I am Christian. I believe in the
Trinity of the Holy God, The Son, and The Spirit,
I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of mankind
I own more than three Bibles
I teach Sunday School every week and
I pray every night.
I am Christian,
And as such I
Hate queer....

Phobia. I can not stand intolerance
And I cry at hatred,
Blood running in the streets,
Fear running in veins,
Running away from the truth.
I am Christian, yet
There are bloodstains in my Bible
And the prayers on my lips
Are for forgiveness for who I am.
The entire story of ***** is
Crossed out, blacked out angrily
In the dead of night
In all 4 versions,
Leviticus is blurred,
Wrinkled with my tears,
Soaked with my pain.
I am Christian
And I am not homophobic.
I know my church won't recognize
Non cis-het marriages,
Leaving entire worlds of rainbows in the dark
The higher-ups insist
Weddings are white, shiny, husband-and-wife, happily-ever-after affairs
That shove me and my friends, my  family, my lovers,
Into closets of heavenly wrath and
Fire and brimstone sermons,
Locked into personal hells of shame
And confusion.
I am Christian
And I am not straight.
My God doesn't hate me for who I love,
He loves me because I try not to hate.
So to the homophobic Christians, I ask:
Who is your God?
Who is your God that supposedly condemns people He has created in his own image?
Your rainbow picket signs are nothing but a cruel mockery of a covenant
Not truly shared by you.
Your tongues are no better than the viper's who called Adam and Eve to sin,
You are the vipers of my world.
Do you think you avoid judgement
When trans teens are killed
By the bullets you spit with your words?
Who is your God,
That tells you to picket the funerals
Of those you hate?
Who is your God,
That refuses to let you open your heart to differentness?
I am Christian,
And I don't need your permission to
Love my God.
Take my scars and tear-stained Bibles,
Listen to my fervent prayers,
Watch my lips tremble when
I listen to my pastor.
I don't need your permission
To love who I want,
In fact I don't want it.
Take my midnight screaming and fear of coming out,
Listen to my frantic pleading for a hand to hold,
Watch my eyes linger on her chest.
I am Christian.
My God doesn't hate me for who I love,
He hates you who refuse to love
While you carry His name, if
Not his blessing.
So I ask again
Who is your God?
Because mine loves all of me,
All 5'6" of queer pride.
Who is your God?

Homophobia is not funny.

Care to hear what is?

The wrenching fear boring holes in your best friend’s once bright eyes
every Thursday afternoon, when she must enter a changing room filled with hostile glares

The violent purple bruise re-emerging beneath your brother’s left eye
the same bruise he told your mother about three weeks ago
that he’d “gotten in a rugby accident”

The gnawing feeling of loneliness in your classmate’s stomach as she lies in an otherwise empty bed
no longer able to hold her girlfriend’s hand in public
following a run-in with her mother at the supermarket

The boy next door who can’t bring himself to leave his bed
Immobilized with anxiety and wrapped up in the sheets
(it’s been six days, nine hours, and forty-two minutes since he told his best friend.)

The young woman who serves you your coffee on Saturdays
living on less than minimum wage for three years now
Since her mother left her to the streets

The kind boy you used to date, he’s been single for years
Caught and confused between miserable safety
and endless happiness

- - -


I lied before.
Not an ounce of wit lies within these words.
This is simply
an open letter to homophobes:

Find some ******* ******* originality for your jokes.

I walk with a limp now,
Two of them in fact,
When I used to glide,
The strut of youth,
Was on my side.

Pain's now the game,
Moving more slowly
My worn knees are done.
The warranty you see,
has fully, finely expired.

Today they took MRI pictures
Of my knees, sized 'em up
For manufacturing,
A perfect, artificial fit.

Metal and plastic components to
replace my played out natural bone.
They assure me it will not hurt,
(Allegedly)  

Surgery they declare will,
eliminate the pain and put
a spring back in my step.

I'll settle for the absence of  
Pain with every step I take.
But, I'm pretty **** sure,
I'll never ever run again.

Even for we humans,
Built in obsolescence,
Is an unavoidable truth.

Man, getting old is really the *****!

Lured by the siren voices of human aggrandizement,
The hedonistic, headlong pursuit of material satisfaction.
By the few who seek wealth and power
On a scale undreamed of
By the Caesars and Pharaohs
Or even by the lofty, pampered Imperialists
Of the heady nineteenth century.

Ignored, are the vast stinking, majority,
The teeming poor who sink deeper
Into the morass of hunger and wretchedness.
In circumstances of inescapable horror
Which breed hopelessness
And the smouldering hatred
Of lasting resentment and fear

A world of vast inequality.
Marshaled by the incorrigibly rich
In order to sate their selfish and aggressive
Lust for more.
An ideological evil
Which grips the lost and deprived
With the extinction of hope
And the rage to exact…a retribution.

