#twocpoetry

[twocpoetry]

Three Fictional Characters

Facebook’s doing a thing. THREE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS! Cartoon, live action, movie, Martyr, Matron, Patron, etc.,

So I decided to just play myself. Someone hard to believe as real. Someone drawn out as a cartoon character, Dead name tattooed on my forehead, Mustache and breasts as a punchline. Target marker on my chest the shape of heartbeat. Hairy legs, a sign I’m not trying because of what’s in-between them. A drawing of myself and others like me, Held up above the eyes of people, Fastened to their faces with duct tape doused in super glue, To ensure, that no matter what I do, they’ll always see me this way.

I noticed that the game prompts more personality besides my own, So I will also add my sisters. The corpses that don’t break windows, The bodies that don’t burn buildings. The memories that are mostly just reasons they weren’t real either. At least not real enough to kill for. Not real enough to make waves in an ocean of blood. Mannequins soaked in red for the sake of a point to prove. Too much man to be woman, too much woman to be respected, A product of unrealistic expectation that states, “You’re only you, if you can be the best version of us, And even then, your hourglass figure remains an omen for how long you’re allowed to live.”

I know they only say I can pick two. I’m supposed to be able to choose which ones deserve to be witnessed. How I wish, that it were as easy for me to do, as it is for other people. The inventory is so high, and so much like me, That I can’t put my finger on the one that gets to exist. I mean, how can I? I am merely a mannequin poet, Crafting art with invisible pain and imaginary grief. Making more paint inside my body, To show the world everything I am not, Everything we are not, and will never be.

So Facebook’s doing a thing. Three Fictional Characters, And I wonder, If I’m playing myself, Will anyone even notice I did?

[anhonestinqueery]

Vote here!!!! You can vote everyday :) http://www.hitlikeagirlcontest.com/18-plus/entry/twoc-poetry-2016

The Hit Like a Girl contest is an international drumming competition and my girlfriend Vita is competing to make history as the first trans woman of color to win! Please check out her video and vote and share!

“I started drumming when I was 14, after a few moments of getting Saturday school for tapping pencils on the desk. Funny right? So anyway, I was in Saturday school, doing the same stuff that got me put there in the first place. The band director hears me tapping, and asks me to become a concert band percussionist for the school.Three years later, I'm auditioning to be a music educator, but I was majoring in the tuba for some reason (my high school band director didn't like drummers). I SUCKED AT IT, and I knew I sucked at it, because my jury grade told me so. I wanted to be a percussionist, a drummer, a rhythmic storyteller, so after 6 auditions and five resounding "no's," I finally worked hard enough to get accepted as a Percussion Performance Major. My teachers have literally traveled the world to learn percussion, and I soaked as much of it up as I could. After I graduated, I worked multiple jobs to make ends meet, and was almost forced to give up music instead. Add to that, the realization that I'm a transgender woman comes up within that same year. I decided that teaching was only part of what I want to do, and I had been doing it for 2 years. It was time for a change, time to get back into it. Percussion called me back every time, and I couldn't stay away.As a result, I made the move to Illinois to begin transitioning, and earn my Master's Degree in Percussion. Unfortunately I only lasted a semester, and I had to find ways to get music back into my life, and survive. YouTube opened the door, as well as some amazing support from the TQPOC (Trans and Queer People of Color) Talent Agency that took a chance on me. In the 13 years I've been playing, music has been my cure for homelessness, hopelessness, overwhelming stress and anxiety, as well as the very idea of existing on this planet as a Black Trans Woman Drummer. Through all of that, I have had music, as well as my mentors and inspirations in my life, when things seemed their worst. I hope to be a mentor to other women and girls like me. I want to show them, that no matter what the world throws at you, there is a chance for us to make a mark on the world, in more ways than one.”

[twocpoetry]

How to Manage the Need For Silence, When It’s Been Used to Abuse You

TW: abuse, mostly emotional, but physical in spots. I don’t know what this will do for people, but I want to offer a take on the idea that “silence is golden.” For some of us, this is not always, or ever the case.

