contemplations

August 7, 2025

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contemplating civil unrest
and violence
and propaganda
and slippery slopes
and all the things that my mind is stuck on
daily
alongside the silly things
i have anxiety about
as well

if only my brain could give an indication of
what it actually is anxious about
because, if it’s the very real dangers
that are closer than people would like to admit
[though i will be fair here and give credence to the
systems in place to stop a war from happening, but
the state-sponsored violence is scary enough
already]
then maybe i have a mind that is
realistic
and preparing me
for potential trauma,
but
if it’s just freaked out about the menial
mundane
teeny tiny things
[and i’d actually do ok
in even more “unprecedented times”]
then maybe a medical intervention
to my anxiety is what is needed
at this time

but no, my distress
and obsession
bounce back and forth between
what are very real, but probably far away, fears
and overreacting to daily issues
most folks seem to deal with
mindlessly

i don’t want to lose my ability to be prepared for any eventuality

but, damn, this preparedness is killing me…

March 18, 2024

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the whole concept
of autographs
is so weird
to me

what is the value
of a sheet of paper
with scribbles all over?
i’m actually asking —
is it the fact that they touched it?
the proof of the meet
between you and a famous person?
what about a book on a shelf
that just happens to have the author’s signature
on the inside cover?
no meeting occurred,
no special message inscribed,
just a/the name
in a/the book
they wrote…

and does it still apply
if a famous author signs
a book they didn’t write?

honestly, that’s what i’d like —
a famous/famously trans author
signing all my [wizard child] books;
a woman signing those tomes contrived
by known misogynists
[of which there are so many];
any sort of “blasphemous” writer
signing
a bible —

i personally think that’s worth more than the dime-a-dozen
‘signed by author’
examples
in bookstores all over…

…but maybe that’s
just me

February 22, 2022

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continuing
on
a trajectory;
a reconstruction?
a fun date deduction:
[2/22/22]?
a pondering of poetry and pain?

the contemplations i create
co-habitate in my brain
until the day
they’re ready
to be
set free…

…and even then, they never truly leave home;
they come back and visit
for dinners,
for vacations,
for mid-week excursions,
for time away from their new habitudes
and i conclude
that i’m never truly concluded
with any sort of
meditation
which is good?
i guess?

August 12, 2021

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i’d like to turn the difficult times
into beautiful poetry,
paint prose with words,
tie them up in rhythm, rhyme, and scansion.

i’d like to take the lovely times
and create gorgeous works
from them too,
burst forth with novel metaphors,
capture the moments,
the meadows,
with similes and allegories and alliteration

but instead
i feel
stuck
i feel
restless
i feel like i’m best
at
turning the mundanity
into humorous
but still mundane
poetry

and i suppose i should be okay with that

but i just kind of want

more

July 31, 2021

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thirty days have september,
april,
june,
and november
all the rest have thirty-one
except february which completely fucks us up and every four years gets even a little bit more complicated because time is a mortal construction and probably not as linear as people make it out to be…

i see my friends
open themselves up to the universe
to give and receive and the universe complies
sending platonic connections from years and years past,
sheltering under iridescent wingspans
and holding safe a space for baby queers;
we are the ancestors we wish we’d had
(and we do have those ancestors,
they just may not be blood)

the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb
isn’t it great how the actual saying is saying the opposite of what everyone who says it thinks they are saying?
there are a lot of things like that in this world, aren’t there?
(and do we even need to live our lives by sayings made up by humans long since dead?)

i’m still finding my way
slowly opening myself up to the universe,
trying not to ask it too greedily,
as i’m still scared it’s not real,
i’m too much of an atheist/agnostic to trust in anything outside of myself
(but, one might point out, the universe could simply be a part of ourselves that is unknown,)
and we are far more connected to one another than we think we are,
so maybe those connections are the universe
and each other are the spiritual guides,
but all of these are very ‘what if’
very potential answers
but not definites,
and it is too early for this kind of contemplation to make 100% sense
(and i was definitely up too early to be too comprehensible to others)
so we can just write this
and post it
and throw it out into the universe
and know that our place in it is constantly changing
and at times you need the guidance
and at others you are the guide
and it constantly changes
and change is good
scary
but good.

June 4, 2021

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i think
i put things off
as a way to prove
that i am,
in fact,
a horrible person.

i am aware
that technically
this issue
stems directly
from depression:
‘executive dysfunction’

but that doesn’t stop me from observing myself
outside in
seeing the things i put off
the things i actually do
and making an educated guess.

and yes,
of course,
the depression absolutely affects the way(s) in which i view myself
and not only would i not have this executive dysfunction
if i didn’t have the depression
i also wouldn’t have such a low opinion of myself

but somehow i’ve decided that the two are linked
and that the effect is the cause, and the cause is the effect
because i can’t just see it as simple brain chemistry,
a result of this battle that’s been raging
in my brain
for years

that would be too easy
too simple
and it takes the blame off of my choices and actions
it puts those things out of my control
and if there’s one thing i have more of
than depression/anxiety
it’s control issues

so
instead
i’ve decided
that my executive dysfunction is not this ‘hard-to-quantify
direct mis-firing of neurons
in my brain’,
but instead it stems from my self-esteem
and my desire to be a good person
but ‘knowing’
deep down
that i am the actual worst
my worthlessness showing up
in my inactions

and that way i can blame my depression
as well as my whole sense of self.

May 14, 2021

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Contemplations of Memories of Musical Theatre College
(In Canada)
those memories i don’t quite carry…
i have the stories
(the ones that i memorized like monologues,
like i do all my important memories,
because i know otherwise
they’ll float away
into the ether
of my mind)
but i don’t have any memories
of egregious things said to me
or a teacher crossing a line in front of me
(though i heard some second hand,
and those do stick in my mind,
as general feelings about particular instructors
moreso than the words/facts themselves)

for someone who rarely understands what their feelings are at any given moment,
i pretty much only remember emotions from any point in my life.
(and unfortunately
the memories that stick out to me
are all pretty much ones that fall under the umbrella of
despair.)

i had fun
at Musical Theatre College
(in Canada)
and yes, there were some crazy things we did
(but i also knew of other colleges that did more [or slightly less] heinous things
said more troublesome things
made more problematic decisions)
but i’d already been in this industry,
and in classes associated with this industry
for over a decade at that point,
so i suppose i had already taken for granted that
this was how we were supposed to find our
‘voices’
as artists.

which is absolutely not to say that what was done is what should be allowed
or is the ‘right way’ to train young, impressionable artists,
i simply stuck my bony chin out
and accepted it as it was(is)
and perhaps that makes me complicit
and perhaps that makes me traumatized
but there HAS to be a better way.

…right?