Words n Stuff

Q || main blog @ qjusttheletter || they/them

[thebittercripple]

rat king

crips the world over with fresh art on our bodies weep bloody tears wish this was just reclamation but reclamation is born from grief - this grief birthing so much reclamation the world doesn’t know what to do with us

we spit back at their snarls their tender shins bark on our bite their rotting teeth break on our fists this fight has always been political the political has always been personal

dead rats in the gutter - the king is dead, long live the king - who will take the ugly throne?

you started a movement of canes raised high - flags of protest and swords when flags fail - sent our bloody wheels to take to streets unused to our traffic

we are deaf to their curses we are blind to their stares the lame will not walk and the world will march over our corpses no more

the king is dead long live the king

[thebittercripple]

A Toast / A Wish

To us with balled fists on our wheels  and barbed tongues in our mouths

To us who ask for a seat on the bus  and sit in the middle of the damn aisle when none is given

To us who refuse to make the world comfortable  because when has it ever cared about our comfort

To us done waiting for a cure us never wanted a cure anyway us still promising our souls to the universe for that magic pill

To us too cripple to matter  and us not cripple enough to count

To us too young to need that parking space  and us too old to be upset about broken and failing bodies

To us haven’t tried everything  and us haven’t tried anything

To us the world ignores forgets  never even knew existed

To us who catch staring eyes  and stare steadily back

To us who bite the hand of the feeder  because we are not dogs  and we will not take the scraps they toss our way

To us who spit in the face of our Saviour  because we are not damned  and us who are damned and spit anyway  because we will go to hell before we let you touch us 

To us too bitter to be inspiration -  us bad attitude  bad example  bad influence - 

I wish  for the world to be kind to unruly heart; 

and if the world is not kind  then I wish for unruly heart to find freedom; 

and if unruly heart cannot find freedom then I wish  for flaming soul to remain unburied; 

and if flaming soul is to be buried  then I wish  for the fire with which it burns  to claim all  that pour the soil. 

[thebittercripple]

08-08-14

Naked in bed on a summer’s Tuesday morning, tears and sweat drying into one another make my skin sticky my room cloying  with the weight of ghosts I refuse to believe in  because what good is talking to you what good is asking for answers  when those answers  will never bring you back 

This is what it means to survive 

This is what it means  to be alive 

Children that don’t make it out of childhood  aren’t given a chance to find answers to their many questions -  you always had  so many questions 

where do crows go after the funeral 

what happens to skin when it falls off 

why are hearts so strong 

Parents are not made to ask their children  what comes next 

I want to ask you  what comes next  but instead  I just ask that you wait 

Wait for me  if you can -  if you’re still there -  still somewhere -  wait for me. 

[thebittercripple]

Gatherer

after “how to mourn your dead” by Robin M. Eames

gather the candles

We will speak with fire held under our tongues and clenched in our fists; with candles for mourning and torches so we do not need the candles.

We will always need the candles.

gather the cripples

We are the breathing history of a people relegated to church halls for healing, to hospitals for healing, to Heaven for healing.

We are not for healing. We do not want healing.

You will not touch us. You will not heal us.

We have always been here. We will always be here.

We are not for healing.

gather the names of the dead

There will always be too many. Say them all.

Before we eat, say each name.

Before we sleep, say each name.

Before we laugh, before we bathe, before we raise our faces to the sky— say each name.

Maybe there is still enough sky to hold them all.

gather our breath

It will catch in our throats. It will say, I am too tired today. It will say, no more.

Tell it just one more.

It is waiting for a rest.

Tell it we are sorry but there is no rest, only more work to be done— always more work.

gather our courage

It doesn’t need to be loud, or strong or confident.

It doesn’t need to be anything but ours.

We are not afraid of those who have come before us.

We are not afraid to be those who come before.

We are those who will make sure there will continue to be those who come after.

gather the forgotten

Do not forget them.

Hold them, a hum at the backs of our throats, a buzz in our ears, a beating in the soles of our feet.

