To Fly or Fall

I was not given the choice of having to make a choice
About a decision
It was made for me
Like a bed haphazardly put together
Bouncing me off of it
Like a trampoline
To go high into the air
Untethered
To anything held dear

I was not given the choice of having to make a choice
A deep incision
It was made for me
So I made up my mind about the split/together
Sucking up the pieces of my heart
Like an engine
Consuming fuel
To go high into the air
Untethered
To those once held dear

I was not given the choice of having to make a choice
But, pushed to a decision
That I had to make for myself
Shaping it like clay with shaking hands
I molded sense from unreason
Like a…
To go high into the air
Untethered
To fly over those I'd fallen for

sundays

"c'mon, boy, it's time to go to church"
          he puts down
          his book and picks up
          The Book
kid-sized
steps to a higher plane
one stair at a
time and again
          he finds himself
          sitting on still-tender butt
          first pew
offers the best view
of the pale flesh
with its plaster cloth
covering loins that
were never sculpted
          it's still the closest thing
          to what he wants
makes sundays easier than others

This Is Home

A cataract moon in a lazily cloud-painted sky, stars peeking through all the you-missed-a-spots, overlooks Broadway. The only snow to be found on this January street are glowing flakes hanging from streetlamps, defiant leftovers from the month before. The silently strumming statue on the corner of Broadway & Pine is the first black person I see on my walk, and I know I probably won’t see another. This is Seattle.

The bus cables hang above me as I cross the street, their shadows spun across the intersection like giant webs for Tolkien-sized spiders. I step over the ditch in the pavement in front of Seattle Central, the ground cracked from countless tires bearing the weight of busloads of students. The school faces the Bonney-Watson Funeral Home, an ironic contrast I muse upon while walking through the small crowd of late-night students and the haze of their cigarettes.

Leaving the thoroughfare behind, I make my way further up the Hill. The angle invites my gaze upward, and I’m reminded again of the city’s newness. Seattle’s infancy shows in its architecture. The buildings have little in the way of ornamentation; austere functionality is the rule, with few exceptions. The same can be said for the North Faced folks walking ahead of me. I overtake them, passing through their conversation expounding the virtues of organic food.

Their earnestness fits the city’s youth: expressed by turns through its citizens’ idealism, naïveté, self-righteous arrogance. Seattle is like a spoiled and gifted child, precocious and proud, with adulthood still some years off. These thoughts carry me past T.T. Minor Elementary. The empty schoolyard a nocturnal playground for three dogs playing together, their human companions each wrapped up in the glowing screens of their smartphones, probably reading HuffPo online.

Arriving at the corner of my block, I make up stories for each lit window I see and all the neighbors I’ll never meet. A newly arranged bookcase in one window catches my eye, and I imagine having tea with its owner, as we politely debate the literary status of bestsellers. My key turns in the lock to my building, the door swings closed behind me. This is home.

Black Day

Don’t remember which
Black Day was my first
Just the setting aside
The segregation, if you will
Of this one day
A sneak preview of
Black Month

My cynicism came later

After I’d learned
Their pale stories,
His story seemed^{1, 2, 3}

My cynicism came later

I don’t know when
Black Days will end
Don’t know when
We’ll integrate
Into brown colors
Bleeding through

A calendar still to come


¹Accidental
²Afterthought
³Footnote

I See You

You open the door and you reach inside. Inside your mailbox, there is a package. You remove this package and take it up the stairs. Entering your home, you set the package that used to be in your mailbox on top of the kitchen counter.

You turn around, opening your refrigerator, removing two eggs from their carton placed on the top shelf. You crack the eggs into a skillet, their jaundiced gaze tracking your movements across the kitchen as you gather seasonings to sprinkle in their yellow eyes and make them run.

The package sits on the kitchen counter waiting for you to grab a sharp object and slice into it, peeling back the tape, ripping off its paper skin. Inside the package, still on the kitchen counter, opened with the knife that's still in your hand, you find two eyes looking up at you. There's no movement for them to track, as you stand, fixed in place, engaged in one of those staring contests from childhood.

The note to the side of the eye on the left, the eye that's the same brown as your lover's, reads, "I can love you now, with all your flaws."

