mixture poem

here you are
with a new patch of grass
with a new plane of ass
with a

your front body splashes
anew yes, what information
to trust from what drug trip,
you were always so susceptible
to power of suggestion

the one that told you
you would never make it
past your brother's perception
trapped in a twinship,
impossible to reign out

that daddy would always win
no matter what, that the 
monolith man could not 
be overcome

when for years
you were convinced
you were a lesbian,
or might be-- in love 
with a man, living with
how you would finger flowers
to try and get a feel
for what that sex
might be like

a thousand breakthroughs
and never an end point
being at "cats" with elena
overly stoned and seething
feeling the man behind us,
cursing our bobbing heads
and kissing, getting a sense
of gay-bashing-- this vision
that though the patriarchal 
dominated for years, 
for centuries-- the alt energy
had been so long brewing
was in a ferocious well
to counter

the time you fucked
that dude on tour
and wished you didn't
let him enter you,
better without,
you felt all gangly
with him the next morning
said you felt like a boy,
and he didn't get it

these gradations of self
separated-- dichotomy
holding what has been fluid
and flourished, and what has 
been kept underground,
newly released

to extend one's parameter
is not to shed all the rest, or--
don't throw the baby
our with the bathwater, or--
don't mythologize in a way
that forgets the other truths,
how dearly we want for 
one answer

the swinging bouquet
doesn't get it,
and here we are
with multiple names
and genders 
and genitals
doing our best
to make it in the world
brain snapping off
from a thousand synapses
what would it be like
if all boundaries melted
(in our own internalized
sense of possibility)
and nothing was wrong
and all could be?

this query, this feeling
-scape, a multiplicitous
rendition, one at the fore
-front now, then another
so finally you are 
your brother, not identical
but of his domain, 
getting to sense it

i was not a boy
did not skateboard
with the others,
did not play video games
or rate the girls 
from 1-10,
rather painted my nails
and shaved my legs
with great routine
writing my crushes
hundred page love letters
in purple felt tipped pen

the mixture of gay
and girl abides, jean genet
tells the interviewer
he likes the word mixture
(the person asking questions,
and so he uses it)
you cannot removed
an ingredient that was true

to be free of trying to label
and understand myself
from a gendered lens,
to eradicate it
to let all amalgamations be
and be ok with it,
to recognize the shifting nature

a twin's journey
in thoroughly unveiling
what was hidden,
in setting free
what one was told
one wasn't

if boy turf
doesn't ax the girl
just enhances 
the whole

if being pretty
is no longer a requisite
for being
if externalization
can happen 
in so many different ways
if shape-shifting is allowed
then who are we?
how do we relate?
what is sung?

no elixir to do the trick
no final reading or conclusion
no one word answer,
we move through the gradations
of tone and interpretation

i am not betraying myself
to recognize this other,
it's all about
how to integrate
and what if there was
no one how
and no one way
and the mixture got to live
as it does, as it did
and the melding was
organically led
and the brain got to be
relieved of hyper-obsession
and then men could think
what they do, and the people
could expect what they do
and i could look
how i do
and none of it could matter
because i am