The First Church of Whoopie

Raised by Wolves

It marks you,
To spend your childhood on guard against predators.
It conditions your behavior.
That certain hypervigilance,
that ability to snap to abrupt attention,
adrenaline pumping, heart pounding
the second any slightest hint of threat
is detected in the environment.

Like small animals who learn
to keep every whisker twitching,
nose up to the wind, ears straining
for that faint rustling of grass or scent of aggression
that might be the only warning signs they get
that they're about to become someone else's lunch.

You learn well to watch for certain signs--
A change in tone of voice, a twist in the body,
Any erratic or unusual or abnormal or scary behavior ...
Not foolproof, but sometimes giving just enough warning
to take what cover is available
Before voices start rising in volume and irrationality,
and hackles are raised,
and claws unsheathed.

These continue to be useful skills
when you get old enough to escape home
And find that there are other predators out there
besides the ones who raised you.

Alas, it's kind of hard to turn the vigilance on and off--
it's not like it's on a switch or anything.

It's kind of wearying to go through life
with your antennae picking up all those predators ...
not to mention all the not particularly dangerous,
but just plain old nasty hateful shit that goes on in the world.
Because there really are that many predators,
that much hateful shit.

You know the signs--
You have the claw marks to prove it.

Winter Solstice Peace Vision: The Posada of Peacemakers

In my dreams, I see a procession
making its way across a wasteland
under the long cold light of the Solstice stars.

It is not an invading army--
they carry no weapons, their hearts are unguarded.
It is not a party of refugees--
they are neither desperate, nor disposessed.
They are neither traders, nor travelers for pleasure,
nor any other type of wayfarers
the world has ever known before.
They are emissaries of peace.

Among their number are people of every color, faith and nation
All ages, all genders, all identities
Both rich and poor, both exalted and humble of station
All bound together and made equals
By love, and by the gravity of their mission.

Their eyes are patient. Their hearts are composed.
Their pace is steady, geared for endurance.
They know their travels will be long and hard.

They are a new Posada, a new journey of the Magi
A new Exodus desert sojourn
Seeking a home for their precious cargo
Seeking receptive minds for their message
A message that transcends all boundaries
That dissolves all ancient enmities

And as they walk together, they sing
The most beautiful song the world has ever known.
And though I have never heard it before,
I find I know every word.

Will this procession, this tribe of peacemakers,
Find the home they seek?

Will they find a community that will open its ears?
Open its hearts and minds?
Take them all in, in all their shapes and colors?
Listen to and learn from their song?

In my dreams, I never receive an answer to those questions.

In my dreams, the tribe of peacemakers is still wandering
Questing across the desert for their Universal promised land
A land without boundaries of Us vs. Them
Where people remember they are all children of the same Mother
And no longer raise up arms against each other

But when I awake, I know the tribe of peacemakes
has found shelter for their journey in my heart

Oh may it be, as our troubled world wheels its way through another Soltice,
That you too receive this Posada of Peacemakers
And give them lodging also,
Till every heart is home to their message
Every voice is raised in their song
Every person become member of their tribe
And the whole world become the Promised Land for All.

Listen. They are on the move now.
You will know them by their song.
The words will come to you if you let them.

I can't play electric guitar so I do spoken word instead

for Mike Keneally, with extreme gratitude

A few weeks ago, I went to hear one of my musician friends play a gig.
And as I sat in front of him and his amp
getting my head cheerfully blown off my shoulders
by his fabulous electric guitarage
I found myself thinking:
Damn, I wish I could do that.

Stand there
with a simple hunk of wood, wires, and electronics in my hands
Intent on producing screaming walls of sound so visceral
They strike people's psyches like tsunami waves

Like a superhero with a secret-weapon raygun
Blasting bolts of energy
straight from one's brain, heart, soul, and crotch
into the universe
And shooting holes of sonic truth
through the very fabric of the cosmos.

But I can't play the electric guitar.
I can play a few baby chords on a nylon-string folk guitar
But somehow that seems so … inadequate.

One thing I can do, though, is what I'm doing right now:
Standing at a mic in front of a roomful of people
And speaking words.

So I started thinking about how I could write a spoken word piece
That would be like an electric guitar:
A blast of sonic truth firing straight out of my brain heart soul crotch
Until it tore the fabric of the universe to shreds.
That would definitely be a fine thing, yes ma'am.

I could always just howl into the microphone.
But that would be so … inarticulate.
Not to mention it being a bit rough on my vocal chords
And your eardrums.
(So don't go running out the door, I ain't gonna do that.
For the moment, anyway.)