You reach out to your lover's eyes and take one in each egg-grimed fist, and hold them to your chest, thinking, "Perhaps these eyes can hear my heart beating faster at being so loved."

Righteous Reunion

You are ready to greet death
Monstrous barbarities all past
Only one future atrocity remains:
The offense granted by
Your loosened bowels
As you swing pendulously

There was a time you flew
Your face emblazoned
On banners borne on desert winds
Crowds chanted your name

Only taunts meet you now
A dissonant counterpoint
To your mumbled prayers
Recited much too late

The noose is placed
A rope ring promising
An eternity together:
With one grandson
Martyred with your own
Two, meeting you at death

Mama's Smile

I love it when Mama sings me to sleep. Her voice calms me until my body feels like it’s falling down, down through my feather pillow, down through the depths of my water bed, down, down, down, all the way down to dreaming.

I wake up to the sound of Mama. She’s not singing.

She sounds really happy and I wonder what she and Mommy are doing having so much fun this late at night. I like it when Mama is happy, ‘cos she’s usually so serious and Mommy and I take every chance we can get to make her laugh. To see Mama’s teeth when she smiles is like seeing a double rainbow: it doesn’t happen all the time, and I always look forward to seeing it again.

Mama used to smile all the time, and her teeth looked like they belonged on one of those toothpaste commercials. But, that was before she got attacked by the bad man. I was so scared she wasn’t ever coming home from the hospital, but Mommy and Uncle Devin both promised me Mama would be all right and she was. Well, almost.

When Mama came home a few days later, she was missing her front teeth just like me. I asked her what the Tooth Fairy brought her and she almost smiled and said the Tooth Fairy brought her home to me and Mommy. At first, I was glad that me and Mama were both waiting for our teeth to grow back. But then, when my teeth grew back and hers didn’t, I felt bad. Mama said not to worry. She and Mommy were saving money to get her smile back the way it was before.

That was months ago. Since then, Mama’s been staying home a lot more. Mommy says it’s ‘cos Mama’s embarrassed to go out and have people see her missing teeth. I asked Mommy why she couldn’t get Mama’s teeth fixed with her insurance like she did when I broke my arm last summer, and she said it didn’t cover Mama ‘cos they’re not really married. I must have looked confused ‘cos Mommy said she’d explain it to me later.

Anyway, it’s so nice to hear Mama in a good mood right now. Almost as good as her singing, but still good enough to make me fall all the way down back to sleep.

Coming Out: The Family Edition

Some months ago, it began. One of my relatives found me on Facebook. Since then, I've accepted friend requests from any blood relation who added me, yet our interaction in both digital and physical life has been minimal.

I briefly wondered, worried even, about some of the things I routinely posted on subjects that openly discussed what my family has already known about me, but never addressed directly since I left home. I passively waited for some Wall Post asking questions…or something. I write "passively", but in truth, I'd actively disengaged myself years ago.

Somewhere in the decade of my estrangement, something shifted. I'm not entirely sure what. But, I'm grateful for it. I love my family. I think of them more often than they could ever know. I haven't consciously needed them, but upon our reacquaintance, I'm moved by their addition to my current life.

I look forward to revisiting old familial bonds with the freedom I now possess; I want nothing from my family, and I'm excited by all they have to offer. When I released my desire for the Norman Rockwell family mythos I'd yearned for, it opened me up, freed me from grasping and shifted my focus to what was already in my hands.

I am surrounded by love. Through great trial and tribulation, my concept of family has broadened to include folks who simply share my species, my beliefs, if not my blood. And, that is enough. Yet, I'm open to so much more. There's room at the table for everyone.

My youngest aunt sent out a mass email to her contact list, informing family and friends of a new addition to their communication circle. My favorite cousin replied, adding my name to the list. She used my old name.

I decided on a brief note, reminding her of my name change, and that details would be forthcoming if she wanted them. She did! What follows is my response:

Sonya,

Details (the short version): I no longer identify as a man. I'm happily male-bodied with no desire to change my sex. However, I tired of the constrictive gender binary system and sought to remove myself from it. Hence, the gender neutral "Lark". I spent too many years and tears trying to live up to identities I hadn't (at the time) realized I'd never chosen in the first place.

