empty parking lot and street corner Unbearably precious? And brief?

If there is no God, then I won’t Spend my one life on my knees, Small and waiting to be struck down. I’ll spend it as whole as I can be,

And happy.

[addoration]

something something minotaurs aren't inherently evil they are just treated as monsters... or whatever

(inserts that image of the sculpture of the minotaur reading peacefully)

(img id in alt description)

@dustasterisms / @septemberbells / @homemadefrog / @drewsaturday