And to be sure,
my guitarist friend doesn't do
the musical equivalent of inarticulate howling either.
Quite the opposite, in fact:
his blasts of sonic truth are full of content
Full of melody.
His solos always have a lot to say.

No, I am not a howler.
(For that matter, truth be told,
I make a distressingly, dismally dorky rapper,
which is why I don't attempt that style in public.)
If anything, I am a conversationalist,
An essayist
A memoirist
A story-teller
All quaintly old-fashioned modes
that are rather quieter
than your typical Stratocaster.

But though my tone and style are quiet,
My content can get pretty noisy, if I do say so myself
(Let's see—
how many pieces have I written about orgasm or vaginas
or other female sex-bits, now?)

Perhaps I have been doing
spoken word like an electric guitar all along
and not even realized it

Standing here with a simple sheaf of paper in my hands
Intent on producing screaming walls of words so visceral
They strike people's psyches like tsunami waves

Like a superhero with a secret-weapon verbal raygun
Blasting bolts of energy
straight from my brain, heart, soul,
and, yes, my crotch,
into the universe
And shooting holes of sonic truth
through the very fabric of the cosmos.

I could groove on that.

Plus my eardrums—
and yours—
will probably be the better for it.

The truth is not pretty, moment #49,760:

When you catch yourself
being pissed off
at somebody else's
obnoxious inconsiderate behavior
and realize that you
have been guilty of
that self-same bit of
obnoxiousness.

Numerous times.

And that others were probably
as pissed off at you
as you were so busy being
just a moment previously.

Goddess Ritual for an Unexpected Baby Crone

Goddess,
Dearest Mother,
here I stand:
Feet planted on earth,
Sheltering in the circle I have cast
To contain the energies I am about to unleash;

My left hand outstretched
to the fire-ringed bowl of the Western Ocean,
Whose waters feed so many millions of your children;
My right hand reaching eastward
across the body of Amerika,
This troubled land whose redemption
I still dare to pray for;

My belly, so recently invaded and emptied
by the surgeon's knife,
Turned scar-first towards
the barren cold of the Northern tundra;
My ever-lovin' ass still
shakin' it for your pleasure,
Caressed by the serpent's-fire breath
of the tropic South.

I cast my eyes upward
Through the ocean of air
in which all your children swim,
Towards the infinite star-shot Universe
that is your home;
I feel your Cozmik rays of love
pour down through my brain,
Down my spine,
through each of my chakras in turn,
Straight on down into Mother Earth,
All the way down
to the life-giving furnace-heart of Gaia,
Your daughter, our too-often neglected home;

And as I stand here, transfixed,
The earth-energies come welling back up through me,
Through the soles of my feet,
through my yoni,
Through the space where
the vibrations of my womb still sing,
Through my heart and brain,
Out my Third Eye
And back into the Universe
In one great reverberation
of Universal Life Energy;

And my mouth falls open,
takes in lungfuls of the breath of life,
and channels every fibre of my body and soul
all the energies of the cosmos
flowing through me
into one resounding cry:

Mama!
I heard your voice calling me.
From the depths of the anesthesia,
As the surgeon removed my womb,
I heard you singing,
Summoning me to this new state of being.

And so, now,
I stand before you.
Baby crone, new-minted,
Arriving at this time in my woman-life
a little sooner than I had expected,
But grateful to you
that I am still here
to answer your summons.
And now … 
Here I am.
Take me.
I'm all yours.

In Praise of Butch

That certain timbre of voice: deep alto, rich like mocha
That James Dean androgyne profile
That broad-shouldered muscular gait

There is nothing about butch that does not call me
like bees to honey
Make my head snap around as if it were on springs
To follow that curve of ass in Levis button-flys
Glues my eyes to hands strong yet graceful,
Masterful whether clutching hammer or Harley throttle
Make me daydream of seeing those hands
put to more intimate uses
Make me want to see her naked in my bed

Nevermind that the straight world see all these gifts as
Errant,
Abnormal,
A failed attempt to emulate what they consider "male"—
I, for one, know that Butch is no imitation
but the Real Thing,
Its own Thing,
A beauty in its own right, on its own terms
And I will love and praise it to the end of my days.

The Anti-Psycho Relationship Pledge

Okay, all you folks
who are currently nursing bruised psyches
on account of relationship bullshit—
listen up.
You wanna heal those bruises?
And avoid getting them ever again?
Well, here's what you gotta do:

First, get yourself a copy of your all-time favorite
"Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish" breakup song,
and play it LOUD on your stereo.
Me, I think I'll go way old-school,
with the Rascals'
"I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore."