In opting out of manhood, I embraced personhood. Who was I? Who did I want to be without concern of being too feminine/masculine, white/black, gay/straight, and countless other dichotomies? I enjoy the freedom from these boundaries. It's allowed me to thoroughly examine how to be the best person I can be, on my terms, and no one else's.

You're welcome to forward this message to anyone you'd like, if you'd like. No obligations.

Be well,

Lark

I ask, you tell

When talking about HIV disclosure, it might benefit everyone to zoom out and think outside of the "HIV paradigm" for a change and focus instead on overall wellness. A bit of wordsmithing might help, too, if we swap out "HIV disclosure" for "STI info exchange". All this talk of HIV disclosure often leads to folks not discussing anything else besides HIV and that fails to address the big picture of both public and individual health. There is a middle ground here.

We all know the danger of stigmatization. We all know the desire to reduce new infections (hopefully, of any kind). If we bear this in mind at all times, all parties will be focused on their own personal health promotion. There is no reason that folks who believe they don't have HIV shouldn't be considering the broader concept of wellness and protection. Ditto for folks who know they have HIV.

Condoms help prevent HIV, but focusing on condoms as the sole source of our safety and protection fails to address the fundamental processes of how we make our choices and what motivates our decisions. The overwhelming majority of my clients have used a condom in the last 12 months. These are the same folks that have also decided in the same period of time to have anal sex sans condom. Asking someone the last time they had sex without a condom, and asking someone the last time they felt they likely put themselves at risk during sex, will often yield two distinctly different responses.

Condoms are not protection incarnate. Condoms are a form of protection. The sooner we (publicly) acknowledge that reality, the sooner folks can focus on making sure they are always using some form of protection, regardless of condom use. Condoms are effective at preventing many STIs; however, they don't provide 100% protection against herpes and syphilis. Furthermore, if we allow people to go on having oral sex without condoms with the mindset that they're having "unprotected sex" because they're not using condoms, we also enable them to stop thinking about protection outside the "condom box", such as a broader conversation about STIs in general and a discussion with partners on their personal sexual health promotion plans.

This is dangerous.

Equally dangerous is the mindset that HIV-positive folks have no other sexual health concerns now that they're positive. This is probably why we're seeing such large numbers of poz gay men with gonorrhea. They're not using condoms because they've had it drilled into them that condoms are (primarily) for preventing HIV, and if they're serosorting and only sleeping with other poz guys, they no longer have to concern themselves with "safe sex".

Safe sex is informed sex. We all make different choices when we have different information. We must encourage folks to figure out what information matters to them. I hope we rise above the ethical quicksand of "HIV disclosure" and embrace an idealistic reality that folks make good choices when they have good information. Folks need to be more conscious of decisions regarding their sexual health and have a set of criteria for what informs those decisions. These criteria should be developed by the individual, acknowledging their agency and ability to navigate their desires rationally, on their terms.

Get tested (for everything) and get talking.

