Author: Lisa Marie

Bisexual

I am a Christian. I am happily married to the man of my dreams. And I am bi.

I have never acted on this impulse, first because of my religious beliefs, secondly because of the sanctity of my marriage.

However, I am attracted to men and women. Strongly, to both. Just to clarify, I never look at my friends that way, so if we are friends just know I am not talking about you.

For a long time I would not even tell my husband about this. When I finally did, nervously, he said he figured as much. That relieved me and startled me. Was it that obvious? I wanted to keep it private, keep it secret.

Since then it turns out that I have been able to keep it hidden. My mother suspected something when she read a poem I wrote, but that’s it.

We live in a culture (in the United States) where various sexualities are accepted and even celebrated. As a Christian though, I simply cannot celebrate. I accept myself. It is not a sin to be bisexual, only to act on it. This is just how I am wired. I write poetry about it because I love beauty, and it gives me an outlet to express that part of myself without acting it out. But I cannot celebrate it.

It feels both nerve wracking and freeing to write this. I have been tired of locking away a part of myself, and denying part of my creative expression, out of shame or fear. I am who I am, and there should be a place for me in this culture, both as a bisexual and a bisexual Christian in particular.

More on this subject to come. I have many thoughts.

Primal

 

Her legs are incendiary.
Though I travel 100 miles,
Dragging the point of myself
Through broken glass,
She watches my natural fullness like
A leopard a pattern in the grass.

Hunt my beastful blush,
Lick the harmony of my breasts.

What can she sing with her lips
Pursed in kiss?

Her waist the willfulness of tornadoes,
Her soft belly bread
Baked in the Parisian dawn.

It is the ritual of her hands hunting me,
The reminds me that pleasure rhymes
With guilt.

In an Office of Glass

A careful umbrella

channels the rain

like tv reception.

 

I am a receptionist in an office of glass.

See this phone?

This is my phone.

There are many like it,

but this one is mine.

 

Operator,

transfer me to God please.

 

I field grape juice flavored calls

From cathedrals.

Wine about everything.

SPLASH!

Beneath the crystalline floor,

an alien jumps into the pool.

Foreign spirits gather in the lobby.

 

Operator,

Take me home.

Journaling, Virginia, Diet

I have been neglecting my darling little blog because I have gotten so invested in paper journaling. Currently I keep one journal to record my daily mood, what I’m reading, a prayer, what I’m grateful for, and my goals for the day. I then write a diary entry in that journal. Then I have a productivity journal where I keep track of other goals for the day and the amount of time it takes me to achieve them, and I track my weekly goals in there as well. Then I have a journal that I am writing my hand written poetry in. I still write a lot of poetry on my phone, but I decided that it opened up different avenues of creativity in my mind to do some of my writing by hand. I have yet another Journal where I write what the Word has said to my spirit. I have been practicing Lectio Divina. After I spend time letting the Living Word of God speak to me, I write down what I have learned and reflect.

So I am keeping four journals and I just bought another so I might start writing more. I just haven’t decided what to write about. I have become rather obsessed with the handwritten. This is kind of ironic since I have such abnormally terrible handwriting. I’ve really been making an effort to improve it though, or if I can’t improve it to at least write slow enough that what I write is legible.

I need to get back into blogging though. I really love my little corner of the internet and I need to post more poetry and snippets of my daily life.

On Wednesday, in the dark hours of the morning, Angelica and I will be flying to Virginia to visit my parents in Virginia Beach. Hopefully my sister will be able to come down from Richmond to spend some time with us as well. We will be there for 2 weeks. It’s definitely exciting, as we have not seen them since we moved here at the end of February. It will be so nice to go to the beach with my mom and the movies with my dad. Angelica is super excited. I just hope she handles the traveling well. She has never flown before. And I am somewhat apprehensive about flying on my own with a child. Craig cannot go on this trip.

I will really miss Craig. I never go anywhere without him. He is my best friend. It will be hard to not see him for 2 weeks. Of course with deployment I have gone 7 months without seeing him, but once he’s home I very quickly get used to having him around. Being apart for any reason is always an adjustment. But I still can’t wait to go see my family.

