The Truth About Teapots

Teapots are known to be somewhat pretentious
C'est vrai
They say

Teapots are known to be somewhat morose
Tea ducts
Tear ducts

Teapots are known to be somewhat contentious
Slake thirst?
Milk first!

Teapots are known to be somewhat grandiose
Tea cups
Mere cups

Least civil of all the cupboard's crockery
They frequently resort to mockery

But some of us

Less easily awed
Can see that they
Are deeply flawed

It isn't just the one who pours
Do not forget
The teacup
Saucer or the spoon
They too are dreamers

Submitted:
Most respectfully yours,

Signed

Your humble creamer

The Graphic Novel: Performed

Jackie's Not a Real Girl: A Play for Voices by Nichola (Nicki) Ward 

Wednesday November 23rd 2011
 Doors Open @ 7:30pm - Curtain at 8pm - Symposium after the performance

 Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
12 Alexander St 416.975.855

The (true) story of a transwoman who is sent to a men's prison. She survives … Almost

Based on a true story, Jackie's not a Real Girl traces the events surrounding the life, imprisonment and death of a transgendered sex trade worker. The narrative is developed by using the testimony of the people around her. These witnesses to her last days include a best friend, a barfly, a cop, a prison warden, a social worker and a John.

The performance lasts 1hour 15 minutes and is performed using minimal staging and back projections from the graphic novel. It's a fantastic performance space (absolutely perfect)... But it is fairly small... so it's probably a good idea to reserve your spot(s) in advance

Tickets are $10 and are available from Buddies' box office 416.975.8555 http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=190969797624067

We Question the Utility of Humility

Even when we almost

Have that taste of grace

Even then we cling to faith

That place of no-face

Numbed by all we’ve done

Scared of standing still

And yet too scared to run

Thought

Humble is for losers

Who have no sense of purpose

Who have no strength of character

Who ought to make demands

Not doing everything the world commands

Of course these are just the lies we need

And this so-called honesty

Provides a basis for security

It’s out of necessity we believe

This painful paradox

All power

Is ours

But suffering

Is brought to us by others

Not bought

With bitter fruit of false desires

See

We needed all of our denials

To hide us from the trials of our truth

To provide ourselves permission

For commission and omission

We heeded

Defects

The broken glass of shattered dreams

Reflects

Solutions that now become the problem

Old tools of wars that now

In peace

Are flaws

To be at peace

Demands a different strength

To be happy

To be human

To be whole

Is not a role

It’s real

  

The Gorgon Rose

I cannot see the coin but I can feel its heft
Blessings be upon you, your grace and excellence
Each modest tribute of a few small pence
Is great to me
But a florin or a crown as alms!
I am bereft of words
As I am of sight

Yet I would be the more so in your debt
If you could also briefly lend me eyes
I seek a statue in this grand square
It is my place of usual and humble work
But in the bustle of this day
I am lost - Misplaced
Of course, I would not touch your hand
Nor dare to touch your sleeve
But my ears can hear the velvet of your cloak
And I would follow that
If you allow

A thousand thanks again
How foolish I
Far-roaming
Lost
Am found by you
A stranger guiding me to my
Sometime familiar place:
To the South West of this galleried Piazza
To be shielded from the Tuscan sun

Do you see it there?
Shaded in the square
Raised slightly from the ground
An open stage
Do you see the graceful columns?
Holding up the heavens

Look up
They say the portico is gracious no?
And see above
The gabled female virtues carved on high
Facaded fabled:
Fortitude
Temperance
Justice
Prudence

Below
Do you see the theatre filled with frozen testament?
Statues
The witnesses of lanced and stolen love
The raped Sabine
The dead rejected Patroclus
The violated Polyxena
The beaten horseman Nessus
A chorus
Of stories
I am companion to these ancient marbles
Thankful for your accompaniment
To be among them

I can tell by the smell of dust and masonry
We are among them
Do they seem titanic?
Heroic
Not mortal like you?
They are both

Mortal in fact - since they
Were killed most surely dead
Heroic in the way
That they were murder'ed

Let me with my guttered

Bronze noble
Fallen slain

The Gorgon Rose

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