So this week I faced a massive panic attack, one that gives me something called a hemiplegic migraine. The symptoms of what they call an “aura” are very consistent with what a person would deal with when experiencing a stroke: Nausea, headaches, numbness and weakness in the body, and difficulty vocalizing. This has resulted in the need to speak less, and I’ve developed some tactics to manage this:

Music

Tapping rhythms of words on my chest

Breathing exercises.

The hardest and most relevant to the subject: Silence. Pure silence.

The benefits of silence is that the world become a world again, ya know? I’ve witnessed outside very fluently since then. Hearing the wind, the water on the beach only blocks away, all of that. But with it, comes the reality of what I’ve experienced: abusive silence as a means to control me.

I’ve had many partners and lovers do this, even as recently as this year. It usually follows a very similar format: I do something my lover did not like, an explosion of some sort follows. This has either been a fight, a moment of being yelled at consistently while I sit silent and obey, or a partner actually physically assaulting me in public, which put me in my place. After all of these moments, a lover would either leave, usually by car, or stay in front of me and refuse to speak to me at all. It would always be crushing.

After every hand I felt, every word I experienced, every injustice I was dealt, I found myself with all of these feelings, none of which were welcome. So I did what I felt I was supposed to do. I kept them to myself. The unfortunate part would ironically come, not with the consequences of my silence, but the benefits of it. Partners would come home, or come find me, smile, laugh, lay with me intimately, and all would be great again, at least for them. For me, it was a nightmare. My partners found peace in my pain, pain I couldn’t talk about. I processed this as: “They’re so happy! How could I possibly ruin their happiness, by telling them how much they have hurt me?” So I didn’t.

But it would come out, and it would only come out inside of me. It came out in my shaking. It came out in my hatred for myself. It came out in my drinking, my cigarettes, my overall Stockholm Syndrome to my partners’ happiness. The panic attacks came, and they worsened, and worsened. I began to lose sleep, which contributes now to my ever pervasive insomnia, which led to more drinking to sleep myself through moments where I could actually hear myself think my own thoughts.

As I find myself having these headaches on and off, the idea having to speak less, and rely on more means of nonverbal communication is not only frustrating from a practical angle, but it only serves to induce further fear and rationalization that my silence is destined, that I am only meant to be someone who is seen and not heard. While I understand this as a thought that many don’t agree with, I offer this statement for people who are much like me.

For someone like myself, silence is literally violence, and while I’ve learned a very mandatory control over the pace of my thoughts, as we all could stand to do sometimes, I want others like me to know it’s ok. It’s ok to not always be able to handle the quiet, to need background noise, or at least some semblance of that, even in a room where you’re the only one who does. This pain is real, and even though it’s not often thought about, it’s something that needs validated, and so, is validated here. That being said, at some point, it helps to know that just because people aren’t always responding, doesn’t mean they don’t care. It will be important to know that as your life continues to be a lesson in unpacking abuse. 

If you are someone who experiences a person who does not do silence well, a word of advice: different is not bad, it is simply different. It’s important for you to have the space you need, so hopefully you don’t feel the pressure to respond all the time. But the best thing to do is let people find the balance they need, and understand the back story behind a very complicated form of trauma that is in more people than is probably discussed.

On both sides, patience, time, and no pun intended, communication, is super important when being involved with each other, either intimately or otherwise. Be aware of how you hold and take space, and it’s totally possible for growth and healing to happen in this way. Peace.

[twocpoetry]

People I Felt on The Walk Home

I challenged my friend, That if I got 5 awkward stares on the walk home from his house, I’d tell him about it. …..There were at least 10. But these are the ones I remember.

8.  You were visibly angry with what you witnessed, And because of this, I am as afraid of you as the consequences of 5’s gaze. Please don’t kill me, I’m almost home, and this poem is not written yet.

