Homeless aspirations:
I left home for you.
Made myself a hut,
A cave, somewhere where you could hide

And you did it well,
You did it so soundly
That I no longer see you.

I can’t find you.

Problem is:
When I found myself
I had lost my vision
For you, for us.

So I redid myself
Ate in moderation,
Was less emotional,
Unconditional, went to sleep in the darkness, holding myself hoping I would come out whole after your interventions of solitude… I was wrong.

Dry mouth, dreams, cautions,
Don’t you know I can see beyond your eyes, even if I try not to?
Don’t you know that I can tell through the tremor of your flesh when you leave home?
Even when you’re next to me,
I know.

So I’ve become an obstacle, clutter in this obscure path that leads nowhere.  As much as I try to see beyond this tunnel, there is no light, there is not a happy ending.

Love should never be silent,
My grandma said give enough hugs because one day you will run out, ******* grandma! I thought, but now I am here, holding myself wishing she was here to hold me as I allow myself to break.

I have known you from before, I’ve known you from my father’s abandonment and emotional manipulations, I’ve known you from my darkest moments, I’ve known you, yet I still believed in that glimpse of light I often mistake for love and potential,
I was so wrong.

You said your hands will one day touch my flesh,
Leave marks over my skin so that I can always remember…
I wish it was poetry you are talking about,
I wish it was a word, yet words are so scarce nowadays, words… even words resist the temptation to fall out of my lips.

When will I speak, again?
So I perform, act on a daily basis
I look forward to the day when I will wake up again:
On my own,
Or maybe with someone brave enough to hold me:
Even at my worst.

We were supposed to make poetry,
A kingdom of illusions falling into pieces as I slowly await universal restitution.

I am not trash
I am not clutter
I am someone who thought “maybe if I” the issue was that I forgot to see beyond I and I ignored the obvious.

I woke up this morning again,
On my own.

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.