I don’t want to jinx it, and if I don’t want to lose my progress I’m going to have to be extremely strict on this visit with my family, but I have been on a diet for about 2 months. Maybe a little less. And I have lost 30 lbs. I really want to keep it up. And despite getting by on much less food than I usually do I still have energy and I feel pretty good.

I just got some new poetry and some new science fiction, so I have a lot of great stuff to read. I have a couple of more books in the mail but they are sold by third-party sellers so I’m not sure when I will get them. Hopefully tomorrow, as I would like a full range of choices as to what book to bring on the trip. I doubt I’ll have very much time where I want to sit down and read since I’ll be doing a lot with my family, but I do like to unwind with a good book in the evening sometimes. Well, all the time.

Today I got a new Bible in the mail. I ordered it to have a Bible to bring on the trip. I have a beautiful rainbow Bible that will always be my favorite, but it’s so special to me that I don’t want to risk it getting damaged by traveling with it, and besides that it’s kind of big and I was hoping for something smaller. But I must have misread the website because I thought that this new Bible would be much smaller than it is. It’s a really nice Bible with commentary in it for women and all sorts of notes at the bottom giving information about different things. I’ve been perusing it today and I like it. But it is definitely not any smaller to bring on the trip. If I can somehow fit it into our cramped suitcase or our cramped backpack I will. I really want to have a Bible with me and my rainbow Bible is just too special, and I like this women’s Bible too. But it is just not that small. I’ll have to see what I can do. Maybe I’ll have to bring one of my little devotionals instead. They do have Bible verses and interesting commentary. I ordered this Bible though for the trip, so I hope I can fit it.

A Viewer

Festive and feral,

I nuzzle a daisy.

 

The sun is dizzy in the revolving door.

 

The penguin in the lobby

points at me petulantly,

but I am not accepting discipline today.

 

In this gun scented,

Wednesday wearing

terrarium,

stones lurch,

lungs pulsate,

lizards lounge on the verdant moss.

 

What am I waiting for?

What I have always longed for –

a viewer.

Excitement

 

I am a very passionate person, in every sense of the word. And one of the things that excites me is bright color. The perfect neon of these flowers, the plant of which I named Sunshine, brought me bliss. I love art for the colors. Line is secondary to me. I like bright, rainbow colors. I love the blending and the contrast between them.

I’ve discovered a course on Coursera that shows how abstract painters make their paintings. I am going to watch it in the next day or two to learn some tricks. I’ll never be a great painter, or even a good one, but I miss playing with color and texture. I saw a painting at the museum Craig and I went to the other week that looked like it was made out of cake frosting. That is the kind of texture and weight I want my paintings to have. I want to learn how to make the colors tango together.

I am passionate in other ways too. Some of my poems are erotic. Very erotic.  Not all of my poems of course. I don’t have a completely one track mind. But in all my writing there is a passion for sex or for color or for the moodscape of the mind, for words and their immense charms.

My passion for learning started when I was very young. As a kid, I used to accompany my mother to her university and sit in the library reading academic journals while she was taking classes. I consume nonfiction rapidly. I love history, culture, art history, psychology, sociology, faith, and more.

Poetry and art consume me. Desire consumes me. Knowledge fills me without satiating me.

Life is just too short. I don’t think I’ll ever have the time to learn everything I want to learn, write everything in my head that longs to be written, to create everything that makes my eyes itch.

My inspiration and creativity wax and wane, and right now they are high. I need to keep learning new things, start painting, write more.

Spirits

The spirits wash

their aeon voices in my sink.

Dizzy neon fish wiggle

through the water.

I am naked.

This is not a good thing.

My clothes are floating in the

vast oxygen above me.

I’ve been breathing bare black

for so long that my blood

is burning obsidian.

Desire –

air,

aria,

atlas,

able.

My spirit waiting impatiently

to birth through my stormy eyes

and gain a voice.