"kandy" poems
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 26, 2014
Jul 26, 2014 at 5:49 AM UTC
How do I deskribe a kiss?
The most blessed of gifts:
It's the keystone of romance,
Kaleidoscope of lips.
It knocks me all off kilter,
Like a kick right to the knee.
But it doesn't hurt, it's keen and kind...
At least initially.
A kiss kannot be shared with kith,
Nor relative or kin.
Just with one who's only kismet
Needs me to kindle its flame's begin
Karma, too, works through the kiss:
She uses Koalemos to kayo.
But so does Keb, the kinder god,
who kills the kildness- my heart's snow.
Still, how do I deskribe a kiss?
Kamikaze? Prepared to ****
Or delikate as floating kites of kids?
Definition eludes me still.
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 9:46 PM UTC
You tasted my fruit and decided
you didn't like sour things.
You thought you liked the taste of lemons,
but soon found it left your tongue bitter
and tough.
I thought your sweet would meet my sour
and would leave me licking my finger tips.
But now I'm licking my wounds and
wondering if I said something wrong or
maybe I didn't make you *** hard enough...
Or maybe it's because I didn't ***
You are King Kandy,
and my teeth have begun to hurt.
Apr 15, 2019
Apr 15, 2019 at 11:23 PM UTC
There's a castle in Duluth
Made out of sugar cubes
And the moat that flows out front
Is filled with soda pop
Fruit that grows on trees
Is the finest in jelly beans
In the nearby spring fed lake
People swim in grape Kool-Aid
The streets where those people live
Are cobblestoned with M&M's
In their houses made of brick
From different flavors of licorice
With picket fences in the lawns
Constructed out of candy corn
When cotton candy clouds
Move in from the South
The crowds open their mouths
As the skittles come raining down
The days are always sweet
In the Kingdom of Kandy
Where the King and Queen rule fair the days
With scepters made of candy canes
In their castle of sugar cubes
This Kandy Kingdom of sweet tooth's
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 8:46 AM UTC
Your life's cut short- We sure had a lot of fun
When I think of you- I see the rising sun
Dynamic noise- The bass breaks the ground
Dance all night- Always ready for another round
Glitter is flowing- Like dust in the air
We were creatures of the night-We would go anywhere
As the crowds were forming- The lines were quite long
Of all the things we were doing- Nothing was wrong
Bright colors and lights filled each room-
We watched each other as our night began to bloom
Darkened corners- Upon the fluffy couches we'd fall
Our bodies outstretched- Our legs in a sprawl
The music flowing thru our veins- Me Pixie Stix- You Kandy Kanes
Oh the fond memories Ill remember all of my days- The fun times we had in the height of our craze!
The twists and turns our lives have brought us thru- We both have come out on top, and we now have clear view
Dec 18, 2010
Dec 18, 2010 at 5:16 PM UTC
( After the Easter Bombing, 2019)
To daily travelers like me,
Mr. Aziz was a common sight on the train.
Small and bearded, clean and bright
He was the perfect train companion.
Newspaper in hand, brief case clutched tight
He would smartly stand up for the ladies,
book tickets and hold parcels
For the less fortunate.
An old hand in the Kandy line
His neat little person ideal
For walking between temperamental
Carriages, rubbing intimately
Against ill-fitted hinges,
Despite creaking bolts
And rusty fringes.
When the trains started again, mid-May
He was a changed man.
Suddenly his clothes hung on him loosely
And people looked at him askance.
They slithered further from him
In the ticketing queue-
And no ladies wished to hold his parcels.
There were subtle evasions
And cruel barbs-
And one day he comes, his beard gone
The valleys and shadows of his face open to
Our stripping gaze.
He settles himself awkwardly in a corner-seat
Wishing himself invisible
And somehow, I know,
That this is the beginning of an end,
He will perhaps retire a few months in advance,
Sit on his porch in glum silence-
Recalling the magical sway of old carriages,
Rubbing with familiarity through tunnels and lanes-
Like old lovers, though ill-matched,
arrange creaking limbs on creaking beds.
Despite creaking bolts
and corroded chains.
Apr 1, 2021
Apr 1, 2021 at 9:47 PM UTC
She is only twenty-three, seven years younger than her brother. She is riding that motorbike late at night, aginst all fears. All she wants is to take her brother and mother to the most favorite place at night in Kandy. It was drizzling a little too by then.
She mixed up with the directions a little. They ended up heading to a place where a highly unlikeable bunch of people hanging out and accommodate. They were drinking. It wasn't a pleasant party. Some people are born so nasty, He thought to himself and reminded of the world's Victorian days. All praise the Queens, Science is new Victoria.
Life felt like a prolonged mystery.
Oct 2, 2020
Oct 2, 2020 at 10:41 PM UTC