They are the ground we stand-sit-walk-roll-limp-fall-bleed on.

There is no forgetting here.

gather our joy and our grace and our heaven and our forgiveness and our harmony

They are difficult to find.

We need them now more than ever.

They are not for those who would have us forget, would have us forgotten, would have us dead.

They are for those who do not know how dearly they will miss us.

They are for those who do not know they are us.

this is how we mourn our dead

[thebittercripple]

I want to say fuck off to palatability, to being an easily swallowed-digested-shat crip, fit for your consumption - I want to stop being consumed by you and your abled gaze - I want to stop needing your abled consumption. 

You give me these fucking respectability politics like I want them, "if your kind all looked like you, it wouldn't be so bad to see you in public" - 

My kind. Crips with middle fingers raised high to your pity sigh. Crips sneering through your nosy little side stares. Crips failing your tests over and over and over - we'll never pass, we need to pass, fuck passing, we'll never pass. My fucking kind. Crips sucking dicks in hotel rooms. Crips working corners downtown where you won't walk at night. Crips selling services you give for free - but... not to us. Not to my kind. 

Your kind... you want to fuck us but you don't want to want it but you really want it. Bodies like this aren't for fucking, why do you want to fuck bodies like this so bad? Why do you want to fuck bodies like this so bad? Fuck bodies like this. Fuck bodies. 

My kind. Crips who give too many fucks but want to give none, want to give nothing to you, want to say fuck you and fuck it - crips who fuck to survive and will tell you ten times an hour cuz word of mouth brings the customers. Crips without a safety net beyond the netting of our stockings and damn is it unstable at best and an expectation-invitation-explanation of violence at worst. 

Fuck your kind, pining to fuck my kind over til we fit in your mouth, tucked in your cheek for the times you want to pat yourself on the back, or want us to pat your backside - when no one's around, of course. 

Maybe if there was less of your kind out in public sounding like you - tongue in cheek, "didn't mean it like that" - there were laws before, around my kind going outside - ugly laws, unpalatable crip bodies unfit for your consumption so your kind buried them, but now us undead descendants don't want your consumption anyway, we're done with it, with you. 

[thebittercripple]

Criptease

[thebittercripple]

boop-the-little-elf:

My sister taught me how to turn tricks on my back, on my knees, on the night after payday when fancy men have heavy pockets and don’t mind paying a little extra for a girl on the corner.

Street work is a science - you can tell a man is looking by the way he walks, slides footsteps, not going anywhere except wherever he wants, and he can go where ever he wants - corners stroke egos and thighs with just the right urgency to tell him we’ll take it or leave it, but he’s special to us - special men come by the dozen, like cheap donuts or Costco underwear worn to bed with partners, never clients.

Tell me what the crips do. When I can’t afford $700 in medications not deemed “necessary for life” but which keep my insides… inside -  tell me, what do the crips do?

My sister taught me how to turn tricks on my back, on my knees, on the night after payday when fancy men have heavy pockets and don’t mind paying a little extra for a crip on the corner -

Fancy men know, us crips turn the best tricks, can flip inside out, upside down, teach you more about your body than you’d ever find alone. 

We spill our insides daily on these corners we’ve claimed as our own - flag-post canes bare - every crip killed sends our flags to halfmast - our flags have flown 6 feet under since before ugly laws and Aktion T4. 

What’s a little rough bondage when our hands are still tied too tight to bring fist to face of those who want us dead? When those who want us dead are not always called Nazi?  Are sometimes fist raised to face of Nazi -

Sometimes I want to cut open the insides of fists raised to face of Nazi to find out which is safe near these insides.

Us crips take the tough customers, the ones who pay a little higher  to play a little harder, a little rougher, a little longer. When we’re found insides no longer inside, if they speak of us, they ask why we would take “someone like that,” as if they have never debated the merits of our culling, like strays barely worth the cost of the poison;  as if our survival has never been of questionable value; as if “someone like that” didn’t just do them a favour.

