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My memoir is about my first five years of transition from female to male. It is not poetry, although many say it is poetic. Most deeply and consistently, I am a poet and have written poetry for over thirty years. Although I have been known to work with punk bands to create primal and seductive alien landscapes of sound, I am not a spoken word poet. Even so, my work is written for the page and then, to be heard and read out loud.
I am a registered treaty Indian in Canada: Blackfoot Confederacy and Kainai (Blood) band - Treaty 7. My mother is from the Blood or Kainai reserve, and my father is from Taos in northern New Mexico. I have been involved in tracking down my father's lineage, my Sephardic ancestors who were chased up north to New Mexico in 1598 and 1694, principally by the Spanish Inquisition, after sojourns in Italy from Spain after the expulsion.
I identify as many things. I am also a transsexual man, having gone through medical transition from female to male beginning in 1989. Primarily, I identify as just a man, but I certainly take on trans as a qualifier and an accurate description of who I am and where I have been.
I have a wonderful loving girlfriend, and a rich and sweet life in San Francisco. I'm a punk at heart, having been involved in the early punk scene, and I will always enjoy anarchy and a kind of visceral rebellion. However, I also have iconoclastic perspectives on many issues, and although I lean far to the left on most issues, whenever I sense that a utopian agenda is circumventing liberty or good, common sense, I have been known to lean to a place that I have not yet defined. That is, I am, in some respects, a civil libertarian, or at least, someone who dislikes being told what to do, say or think. I also dislike identity politics. It is the seventh ring of hell, and I would prefer to not think about it, but I guess, I am a man condemned in some sense. Possibly, we can move beyond those layers, to a fresh and energizing perspective.
I love visionary art and poetry. I am in love with transformation and intensely lived experience. I have been a part of many religious and spiritual paths including Tibetan Buddhism and Afro-Caribbean traditions, American Indian traditions, and an exploration of Judaism.
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