How to Make Love to a Trans Person.

Forget the images you’ve learned to attach
To words like cock and clit,
Chest and breasts.
Break those words open
Like a paramedic cracking ribs
To pump blood through a failing heart.
Push your hands inside.
Get them messy.
Scratch new definitions on the bones.

Get rid of the old words altogether.
Make up new words.
Call it a click or a ditto.
Call it the sound he makes
When you brush your hand against it through his jeans,
When you can hear his heart knocking on the back of his teeth
And every cell in his body is breathing.
Make the arch of her back a language
Name the hollows of each of her vertebrae
When they catch pools of sweat
Like rainwater in a row of paper cups
Align your teeth with this alphabet of her spine
So every word is weighted with the salt of her.

When you peel layers of clothing from his skin
Do not act as though you are changing dressings on a trauma patient
Even though it’s highly likely that you are.
Do not ask if she’s “had the surgery.”
Do not tell him that the needlepoint bruises on his thighs look like they hurt
If you are being offered a body
That has already been laid upon an altar of surgical steel
A sacrifice to whatever gods govern bodies
That come with some assembly required
Whatever you do,
Do not say that the carefully sculpted landscape
Bordered by rocky ridges of scar tissue
Looks almost natural.

If she offers you breastbone
Aching to carve soft fruit from its branches
Though there may be more tissue in the lining of her bra
Than the flesh that rises to meet it, Let her ripen in your hands.
Imagine if she’d lost those swells to cancer,
Diabetes,
A car accident instead of an accident of genetics
Would you think of her as less a woman then?
Then think of her as no less one now.

If he offers you a thumb-sized sprout of muscle
Reaching toward you when you kiss him
Like it wants to go deep enough inside you
To scratch his name on the bottom of your heart
Hold it as if it can-
In your hand, in your mouth
Inside the nest of your pelvic bones.
Though his skin may hardly do more than brush yours,
You will feel him deeper than you think.

Realize that bodies are only a fraction of who we are
They’re just oddly-shaped vessels for hearts
And honestly, they can barely contain us
We strain at their seams with every breath we take
We are all pulse and sweat,
Tissue and nerve ending
We are programmed to grope and fumble until we get it right.
Bodies have been learning each other forever.
It’s what bodies do.
They are grab bags of parts
And half the fun is figuring out
All the different ways we can fit them together;
All the different uses for hipbones and hands,
Tongues and teeth;
All the ways to car-crash our bodies beautiful.
But we could never forget how to use our hearts
Even if we tried.
That’s the important part.
Don’t worry about the bodies.
They’ve got this.

-Gabe Moses

VIA coilhouse

Wilderness.

THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess … I pick things out of the wind and air … I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers … I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me … a snout and a belly … a machinery for eating and grunting … a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me … I know I came from saltblue water-gates … I scurried with shoals of herring … I blew waterspouts with porpoises … before land was … before the water went down … before Noah … before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the baboon

because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in

the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

BY CARL SANDBURG

Shaun Haikus: Vol5

On Office Banter.

Tales about your kids

Are as interesting as

Stepping in dog shit.

dipsethaiku.com (This is why I Love the internet).

BLOWIN' BALLOONS

Yung archduke of deuce

Cam dookie dat divine fruit

Cop coke out da poot

THE CORNER

A-rab bodega

Private Stock and a loosey

Break this hun'nid yo

FLORAL ARRANGEMENT
Flowers wit dew drips
Bring out the vase miss cuteness
Bouquet them tulips

THE MERLIN
The Cam jimma-jam
Abba-Cadabba wham-bam
Shazzam! Thank you ma'am.

And I thought my haikus where good.

See more genius here.

Shaun Haikus: Vol4

On Office Luxuries.

The only difference

'tween cubicles and jail cells

Is email access.

(inspired by Jeff)

Shaun Haikus: Vol3

On Doing Taxes

Doing taxes blows

Big chunks of clam chowder soup,

Brought up by vodka.

Shaun Haikus: Vol2

On Ignorant Comments

You may have slipped up.

when you called me Westely Snipes.

Be Glad we're at Work.

My Haikus: Vol1

On Status Meetings.

The sky is Falling.

And some people might be Sad.

But it Would End This.

Remarkable.

It's an unremarkable thing,

this life I live.

I know people think their lives are special.

But who am I to kid.

I witness morning after morning, of nothing new.

Day after day, and nothing grew.

I meet person after person.

And they are all the same.

Sizing me up, figuring out my weakness

And then playing the game.

"Hello...my name is...what is it you do?

Let's have lunch...do me a favor....I'll be your friend too."

It's an unremarkable thing,

this blog I write.

Arbitrary and compact

As meaningless, but less impactful,

than my last literary plight.

My skill set is measured hourly.

And my mind is literally, for sale.

My limbs worry about copay.

And my wallet awaits the next bill.

It is an unremarkable thing. 

This thought I have.

That made me sit, in front of this screen.

And type so much about.

Where as in other parts of the world.

I suppose things far great are occurring.

But not to me. Nor the people I know.

So what's the use of caring?

It's an unremarkable thing, 

this life I live.

But with such an average past.

I have no choice but to go forward.

And let the rest go pass. 

Because who defines remarkable?

That still isn't very clear.

And that is why remarkable.

Can never be, just this here.

-shaun w

i like....

VIA lungful

The Linkdown.

1. Severed hand soap.

2. Making swine flu a bit more friendly.

3. Blasphemous Ice Cream Ads.

4. Sean Gallagher. 365-a Haiku a Day. Yeah, I'm waiting for him to miss a day. 

5. Beyonce keeps it real :45- threatens peoples jobs. And you know she isn't acting...cause it sounds believable. 

6.Another burrow down....looks like Brooklyn is now off the list. 

7. It's sad...I agree...X-Man Origins: Wolverine Kinda sucks. A review will come later (but Gambit was Awesome- all 10 seconds of him).

8.Degrassi hood music. 

The Linkdown.

1. Different, bathroom doors.

2. I want these. They don't get their own "i want" post because they are just socks (the most awesome socks ever).

3. 20 grand? On an anti-PETA poem. You know... some people call me The King too.

4. OMG...Stacey Dash is still, still hot! What is she...like 80?

5. Design is...

6. The Obama Rap. And a good new blog find aswell!

7. The downturn of Padma's career. Over a burger.

Will.I.Am. Yes We Can.

Yes We Can Obama Song by Will.I.Am

Add to My Profile More Videos

over and out.

the magic is fading fast
of all the great things past
the laughter shared, the interesting glares
and of how we moved as one mass

the tall building sheltered us
education melted us
to open up, our true selves
and it was good, those moments a new
when a Wednesday night open bar, where always too few

now i am walking
a path with a definite end
no walls, low ceilings...but I will always remember how it began
crossing three states, hours per rate
many beers, and no fears
paramount conversations, and stressful stress-free days
when there were no toes to step on, less bills to pay
but its is over now

that sweet, safe, fun and interesting place
is over
i wish to know no more, experience much less
without judgment, fear, demoralization and misunderstandings
it is over.

believe that.

-shaun williams