[thebittercripple]

Concerns for the greater good bury street corner burial grounds as canaries sing the blues in this coal mine city filled to bursting with the dead and dying looking for a good time, not a long time - 

What do you know?  Of scuffles thrown curbside in the curbside shuffle, the tar and feathering cast without malice - anything’s better than the drink we’ll doubtless buy with your naivety - these days we don’t even bother asking for a dime, never mind the crime you recommit to every time you walk by with eyes cast aside to the lies - 

What do you know?  Of angry words never bared in our stupor of cold trying to warm itself with icy fingers - we don’t need your spit in our dinner, we’ll just move ourselves along as you walk the high road, say goodbye road, never let them see you cry road - get a load of this crow in the crowd, he thinks he’s all that, thinks he’s up to bat in this game of cat and mouse, doesn’t see it’s all a rat race and he’s so far behind he thinks he’s winning - 

What do you know?  Shrink yourself down to our shadow-cast semblance of humanity, talk down to us, ‘cause we’re the barely literate, the barely here-for-it, too wrapped up in the present to bother presenting ourselves the way you see fit. We’re the head cases giving you head in the alleyway, the beat-downs you beat down to size, the brush-up pat downs passing you by - you better pat your pockets twice while we pat your zipper - 

What do you know?  We play childhood games of hide-and-seek in concrete forests, so easy to hide in wide mouths and empty minds, so easy to disappear amidst pounding feet pounding thoughts into beats drumming their way into our heartbeat as it echoes - this city less pulse more repulsion, twin magnets back to back as we face off in three-four time just in time to disappear again - 

What do you know?  Of existing risking unfriendly hands frisking for any scrap we scavenged, any shred of backbone built from slats pried off boarded up windows unstapled from our nervous system - more nerves than we know how to manage so we man-handle them into early graves wrapped in blue tarps and who would come but the coal mine canaries singing the blues at our street corner burial burying the greater good in this fight to become greater than the goods we gather - 

but what do I know. 

[thebittercripple]

Some nights I dream of my sister. I dream of her walking beside me, holding my hand, my arm, telling me to hurry up a little, we have to get out of the cold and dark and wet. Picking me up when I fall.

I usually wake up then.

Her arms under my knees, my neck. Chest warm against my side. Heartbeat steady, right here.

Right here.

I usually wake up then.

As if my body knows better than my mind, knows her absence like the static of feet gone numb, throat gone tight, eyes gone dry. The static of nerves seeking what isn’t there.

Dear sister, I want to tell you I lay down in flooded field today; I let ocean wash over me today; I drowned in it today.

I want to tell you I drowned in it today.

And what point is there in finding another breath when all I have is unread letters and salted wounds?

Like soil washed into estuaries after forests fall, what good is in finding home again? Without trees for anchor, why not become ocean floor?

Why not become the cold, and dark, and wet?

[thebittercripple]

Criptease

My sister taught me how to turn tricks on my back, on my knees, on the night after payday when fancy men have heavy pockets and don't mind paying a little extra for a girl on the corner.

Street work is a science - you can tell a man is looking by the way he walks, slides footsteps, not going anywhere except wherever he wants, and he can go where ever he wants - corners stroke egos and thighs with just the right urgency to tell him we'll take it or leave it, but he's special to us - special men come by the dozen, like cheap donuts or Costco underwear worn to bed with partners, never clients.

Tell me what the crips do. When I can't afford $700 in medications not deemed "necessary for life" but which keep my insides... inside -  tell me, what do the crips do?

My sister taught me how to turn tricks on my back, on my knees, on the night after payday when fancy men have heavy pockets and don't mind paying a little extra for a crip on the corner -

Fancy men know, us crips turn the best tricks, can flip inside out, upside down, teach you more about your body than you'd ever find alone. 

We spill our insides daily on these corners we've claimed as our own - flag-post canes bare - every crip killed sends our flags to halfmast - our flags have flown 6 feet under since before ugly laws and Aktion T4. 