25

1. I'm not nearly as extroverted as I come across. For all that I'm comfortable sharing, I'm a private person.
2. I spent years doing theatre and I briefly studied opera. (I'm a basso profundo.)
3. Graduating valedictorian in 8th grade, I held the record for most suspensions.
4. I lived in abject terror as a child, until I got smart and accustomed myself to the immutable situation, giving my adrenal glands a rest in the process. The State removed me from my home years too late, just to return me. My childhood domestic abuse required years of speech therapy, though my chipped tooth and wrist scar are, ironically, both from accidents. (After ten years of estrangement, I finally added Mother to my speed-dial.)
5. I compartmentalize everything: My heart and my mind belong to two discrete political parties. Not surprisingly, what I find aesthetically pleasing in another person rarely translates to sexual attraction; conversely, what I find physically attractive doesn't usually appeal to my visual taste. (However, given enough time and thought, I can turn anyone into the object of my desire.) Only once have I been sexually abused by someone I found attractive. I own several albums from vocalists I can't stand who pen phenomenal lyrics and write beautiful instrumental parts.
6. I feel closest to G-D and the rest of humanity when dancing, and I've been paid to do so in various states of undress. I've been known to cry when dancing or experiencing any artistic medium. (Though I was a raver, I never did Ecstasy.)
7. I prefer houses to condominiums.
8. I was raised in a conservative Southern Baptist household, but went to a predominantly Jewish high school. (Coincidentally, I have a thing for Jews with Southern accents.)
9. The first crush that I can remember was on Dark Heart, from the second Care Bears movie. (I've always been enamored with repentant sociopaths.)
10. I used to write lyrics for industrial, hip-hop, and folk songs. (But, my favorite music to listen to is lyric free and in a minor key, even though I have a word fetish.)
11. I spent the week leading up to my 18th birthday institutionalized for my sexuality. (I whiled the week away counseling my fellow inmates.)
12. My life's ambition is to run my own social services non-profit organization, to eventually be the US Secretary of Education, and to be a parent. (Paradoxically, I really wish I were a monk.)
13. I think of myself as Orlando Ndegéocello Lark, but introduce myself as Lark.
14. I received both my GED and Ivy League recruitment letters in the same mailbox. This makes me self-conscious in some conflicting ways. Regardless, I love being the most ignorant person in the room as it gives me an opportunity to learn more.
15. I'm a hopeful romantic: I still have my favorite valentine, a layered 2-dimensional handmade representation of a four-chambered heart; I've also had my wedding planned for almost a decade. (My funeral, too.)
16. I enjoy writing poetry and came out onstage while performing at my high school poetry slam when I was 16.
17. I'm vegetarian. (I refuse to assassinate mosquitoes, but I have a penchant for leather.) My favorite beverages are cow's milk and water (separately).
18. I've a keen interest in various esoteric branches of Judæo-Christianity, particularly Gnosticism. I learned how to read from the Protestant Christian Bible at age 2. The first novel I read was Stephen King's "It" in kindergarten. (There is a connection, I assure you.)
19. I've beaten people for money (at their request). I've also been set aflame (with my consent). I have other fetishes that I shall not list here. I am a private person, after all.
20. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom as a child. (It was the only door with a lock.) I spent most of my childhood alone, when possible.
21. It would take immortality to sate my lust for literature, music, and film. (I read every volume of the World Book Encyclopedias as a child, own over 700 physical CDs, and almost a hundred DVDs.) I read the world and national news every morning. (Important local news trickles down.) I haven't had a television for eleven years, but the amount of time I spend in front of a computer screen precludes any self-righteousness. I own complete series that I've never seen on a television. HBO on DVD, anyone?
22. My twin was flushed down the toilet before I was born.
23. Sometimes, I have relapsing control issues with my weight.
24. I'm making a third of what I used to—if that—and I've never been happier!
25. I have no concept of time. None. At all. Whatsoever. My memory is a spilled box of jumbled Polaroids, with little continuity. Despite this, I can relive all my memories with astonishing emotional detail.

"Desire won't die…"

I've been mulling over the concept of desire's construction for years now. When I look back on my own notions of beauty through the years, I'm struck most by how much more pleases my palate now, and how many more colors I have on my palette to paint a picture of what I desire. In short, with increased experiences, the space required to house my tastes has become quite palatial! (I couldn't resist a bit of wordplay.)

The question of "Where is the line between taste and unjust discrimination?" comes up often when discussing the intersections of sexual attraction, gender, age, and race (amongst other things). To better address what we all seek to gain from the answer—chiefly, to be (reciprocally) desired—I think another way to frame the question is: "How do we personally stand to benefit from examining how we construct desire?" If we each take the time to thoroughly investigate what concepts we're attracted to on a fundamental building-block level, we can then perform an appraisal of another individual based on their embodiment of those concepts we find attractive.

Perhaps an analogy would help to clarify my point (and I do have one): the politics of sexual desire are akin to the politics of affirmative action. The latter seeks a localized remedy to the systemic symptoms of a society plagued by prejudice, rather than confronting the cause of the illness. Masking symptoms might make us feel better, but we're still sick and "Band-Aid" solutions aren't enough to staunch the bleeding. Just as it would be a mistake to police racism solely through legislature without some social discourse on what forces drive race relations, it doesn't help to focus on sexual discrimination without (and, I daresay before, as well) discussing why we like who we like.

Consider an employer that elects to only hire applicants from a particular group. Before having a charge of "groupism" leveled against them or considering themselves "groupist", it would help for them to identify what qualities they're looking for in an employee. By adjusting their focus to zoom in on the parts that create the composite whole they desire, they'll have the chance to pinpoint those qualities outside the group they were previously limiting themselves to, thereby increasing the pool of desirable applicants and allowing them to skim more cream from a substantially larger crop.

