I know of those who trudge in the desert

Desperately searching for something more

They hop from mirage to mirage

Expecting a nonexistent haven where they stand.

Blinded by the years of sand in their eyes.

For the comfort they search for,

Is but an illusion built by those against us.

In the desert, they rebuilt Constantinople

Using words of judgment as its base.

The walls reaching the point of being bent

By the Earth’s horizon,

With each word building upon the last.

We would be in awe of its presence,

Had we been ignorant to

The reason for its existence.

At the front, lay the guarded gate,

Without use,

Without function,

Yet it lays there anyway.

Approaching the gate

Is a mistake made by most.

Approaching armoured peoples who play

Judge, Jury, and Executioner

To those they deem unfit.

Those with expectancy to enter the queue

Are then tried for lunacy rivaled only by Don Q.

The gatekeepers call us liars

And demand to see receipts

For we are not the proper perfect poster child

That they wish to seek.

Some of us choose not to wear flamboyance up on our shoulders,

A truth they cannot accept,

Expecting such beacons to be ignored by the hunters around us.

The gatekeepers call us actors

And think us parasites after them.

Their words exit their mouths

Like wasps from their nest.

They surround and sting 

The Bisexual and Pansexual men they deem confused,

Ordering them to be either Gay or Straight,

Leaving them invisible to all eyes around them.

They feast on the Bisexual and Pansexual women,

That Gatekeepers deem impure,

We critique men who think women who have sex are impure and tainted,

But we don’t find it hypocritical when Gatekeepers do the same

To Bi and Pan women who dare be attracted or have had sex with men.

The insects swarm the Aspec men,

Because if a man doesn’t want sex he’s ridiculed to hell,

But if you’re an Aspec woman,

You’re a prude as well.

We’re all targets to the swarm,

Because our hair isn’t dyed,

And we refuse to play stereotypes for the straight ones.

Heed the gatekeepers, they shout,

Demanding our obedience,

Constricting our existence

To better suit their molds.

They think themselves the saviours

Who will save the Queers,

From other Queers,

Who are still Queer

In the eyes of every Queer who see no value

In protecting a gate of no use.

They pledged to fight those who hate us

Yet they scream the same discrimination that the straights do,

We have to watch which competitor will take the top spot,

Would we have to heed those who threaten to kill us and take our rights,

Or Heed the Gatekeepers who would leave us to the wolves to die?

No, They don’t recite two pages ripped from a tome of old,

Instead writing their own, to ostracize those they don’t behold.

Yet we exist against all of their wishes

And pleas for us to change,

To enter the world of stereotypes that they whole-heartedly proclaim.

Still we wander on our own,

Refusing to write ourselves in their realm of fiction.

We trudge with our beacons covered,

Emitting light only visible to those of our conviction,

And when we see sanctuary, there lies no gate,

Only a beckoning hand of something more,

And the voices that proclaim that every morning we wake is a victory on our shore.