faerie games

mx. peri m. hawley / queer+polyamorous / they+them+their / poetry + social change + magick + other such [IG: @perithefaerie]

[perithefaerie-blog]

2016.08.09

(for c.m.v.) We prefer our love With a little heartache Stracross'd Fated Destined Doomed Each kiss carries the weight of goodbye Even when we are saying hello [Especially when we are saying hello] Each touch tingles with the echo of the distance between my bed and yours When we lie together The bed sags and creaks under the burden of our attempts at love As we scramble and struggle to suture together these carcasses we carry around And when we join together I know I'm not complete I know you aren't some other half That I'm not actually empty without you Sheathed deep inside me But good luck telling that to my cells and nerves As I curl up and into you from my toes As I blossom open as full as I can To take all of you Every inch Every breath Every moment Just as I know you aren't a muse I know you aren't a damsel in distress I know you aren't a thing of imagination or myth But it takes every ounce of will and reason To even attempt However feebly To write a single word that acknowledges that knowing

[perithefaerie-blog]

Queer Poetics: How to Make Love to A Trans Person [by Gabe Moses]

Forget the images you’ve learned to attach To words like cock and clit, Chest and breasts. Break those words open Like a paramedic cracking ribs To pump blood through a failing heart. Push your hands inside. Get them messy. Scratch new definitions on the bones. Get rid of the old words altogether. Make up new words. Call it a click or a ditto. Call it the sound he makes When you brush your hand against it through his jeans, When you can hear his heart knocking on the back of his teeth And every cell in his body is breathing. Make the arch of her back a language Name the hollows of each of her vertebrae When they catch pools of sweat Like rainwater in a row of paper cups Align your teeth with this alphabet of her spine So every word is weighted with the salt of her. When you peel layers of clothing from his skin Do not act as though you are changing dressings on a trauma patient Even though it’s highly likely that you are. Do not ask if she’s “had the surgery.” Do not tell him that the needlepoint bruises on his thighs look like they hurt If you are being offered a body That has already been laid upon an altar of surgical steel A sacrifice to whatever gods govern bodies That come with some assembly required Whatever you do, Do not say that the carefully sculpted landscape Bordered by rocky ridges of scar tissue Looks almost natural. If she offers you breastbone Aching to carve soft fruit from its branches Though there may be more tissue in the lining of her bra Than the flesh that rises to meet it Let her ripen in your hands. Imagine if she’d lost those swells to cancer, Diabetes, A car accident instead of an accident of genetics Would you think of her as less a woman then? Then think of her as no less one now. If he offers you a thumb-sized sprout of muscle Reaching toward you when you kiss him Like it wants to go deep enough inside you To scratch his name on the bottom of your heart Hold it as if it can- In your hand, in your mouth Inside the nest of your pelvic bones. Though his skin may hardly do more than brush yours, You will feel him deeper than you think. Realize that bodies are only a fraction of who we are They’re just oddly-shaped vessels for hearts And honestly, they can barely contain us We strain at their seams with every breath we take We are all pulse and sweat, Tissue and nerve ending We are programmed to grope and fumble until we get it right. Bodies have been learning each other forever. It’s what bodies do. They are grab bags of parts And half the fun is figuring out All the different ways we can fit them together; All the different uses for hipbones and hands, Tongues and teeth; All the ways to car-crash our bodies beautiful. But we could never forget how to use our hearts Even if we tried. That’s the important part. Don’t worry about the bodies. They’ve got this.

[perithefaerie-blog]

This poem isn’t for them [2016.07.26]

This poem is for the femme as fuck faggots This poem is for the trans girls and the trans boys This poem is for the boidykes This poem is for the ladyfags This poem is for the “none of the aboves” This poem is for the “all of the aboves”

Let me tell you the truth that our ancestors died for Let me speak aloud here a truth that they can never kill Tho not for lack of trying For they have tried to kill you I know because they have tried to kill us all They erased us Our presence and our histories Until they forgot we ever existed And then they tried to convince us we didn’t exist They told us we were possessed and crazy and broken and alone They did everything in their power to exorcise us from their streets and from ourselves And they have succeeded more often than they have failed