7.  You started at my feet, Then moved all the way up my existence in front of you. Became uninterested, and then continued your delivery. I hope they tip you well.

6.  I love your head wrap, Sorry you didn’t like my dress, Cause I was hoping that we could have that moment together as Black women. Anyway, enjoy the food. I’ve never eaten there but I hear it’s good.

5.  You looked at me the way 2 did, but for a different reason. Maybe you don’t know this, But I live in this neighborhood, and I mean you no harm by existing. Please don’t call the police. I want to die today, but not by their hands, And I swore to my friends I’d try to stay alive this month.

4. You are the aesthetic opposite of 2. 2 femmes walking side by side and smiling at each other, You’re giving off major stud vibes and I dig it. Sorry you felt you had to grab her hand because I walked by. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought you were cool.

3.  You were with who I assume was your family, Enjoying a lollipop, rocking back and forth, and being comforted. My body confuses you. This is something about my body we share.

2.  You and stereotypical white cisgender gay boyfriend. Ripped muscles, rainbow tank top and an overcompensating haircut. I don’t want your man. If I did, you wouldn’t have walked home with him.

1. You told me dress was pretty. You were the only who looked at me this way. Thank you.

[twocpoetry]

I Can’t Tell You

I can’t tell you what it means, To know that I can never plant flowers in the hearts of people, Fast enough to watch them grow into ones I place on graves. I am not prepared to give another eulogy, Because I have not had time to finish writing the others.

I can’t tell you what it means, To know that getting older is a luxury for us. I count the days like breaths in a tank of oxygen run low. I read the headlines like I never stopped. Like there was never a break between bodies, Because there never was.

I can’t tell you what it means, To look at my poetry of recently and see nothing but obituaries, Cries for help muffle themselves into computer keys, Lamentations find their way into lyrics of the same song, One I’ll never be able to stop writing, Because we never seem to stop being murdered. The same blood-soaked melody leaking into my vocal cords, And then pouring out of me like a familiar friend you can’t block.

I can’t tell you what it means, To know that I’ll write this poem again someday. Probably someday soon. I’ll drink the blood of my people, Regurgitate it onto a piece of paper, Only to never perform it because the heart can’t take as much death as the hands can. My eyes looking for words in the back of my mind, Because my fingers can’t stop burying people like me.

I carry Black ink in them like soil, I hold bodies like syllables, I scream their names, and no words ever leave my mouth. A mouth wide open, that has so much to say, But can’t tell you anything new. Can’t tell you anything you haven’t heard before. Can’t tell you anything that doesn’t sound the same. Stop killing us on repeat, The broken record that no one ever takes home. The song that no one sings when a Black Trans Body wrote the lyrics. A melody, invisible, even post mortem.

I can’t tell you what it means, Because I’ve already told you. And it hasn’t meant anything, No matter how many times, or ways, it’s already been said.

[twocpoetry]

My Existence Is A Construct

My existence, is a construct. And it begins to make sense the more I place this phrase on the tip of my tongue.

My existence, is a construct. Must be why it is so easy to deny. My body is wrapped in paranoia and dysphoria, Because people look at me with disbelief, The first, second, and third time. They lay eyes upon me like a dinosaur that made it out of a comet crash, To evolve into an imaginary friend, One that the adults have more questions for than the children. I move through a fantasy improv comedy show, Where my behaviors never change, But people continue to develop varying versions of me in their heads. Some will find me funny, others will find me an appalling error. They decide to use the blood of my sisters for ink to label me fake, And then erase me from the record, Cause only a woman like me can be so dangerous and so nonexistent all at once.

