Barefoot

...only he who sees takes off his shoes.
                                                  --Elizabeth Barrett Browning

prophets preach these words are yours.  

     "feeling is not sin.  

      action is transgression.  

      choose the right."  

they say you'll bear down with rut force
but you are quiet, laying down a quick sting.  

i look up and open my mouth, suck in another thick gasp of air.

you know the kind of shitty host i'd make, 

shifting between well-believing woman and doubting thomas. 

you know your precious paul and i share the same fuck-stuck thorn. still, 

you've made yourself malarial,

put your nose in my flesh to insert the little, faith-full germ inside my blood,

forever.

your fire burns everywhere!

in every bush, in trees,
in his pair of eyes, 

     his lips and bones and hairs that edge the back of his hand. 

     

your fire ignites seeds he smiles and i sew--

we're not planting weeds we'll want to pull.

it is written, Same-sex attraction itself is not a sin, but yielding to it is.

it is written, Love one another.
it is written, Batter my heart, three-personed God.

weariness is bending down any old time you flare up to unbuckle my shoes.  

last spring: i began speaking at community forums about LGBTQ issues in northern UT.

last summer: i sat in a kitchen i shared with NYC actors and sobbed as i scrolled through photo after photo of mormons in the SLC pride parade.

a few months ago: i found this image.

last week: i read about another LGBTQ teen suicide in UT.

today: saw the lds church's new web

site on mormons and gays. i think these thoughts: nouns. names. stupid words.

all this warmth and sadness. bandages, knives, cancers, scars. 

tenderness and fear and hope regarding the application of love and the misapplication faith in our community. 

mormonism and LGBTQ : mormonsm vs LGBTQ. depending on the day, GOD, the duality gets to be too much, even for this split-up gemini. i'm both. sometimes, i consider the spiritual history of NIC MAUGHAN and i lose my breath. i want to be neither. but i am both [i.am.in.you.and.you.are.in.me], and because i am both, i empathize; i teach; i learn; i rage; i love. i speak. i do. i grow. 

i become "i am." becoming one? atonement. it isn't ever easy to name what you've borne.

you kill something to let another part live. but death is transformation. blood becomes scab becomes scar-is-stronger-flesh. flesh becomes bare bone. those skulls where brains bounced with ideas.

god's eyes must have some kind of x-ray vision: they look on us all and see the same.love. it's this flesh we've got that keeps us seeing separate. it's flesh that's weak and clings to fear. 

i say fuck fear. embrace love. i see the image at the top of my screen. it's a reminder: look underneath. remember you all have the same blessed name: Child of GOD.