So know this

Every step you take is an act of worship That sway of your hips is a sacred dance passed down for millennia Long banned in public for the spells it casts on those you pass Spells that topple tyrants And free the imprisoned Spells that make stoics dance and weep and hold each other gently

Every word you speak is a revolution Too high Too low Too quiet Too loud Broken Insistent With each breath in, your lungs fill with the prayers and hopes of those who came before And with each word you manage to speak into this mundane void, you are clearing the path ahead for those who come after

Every part of your body is a gift Scarred Shaven Hairy Painted Pierced Twisted Too much Not enough Sewn together And hidden away - When you offer it up, On beaches At bars And in beds, You are healing the world You are taking these broken pieces of what could’ve been, back into you and mending them into what cannot be

Let them look

Let them stare

Because beneath their disgust and distrust is disbelief and awe that anything quite as magnificent as you could ever survive on this battlefield

You Are So Desperately Needed Right Here Right Now Please Don’t Let Go Just Yet

[perithefaerie-blog]

[2016.07.13]

A poem

To be performed silently And without any gesturing So as not to interrupt the regularly scheduled activities of the day So as not to disturb the neighbors So as not to impede the flow of traffic or of business So as not to give yourself away or stand out in any fashion

The performer simply counts to 49 One at a time While performing whatever task they are already performing 49 steps 49 bites 49 keystrokes 49 breaths

And then Upon reaching 49 Screams and wails With inconsolable terror and fury and grief While running at a full panicked sprint Still silently and without gesturing, of course So as not to startle the children Or annoy the parents

To conclude this performance One simply counts back from 49 again And with each number forgets Forgets what it is they are counting Forgets where it is they are running from Forgets who it is they are crying for Forgets 49 times Forgets 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

There is to be no curtain call No applause No recognition of any kind This is all very ordinary This is simply what it is These are just numbers

Nothing to see here It's just walking It's just eating It's just typing It's just breathing It's just nothing

[perithefaerie-blog]

Oh Elie [2016.07.03]

I've wanted to cry for you Since I heard the news But every time The tears have been stopped By such anger

I've wanted to mourn you The loss of you But every time I've been stopped In mourning for what you could've done For the people of Palestine

I've wanted to tell you What you should've done

Instead I've silenced you I've held back I've shared no pictures No quotes No stories of how you opened my eyes to the suffering of the world I've erased you

I've exterminated you from my speaking And that is no small matter You taught me the importance of speaking You taught me that to not speak of those who have suffered Is to kill them yet again

And I've been so angry at you For the second deaths of so many Palestinians during your life That I was about to let you die a second time during mine

I'm sorry Elie I'm so sorry That we are so awful to one another That we are more willing to silence and erase Than we are to deal with our own complexity and contradiction

For after all Isn't it I who always says That we cannot think to tell a survivor how to respond to their violence Surely this applies to a survivor of such a horror as Auschwitz Surely to you Israel equaled safety Surely to you the settlements equaled self-defense Surely to you Iran equaled a memory of a terror I cannot comprehend And surely I don't have to agree with you To get that Surely we can take different sides And I can still mourn for you

And so I will mourn for you I will mourn for what you were For what you witnessed For what you created in its wake And I will mourn for what you could've been For what you turned your back on For what you created with your silence

I will stand for Palestine And I will speak of you I will let both of these be together I will declare that one does not negate the other I will not let one annihilate the other Simply because it cannot understand Because that Dear Elie Is what you taught me was possible

[neutrois]

The people who told me I was confused were right but not in the way they thought – how could I not be confused in a world that denied that I could even exist? How does one come out as something people don’t believe in?

Plymouth comes out as genderqueer (https://neutrois.me/2016/05/19/fv-genderqueer-at-google/)

[villblomster1050000]

Once I found a butterfly’s wing on the sidewalk. I wanted to keep it but I didn’t. I knew there were things I should never find beautiful. Like death. And girls.