Paring my attraction to ("biological") men down to its base components offered me the opportunity to seek out those elements I find desirable in as many people as possible. I discovered that my attraction was not to men, per se, but to the nebulous construct that is masculinity. This led me to pursue the root of my desire in folks that, theretofore, I had written off for not belonging to the group stereotypically possessing the quality I found so appealing, such as transdudes and even women.

Going beyond the bounds of what society had set for me to be attracted to as a gay man, boundaries that I myself had unthinkingly adopted, was liberating in many senses. It freed me from the bland limitations of only consuming what I'd been served by the media, and eventually freed me from a binary gender identity as well. Somewhere in the process, it also opened up my eyes to experiencing qualities I admired in people with a gaze looking from outside the arbitrary checkboxes of "masculine" and "feminine".

For all the benefits that I have gained through action inspired by introspection, the (ongoing) process is not without challenges. However, I can joyfully say that, for me, eating the fruits of my labors outweighs the toil of tilling the field. In short, if more of us ask ourselves the question "How do I construct desire?", we're likely to find that we find a lot more attractive. Casting a wider net benefits everyone. How wide the net might be is, of course, a personal choice, and through the casting the fisher might be surprised at what eventually ends up on their plate, pleasing their palate.

"Neither a woman, nor a man"

I've changed the No Boundaries URL from http://karlwithakay.blogspot.com to http://larkwithakay.blogspot.com to reflect my recent liberation from gender and name change from Karl to Lark. (Please update your bookmarks, RSS feeds, and contact info.)

Click here to continue to the new URL.

-Lark Withakay

Coming
Jimmy Somerville
Orlando OST

I am coming! I am coming!
I am coming through!
Coming across the divide to you

In this moment of unity
feeling an ecstasy
to be here, to be now
At last I am free

Yes at last, at last
to be free of the past
and of a future that beckons me

I am coming! I am coming!
Here I am!
Neither a woman, nor a man

We are joined, we are one
With the human face
We are joined, we are one
With the human face

I am on earth
And I am in outer space
I'm being born and I am dying

I am on earth
And I am in outer space
I'm being born and I am dying

I am coming! I am coming!
I am coming through!
Coming across the divide to you

In this moment of unity
feeling an ecstasy
to be here, to be now
At last I am free!

Yes at last, at last
to be free of the past
and of a future that beckons me

Yes at last, at last
to be free of the past
and of a future that beckons me

I am coming! I am coming!
Here I am!
Neither a woman, nor a man

Oh we are joined, we are one
with the human face
Oh we are joined, we are one
with the human face

At last I am free!
At last I am free!

I am on earth
And I am in outer space
I'm being born and I am dying

I am on earth
And I am in outer space
I'm being born, I am dying

At last I am free!
At last I am free!!!

Yes at last, at last, at last I'm free!
Yes at last, at last, at last I'm free!

Tell Me, Venn

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
John 1:1

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…"
John 1:14

---

It didn't begin here. You weren't always being held so high. There was a time…there was a time when you bedded down with ox and ass not even three feet away. There was a time when you benefitted from the charity of three old men. There was a time when you were the student, a young man of only three and ten.

Three…

There are two others with you, but you are all alone, arms spread wide in an empty embrace. It's lonely being king. Your subjects are at your feet, but it's a long way down. You consider getting down, think about being among them again. Were you ever a part of them?

You see your mother below. Surely you were a part of her. Surely? A child's mother is never in doubt. But, what of the father? What of your father? Where is he now? You can't see him. Yet, there are things you've felt, though never seen. You've seen what got you here; you're feeling it now. This experience is a part of you.

You are the sum of your experiences: every day lived, every word read. You've lived your words. You're dying for them.

What else are you dying for?

You're dying for a dream; for an ideal; for a people. You're dying because you've decided your death will accomplish more than your life. You're dying because your flesh is real, like theirs, and this is something they can understand, something they can relate to.

Look down again. Do you see yourself among them? Or just your reflection in their skycast eyes?