My existence is a construct all at once. Must be why it is difficult to keep on me. Nowadays I witness my existence on people I had never met before. It is a series of trends, a cultural ATM, Parts of me plastered onto bodies of those who would scream at oppression, Until they’re being accused of carrying it on their bodies like a stereotype. Then my existence is only rhetorical, One that I can only free myself from by devaluing parts of me, As nothing more than a passing phase. Nothing more than a marketing campaign. They carry my complexion in aerosol cans and tanning booths, Mold the hair that society labels as unclean into a conversation starter. Take my transgender body and all it’s damages, And win Oscars with it. Turn the language that raised me in the projects, Into the butt of a joke disguised as cultural appreciation, And then sell it back to me for twice the price, but half the worth, Only to remove it when it’s something that can get them shot. Cause as the saying goes, Everybody wanna be a nigga, until it’s time to be a nigga.

My existence is a construct. That must be why it’s so easy to erase me. The irony of my fear of a cop faking danger as a means to kill me for my own safety. Must be why it’s so easy to see our bodies more like pin cushion than skin, bones, and the word, “no.” Must be why doctors who are trained to save lives, Can’t even recognize Black and Brown trauma until we’re dead. People hear our screams as an alarm to snooze with the weight of an army. Only to prop our bodies in front of cameras as if we’re still alive. Must be why my body is more of a topic to a stranger than my name itself, And those strangers will claim more rights to it than I, As a form of visual aid for their Trans 101 courses they didn’t pay me for.

It is strange to me, That to be someone people do not believe as tangible, Scares them so much. I move through the world a conundrum, Something that cannot be understood without effort, And so, cannot be controlled. So I move through the world, a series of things unreal. Until it is either time, to borrow them, or bury them.

[twocpoetry]

The One-Sided Messengers

We are the one-sided messengers, The Black Lives that never get riots, But are always making sure people respect them, And are even present for them.

We are the one-sided messengers, Existing both on the front lines and the back burner. Protecting the legacies, Of those who won’t even put our real names in stories about how they killed us.

We are the one-sided messengers, Straddling the worlds of loving our people, And living in fear of them. Our bodies are merely collateral, In this economic exchange of police for activist politics.

We are the one-sided messengers, Those who will watch the videos of our cis brethren dying, In the hopes that we do not lose the empathy they never had for us. Videos that no one ever bothers to record when we are slaughtered.

We are the one-sided messengers. The ones who will boost videos of Black joy, And keep our Black Trans pain to ourselves, Because it is only making people uncomfortable.

We are the one-sided messengers, Organizing movements that are still not meant for us to benefit from, Attending rallies never held in our name, While our Trans elders live off Go Fund Me campaigns, Instead of cisgender solidarity for the shoulders they stood on to make it out alive.

We are the one-sided messengers, Building safe spaces that we are not welcome in, Teaching classes that do not have us in the curriculum, Writing songs that no one will repeat without a cis name attached. Holding hands with our attackers and abusers, As a form of taking what we can get, Because normally those hands are beating us to death, Shooting us in cold blood, Burning our corpses, And then typing posts about how we deserved it.

We are the one-sided messengers, Those that will kill for and die from the same Black hands that raise fists in the name of liberation.

We are the one-sided messengers, Misgendered, under-represented, Slaves to a system that is ironically built on the premise of dismantling all systems, Still erased, even today.

We are the one-sided messengers… And I fear we always will be.

[twocpoetry]

How Many?