What's a little rough bondage when our hands are still tied too tight to bring fist to face of those who want us dead? When those who want us dead are not always called Nazi?  Are sometimes fist raised to face of Nazi -

Sometimes I want to cut open the insides of fists raised to face of Nazi to find out which is safe near these insides.

Us crips take the tough customers, the ones who pay a little higher  to play a little harder, a little rougher, a little longer. When we're found insides no longer inside, if they speak of us, they ask why we would take "someone like that," as if they have never debated the merits of our culling, like strays barely worth the cost of the poison;  as if our survival has never been of questionable value; as if "someone like that" didn't just do them a favour.

[thebittercripple]

After seizures, the nurses run me through a gamut of tests, like “I’m going to push down against your hands as hard as I can, I want you to hold them where they are, that’s alright—” can’t do that one this time, try the feet, “Nope, nope, okay, that’s alright.” That’s alright, they say, always, as if repeating it will speak it into being, that’s alright. Reach to shine flashlight before remembering I’m blind, embarrassed laugh, head shake, memory test. It’s pretty shot this time, that’s alright, it’ll come back, this time.

After seizures, everything comes a little later, a little slower, a little can’t-quite-grasp-it just-out-of-reach-er, like the top of my head —see it there, floating away— or the soles of my feet running away from me, holding onto the world. It’s all a little softer, like donations in the hospital thrift store, like overnight bags filled with home on the go, like hands on my own while my brain is on fire, like living.

Living can be soft, I think. I think it can be soft sometimes. When it’s cradled in a palm, or held close on a hip it can be soft, sometimes, I think. 

---

I think I’m scared of letting it be soft quite like this. Like this... tired, waiting soft, this socks-on-tile soft, this... this hospital gown soft. 

I think I’m scared of this hospital gown soft between fingers I know between my own, the way this hospital gown soft strips me of my open-heart messy, grinds me bare into nothing, covers me naked with skin flipped inside out. 

I think living can be soft, sometimes.

---

After seizures, everything comes a little softer, a little wider, a little stretch-my-arms-far can’t-quite-grasp-er, like my open-heart messy buried too far inside when everything’s falling, or this dust I call nothing when I forget to breathe deep.

After seizures, I forget to breathe deep. I forget I have lungs, undeveloped in a chest I only feel in my bones. I forget I have bones.

It’ll come back this time.

[thebittercripple]

I’ve found a Love on an old porch couch, tucked cold against warm against cold while feet fall asleep, passing stories like fire - you’re not alone, we shiver; there’s something shared here; the world has been cruel and it will not stop but there’s a place to sit here, for a minute, we find. 

things don’t need explaining here. words or no words, hands or no hands, self or no self - everything and nothing is understood. held. known. 

I’ve found a Love on an old porch couch, tucked cold against warm against cold while feet fall asleep, giving breath to things I too often tuck deep in the folds of my jacket, my skin, my belly. things I can’t often find voice for. I’m scared of falling. I’m scared of being seen as I fall. I’m scared of being seen. 

Love here understands. holds these things I tuck away. knows these things I too often can’t find voice for. Love here doesn’t need voice to understand. hold. know. 

I’ve found a Love on an old porch couch, tucked cold against warm against cold while feet fall asleep, no space constructed to hide, only space constructed to open these bloody messes, these pulsing veins and rotting stomachs and misfiring remainders of what was built before us. you do not scare me. I am scared for you. you do not scare me. 

bodies are not built to last. these bodies are not lasting. we know this. hold space for the viscera of this reality. understand this to be an unraveling grace. 

[thebittercripple]

Holy

I find humanity in vulnerable moments gifted to me by bravehearts growing into their weakness, pulling skin and muscle and vessels aside to show bones that break and break and break and still attempt to knit themselves into one; bravehearts messy, unclothed, prone in midst of final breakdown, body untethered and so unbalanced, undone, but still - still here.

I'm learning how to pray. I'm not always sure to whom - maybe you, or me, or us. 

Maybe to us. Us here. Us now.

We are holy.

We are offering laid at the feet of those who will come after. We are those who have come after.

