"transformative" poems
If (WO)men are the ones that suffer an exacerbated amount
Of the violence, the **** the abuse, and everything that comes
with and from struggle and alienation;
it is because of their femininity that men at times
have come to believe that their contributions soften institutions.
That at times throughout history neither capitalism, neoliberalism nor revolutionary experiments like that of Cuba have placed femininity as compatible
with progress or resolution.
In which case femininity must be hidden, silenced, or displaced with no purpose or place to belong.
Thus everyone closely associated with this femininity such as homosexuals, transgendered (WO)men, and "effeminate" males, (ignoring, subverting and negating the lesbian identity because of their gender) have come to be marginalized by a structural system of exclusion.
(WO)men carrying the highest burden for originating the associative distinction
Homosexuals battling to find love by constantly having to assert their masculinity
Transgendered (Wo)men afraid of expressing their through identity.
Lesbians fighting to legitimize their own identity separate from the directives ascribed onto them by virtue of being born women.
Males who are labeled effeminate because of their sympathy toward those who struggle and are alienated.
And every other individual who refuses to deliver to give a marker to their identity and a degree to their femininity.
Hold fast in your femininity and embrace the rancor that society grants you
As a homosexual I speak with you brother and sister, not for you
Realize that our self-ascribed degrees of femininity and identity are as revolutionary and transformative, and thus necessary, as those of Che Guevara, Mohammed Ali, Harriet Tubman, or the Dali Lama.
That because we have decided to embrace our degrees of femininity, problematic to any movement, at one point or another, we have inadvertently decided to align our selves with those who are alienated the most by the systems in which they live.
So that in this way we must make our struggles deliberate and political. Let our degrees of femininity become legitimizing banners of solidarity for anyone who suffers in any corner of the world.
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 12:48 AM UTC
Step into the sunshine my friend,
let it kiss your face and refine your spirit into a golden bar.
Step into the sunshine my friend,
come out of the shadows of your past,
emerge as a saintly being clothed in angelic white.
Step into the sunshine my friend;
let the great sun inflame your soul
with magnificent grace and transformative power.
Step into the sunshine my friend,
wipe the darkness from your eyes
see what miracles the new day brings.
Believe in all the light you see.
Step into the sunshine my friend,
let radiant beams of love ignite your passions;
your heart will bust forth like an exploding star
washing the galaxy with positive energy.
Step into the sunshine my friend,
receive the fantastic glories the day brings to you
and revel in them all.
Step into the sunshine my friend;
bathe yourself in the warm river of humanity.
Recognize yourself for the first time in its watery mirror.
Step into the sunshine my friend,
witness the delicate flower break through the hard crust of earth,
marvel as its fragrant bud blooms.
Step into the sunshine my friend,
experience the wonder in a child’s face,
let them lead you to the next 10,000 sunrises.
Step into the sunshine my friend,
feel the soft rays touch your wounds;
know how the daylight can heal.
Step into the sunshine my friend,
smell the ocean heave against the climbing sun
listen to the wisps of the meadowland's verdant fragrance.
Step into the sunshine my friend;
see the sparrow take flight toward the light,
watch its tireless wings glide on a blanket of rising thermal air.
Step into the sunshine my friend.
Music Selection: Ramsey Lewis
Sun Goddess
Oakland
122698
jbm
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 9:31 AM UTC
We all have our own destiny,
written in the celestial mystery,
Mayan cycles in the eternal so trippy,
transition of ego death can be accepted,
our souls last forever protected,
fear is only a shadow from light of awareness,
experience deathless consciousness,
nothing but a transformative change,
a quantum jump strange,
fictional in the cosmic game,
rearrange dance celebrate and play,
welcome the unknown foresty beyonds,
all webs of being are woven better,
we are all one from the beginning until forever,
ceremonial tribal & shamanic let's gather together.
Apr 7, 2016
Apr 7, 2016 at 5:35 PM UTC
We’re in a young-love recession.
Gen Zers are slow to trust and averse to risk,
we have, it seems, a particular social nervousness
about interpersonal exchanges and the symbiosis of love.
So we resort to situationships (undefined relationships),
a stratagem for closeness, with zero commitment.
You can flirt; you can kiss; you can dance.
You can have a crush so big it blots out the stars
You can have transformative romantic encounters
you can care deeply and get hurt badly
you can, in fact, be absolutely wrecked by love
All without ever being in a relationship.
Thank God we’re only young once.
.
.
