Protect your pack;
Show no fear;
Respect the elder;
Teach the young;
Lead your companions;
Survive each day;
Hunt your enemies;
Howl to a new tomorrow;
Explore the unknown;
Adapt to the environment;
Demonstrate no weakness;
Nerver back down;
And leave you mark

I never asked for it
the touch,
the comment,
the harassment.

I never desired for it
the pester,
the stare,
the ******.

I never wished for it,
the assault,
the blood,
the death.

who were you
                                                                                         before you were hurt?

You smile, and my whole world falls apart
You laugh, and my knees began to tremble
You make my heart shake, you make my brain vague
It is you who ruins my system

I remember the first time someone explained to me what the word gay meant.
We were in middle school
Playing on the swing set behind Stoy Elementary
"He’s so gay," she said
Bitter disgust poured out of her mouth with every syllable
I could not think as to why being happy could be such a horrible thing
And so I asked
My exact words being
“Whats so wrong with being happy?”
Now both my friends looked at me weird
“Don’t you know what gay means?”
“Doesn’t it mean to be happy?”
“You’re such a little kid, gay does not mean happy. Gay is a boy who likes another boy”
I stood there wondering why it mattered so much that a boy liked another boy;
why it was such a distasteful thing.
And why it meant gay couldn’t still mean happy.

~for lovejunkie, who loved this poem best~

so many reasons,
so many stones
yet unturned,
for each poem
a season,
for every season,
a given reason

eyes, dimmer,
hearing, harder,
memories, ha,
disappear as fast as
footsteps upon
my island beach

this then
my log,
of places momentarily visited,
capturing the of,
of me,
the exactitude of
where, when and what
I felt

what felled me,
the long and lat,
of the attitudes
of breeze and currents,
the happenstance that carries
a desperate soul
eager and afraid
to remember

"how fragile we are"

so memorized records here,
for his storage and his places,
both filled and unfulfilled,

poems, nothing more,
flawed each,
product of a flawed man,
here, for all to see,
most of all,
for the man,
to see himself
when the eyes of his mind
at last be shuttered

in a workshop i wrote
about a boy who kissed me
after i told him not to.
in the piece i called
myself Clementine.
admitting that i was
kissed without permission
seemed so much easier
than not misgendering myself
in front of fifty people.