We are knees on sacred ground, seeking closeness with all who have walked these paths, finding connection in soil that holds more memories than our tongues, holding conversation in these quiet moments. We are sacred ground.

I'm learning what it means to call myself holy. This heartbeat, so often begrudged and unappreciated - most days I'm still loathe to call it mine, still resent its ongoing persistence. 

But there are days I whisper-hum I love you. I feel you. I know you. There are days my whisper-hums feel true.

Dear heart, you belong to the hearts you hold dear. You are here, now, and this is what it means to know that weight.

I'm learning how to pray. I don't care to whom. It is to everyone. It is to no one.

It is just to say thank you - with every breath and motion and action.

Thank you for this chance to seek what it means to be holy; to witness the holiness around me as it grows and breaks and bleeds and heals and does not bother with the mess; to embody all the holiness I find in my many hearts, and revel in the mess we make together on this holy, holy journey.

[qjusttheletter]

So I’ve told a few folks that hey! I have a piece in an upcoming issue of a friend’s litmag - @oratorealis - and there’ve been questions around how to get a copy! If you’re in Vancouver you probably already know about the upcoming launch with oratorealis and Geist magazine on the 25th - you’ll be able to buy copies there and a number of other Verses events for $10CAD. 

But! If you’re not in Vancouver! You can email Shayne at [email protected] and he and the folks there will figure out rates with you! PayPal or e-transfer would be the fastest way for payment - if you mail a cheque, you won’t get the book until the folks physically receive the cheque. 

[thebittercripple]

Nursery Tree

He asks me why I am afraid and I wonder how to explain muddied palms and bloodied knees I've so often tracked inside.

I wonder how to speak unspoken seeds, how to pull them up from my stomach, how to untangle them from roots I've grown since I've been kneeling in this garden.

I wonder if he is actually listening, or simply waiting like the crows to speak. 

He asks me why I am afraid and I don't say it is because they do not understand.

I don't show him river stunted and tell him he is dam and damned.

I don't lead him to tree, don't put axe in his hand, don't guide his felling blows. I don't ask if he heard the forest's plea.

I don't show him sagging roof and call him rising storm, don't lay village at his feet and rain landslide from his shoulders, don't fold his hand into fist and ask him where it will find its home.

I don't tell him it is because they do not understand.

He asks me why I am afraid and I can't speak past the boughs in my throat.

Where does one start? With branches peeled of bark, leaves fallen skeletal on paths, roots pulled from soil - still hosting new life in their decay?

I can't ask him why life always falls to the fallen, why this death always ends in rebirth, why his narrative always demands yet more sacrifice.

I want to trace other stories into his skin, want to believe they would mean anything to him. 

Would they mean anything to him?

Or would he know them only as far off and distant, tree crown unreachable and so, unknowable?

Why does he have to touch it to know its awe and the pain of its ending? Why does he not feel the burn as his own? Has no one built pyres from his brethren?

I want to trust his questions, want to show him husks of trunks once majestic now rotted, gutted, want to know he will feel it deep in his belly, deep in his bones.

I don't know that he can.

I don't know that his hands felt the soil before it was soaked with blood, don't know that he ever pulled himself to sit in foliage once thick and dark, now more light than leaf.

I don't know that he ever found refuge in the embrace of rough arms brushed with moss.

I don't know that he can understand the grief that comes with rebuilding and knowing there is no end in sight.

[thebittercripple]

Lila

She gifts me her books and I am at once thrilled... and devastated. I know the tremble in her hands is more than tremors that plague all who sit in rooms like this - rooms of sterile reminder, mirror held to temporal qualities.  

But we - sterile family, temporal kin - hear her wordless request echoed in each of ours, and none dig deeper than exclamation of surprise and pleasure as she presses vestiges of life's proof into each of our hands. 

 Two days later, I am unsurprised by news of her dying. 

 She did not "lose a fight" - she was not fighting, and she only ever lost because she always let us win, she'd have you know. She was just living, like each of us - just living in all the ways she knew. 

