Scene, 2/24/2013

A cat and a boy laze on the couch, ignoring dirty dishes stacked in three teetering piles atop the dining room table. There are cat-naps to be slept and kitchens to be cleaned, but neither the cat nor the boy wishes to disrupt the lazy ritual of Sunday-afternoon-couch-sitting. The cat peeks out half-lidded eyes and thinks whisker-thoughts while the boy daydreams of black-and-white movies and a dancer he met a few weeks ago.

Light lands warmly on the little brown couch where the cat and the boy half-sleep. Both smile at the secrets they keep within their own pleasant, little thoughts.

many words hide inside the specks that spell hazel in my eyes.  

if i keep them open long enough 

(wrinkles deepen and multiply) 

i think you will coax them out, my gentle love:

you will find these words hiding inside my sight.

transcribe the text you find and teach me what you see.

     i will try to keep my them open long enough 

      for you to tell the story back to me.  

Driving

it's almost christmas.  you are heading to the mountains at mom&dad's.  anxiety presses up against your stomach and lungs.  as you get closer to home, you begin to argue and argue and argue with GOD (or maybe just with your Self) about religion and prophets and feelings and boys-that-you've-decided-you'd-maybe-like-to-spend-nights-with.  you rail on about family and fundraisers and seasonal sayings.  you cry over babies who went to school and didn't go home because some wacko (who probably had some kind of violence perpetrated against him at some point, because you only treat people the way you've been treated) decided to visit their classes and shoot their little lives away.  you ask HIM why? and how? and where are YOU?

you tell HIM you question your faith tradition and practice more and more every day, but you see HIM everywhere, burning in bushes that look like Pretty Girl and Sweet Pea and Handsome Boy; burning in bushes that look like battalions of pink ribbons lining streets to the grave of a little girl named Emilie; burning in a man who buys you waffles&chicken; who lets you laugh without constraint; who tells you how-he's-broken-but-you-just-see-how-he's-breathing-BEAUTIFUL-everywhere-you-look.

there's all of this anger and sadness behind your eyes and you weep with questions you haven't asked for years.  you tell HIM you see HIM mostly in the living things of earth, but sometimes in that-which-cannot-be-seen.  you remind HIM that sometimes things of the earth look like old men in suits who have cloudy vision.  you tell HIM those old men in suits get in your way, block what it is you need to see.  you tell HIM you think your own vision probably isn't any better, but it's yours but it feels right but it feels scary because it feel so goddamn big and true to you.

you say you're marrow-weary of being patient for people who claim to be GOD's chosen.  you demand some Gilead-strength balm!

you pass the stupid, cud-chewing herd of elk that now neighbors the highway, raised for their antlers (and maybe their meat).  maybe those elk know best, knowing nothing better than clumping together when it's cold enough their breaths steam.


answers envelope your accusations and questions like a patriarchal embrace: BE PATIENT.  BELIEVE IN LOVE.

deeply-breathing-BEAUTIFUL-everywhere-you-look, you concede: ok.  you press the pedal down with a little more weight as the truck you drive starts the climb up another hill:  be patient.  believe in love.

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.

Looking Forward

Hope is the thing with feathers

                                      Emily Dickinson

lie with me on lazy Sunday mornings

drape the blanket of your arms and your legs

down the length my arms and my legs

read Neruda while coffee cools, neglected,

in mugs on the nightstand

beside our bed

when i remember that i ought to forget those two and a half weeks

• you, standing next to my piano, pretending to peruse old photos on the wall
• grabbing gas station wine
• running for coffee and Hannaford muffins
• smoothing white sheets and white sand and rubbing white sunscreen into our tanning backs
• letting our waitresses and the coffee girls and that sexy artist believe we were a couple from "The City" on holiday
• your fingers tickling the air when you talk
• acknowleding my stony disappointment when you talked about your four-year-long Him
• hating/needing/loving that final dinner together (thank you, Subway) before your four-year-long Him showed up for the opening of our show
• smiling because you're a bitch-of-a-flirt (but so am i) even when your four-year-long Him is around
• trying to assuage your appalled frustration and eventual fuck-its when she re-clumped/re-staged/re-choreographed your show
• your teeth, lined up like tight soldiers
• your arms
• your red swimming briefs
• you
• being late to "lobstah" dinners and being okay with being tardy
• neither of us stopping the rumors that we were show-mancing each other
• letting the rumors fuel fiery undercurrents
• trying to convince myself to keep a difficult boundary
• you, not letting anyone else sit next to me when we all went to the beach to watch 4th-of-july fireworks
• me, not letting anyone else to sit next to you when we all went to the beach to watch 4th-of-july fireworks
• acknowledging i'd let myself have my first crush without feeling any sort of guilt or fear or self-condemnation
• you, telling me i was the only "option" you would've pursued
• me, wishing i could have talked myself into yielding
• now, glad i didn't yield
• missing you so much more than i expected i would
• arguing with myself each time we've communicated since you left
• looking at some lessons learned
• knowing that even though i tripped in the water and probably broke my foot, this day was one of the best and happiest days of my life.  #becauseiknewyou