Genderqueer Open Mic

[Sammie]

Aw, thanks, all! ^^ You make me wish I did have a way to make this into a real shirt.

Actually, getting your own t-shirt printed is simple these days. I might steal your design and get it printed. I could put 'Bero' at the bottom of the t-shirt for credit? or some other artist-name, if you like.

[Sammie]

Days

There are days

when life gets just to much,

Well, not my life itself as such,

Just my own every day surrender,

To other people’s thought on gender.

And there are days I cannot take,

Days when I don’t want to wake.

Not that I would want to die,

But I’m so tired of this lie.

Every time somebody calls me Miss,

Every time I see two gay boys kiss,

Every time my chest gets in the way,

Every time I wake another day,

To this life where I’m never seen,

As the person who I’ve always been.

Or want to be,

This part of me,

That’s always been underrated,

Hidden away and suffocated,

This body was made to betray,

To bring discomfort and dismay.

The real me lives life as a ghost,

Invisible, a trace at most.

Living in a body, haunted

By these curves I never wanted.

This female body that deceives,

Sobs in sorrow, gaps and heaves.

And when I’m running out of breath,

No, I do not wish for death,

In fact, I intend to survive,

That I may one day be alive,

Become who I was born to be,

That day that the world will see

ME.

[Yanagi]

Everybody out of the water

Everybody out of the

Water

Before the frame

Comes crashing down

Down

Down

And shatters

There's a woman

And a man

As they sit together perched

In a painting

With a golden frame around

Them

You know what they look

Like

You know what they

Mean

I think I'll take a

Can of black paint

And begin to color

Over

Their faces

Their hair and eyes

For nobodies that perfect

I'm going to destroy

The painting of

Normalcy

I'll play God

And create balloon people

Some tall

Some fat

Some short

Some skinny

Some dark

Some light

And all I can hear is the

Couple in the painting

As they

Scream

It makes me happy

To hear that

I want to destroy

Your given stepping stones

Your pink and blue boxes

Your sexual expectancy

And watch it all begin to

Drown as the river

Floods

So

Everybody out of the

Water

Everybody out of the water

Now

You'll be washed away otherwise

I'm going to become

A screw

As I tighten into you

And don't let go

For I'm planning to play with you

To mess with you

To enjoy your reactions

When you see something

You can't understand

You're so used to that

Painting

With its swirls, lines

And dots

As it resurrects a familiar

Pattern

Of a formation that doesn't exist

You still want it though

Oh God

You cling to it

As the dam breaks open

And you're threatened to be

Swept away

I find it amazing that

You can ignore

The fact that you're drowning

You're dying

Under the oppression of the waves

So

Everybody out of the water

I'll take that frame

Apart

And stuff the painting

In the closet

For the artistic value

Is wrong

Is sad

Is completely over rated

I''l take my old, dry

Paints

And apply directly to the

Wall

I'm not an artist though

Not good

Not perfect

I can go beyond the frame though

For there's no limitations

To my sex

My gender

My attraction

My desire

My feelings

So

Get out of the water

So you don't get trampled

Crushes

Shattered

When I rip that painting off the wall

And destroy your

Heterosexual normalicy

[Sammie]

/Yet another self-explanitiory poem

Being my own

I spend half my life,

just running away

Avoiding the stares,

waiting for a new day.

I didn't know if it would come,

I didn't know if it would last.

Just knew I couldn't go on,

I grew up too fast.

I couldn't see what was wrong, so

I just fought with the mirror

Thinking of a better place,

but it never got nearer.

I wanted to dream,

but what dream would that be?

All the dreams in the world,

would do nothing for me.

Knight and riches can't save you,

when the fight is your own.

So you build walls to survive,

try to make it alone.

But there is no way out,

you look in every direction,

Only to be defeated,

by your own reflection.

It's a sad kind of life,

born with the wrong name.

Fighting only yourself,

there is no one to blame.

I've got to shed my skin,

make a brand new start.

It may seem that I'm crazy,

but it's a choice of the heart.

Gotta keep on believing,

though it's hard to explain,

These unusual feelings,

this invisible pain.

I've got one chance now,

to do more than survive,

If I stay this way,

I'll never be alive.

It's a sad sad story,

so I'll write you a letter,

To tell you I won't go down,

to tell you things will be better.

I've got to shed my skin,

make a brand new start.

It may seem that I'm crazy,

but It's a choice of the heart.

It may never be perfect,

I may never be me,

But if I don't try,

I will never be free.

So tell the world who I am,

put an end to the lying,

I'm gonna be my own man,

My own man, or die trying.

[Oka-sama]

I wrote a story! The person in this is agender, by the way, and I had a time similar to theirs, except my family was much more loose about the whole makeup-frilly-clothes thing.

They spent most of their life masquerading as a girl. In fact, they thought they were one when they were young, because everyone told them they were. But they never wanted to play with the other little girls, and they couldn't play with the little boys. They sat there, all alone, waiting for someone to come and play with them.

Then they were around the age when people begin to stop treating them like dress-up dolls. they were able to choose the clothes they wanted. They didn't want to go to the girl's section; all frilly tops and cute things. They gravitated towards the boy's section, and for some reason felt that it represented freedom, when they didn't quite understand the concept of imprisonment.

Then they were a teenager. Their mother didn't let them cut their hair short; she was sick of her 'daughter' being so boyish. They were forced to dress like a woman, wear a bra, shave their legs, wear makeup. And they were miserable. They didn't know why they were miserable, they just were. They looked at their breasts constantly, wishing that they would disappear. Wishing they could have the body image they dreamed of.

And one day, they had it.

They threw out all their clothes, chopped off their hair and flushed it down the drain, scrubbed off the makeup and hid it away so their mother wouldn't find it. They found a roll of ace bandage wrap, and wound it so that there was just a bump there. They tore through their brother's closet, grabbing clothes at random.

And they looked in the mirror and found themselves happier than they ever could have imagined.

It felt right.