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Dr Robert Lyons

 

2023

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This poem was vocabulary-harvested from a letter I wrote to Dr Lyons’ office in 2017, requesting admission to psychiatric assessment for Gender Dysphoria and approval to begin HRT.

 

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I’ve (let’s call it)

encountered lines

of stimuli,

memories of emotional reactions,

of myself in a sense of makeup’s lack,

in confusion, calming, catatonic:

complicit        rather than legal        with mascul-

       ine

   methods of artistic and cognitive

   self-reference, -visualisation,

   shame, suicide, a sense of impending

   specificity        on the off occa-

         sion

I’ve managed

       as it were

   to repress

         the vocal darkness, the milder frequency,

         the enormous escape, the emotional

         clothing of genitaliaslashbody

         that, in the event of a cancellation,

         I’m

         ,willing to hide        my disgust, my ideals

         my videogames, my artistic

        episodes, and medical beliefs for

         ,the soonest available appointment

         for

         the earliest

         anxiolysis

         nature can do