How many times will I write this poem? How many times will I bury my loved ones with a shovel for pen and bloodstained paper? How many times will I have to share photos of them living, In order to counteract the videos of them dying? How many #hashtags? How many tears? How many names will run across my TV screen, Waving in transit to the afterlife? How many bodies will be traded for news coverage? How many bodies won’t be valued for news coverage? How many schools will be traded for prisons that we’ll live in from the womb? How many terrorist attacks played off as white misguided kids, Who’s trauma is only relevant because their skin tone is? How many have we missed because the names are wrong? Because the camera wasn’t rolling? Because the life didn’t matter? How many smiles stolen? How many families broken? How many people will take their own lives, Because they couldn’t live truthfully without pain, Only to be labeled as cowards for not wanting to live in a world that hates them? How many times will we hear more about what they were wearing, drinking, doing, Than what their attackers did to them, and how wrong it was, no matter what the factors were? How many deaths erased for the sake of reviews and reblogs? Shit, how many people even bothered to notice this time? How many days will we wake up in a sweat, Covered in bullet-style raindrops that we wish the guns were loaded with instead? How many days will we have to grip the door handle of our homes like it’s the last time it will happen? How many deportations of people who were invited here by us in the first place? How many of those deported will be abused in prison before it happens? How many lies will our government hide for the sake of agendas that don’t protect us? How many more bombs will we drop on civilians that will later be launched as fireworks in the name of “Independence?” How many people will read this poem and tell me it’s all in my head, When in reality it’s all over my monitors? On every screen I have to view oppression in HD? How many this year? How many last year? How many next year and the year after because it never seems to stop? How many candles lit like mourning? How many filters made like appropriation? How many hate letters for wanting to live longer than we do? How many grants did they write with our blood this year? How many weeks between killings? How many days between killings? How many hours between killings? Are there any hours left anymore? How many of our own will we have to bury before their time? And better yet, Why hasn’t how many become too many?

[twocpoetry]

Unpopular Opinion: I’m Terrified of Cis-Black Men

Unpopular Opinion: I’m Terrified of Cis Black Men

I don’t really know how this article works context-wise, without a story to back up my thoughts on the matter. So STORY TIME!

So I’m in DC, walking to my sister Venus’ house after the semi-finals of a poetry slam. I asked a friend to come with me, cause it was late, and I didn’t wanna walk alone. And that’s when I heard it. Loud, clear deliberate and violent.

“Hey yo, you deserve to be slapped with a bullet!”

“You big ass blister!”

“Fucking Faggot!”

It hurt the most because of the faces. Faces of men I put my life on the line to protect, now threatening to kill me on a street full of people. I’d be lying if I told you this was the first time that this has happened to me. Last year in the same city, I had a man inappropriately touching me and then clock me as Trans at a burger joint. The constant discussions of my body parts right in front of me, on the train, as if I’m not even there to defend myself. But I’m too scared to defend myself. I’m always too scared.

I’m scared because I’m a Black Trans Woman who watches her sisters get killed on the news, seemingly twice as fast every year, by men who look, sound, and move like us. I’m scared because Jessica Hampton, a Black Cis-Woman, was stabbed to death on the same Red Line that’s down the street from my house, because she said no. I’m scared because I see comments from Cis-Black Men, justifying the murder of Black Trans Femmes as justice for lying to them about “what we really are.” I’m scared, because this literally happens around the world. I’m scared, because if I don’t provide information outside of personal experiences, it’s likely I will be written off as racist, and someone who hates her own. And as much as I’m fighting the inclination to label all Cis-Black Men as dangerous, because it’s a part of the problem…… I often find myself stuck as to how to proceed.

We know for a fact, that white supremacy’s goal is to turn as many of us against each other as possible. As a result, some of us, especially Black Trans Femmes, don’t always go home. I at one point intended to move back to my hometown, and had to spend more time wondering about the bodies of girls like me being found in rivers, in ditches, and flat out being attacked in public. Unfortunately, there’s an imposed culture in our community, that shames women and femmes like me for existing. I know this from experience as well. Before I came out, I would see Black Trans femmes walking through buildings, down the the streets, to and away from clubs, and the result was always the same: violence, either physical or verbal, and sometimes both. This is a tactic of white supremacy that makes us view only a certain type of Black person as valid, leaving the rest of us in a position that quite literally puts our lives at risks, and creates an aspiration to a hyper masculine behavior, that we’ve been forced to digest from birth. We’ve been seen as violent people incapable of understanding and compassion, because that makes us easier to manipulate and remove once we begin to believe otherwise. This is not us by nature, but society has made this a norm for us, and it needs to be addressed in a way that will no longer put Black Femmes in danger.