Songs for this:
Die With A Smile by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars
Busy Woman by Sabrina Carpenter
Mar 18, 2025
Mar 18, 2025 at 9:55 PM UTC
Teasing the beast
Looking for a feast
Hounds barking at our ears
Vultures flying up ahead
Circling a bald eagle's fresh corpse
Compartmentalizing symptom after symptom
To hide the great systematic sickness
Labeling the suffering, outcome from desire
We, wholeheartedly accepting being
Appropriated, labeled, discarded
As construing our own oppression and sadness
Enduring the **** of our minds
Being castrated of our consciousness
Before we reap the products
Of its bold liberation and grandness
Its the belly of the beast
And its hungry
Insatiable, amoral entrails
Hoping to salvage a feast
From the casualties of d(e)moc(ratic) wars
Hoping we feed our monstrous fear
Thirsting for the greed
Dripping off of accumulating wealths
Impatiently waiting, we keep parceling out grudges
Disfiguring our minds, our souls, and our bodies
Its misanthropic nature lashes out without conscience
Knowing we'll never realize we are masses
Disappearing the individuals who realize their suffering
Ensuring there's no collective opposition or action
Trying to reassure we are weak
Knowing at some point or another
We all act mute, deaf, and blind when anyone experiences:
Oppression
Pain
Silencing
****
Hunger
Fear
Violence
Repression
Retaliation
Discrimination
Torture
Negation
Alienation
All forms of mental, psychological, physical, and spiritual mutilation
Fearing death more than fighting for necessary abolishment
Preferring to live out our veiled miseries
Endorsing their continuance
Instead of risking our lives for everyone's liberation
Always ensuring the feast of the beast
By its very efforts trying to decree our very human nature
Ingraining greed, fear, animosity, and weakness as if inherent of us
All parts of its most damaging weapon: the seed of discord
Its implantation, a socialized deep desire for self-preservation
Sheep bleating painfully toward our ears
Vultures flying up ahead
Circling a bald eagle's fresh corpse
Signifying the impending recapturing
Of our true transformative desires
May 4, 2013
May 4, 2013 at 11:30 PM UTC
Stomach pains directly connected to the interwoven circuits that are
Wondering, hoping.
Stopping at blind corners
Questioning the soul...
A potion of acid and cactus forms
Transformative contributions.
Catching up because you woke up to late.
Now it's to late; so late that your building a statue to remember the good you see in others.
The universe is penetrating everything at the same time it's being penetrated while we all wonder what is happening?
What does this all mean?
Why are we here?
Everything is ***** and a ****** everyone is ******* everyone and everything and everyone and everything is being ****** at the same time...
Nobody gets it while the soul is in the body.
By the time the true soul leaves the said body you fools will build a statue of this body that no longer has a soul.
Feb 12, 2016
Feb 12, 2016 at 12:40 PM UTC
Looking into your green eyes
makes me want to be warrior monk
in the service of beauty,
wandering the earth
on a sublime quest
to slay dragons, destroy demons
and bring them to lay
at your feet as offerings
before the holy altar
of your lovely gaze.
Only blink and I will do this;
Only wink and it is done.
~mce
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 8:51 AM UTC
Oh, glistening Prince:
We are all so happy you have come (though we may not realize it).
We thank you for your million presents (though we have not opened them).
We know you seek to help us (though we may not want it).
Happy fault and blessed Barrenness,
embed a single snowflake in our hearts.
That we might always hold a dear token of
the transformative power of anguish and death.
Because you alway testify that with new life:
"My cup runneth over".
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 12:21 PM UTC
By: Cedric McClester
Twenty- seven years
In a prison cell
Like Dante’s Infernal
A version of hell
All he wanted was freedom
For his native land
Where because of apartheid
Things had gotten out of hand
This is a song for Nelson
Who changed everything
A song for Nelson
Is the song that I sing
There on Robben Island
Where he would be still
If not for his courage
And his indomitable will
He led a movement
That endured and prevailed
Even from a prison cell
Locked away in jail
This is a song for Nelson
Who changed everything
A song for Nelson
Is the song that I sing
To say he was transformative
Understates the case
A man for the ages would be better
In its place
He changed a people’s destiny
Saw apartheid get erased
As the father of his country
His name has been encased
This is a song for Nelson
Who changed everything
A song for Nelson
Is the song that I sing
In 1964 an indictment was lodged
Against Nelson Mandela
Accused of sabotage
Which he never denied
Or tried to camouflage
The truth of the matter is
He was guilty by and large
And locked away until he was discharged
This is a song for Nelson
Who changed everything
A song for Nelson
Is the song that I sing
Twenty- seven years
In a prison cell
Like Dante’s Infernal
A version of hell
All he wanted was freedom
For his native land
Where because of apartheid
Things had gotten out of hand
This is a song for Nelson
Who changed everything
A song for Nelson
Is the song that I sing
(c) Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester, All rights reserved.
Apr 21, 2015
Apr 21, 2015 at 4:51 PM UTC
Jupiter and Venus,
radiantly dancing.
Proximate partners in a velvet ballroom,
somewhere over the eastern trees.