Next, pour yourself a good stiff shot
of your favorite intoxicant.
Me, I'll be going with
a double Wild Turkey 101.

Now raise your glasses,
all you older-but-hoping-to-be-wiser lovers,
and prepare to recite
The Anti-Psycho Relationship Pledge:

I hereby solemnly swear
that I will never again subject myself
to any more of the following
psycho-relationship bullshit:

1. Falling in love with anyone who is unavailable,
for any reason whatsoever, including but not limited to:
  a. persons whose sexual orientation/gender combination is incompatible with my own;
  b. persons already in a relationship;
  c. persons who are married to their careers;
  d. persons who are psychologically incapable of giving or receiving affection;
  e. psychos.
2. Falling in love with anyone
simply because they said they were in love with me,
regardless of whether there is anything else
to base the relationship on.
Or whether they're a psycho.
3. Falling in love with someone
just because it keeps me from being alone.
Especially if they're a psycho.
4. Falling in love with anyone
whose behavior, private or especially public,
regularly causes me to cringe.
As psychos often do.
5. Falling in love with any person
who is high-maintenance,
including but not limited to:
  a. persons with huge numbers of life issues,
none of which they are in any hurry
to sort out;
  b. persons with active addictions;
  c. terminally needy persons;
  d. persons given to grandiose plans and projects
that of course you need to help them with;
  e. persons actively running their credit limits
into the ground;
  f. psychos.
6. Falling in love with anyone
whose politics make you cringe.
Especially right-wing psychos.
And people who take Ayn Rand seriously.
7. Falling in love with psychos, period.
Nomatter how attractive, charismatic,
or good in bed they are.
Especially if they like to play
PDR Bingo with their meds.

To sum up:
life, and love, is just easier to manage
without psychos in it.
So drink up, friends,
And now go and psycho-love no more.

The Mother Earth Uterine Cancer Blues

(On August 7th, 2006, I underwent a full hysterectomy. This is one of several pieces--so far--inspired by that event.)

The fates have seen fit to inflict on my body
one of the emblematic stigmata
of my generation of women.
So many of my sisters have given up
wombs,
ovaries,
breasts
these quintessential life-creating woman-parts,
To the surgeon's knife,
Sacrifices on the altar of modern medicine
to ward off
that equally emblematic curse of our time,
cancer,
That disease which is
The inevitable consequence
of our species' refusal
to stop fouling our collective nest,
Slowly but surely pissing out
a growing sea
of toxic industrial excretions
that continues to rise
until it threatens to poison
all life on our great Mother Earth.

Medical, political, and religious pundits
wring their hands
over the miracle of stem cells,
The biological Philosopher's Stone,
Able to transform into any type of flesh.
But how much more miraculous are
our ovaries
wombs
breasts,
Our bodies' own hatcheries,
incubators,
and food supply
for the whole next generation of the species?
Why, then, do these same pundits
NOT
wring their hands
over this chemical war
on our generative organs?
For surely this war bodes ill
for the future of all our children.
Because those of us who have lost wombs,
ovaries,
breasts,
AND lives
Are unwitting canaries in Coal Mine Earth,
Warning of much greater ills to come
if Things Don't Change.

And when I say, "greater ills …", well …

Consider this:
Evolutionarily speaking,
Mother Nature wields
a sharp and heartless scalpel.
When a species, or a biosphere,
has outlived its ability to function,
It tends to disappear
in the cosmic-scale equivalent
of a heartbeat.
In other words, worst-case scenario,
We are talking full-on extinction
of the human race.

Now in human terms,
extinction could be a long, long time coming…
And the human race,
particularly its ruling class,
has demonstrated over and over again
its fiendish expertise at denial—
Especially when the first casualties
of an inconvenient problem
are people of lower priority and status,
easily kept out of sight and out of mind:
The old,
The young,
The queer,
Those too poor to afford adequate health care,
Those too poor to avoid living and working
with the very toxins that threaten us;
Those not born with Caucasian skin …
And still, even in this day and age,
women generally.

But if humanity fails to wake up
and heed the meaning
of this growing plague upon our wombs,
Our descendents will yet have just cause
to curse our generations
for giving cancer
to Mother Earth Herself,
Such that her generative powers
will no longer be able
to feed and house our species.

And what then will our descendents do,
when that Darwinian scalpel comes down
like Fate's guillotine,
To perform that Planetary Hysterectomy
on Mother Earth--
When that evolutionary blade
cuts our species off
from the only womb/home
we have ever known?