Unimpressed by euphemisms meant to soften blow of words calling infinite infinites into question - not "passing" except perhaps gas, not "moving on" except to a place where you couldn't pester her anymore - she was not soft. 

Even in her vulnerability, she opened like cave mouth, wide and splintered and sharp as sharks' teeth she dropped along the way. 

She was lightning bolt stuck fast in heel, ripe earthseed found home in throat, iron shard lodged beneath fingernail.

She was bloody frustrating, bloody stubborn, bloody knuckles as she salvaged what she could escaping coffin she knew to be inevitable.

She was never more than what she said, never said more than what she loved, never loved more than all the broken pieces she picked up along the way - with a penchant for sea glass, for driftwood, for shattered shells, she knew her way around edges not unlike her own, never thought to round them out, merely sucked her fingers when she forgot to move carefully, cursed only herself for forgetting she was not alone in these suits of armor doubled as sword. 

Lila.

Graceless as her name is graceful, said her parents named her wrong. When I asked why she never fixed it, never named herself right, she spoke past sea suddenly rising in splintered cave lungs, said she wanted to be as gentle as someone once thought possible of her.

[thebittercripple]

Legacy

How many people need know my name for it to constitute a legacy? What deeds must I accomplish to be called accomplished? Whose memories will survive the tests of time until there is no time left to survive? When will I be thought of most?

I think I understand this dying thing. You say some meaningful words and then quietly exit, don't forget your coat as you go - it might be cold out there.

I think I understand this dying thing. You say some meaningful words and then quietly exit, don't forget to wrap your scarf double - it might be cold out there.

I think I understand this dying thing. You say some meaningful words and then quietly exit, don't forget to shut the door on your way - it might be cold out there.

Rooftops offer sanctuary foreign to hospital halls - free of tangible ending - from way up here, how can anyone say anything ever stops being?

You see the whole, forget all the hands it took to build it - think of all the hands it took to build it.

Hands rough, calloused, covered in oil, full of stories too often left untold - there is no way to hear them now.

Hands barely big enough to grasp a finger, pink with promise of new beginnings, new questions - there is no way to hear them now.

Hands that raised this body, grew it from seed although it was not theirs, taught it to love as though there was nothing else to do, nothing else to be - only love. Always love.

I think I understand this dying thing. You say some meaningful words and then quietly exit, don't forget to leave your heart behind - it might be cold when you're not there. 

How many people need know my name for it to constitute a legacy? Give me one less. What deeds must I accomplish to be called accomplished? If it is anything more than to love with every fiber, I am content to fail. Whose memories will survive the tests of time until there is no time left to survive? I wish to name them hero. When will I be thought of most? Let it be now.

[thebittercripple]

Dear sister, I want to tell you I lay down in flooded plain today. I want to tell you I let ocean wash over me today. I want to tell you I drowned in it today.

Dear sister, I want to tell you I somehow came up for air again - 

Dear sister, I want to tell you I somehow came up for air again -

Dear sister, I want to tell you I somehow came up for air again today. 

---

I find her in tattoos and bad jokes; in blind spots and bookworms; in saxophones bleeding on sidewalk corners, untrained - still pulling me to sit until I can't feel fingers aching to play along; in living and dying and feeling every moment as fully as curbside flowers tied messily to guardrails.

I find her in bravehearts and brokenhearts and dearhearts; in messy hearted lovers tracking bloody footprints over carpeted vulnerability; in sweethearts laughing at the hardest times from safety of a shared bed; in my own heart beating in the pit of my stomach, spilling from my throat, refusing to live beneath the floorboards of this body unlearning shame.

I find her in bus rides to nowhere - in finally finding nowhere - in finding out it is somewhere - nowhere is somewhere and sometimes it is everywhere.

I find her in circular words that take me to this everywhere somewhere nowhere.

I find her in questions of legacy. In answers of love. In late night talks of creation. In late night creation.

I find her in loving; in knowing loving is surviving; in surviving and loving and surviving and loving and surviving.

---

Dear sister, I want to tell you I am surviving today. I want to tell you surviving has to be enough today.