Light from a fiery source,
transformative and transforming
heart and mind of the Universe.
Convergence renders conversation
almost null and void.
Nothing but each other
will ever give them peace.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 4:46 PM UTC
I give up on you
Men of appearances
Men who will crumble as you question their true level of intimacy
Men who will feel forever shamed by their weight, class, **** size, ********
Men who will not think about stepping over you in order to look taller
Men who will never love, but unconsciously choose to live in a constant state of crisis just so they can feel alive
Papi, I give up on you
I give up on you as you tell me you want to be friends,
Then you call me in the middle of the night as you feel insecure because your grindr hookup never showed up, or showed up but left you feeling alone, empty, used, *****
So you come to me for healing, to build you up only so you can leave my bed feeling new and ready for your next fall
I will not pick you up again
You need to learn that love is mutual and something more than laying down to cuddle, love is a deep and transformative understanding, love is not Hollywood or healing **** sessions, it’s beyond that, and it feels free.
And every time you leave I feel entrapped and know that you will only come back
When you fall.
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 4:55 AM UTC
Ingenuously accepting an invitation to transformative crystallization of this divinely interwoven experimentation.
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
Change is necessary.
Change is require.
But is change sufficient?
Change is a diversifier.
Change is a niche filler.
But is change transformative?
Change is not good.
Change is not bad.
But then what changes do we keep?
Heuristic small change we like?
Perpetuating idiosyncratic Absurdities?
Selecting traits for "survival"
in a world of our own creation.
Do you understand the Michael Jackson trap?
Real Evolution is easy.
Diversity + Mobility = Survival
But cosmetics is much harder.
What will the monkey see in the mirror?
Will he like my face?
Will I have diversified my humanity,
change my BIOS for faces,
to an arbitrary Facebook,
Unrecognizable to a nostalgic monkey?
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 11:06 PM UTC
the transcognitive experience
a transformative deliriousness
makes your gibberish sound Shakespeareanesque.
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 11:01 AM UTC
For my young princes,
don't start your searches in a swamp:
toads kissed and coddled are still toads,
broken mirrors draped with silk are still broken,
the knife sticky with love is still a knife
sorry, so sorry, my sons
but a story you love is still a story
don't ask me for magic books,
maps to the underworld,
a talking horse
a broken girl is still a girl,
also still broken;
sorry about the locks
they won't magically open
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 4:06 PM UTC
it wasn't as though he shoulda seen it coming
(God knows he muddled through that one well enough)
and it wasn't as though he thought it in the bag
(the whole **** thing had always seemed ****** daunting)
but these now recurring tasks
and pop-up commitments
were wavering him
*a great big pain the ***
burdensome, machine like
lacking, of any particular meaning
now there was that element of perseverance
that he had read and lectured on (oh, how he had lectured on and on!)
but he was not fully accustomed
(having flown on a wing and a prayer)
to the shattered routines
and fallen plans
obligatory iterations
and post-mortem like sessions
(seemed easier to stack em up, and
shelve em in a somewhat manageable way)
but a rhythm evolved
in simple momentum, and truth
new plateaus, and revelations
transformative unfoldings
and cosmic events
(which appeared as gifts from above)
and they paved a path to growth
eyes opened, to the wonders of the world!
a grounding in an earthly connection
narratives reclaimed
adjustments made
faith, and fellowship
first steps, compromise
and gratitude
filling the center stage
(in kaleidoscope colour!)
in this glorious
and ever evolving
play of life
~
was it worth it old friend?
*you bet your *** it was!
Oct 30, 2019
Oct 30, 2019 at 10:52 AM UTC
We are waves of people
We don't accept defeat
Carrying generations of their blood
Etched on the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet
We defy the laws of gravity, our cosmic bodies in orbit always revolving
We possess a transformative skin
Continuously moving, constantly evolving
Current crashing, ripping through the earth
Roaring tides behind us, our vicious flood fights
The foundation of millennial’s - conscious, violently beautiful beings
Our loud waters, impossible to ignore, amorously painting our rights
The right, the will, the intense appetite
Flavored by salty words with a sweet impulse for action
Drowning all numbness, consuming the calm which once was
Thinking like philosophers, walking like warriors, as they record our reaction
Thin, musty white air trying to cover the shifting blue hues
The water never stops moving
the ripples inconceivably vast,
Our wave leaves masterpieces of celestial proportions
Our space is here now,
our tomorrow will not echo the past
Ours roots are planted and grown in our cities
Perfectly immortalized in a valiant state of existence
We are waves of people, waves of voices
A digital age of collective resistance
- p.m
Feb 9, 2017
Feb 9, 2017 at 12:41 AM UTC
I witness the carnivalesque dance of illusion
the self conscious telling of a familiar story
a darkening tone, the synthesing
of incompatible perspectives
that cause an incandescent agony
of self-inflicted wounds
caused by the somatizing of events by others
but leads to epiphanic illuminations
the transformative energies of disintigration
where all the beauty that is inherent in the ordinary
becomes clear
everthing lights up with the glow
of the quantum expansion of great silences
and I can retrieve from the unconcious
something I know but have forgotten
Dec 4, 2012
Dec 4, 2012 at 4:48 PM UTC
I give up on you
Men of appearances
Men who will crumble as you question their true level of intimacy
Men who will feel forever shamed by their weight, class, **** size, ********
Men who will not think about stepping over you in order to look taller
Men who will never love, but unconsciously choose to live in a constant state of crisis just so they can feel alive
Papi, I give up on you
I give up on you as you tell me you want to be friends,
Then you call me in the middle of the night as you feel insecure because your grindr hookup never showed up, or showed up but left you feeling alone, empty, used, *****
So you come to me for healing, to build you up only so you can leave my bed feeling new and ready for your next fall
I will not pick you up again
You need to learn that love is mutual and something more than laying down to cuddle, love is a deep and transformative understanding, love is not Hollywood or healing **** sessions, it’s beyond that, and it feels free.