Andrea Gibson (the madness vase)

[perithefaerie-blog]

to they who the patriarchy would christen side-chick

You are not the Serpent in the Garden tempting Eve to betrayal with your slithering and hissing You are, however, akin to the Apple – that apple which is always objectified, and tossed aside at the end of the narrative, having been whittled to its seedy core by the teeth of those ravenous and frustrated Virgins and then forgotten, left to rotten and to return as fertilizer to the Tree from whence it came Or perhaps To get swept away on a wind or a wing and dropped in some distant soil to rupture and take root as its own tree of Knowledge of Goodness of Evil of Things-As-Yet-Thought-Impossible But you shall not be tossed aside, my dear For when I bite into you, your sweet and bitter juice opens gates - gates that I had long since locked and grown over with ivy in apparently futile attempts to block them from my view, to forget them entirely, to never again risk stepping through them – gates that lead out of Eden and then East, to paths that follow the Harpy’s screech across the deserts of these lands You are not the Fall The fullness of your Mystery and Being came and went before those Ancient Scribes even began to tell their tale – You are of that Kind which was thence only spoken in whispers and only seen in dreams or out of the corner of the eye during walks at twilight - unable to be tamed by something as urbane as written words You are not a Siren I did not crash upon your thighs in a delirium to find that the beautiful song was truly a trap You are not a side-chick You are many things, Told and untold: A satyr A nymph A hyacinth blooming with wonder and yearning in the bloodstained playground of the careless and hasty Gods You are not the breaking of a Promise You are, more so, the cracking of a seed a necessary and welcomed intervention into the hardened complacency of this Could-Be-Tree You are so many things, my love; You are green nails And lavender hair And floral prints And bell hooks And Lemonade And mushrooms And flowers And mythology And Poetry - Poetry long silent and settled, now stirred up like dust in the backroom of a SoHo bar where a fortune-teller guards the doors to the Underworld; To name but a few of the incarnations you have so far taken in my story – in Our story

[poems-and-words]

[perithefaerie-blog]

On Departing

Surely there must be a word For this feeling, When one of us Is departing - A word to express The stale yellow light The stains on the carpet The shuffling of feet And wringing of hands The looking back (The not looking back) The half-formed movements And hard-swallowed words The palpable presence Of everything going And gone - The unknowing - The injustice - The cliché of it all

It would be one of those arcane words That only exists in the language of a people Who can appreciate the unseen layers of the painting Who know the moods of colors And the flavors of shapes Who look up just in time sometimes to find that they are standing at the point where all the right moments and gestures have convened to commission a private masterpiece

It would be a word That would express more than would appear possible for one word to express - It would convey an apology For all the missed chances The false expectations The misread movements And uncherished moments The failure of the heart to let in the fullness of the Moment

And in the very same breath It would include a celebration For the wisdom of hands For the boldness of lips For the endurance of hearts For the tenderness of scars For the forgiveness of forgetting For the -

There is no single word I have yet found To express how it feels To watch the muse pack his bags To choke back pleas and vows and bargains Knowing that to have him stay Would mean this poem Will never be composed

[2016.02.07]

[perithefaerie-blog]

[perithefaerie-blog]

Doing some work with #CarolineMyss' #Archetype card deck. Today I'm observing where the Magical Child shows up in my life. Where do you find yourself seeing the potential and the possible - or seeing its absence? How does this guide you in your life & relationships? Where could you use a little more childlike magic in your life right now? Where is hoping and dreaming maybe leaving you disillusioned, or holding you back to daydream when there are actions that you could be taking? (at Queens, New York)

[perithefaerie-blog]

Credit: @mopeebs // “We call it "Science!”“ (at Los Angeles, California) // My homage to #Carlos from #NightVale

[perithefaerie-blog]

Who knew she was #crafty?! She sure didn't. But she made her own tarot deck. You learn something new (about yourself) every day. #Craft #DIY #Magick #Tarot #AllSeeingEye #PeriWinkle

[perithefaerie-blog]

Possibly the best desktop background I’ve ever had.

[perithefaerie-blog]

Yes it does, Carlos - yes it does.

[perithefaerie-blog]

#1199seiu #activism #art #mural #painting #union #peace #disarm (at 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East)