After  many years in the basement,
behind a green tattersall shirt,
next to a plum colored robe,
is my gray tweed sports jacket;
sadly hanging like an old man’s *******,

inside the left breast pocket rests
the funeral  program of a man
I have learned not to hate,
or to become a semblance,
and god ******, I have not;
I still have time remaining.

Two Snowy Egrets land.

One is lame.

Surrounded by cattails.

The other ascends.

Sometimes I smell your hair
and pretend to lay my
chest against you

like on those nights after
building  a pine  fence
around the yard

of  a Baptist preacher’s
house in Georgia
forty miles

from cold beer and café pie,
and then I remember that
was 20 years ago

before you and me
drove different
highways.

December 17th 1998 the doctors say "congratulations, it's a girl"
I do not know what I am

5 years old I am at preschool
I ask "why don't they wear dresses?" pointing to the boys I get an answer that boys don't wear dresses
I don't want to wear dresses, can I be a boy?

Elementary school the boys play football and tag at recess, the girls talk about the cute boys, their hair and their outfits.
I want to play football with the boys but I sit alone on the swings watching the boys.
I wish I were a boy

Middle school the girls are wearing bras and the boys are getting deeper voices. My voice doesn't get deeper but my chest grows, I try to push it back but it doesn't work. My sister want to put makeup on me and have me dress in girly clothes.
But I feel like a boy stuck as a girl

Highschool I learn the word transgender. I cry because I'm not alone. I find out about binders and order one. It comes it the mail, I put it on and put on my most masculine clothes. I already have short hair but I put on a beanie. I look like a boy. I feel like a boy.
I am a boy

The name my mother gave me is not mine. Phoenix sounds right for me. A new beginning, a new life. I will make a boy out of this body.

I'm 15 and scared to tell my family. Over the years in my head I know I am a boy but my body tells me differently. I tell my family that I am a boy. I'm scared and they don't say anything about it. Maybe they think if they don't say anything it will go away. But I am a boy

I tell my teachers and they call me he instead of she. I feel like me. Other students call me a girl but can't they see I am a boy

I go to a store and get called sir, they see me as a boy, I look in the mirror and finally see me.

A boy

We're stuck within these bodies that we're dying to change
We are ashamed because we want to be different

Modified.

We cannot escape being called by "her" or "him"
It may not seem like much, but titles matter,
As do appearances.

"I want to be this", I say
"But you're not that." Society barks

That.

We crave to be that,
The opposite of "who we are"
We're stuck, truley
We feel as if we can't escape this, containment,
This restriction,
This prohibition.

That defines us.

We didn't choose to be WHO we are,
We didn't get a choice to become WHAT we are.

I am a "he".
I am a "her".

We are confined to be one gender, "ourselves"

How can we be ourselves if our looks are so decieving?
Are we not judged by our outskirts?

I want to be "that", On the outside
I already am, on the inside

Though, I'm jammed,
Wedged,
Lodged,
Embedded,
Fixed.

We linger in these false corpses
They burn at our courage and tear at our hearts
They puncture and pierce and leave scars and bruises in our souls
Because we cannot run from ourselves.

When society is against us
We remain still
Immovable
What can we do if our skin is a lie?

I am a "he" on the inside, a "she" on the outside
I am a "she" on the inside, a "he" on the outside

I can't escape alone.

I think I'm trapped

I hate the ‘Body
Politic’

Whose wave blasphemes
and grows

I battle to swim against
its tide

Or be abandoned in the
flow

I hate the way it stunts
my voice

‘Old Dominions’ chosen
side

I hate the fact—it’s hate
I feel

With the truth a captive
lie

(Villanova Pennsylvania: October, 2016,
  Inspired By Neal Hall)

....
Stream takes possession of the land
Made wetlands
There are plenty of fish
Meet your protein needs

Clouds are playing in the sky
The dark and the shadows are dissolved in water
You drink
To quench thirst

Yet you have an existence
With a Continuous form
He who cast the shadow on the ground
Where love and hope locked in a home
Binds within a loop with Only a God

Words which are uttered
Of course diluted within air
Has written in the book of divine
Many do not understand while they read

See a beautiful garden
They are more steadfast
And that Red Rose is for yours
I have seen a lot of values to be gloomy
Then they lost

I have seen so far
Wandering Star to Star
Again in the Fog, tried to recognize
She lost!

Ah! How come all!
Alas! How Everything lost in the time
From Empty
Or Nothing
As if an Existence of Non-Existence!  

When Silence come down
Dark touches the death role
Nothing Exist without the Spiritual Soul
From Lost to Found
Everything Answering Nothing!

But where is the balance
You will get back everything
One day!
......

When you see through stained glass eyes
With a mind that's full of shining light
The world just seems so vivid, bright, and oh so full of color.
But could you ever tell the girl,
With stained glass eyes that glint like pearls,
Of black and gray, the dull real world
When she has not succumbed to more?