The Living Testament of Roy Antonio Jones III: A Eulogy

To my brothers and my sisters and my cousins in-between
To those of us who are tired of being ghosts
Unheard … unseen
Listen close and be uplifted
We have been …sifted
By the gods
We are… the gender…gifted

But lest I go astray - Let me just say
…Just for today (that)
This is my intention
To engage you in an intervention

To do so let me tell you ‘bout a case beyond prevention

Roy Antonio Jones the Third was killed
On August First
This year - The birth
Certificate said that he was born a boy
And I don’t know if that is true or not
Trans or not… that’s not
The point
That’s not my joint

South Hampton in New York - On a reserve
This child got more than anyone deserves

Sometimes the force from a back hand
Takes a year or two or more to land
Sometimes twenty years or more have passed
Before we feel the full force of that blast
Sometimes we face a damn-near fatal bullet
Long since we saw the trigger finger pull it

(But)
Roy Antonio Jones the Third did not have to wait so long
Roy Antonio Jones the Third
Born of the Shinnecock Indian Nation

Was being cared for by a certain
Pedro Jones (a man of no relation)

On August First - Late afternoon
Pedro grabbed the child by the neck
Strangled and
Then beat the child to death
“I was trying to make him act more like a boy…
The murderer said

“Instead … of like a little girl…”
That’s what the perpetrator told
The cops
As to why he didn’t stop…

Why he killed a child
Who was barely
Six… teen … Months …Old
A toddler who was less than two

For heaven’s sake
You can’t lay claim to any guilt or gender
At that tiny… tender age
A life so brief

…Such grief
That … I couldn’t even feel my outrage
I’ve seen too much of this to be surprised
Not least of which
Through my own ears and eyes

I’ve heard those words thrown at poor Roy
Why can’t you be - More like a boy?
Don’t you know
That those are not your toys?
It is perverse
For you to love
The things the other sex enjoys

Of course, today I know that those were lies
But they leave marks
All those punches that were thrown
I still own the bruises and the scars

Sometimes the force from a back hand
Took a year or two or more to land
Sometimes twenty years or more had passed
Before I felt the full force of that blast
Sometimes I faced a damn-near fatal bullet
Long since I saw the trigger finger pull it

And though my old abusers were long gone
Insanely I became accomplice to a prior act
Aided and abetted
Vainly brought old harms… into present fact

Discovered that
For me
…There is no difference between attempted homicide
And a suicide… Besides a slight delay in timing
…Nothing much
They’re just the same excepting who’s assigned the blame.

But, I survived the echoed pain I heaped upon myself
Somehow escaped that circular and pointless game
And lived my pride
…I’m never going there again

And then I hear the fateful news
That Roy Antonio Jones the Third
A Child: Has died

And inside my sadness – I struggle to remember to be grateful
I’m alive
And search for sense in innocent and senseless death

…Yet
– In time I search and find
A truth
This truth - and my true aim

I must not bear the burden of a perpetrators’ shame
I must share the absolute foundation of reality
That murder is perverse profanity
That they
Not us are clinically insane

And though they try to get me to confess
That I am mad – By definition of transgendered-ness
I must not buy their crazed mythology
That I am a victim of some strange pathology

Thank you Roy for reminding me to honor our humanity
To value what it means to be humane
Thank you too for reminding me just who is sane
And who is guilty of insanity

And finally for forcing me to face the truth of our own duty
To negate the ugliness of hate
We must embrace the truth of our own beauty

Oddly Woken

A phone call

Did I catch you sleeping?
They Say

Just my morning meditation
I lie

The phone call ended
Now I doze

And
dream of gods

The Music of the Spheres

Someone gave you a book
The Music of the Spheres
You passed it on to me
Here
You said
This is more your cup of tea

You died
And I tried and tried
To read the bloody thing
I only understood
That I was thick
That it had something to do with Pythagoras
And chromatic intervals
And music

I checked the edges
Of the pages
You’d only read the first part
You crafty bugger


Every now and again
I’d pick it up
For a little while
And even in my frustration
Before I set it down again
I’d smile

One day I came upon a bookmark in it
Just a small scrap of paper in it
Your handwriting on it
A single word upon it
Writ clear

My name

A name that I had never heard escape your lips
(You never… ever … said my name)
But you wrote it on a little slip
And left it in a book

Music to my eyes
If not my ears
Perhaps this was the music of the spheres

Bohemian Dry Cleaners

The streets are too well-swept to be considered squalid
Perhaps it tries too hard to be
Bohemian

This clapboard ghetto sat behind
Spadina’s downtown – Chinatown

And it’s sad testament
That recent refugees
Disregard its cardboard seediness
And live elsewhere

Though old, old immigrants
Mainland Portuguese and Azores
Owners of cheese stores
Seem to live
Seamlessly
With new age wiccans, cyber punks
Under-performing performance artists
Under shopping at the
Butchers
Next to Reggae historians
Fishmongers
Milliners
Compassionate cannabis clubs
Hats

Too many bookstores
Too many strident coffee shops
Too many vegetarians
Of the proper sort
The punks who
Are too too polite
So all the grunge looks like it has been dry-cleaned

And if Toronto is New York
Designed by someone Swiss
Then Kensington Market
Is Amsterdam
Without the hookers and the water

Despite its smugness and its neatness
Its well preserved graffiti and its too too tidy soul
And even though it isn’t ugly
I love it anyway

Poetic Polemic

Poetry Lesson
One: Poems are not lessons
Two: There is no two