A cure for cramped-up river vagina

(Written and performed shortly after Hurricane Katrina)

As some of you may have heard, the flood waters hadn't even begun to recede in New Orleans before certain Christian fundamentalist preachers started intoning that Katrina was God's punishment on New Orleans for all its sinful celebration of sexuality, queer and otherwise.

Well, that may be what their "God" tells them, but that's not the only Divine story going round.

I also happen to know that, just prior to Katrina making landfall, a huge number of pagans of all stripes, all across the country (including followers of African Diaspora religions, especially voudoun, the flavor traditionally practiced in New Orleans) had put out a huge amount of spiritual energy asking their respective Deities to save New Orleans from a direct hit by the storm. And miracle of miracles, the hurricane did shift course just enough to spare the city the full brunt of her winds.

But unfortunately, while Oya was merciful with regard to the natural part of the disaster, the Gods would not or could not prevent the totally human-made disaster when the inadequate levees gave way. That part of the disaster, the gods seemed to be saying, is our species' responsibility to deal with: to seek justice against those leaders who set the disaster in motion, to seek healing for those innocents caught in its path, to seek the wisdom to learn from this crisis, to seek the will to head off further human-made disasters waiting to happen, before they happen.

These were sobering thoughts in a sobering time. But they also got me thinking about *all* the human-made damage that has been done to the Mississippi delta. The dredging. The destruction of protective wetlands. The pollution from the massive chemical/petroleum/industrial complex ringing the city. The pollution flowing downriver from chemical and commercial and agricultural run-off hundreds of miles upstream.

And then there's what I'd like to call the political and economic pollution—the power structures and prejudices of the Deep South, that keep the businesses booming along enriching the rich, and that keep the poor people disposessed and disempowered.

In other words ... the Mississippi Mother-River is in desperate need of cleansing, to free her of all this pollution, environmental and political and economic. And while I don't have the funds or skills to help much with the physical aspect of that cleansing, I can at least conjure up a woo-woo witchy meditation to encourage the cleansing on the psychic level.

It's a very simple meditation, really, at least for anyone possessed of a vagina. For what is a river delta except the vagina of one of Mother Gaia's daughters? She has many river-daughters, does Gaia, and they all have their cycles just as we mortal women do--sometimes they run low, and sometimes they run high. And every so often, they flood, and flush out a huge amount of accumulated crap.

Now sometimes, when I'm having my menstrual flow, I get these huge fearsome cramps as my womb attempts to expel a particularly large chunk of uterine lining--stuff that was once useful but is now detritus that needs to go. Only it won't go, not easily at least, and so the ball of muscle that is my uterus cramps and cramps, trying and not quite succeeding in pushing the stuff out. But I've found that, if I can just manage to block out the cramps long enough to masturbate myself to orgasm, the sexual release often causes the uterus to release as well--the muscles relax, the cramps subside, and the clot is finally expelled.

Well, right now, Mama Mississippi's delta is all clogged up with a noxious stew of chemicals, death, and decay from the flooding of New Orleans. And Her delta could also use a good psychic flushing of all the greed and governmental corruption which caused this whole mess, and the racism and classism which caused a majority of the population to be so impoverished even before the flood took what little they had. The whole shebang just needs a nice big release from all that evil energy.

So ... what I'm proposing is a huge psychic Cure for Cramped-up River Vagina by Means of Psychic Shared Orgasm.

Ideally, I'd love for this to be done in a formal group ritual. Can't you just picture it? A whole roomful of women--a whole hallful, a whole stadium-ful ... a whole nation of women all driving themselves (or each other!) to simultaneous orgasm, in order to encourage the River to free Herself of the poisons which pollute Her? I think that would be one hell of a beautiful thing. (And just imagine how it would freak those ol' Fundies so hellbent on condemning the Crescent City!)

But perhaps that might be a tad mite difficult to pull off.

But that's okay--as I see it, we can work this spell in a decentralized way too. Lots of little drops of woman-orgasm all gathered together in a great big river of cleansing empowering energy. And we can do it whenever it feels right to do it.

So—if you want to participate in the Cure for Cramped-up River Vagina, here's what I suggest you do: just get yourself set up in your favorite little self-love nest, with your favorite mood-enhancers--candles, incense, music, toys, erotica, helpers, whatever works for you. Cast a circle or declare sacred space according to your personal practice--or don't, as you wish, again whatever works for you. And then start visualizing that Big Mother River, so in need of releasing all that is burdening her ... and then just let your fingers do the walking.