Is there a way to criticize the internalized violence in Black-Cis men, without labeling them wholly as violent, and being afraid to be near them, because I’ve been met with violence so often? I know that there is a larger, more dangerous force at work, that causes our Black Men of any and all ages (and I’ve experienced this first hand) to believe that Black Cis and Trans Women and Femmes are either a problem that needs correcting, or property that needs controlled. This is a white supremacist, Anglo Saxon, hyper masculine idea, one that takes shape in the form of Hoteps and Chasers alike, and everything in-between. I know that this is the deeper root of the evil, but there’s something in me that is running out of hope that I’m safe.

I don’t want to be a part of white supremacy’s intentions. There is no benefit for me or anyone else, to have a conversation about involving police in anything that we do as Black People, nor do I fuck with them for anyone else’s benefit. I just wanna know, an honest question, needing an honest answer. Is there any way to speak out against the violence against Black Femmes that is portrayed by our Brothers, without throwing them under the grip of oppression to do so? And if so, what’s the move? What’s worked for others in the past? Cause the point is for as many of us to be free as possible, and I won’t abandon my people because I’m afraid of some of them.

Still….. I’m afraid of them….I am.

[twocpoetry]

Hey y'all!

Just wanna let y'all know that the voting for the 2016 Hit Like A Girl Contest starts this week, and can start as early as this afternoon! It's my shot at the finals, and a chance to be the first Black Trans Woman in the World ever to win this competition.

I'd love to make this place in history as a percussionist in this community, and I need your help to do it. Please share this wherever you can! You can vote once a day from now until the 27th. Let's show the world that‪#‎BlackTransGirlsRock‬!!! http://www.hitlikeagirlcontest.com/18-pl…/…/twoc-poetry-2016

[twocpoetry]

Revolution Ain’t: a Poem by Vita E

Revolution don’t look like what some people have tried to paint it. A bunch of happy trees and Bob Ross mountain ranges that we all stand on, Holding hands and singing “Kumbayah” while hierarchy sings “Burn the Witch” This magic is too strong for patriarchy to cast shitty spells on us, But some of us forgot to salt our houses, put that salt into wounds instead, And now carry that iodized internalized hatred into spaces, Instead of creating changes, we added fuel to flames that, Were never meant to do anything but burn us alive.

Revolution ain’t elders paying more attention to their pride than their peers, Letting ego be the one entity you let have space in the room, The eyes of your future being forced to see you as enemy, Calling me, “sister,” when it’s clear you don’t fuck with me like that. The goal of the oppressor personified in your bullshit rhetoric about how, “We started this shit, so you have no opinion.” Please….Spare me the words that I hear from people who’d rather see us dead. We come to you for guidance, for support, for understanding. In our anger, and our confusion, But you’d rather protect your place in the very game we’re supposed to be dismantling, Just cause you have the high score already….. What…. think they won’t unplug you too? Better take the red pill and wake the fuck up.

Revolution ain’t spending money on lavish hotels and open bars, While the future sleeps on the streets two blacks, I mean, two blocks away. It’s not inviting people who persecute people to receive praise for being the exception. While their armies raid our homes, kill their people, treat our Palestinian family as POWS. But instead of exposing their injustices, they were invited here. Here under the full protection of organizations that received hundreds of dollars a head, To take our ideas and sell them back to us later, likely for twice what we paid to give them away.

Revolution ain’t walking around the world like you own it, Claiming you’re just trying to save it, And receiving grants for casualties. Revolution ain’t silencing people you should be listening to, Because you’d rather hear the sound of your own voice. Revolution ain’t showing up to protests to call us oppressors, While the real enemy sits in a conference room protected. But it’s all good, cause our anger is your economy, Hatred is your hotel room cost, Chains are your pocket change, But I won’t be buying your bullshit, not from none of you. I’m tired of paying for it with pain, and the pain of our people. My revolution and the revolution of our people, all of our people… …..will be free.