Then there is the deterioration
Of international leadership,
The willingness or inability
Of world powers to control
Excess or anarchy within or without
Their borders…
Even whilst circling each other
With monstrous weaponry
And an engulfing, growing,
Antagonism of distrust.

America is in retreat to it’s fortress shores.
Europe is leaderless, timid and uncontactable.
Russia, near bankrupt, snarling aggression
And clawing back a buffer of unwilling former satellites.
Eurasia and the Middle East seething
With religious and racial warfare.
Africa in the throes of losing control
Of a world threatening Ebola pandemic.
China clawing it’s way forward
To global economic and military dominance.

A world without referees or rules
Where antagonistic giants force
The un-powerful to adopt
An  ultimatum of “either them or us”.
Where the threat of terrorism transcends borders every day,
Where genocidal practices and weapons of mass destruction,
Computer global anarchy and environmental depredation
Illustrate the growing volatility
Of a deteriorating world order.

There is a Paralysis of Will in mankind.
Anthropology, psychology and physiology
Recognise only one single human species.
But that species is impossibly fractionated….
By an entrenched pattern of conflict,
An inability to compromise,
A refusal to disperse wealth for the common good,
Global racial and religious disharmony and animosity
And a fundamental refusal to communicate
Proactively …at all.

The consequences of tolerating
And furthering this Paralysis of Will,
Shall lead mankind to an apocalypse.
The consequences of which,
Are just too terrible to contemplate.

Somehow we should, as one,
Engender… a common aspiration,
With a level of universal commitment,
To induce an attitude, a consciousness
Of great and abiding…
World Citizenship.

Realistic? …No!
Likely? …No!
Do you give it a snowballs chance in Hell? …Not this week!

Why?... The frailty of Human Nature!

M.
From just about as far away from everything as you can, thankfully, possibly get….
NEW ZEALAND.
20 September 2014

Mao Zedong’s revolution deposed the ancient, 5000 year old rule of Dynastic China.
In doing so he espoused the continuous violent struggle by contradictory forces within society to produce a perpetual disequilibrium of revolt against intellectualism and Confucian principle and practice.

With the global collapse of Communistic systems, the wily genius of the diminutive, Deng Xiaoping, breathed new life into the faltering rule
With a cunning rebranding of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”, he maintained the stability of Chinese Communist kleptocracy until relatively recent times.
But the middle class awakening of Tiananmen Square and the recent Hong Kong massed protest, has brought into focus the demands of an increasingly educated, increasingly affluent, Chinese society’s expectation and demand for increased democratic rights and freedom and a more just system of the Rule of Law.

The day of the old, strong arm, autocratic rule is over.

China is emerging, quite naturally, into a world of increased information freedom, where the seeking of each individual’s betterment and independence promises a brighter future of personal dignity, increased self-esteem and an emerging sense of high anticipation.

President Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party is now presented with the challenge to moderate in order to survive. To endeavour to embrace and meld the old concepts of Confucian harmony to the vaulting expectations of China’s new world beckoning.

M.
Denmark, Western Australia.
5 October 2014

Therapeutic it may seem,
Illuminist assumptions claw
To recollections which allude
To that which was and is no more.
Gone is history’s clear blue mode
Associations lost to shade
In jaded hopes of eons past
To aspirant’s cold censored fade.
Germans clawed to **** shrine,
Eskimo’s to barren ice,
Russians wept in baritone.
Aspirations censored thrice.
Reaching back to jewelled thought
Dim as dust, as it may be,
Gossamers of shades of silk
All valuable as gold to me.

Now weeping in frustration’s craw
Extending out for tendrils thin,
Misting clouds in shrouded skies
But tantalizing taunts begin…
Fulfilment in a feather touch
Of fingers stretching into dark…
A trickle of a thread resumes
As fragrant ghosts of recall hark!*

M.
Auckland
17 October 2014

Did you grow up thinking a streak of black ink across your eyelids
would make you feel better about yourself
Did you grow up thinking fake lashes
would make someone fall in love with you a little more
Did you grow up thinking eye-enlarging contact lenses
would make someone look at you any differently
Did you grow up thinking a bottle of liquified foundation
would make you hide away all the things you hate about yourself
Did you grow up thinking a tube of cheap gloss
would make your self esteem increase by leaps and bounds
Did you grow up thinking that learning how to apply mascara
would make you the pretty woman you deserve to feel like
Did you grow up thinking a size zero on that dress
would make you feel like you have it all?


Or did you grow up asking yourself
*When will I start accepting me, for me?