And when the Kundalini awakens and flashes up through your chakras into the enlightenment of the Big O, see if you can't take all that healing energy and aim it in the general direction of Nawlins.

There will be one happy River Goddess down there just lapping it all up. I garontee.

My Liberation from Lawyer Mind

In my time, I've heard and read
a whole bunch of coming-out-to-parents stories,
from the laughable to the tragic,
but I've yet to hear one
with quite as peculiar a punch-line
as mine.

Early 1980s, me in my early twenties.
I succeed in roping in both my parents for
The Big Serious Talk.
And I lay it on 'em,
the secret about which
I'd been dropping huge hints for years,
hints they'd steadfastly ignored—
so I leave no shadow of a doubt
when I finally haul off and tell them
in no uncertain terms
that their eldest daughter likes girls.

(Oh, of course I put it much more
upliftingly than that, but that's the gist ...
you've been there, you know how it goes...)

Mom, in response, goes into the whole tearful tirade
about how I'm cutting myself off from one of
Life's Most Fulfilling Experiences,
namely that of being a mother and having a family.
Yeah, Mom—like being queer
stopped any of several of my friends
from either of those experiences.
And like you're so fulfilled by your life,
stuck in perennial housewife and at-home mother mode,
sacrificing your existence for children and hubby...

All the while she's going on, Dad sits there,
listening, not speaking, facial expression inscrutable,
waiting for her to wind down.

When she finally does wind down,
Dad gives me what he means to be
a Thoughtful Look ...
and he says:

"You know, your mother and I always wanted you to be a lawyer."

Um ... what?

The scary thing is that,
after the first few seconds of incredulity,
I am able,
knowing all too well how my parents think,
to translate this cryptic statement.

And what I realize my dad means by this statement is:
"Your mother and I had these huge aspirations for you,
our first-born offspring,
with the genius IQ and the top-flight grades
and the fancy college education
which we uncomplainingly paid for..."
(well, they think they were uncomplaining, but nevermind...)

"...anyway, we had these great expectations
that you would become some
meaningful and important figure in the world,
but instead you're telling us
you want to hang with these sexual deviants
with their socially-inappropriate practices,
and if you spend all your time doing that
you're going to ruin your reputation
and waste your life
so that you'll never be
that famous socially-respected person
we dreamed you'd be."

Even translated,
the statement so flabbergasts me
that I am struck speechless.

What can you say to something like that?
That demonstrates so baldly
that one's closest blood relations
are totally delusional
about who and what their daughter is?

I mean,
even though I also happen to know
bunches of queers who have become
successful lawyers, politicians,
and other public figures of great social respect and status—
what, by all the Goddess holds holy,
made my parents believe that I desired
to be such a socially-accepted figure,
whether queer or straight?!?

No, Mom and Dad,
I'm no more lawyer material than I am parent material.

Nor am I the malleable little expression
of any of your other vicarious dreams
of mainstream middle-class success.

After all these years of raising me,
how could you have come to think
I was such a creature?

In that moment,
I realized I had experienced
not one but multiple comings-out:

I came out as a queer;
I came out as an anti-establishment non-conformist;
I came out as a woman who,
while enjoying children quite a bit,
had absolutely no interest whatsoever
in actually giving birth to or parenting one;
I came out as a grrl least likely to become
a Log Cabin Republican;

Indeed, in that moment
I officially came out
as allied with all the more outrageous a
nd less socially-acceptable
sectors of the queer community—

the drag queens and kings,
the fairies and bulldykes,
the gender-fuckers,
the leatherfolk,
the trans-people,
the bisexuals,
the flat-out uncategorizeable,
the defiers of the status quo,
the folks who steadfastly refuse
to stay within the lines
of the gender-identity coloring book;

Moreover, I came out as a changeling,
seemingly dropped into my family's nest from the heavens,
psychologically unrelated to any of their values,
hopes, fears, or dreams;

In other words,
in that moment I came out as
a psychic orphan.

We never spoke of that conversation afterwards.

No surprise—
my folks would never willingly bring up
uch dangerous content themselves,
and as for me, well,
now that I realized my psychic orphanhood,
what was the point in arguing with these people
who were no longer my psychic parents?

But I knew, and I suspect they also knew,
that a door that had been creeping closed
for some years now got
permanently slammed shut on that day.

Although there was also the consolation
of a much more enticing door
swinging wide open …

And so that's the story of how I came out to my parents as ...
the L-word.

Meaning … well, certainly not "lawyer."

Meaning, rather, everything that I really was ...

which was:
Liberated from Lawyer Mind.