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 Nov 2014 Stephanie
Ann M Johnson
Just an ordinary day
   doing things in an ordinary way
              tell you came along
                     Now I feel like singing a song
                        You made my otherwise ordinary day
                            Extraordinary in everyway
I dedicate this poem to my friends both near and on Hello Poetry
Who with their words and messages and presence make an otherwise
ordinary day an Extraordinary day.
 Nov 2014 Stephanie
Reece
Words meander alabaster wanderers no rhythm for the panderer
Poetic evangelists sliding on the bannister, siding with a barrister
Space flown canister or crushing apples after Alistair
Prose left with the carrier, roses left in the carriages
Verse burst from the hearse serenade the ears and it'll carry ya
The skies are full of lies from the savages and the miracles
of marriages
But this disparages the ties between the higher dyes of oranges
These tobacco stained nostalgia skies are going away someday
to read the words of de Vries, mystique of poetic compromise
The only poems worth reading are the ones behind her eyes
 Oct 2014 Stephanie
bones
She's an alphabet artist
she paints in words,

from a palette of adjectives,
nouns and verbs,

the landscape she finds
in the folds of her mind

she exhibits in volumes of verse.
My hands are shaking,
The smile is no longer faking,
Sweaty after a realization of my dark lungs,
No longer caving to drown the the butterfly chained to a ball and chain in my gut,
I put down the bottle and pick up my sneaks,
Perspiration leaks,
As I wheeze,
The butterfly is set free,
And I feel like for the first time i can taste the breeze,
Shakey knees,
And a new song to sing,
Grabbing the new beat,
So I take off my shoes,
Step inside the fresh door,
Starting again with a smirking core,
With my hands that won't stop shaking,
And a smile I'm no longer faking.
Putting down the bottle and putting on a new song and some basketball shorts

Not one of my best, but I had fun writing it >_>
He whistles round the corner
it's that time of day.
The nine to five has ended
and now it's time to play.
His lunchbox in his pickup truck
had been equipped with more then food.
The liquor store was the next stop
but not the fix for his mood.

Come six o clock he's made it home
and had a chance to eat.
By eat I mean drink his ***
finally kicks back his feet.
Day three without a shower
because there's no one to impress.
Half the time wearing yesterdays clothes
forgetting to undress.

By seven he's watching Wheel of Fortune
screaming slurs at the TV.
Never guessing puzzles right
and finding need to disagree.
His phones been off the hook for days
beeping in the distance.
Come Jeopardy the urge is strong
with more and more persistence.

He grabs the bag of goodies
holds it in his hand.
Getting excited by just the feel
of the syringe and rubber band.
He's sweating now profusely
anxious with desire.
With nothing left to lose (but life)
again he plays with fire.
Do I dare,
Dare I not,
Forsake the heart
You have forgot?
Lest the winds
Wildly blow
And shower me
With a frozen glow
Of hearts ablaze
In winter's frost
And a shadowed haze
Of lovers, lost.
Dare I love you
Once again
Or let the cold
Come creeping in?
And your love, as cold as ice
Freezes me under my skin
Winter is not far away
Let the chill of hearts begin.
 Aug 2014 Stephanie
bones
I cannot write
I cannot find
behind the creases
of my mind
the words to fill
another line,
those words wait
out of sight
for now I
cannot write.
** hum
 Jul 2014 Stephanie
RebelJohnny
The men shout at me as they drive by
“******, walk like a man!”
They hoot, shout, and laugh
As sunlight blinds their white-trash getaway.

I look around and think
How ridiculous to be unable to walk
How insane for me to think that these legs
Move on their own.
How silly for me, the queen that I am,
To think that my kingdom was
Any place I was welcome.

To be queer and visible
Is to challenge
The stained muscle shirts
“wife beaters,” strung across
Tattooed skin and handlebar
Mustaches of the “real men”
Whose siren calls
Police my step.

Most men hate us
The Children of Naomi Campbell
Men, YES MEN, too unafraid
To straighten our walk
Loosen our pant legs
And be invisible.

To be properly gay
Acceptably gay, to be
Tolerable is to be invisible
To hide, to be “real man”

My manhood is ghostly
Terrifying even
My walk so dangerous that
It is unsafe to even drive by

My community is still
Dangerous, unreal
Waiting for the next truck to drive by
To beat me, tie me to a fence and leave me
Like Matthew Shepard
A ghost on a fencepole

Unwanted, dangerous,
My people are a threat
Legs too long threatening the ability of
“real men” to have simple desires
They will do whatever it takes
To keep it easy.

Walk like a man, they yelled.
I yell back the names of my family:
Tiffany Edwards,
Zoraida Reyes, Kandy Hall
Yaz’min Shancez

Bodies that didn’t walk the right way
These ghosts were once threatening too.
Simply existing means threatening
"real men" and their women

Swinging my hips is literally deadly
To be flirtatious is to be threatening
To invite violence, attention
To get what I want, to be made a man

Real man, I am not real
As if my only job is to
Show others how to walk,
As if the rest of me
Is simply fake, fantasy, irrelevant

See how easily queer people
Are watered down to something unidimensional,
Something that is only a fragment of
“real” people – we are ghosts
Moving among you

Threatening, ******
Never just going to work
But always somehow
threatening, challenging
And forcing fantasies onto the world

Why do we always challenge
What is real? What is normal?
Why can’t a man strut? Why isn’t manhood
Something other than what swings with my
Legs?

Real. Ghostly. Fake. Invisible. Dangerous.
What I hear is powerful, noted, interesting,
….maybe even desirable.
(GASP!)

When I walk now, I walk with an army of ghosts
Led by the fallen, queens, and divas
who threatened the men of the past.
I live their lessons and proudly
swish my hips in honor of my adopted
****** ancestors.

We Sashay however we want
Because we've realized that
a "real" men is always
Just a step away.
 Jul 2014 Stephanie
RebelJohnny
When you left my house
I almost offered you a receipt
Because you left me like
Tourists leave a hotel room

I look back now and
Know why I lost so much weight
I was trying to make more room for you
So that you could fill me with your love,
I thought

Really, I just made it that much easier
For you to rip my heart out
Without even rolling up your sleeves
It was that easy

“Going to stay with a friend”
Felt like you stole the kingdom’s
Jewels and left.

That’s why I stay up so late
I’ve realized that it’s always when I let you in
That you let yourself out the door

So I fall “in love” with
Grindr profiles that remind me of
Pieces of us that I’m still picking up
Sorting out which pieces go to which
Of our puzzles

I just wish I could tell myself
Apart from you
I’ve inhaled so much of you
Like the smoke that burnt
Every time we touched

It had to be that way
Because I was playing with fire
And I didn’t realize that
We may as well have been
Slow dancing in a burning room

I write letters to you that I’ll never mail
In secret languages, I tell you how stupid we both are
Knowing **** well that what I’m really saying is
That parts of me are still confused

Confused as to whether or not you actually
Ever loved me or if
I was more like the lab specimens
We hung out with

I want to be the fire that burns
Against the skin of lovers who speak in secret tongues
Not in notes I tear up in the dark
But in gasps and croaks

Instead of croaking
Like another dissection frog
You experimented with:
**Even though you earned an A for your work,
I failed you because you never appreciated the class
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