Wednesday 27 January 2016

Trans* Manifesto - As A

To reduce the process of art by trans* subjects to an expression of identity (and the struggle for acceptance and reconciliation) is to alienate the trans* subject from all forms of struggle aside from the expected and legitimised. The same goes for reductions of this type across culture; the culturing of minorities necessarily passes through phases of assimilation. This is the right of passage to culture. This itself - these manifestos. They are well read because they draw on that well of cultural capital. They are seen to produce that voice. That voice is the manner in which one is expected to speak when one is comissioned to, say, "contribute a piece of writing related to your experience as a transgender or differently gendered individual" or "come and give a talk detailing your journey as a transgender person". The qualification is the same qualification one hears on Question Time; "as the husband of a service woman", "as a nurse" or "as a patriotic member of the highland regiment". That voice nervously addresses itself to its audience with the  shudder of a qualification "as a", and it is guarding itself against the confinement it has already been locked into.

A single glob of advice for the curators of lives and experience is that it is revolutionary enough to simply allow marginalised subjects to speak, and if you dare do such a thing dare it against yourself and the trust of any potential audience by destroying any unconcious perimeter fences you've erected in your callout. That or pay us a lot of money so that we can escape for a bit.

Thursday 21 January 2016

For Sleeping. (anti manifesto, transitional terror).

Last night. I couldn't sleep. I was very glad when I saw you had fallen asleep. And I was very glad when I heard all these eyes closing. Eyes everywhere, falling asleep. And the eyes were over the water. And eye after eye fell silent. And they were counted. and closed, counted and closed, counted abd closed.

**

Sometimes when I need to sleep I listen to someone's voice, and I reach out to whatever my mind can imagine. Last night. It was an audiobook of the last Sherlock Holmes story. At the end of it there is this: "There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.". I lay there and your eyes made a closing sound. And I thought about that bile and all the people it hated. And your eyes snapped back and forth behind their lids: pop, pip,pop,, pip. And then I found an audiobook of Das Kapital. The chapter on the Working Day, where there seemed to be endless floatillas of passages describig women of different ages compacted into agonies and boxes, working themselves dead. No. Not that. Snapping eyes. Being worked to death. Only I wasn't hearing it. It was in my dreams. My eyes had gone. Every dream was thousands of bodies crushed and stamped together. All of us writhing and twitching. Eyes bolt open. It's raining. I don't want to walk with you alone by the sea.

*******

Sometimes the sun is there

when you wake up it goes
into your eyes

a jar of water
a helpless moan  The clamour
is disgusting

you move through
the stations
                      ,  filth

read of it

lie there

not speaking

                        whilst
your failings
gloated

                        whilst
siren, flea

shut up. The sun, the sun
never say it

foil
shut up.

Constant clamour.

I become ruthless, depthcharge

heretical blame
chard of flags.

Then go alone
into the sun.

                         No.

I do not want to walk through this door to stay inside that door to remain out here between them I do not want to have to move I want to see no one I want to be alone I want to see anyone everyone I want my time taken or given back I hate the cold and the heat the scabs and ridges wrists wrists everywhere are wrists I want something back something gone no returning no extending no doors and every door. Sick of sick of what take me away take back my time my agency I want it gone // was born in the wrong body the wrong world its climates can not drop out of. What is the i-body, wait.

& when I am told I have
no enemies something
happens to my blood. My mind.
Surround me
and celebrate
what is there to
do to celebrate.

The broken voices, Jesus...

Friday 15 January 2016

A Hex, on Social Justice or Another Trans* Manifesto

I've been thinking about the term "social justice", and about divisions and parting,
and about Antiochus IV

Sometimes things seem to fall into your hands, and it isn't a comfortable feeling. Just like this term "social justice", which is chiming in my ears. And thinking of all the magnificent things that are done in the name of justice. The Bulger trial,
Hussein, Fifa, enforced Helenism, the Patriarchs of Triton, the democratic consistency of the Empires, the harmony of the two genders, the two genders etc. Oh yes, and of course
splitting. Principalities. I'm being lost and easy. But there are very few spaces for negotiation. And none of them are safe. If someone tells you that you are entering
a safe space
they might as well be tying a thread around your root around a metal rod and you might just as well put a knife into their face. The introduction of a safe space
has a mirror call it an asylum or a school and you are left there, afraid, and most of the people there are thoroughly kind and good they're going
to protect you. Justice, sanctioning container. Law, begin a hymn to my god I don't want allies
I want accomplices.
I said when I was hungry;
Her sandals caught his eyes
her beauty captured his mind
and the sword slashed his neck.

And we will equalise our
we'll horizontal
our we'll level out the
enacting justice on our enemies. Child molesters, make a warning, abusers, make a warning, trans*phobes, make a warning, IV? A simplified a limb, those who have not
will I be allowed to understand
you warlords of social justice
reconfigured tankies and therapists Let all your Creation serve you.



(I don't want allies. I want accomplices).