And every time you leave I feel entrapped and know that you will only come back
When you fall.
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 9:25 PM UTC
Lisa was carefully pulling a strand of cotton candy off a paper-coned “barbe à papa” - winding it around her finger while absentmindedly gazing at a carousel. She seemed hypnotized by its white horses, trimmed in gold, with their brassy red and blond manes, as they hopped, like slow-motion rabbits, in circles beneath wreaths and garlands of colored lights.
My watch jiggled me awake, mid-dream. I was bemused. It took me a moment to orient myself. I groggily pushed the sheets off and performed a big stretch. It's Monday morning, I think. “Alexa, what’s today?” I ask, to be sure. “It’s Monday, April 25th,” she says.
A beautiful, if cloudy spring morning was going to bloom on the other side of my jacobian glass windows - any minute now. At least according to my weather app. “Alexa, good morning,” I say, to start my rattling, sputtering, steampunk sounding coffee maker.
College time is warped, measured more in deadlines than minutes. There’s no plan other than your class or test schedule and let me refresh you on the rules – there are no rules, I’m free to do whatever I want. I actually chuckle at that thought.
College is transformative but there’s a hoary sameness to it. Read, discuss, review and test - wash, rinse and repeat. This morning is reserved for test review. I have a final this morning - well, sort of.
Some classes have a quintet of tests instead of a big midterm and nerve-racking final. It smooths out the stress, but you still have an almost forensic exploration of ideas, and you want the answers queued-up, ready for easy access.
I quickly washed and donned my workout-wear. A glance at my watch told me I was right on time. I’d loaded my shoulder bag last night, with my book, highlighters, my phone, Air-Pods and a water bottle. I grab it as I head out. I’ll do my review on the treadmill.
Anna opens her door just as I do mine - perfect. We’re off to the gym.
Apr 25, 2022
Apr 25, 2022 at 7:13 AM UTC
Hot on the tail of that wily, elusive beast
named ‘inspiration’, I travelled north.
North, where colours mute
and transformative shadow
bends in darklight,
revealing the world as it really is,
as it once was.
Hundreds of years pass,
rolling back time, boiling clouds
rushing over peaks in reverse,
a tiny tornado ***** in on itself,
and hundreds become thousands.
Rain blackens the babies of volcanoes,
engorges forces with greater purpose
and cleanses every shred of vision
from my grasping, desperate mind.
Thousands become millions
And I am stripped of incentive to try.
There is no ruination, here.
No furious nor frantic need
to imagine past lives
in this manicured, managed place.
High-vis’d toilers scuttle on mountainsides
carefully placing and re-placing rocks,
funnelling feet and discovery
on a prescribed and sensible path.
Only the rain
wreathing a secretive misted ribbon,
creeping in glacial cut-throughs,
is possessed of fanciful virtue.
Nothing shatters but the slate
and the landscape does not turn inward
to eat itself
in gnawing, atavistic need.
It says more about me,
than it does of the Lake District
that I would wrench out and offer
my super-heated heart
to see the mountains fall.
Aug 24, 2015
Aug 24, 2015 at 8:53 AM UTC
There is no dressing this up,
or hiding behind
protective walls of feigned indifference;
our ending is sad.
It is not a transformative stop
where hatches are battened down
with the promise of spring burst,
our leaves will stay away,
for good;
the midst of us going
is final
as
bills
for flowers
on hearse.
Not that we thought our days would last
indefinitely,
we didn't think at all
of the days of not knowing what to do,
without me
and you.
Nov 13, 2015
Nov 13, 2015 at 3:52 PM UTC