Trans Manifesto - Third Formal Rendition

Bones belong in the ground. Bones belong in the ground.

I am from the past; the future has neglected you.

A reaction against identity politics is a symptom of being kettled. A noise of contrary energies. And what it means to fulfil all of your dialogues as a politics of identity is to kettle oneself. No. Not that. What I have done in a few practices of negation is essentially grass myself up. Just as intimacies of the body neglect other parts of the body: Yes in my politics I am not born in the wrong body. Yes in the established world of gender I find my body terrifying. Body and voice and mode. Yes I resist. Yes I fail. Yes this is an internal politics. Yes this is the individual. These are my tracts of affirmation. Yes this is still a jail. Yes I have never been killed in jail. Yes I cannot imagine it. Yes I do. Yes our feelings are not mutual. Yes, you are an enemy of mine. Yes the conditions are speculative. My voice, a revolting chain of lesser evil.

Bones belong in the ground.

And so we go sleeping. And so there is no action. And so you call me a boy. And so I, the unspecified order. ;;;, ,, , burying your last words with your body in the ground. An eccentric perversion. A mite.

If there were a sound
blitzing through the air
it is not yet the sound
of an entire failure.

Some Circles

There's a madness to this, and that's not a word
I'm comfortable to make

heaves it off you takes in your
no I will I must listen distractedly moving
back, back and across

regularity
everywhere I go for you
retrace the circles. Say you've seen things
had to hold back your eyes hold them tight shut say fuck off to the twilight and sunset
you are less dead than I am
my bones are compressing
I am going around and around in circles
and don't mind. Stay very still.

****

o cherished vacant. Get to the whizz of it give me something. Company. Eat. Usurp compassion there isn't it's not there in there is a gut a wall in a hole a layer a dead chrome of dope me spasm the these voices now I know what you mean about that fucking song now I want all of their voices ended. Trance the edge of Will is a
No is a
Block is Block is a wound.

**

who is it who speaks like that one point I thought it was everyone else now I am yeah sure certainty is for shits like us embrace the infinite embrace disorder no that it isn't true change your handling of the situation was inapprop ri r i I are not the i-body i-am-is-institute destroy me generalised hatred a mountain of contrary energies.

And.

There's nothing unlike not sleeping everything is similar to it everything I can see you can see is similar flying is similar cars is similar no
no that's a joke and fuck you I don't
have a body I have seven heads each head has nine eyes each eye has a mouth filled with sockets for eyes, each mouth of sockdts will follow the traitors home and take their eyes I without a body will curate the movements of the eyeless traitors. They will go faster and faster, spoiling the ground they left him there. Quite still. Such a still night

stretching forever like an eye

lay there for three days. Began to smell. I cannot call him. His eyes, they're as wet leather. No. Not quite that. Something left I can't describe. Perhaps you moved the chin. Made words appear. Perhaps I should move his chin, but the smell, I imagine, or if it just hung there open the discoloured tongue unfolded, resting there. Stuck there. Burn out my eyes. Electrolysis the eyes.

It is not a political statement,

this crowding.

..People are feeling under
valued. There is a loud confusion of hands. Sweep away the webs. What
is it we say now? Mist or exotic or it or them or she or he. What correct infliction, what choice torture. When the sound of growing is in the air. The fucking wind outside. Nothing can take us
Nothing.

              Passed.came passed.

Spreading a Rumour

Whatever you do don't wake up the river
cuts and buffetts the soul. Go across

don't let your eyes fall open with a bang
snap your nostrils shut. A wedding.

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.

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...

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).

Against Transition - A Trans* Manifesto

In total darkness or in a room that is merely devoid of light for hours and hours repeating the same actions over and over again, unable to detach the interior from the exterior, imagining that you were originally hollow: a hollow body waiting for an object or spirit to come and live in that hollow. These are some coping strategies. Over and over again without a shred of light, moving up and down the walls, performing the same abstractions as if they were concrete. It is not that we hate you it is that we have moved away. It is that we question your use of the word 'agency' and 'choice', it is that we can't work out whether your theology is that of Calvin, Arminius or Molina. And we have our own dark night to walk through and we are understandably quite afraid.

 

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

 

I spoke to a queer on Sunday. I bent down to rub the spit and grit from her head. She said it isn't out of hatred or even apathy, I'm just not sure I want to come to the altar and watch you and your husband do whatever kind of strange ritual it is that I am historically excluded from or worse, forced into. Call it my small act of rebellion. I screamed at her for hours how frantically you may emulate our disorder how never before have things been so I snarled progressive. How you could join yourself to your hip I became very angry and began to spit and kick.

 

 

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\////\/\/\/\/\\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\///\/\//\\\/\/\//\/\//\//\/\/\/\////\/\/\\\/\\//

 

 

We don't have much left to say on these issues. Everyone's been pushed into such shitty counter-rhythms it's basically useless trying to argue. Just this, just remember this, baby, it isn't a transition it's a fucking apocalypse. So sorry to cause you so much discomfort. 

*

for a gun, an abortion

for a scan, a lathe

for a pine, fly agaric

for a knot, anew rage.