---

"And God said, Let us make man in our image…"
Genesis 1:26

Iris

Beautiful eyes see beautiful things:
You see eyes in a mirror, framing
Your face, which frames your beauty
Dutifully giving the frame a place,
A reason to exist, to reflect
Upon the beauty it contains

Malo Mori Quam Foedari

Oh, you little king, checked and filled with momentous rage! Ponder your next move… Bound to lateral dimensions, you long to break free from your bored existence, surrounded by squares who view the world in black, in white, never your spectrum. Alas, the fight has gotten stale and you've tired of waiting for a better end to this game; now, part of you longs to occupy their terror, story it as your own. No, far more preferable to resign on your terms, before you conform to further defeat at their unseen hands, to fall with pride and not after dishonor.

Synæsthesia

What color, joy, to paint a smile on one's face? What sound, love, to throb and thrum with beating drum? What taste, desire, to tease tongue 'til reason's undone? What smell, happiness, to waft aromatic with memories of home?

What touch, to feel you?

I see what//I hear//what//I taste//what I smell

May I feel, too?

Babylonian Waters

• Miracles are what happen when we forget to remember reality as we know it, when we allow our schemas to topple, crumble, and fall away into dust.

I performed a miracle today. Twin rivers of saltwater streamed from dry eyes, washing away the hurt I felt inside.

• Miracles need to be observed, recognized, confirmed. They need a body to witness them, to go forth and testify.

I cried in public today. This miracle was chronicled in the consciousness of another, perhaps to be forgotten in the days to come; perhaps to be remembered when the waters rise again, when I forget to remember what I think I know.

A Stone's Throw

You still don't know how he got in, or even if he got into your cell at all. He might've just gotten into your mind to do some time. He brought light with him but it wasn't strong enough to cover you. You remained in darkness listening to his soft, sibilant voice. The conversation between the two of you still has you locked up in those moments, even as you're being strapped in.


LB: How do you feel?
You: How the fuck do you think I feel?
LB: You're angry. You think you don't belong here.

You're silent. Perhaps he'll leave if you don't respond. However, you're lonely. He's the only person you'll see before the morning crowds your vision with uniforms and cameras.

You: Why are you here?
LB: Why are you?
You: I'm not guilty.
LB: Aren't you?
You: Look, man, everybody fucking changed their story!

Now, it's your visitor that's silent. You look over at his glowing form, wondering what it would be like to cast no shadow, to always walk in the light. Funny how your mind has time to dwell on such matters. Funnier still when you remember that all you have, for these fleeting moments anyway, is time.

You: You know. You know I didn't do it.
LB: You're right. I do know that.
You: You're not going to say anything, are you? You…you could get me out of here.
LB: I could. But, I also know everything else that you did.

To end the story here would mean…well, you know quite well what it would mean. And to go on would mean more opportunities, more validation for your sentence. Wouldn't it be better to end it here? Before you run out of stones to cast? That is, if you ever had a pile to begin with…

Noh Way

You smile because the fist up your ass unfolds into a hand, bowing the corners of your mouth into a tense parody of good humor. You are simultaneously puppet and manipulator, molding your own expressed emotions to obscure the tempest within.

Gute Nacht

Your bed is an untethered island, floating on a dream sea. Peering over the edge, the waves reflect nothing, forcing you to look deep within them, and ultimately, within yourself. You're distracted from your marine reverie by stars unseen, beckoning you from outside the blanketing clouds above: "Come, hear our whispered secrets. Sleep no more; awaken this night before the sunrise wipes the sky again and you forget our love."

You're alarmed by the rising strains of music from your speakers. Spotlighted in sun, you wipe the sleep from your eyes, trying—and failing—to focus on the blurred images of your rest. Your day begins again with another cycle of messages mixed and missed, as your fingers rhythmically flow across the keyboard, spilling words across your laptop screen. Done, your mouse scurries across your desk closing some windows, minimizing others.

The now empty screen seems to take up too much space; you feel claustrophobic. Turning away, motes of dust floating in a sunbeam remind you of something. Your bedroom window? You walk over, looking out at a paned view of the world. Muffled sounds tease your ears as your pupils contract in the glare of the sun. Your eyes wander with your mind while you wonder aimlessly about bullied stars being chased from the sky's playground by the sun. How strange that you can't see what you know is there.