he is beautiful like a rainbow

this was never a story of pride parade floats

this was a rebellion created by black trans women throwing bricks at cops

stonewall was a riot

my love is not celebrated by supreme court legalization of monogamous marriage,

or flags held up in business windows to attract money

it is not found

in your rainbow capitalism

when historically those same places have always held us down

beaten us and thrown us out in the streets

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

and right now i am sitting on the street where i went

to a nightclub

with my friend from band

and i remember how that night i was reminded for a second

of orlando

because i am a gay trans white man and she is a straight cis peruvian woman

and together as one gay trans and one latina we made up the three groups that had been targeted

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

and when he smiles, my world flourishes

and his laugh can echo its way into my heart

with a love of books and disney and cats

i couldn't be more grateful to find him

but the truth is

something you care for becomes more meaningful when you have to fight for it

and us gays

have always been fighting harder than you have

yet you complain

because you want your straight pride parade

because you think our world is nothing but a party in a pink triangle

but you never think

of the way that the pink triangle originated in our own genocide

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

and my love as a man to other men was never made for your consumption

i was never meant to simply be your favorite porn category

your token friend for whenever you need your full queer resource center

i have my privacy

that you do not respect

but i don't tendril into your's

you say you're not homophobic

but the way that you go out of your way to not acknowledge my partner's gender

even though i have explicitly stated it numerous times the same way you'd mention your's

shows me otherwise

the way that you flinch when i mention my relations

shows me otherwise

you visibly jump

at the sound of it

because i didn't know you were a faggot

god forbid

that i shatter your hetero world

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

and the way that men love other men should not be foreign to you

you think of yourself as strong and intelligent

yet you get so confused and don't understand

when i say that i'm gay

i really don't think

that's a hard concept

to understand

that i can be a man

who loves other men

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

i walk with him across rainbow crosswalks

reach him miles away

my love fights harder than yours

every activist campaign

is brought in

because we love ourselves and our friends and chosen family

who know the angry police raids

and the gunfire shots

staining our blood in pride month

it used to be believed that blood was blue in your body

and red outside

funny how that mixes and creates purple

when it stains the dance floor

but that isn't true

blood remains red no matter where it is

every rainbow begins with red

because our rebellion originated with our sorrows

and how we loved something different

funny how

every fight for justice is always started by injustices

it's almost as if

we just wanna have human rights

every fight

in its time

is seen as unreasonable

but yet generations later they pretend they were with you all along

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

and my love is not easy to find

it isn't easy to find the right one

but here i have found him

in a mess of everything else

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

a man who wasn't your pride parade gimmick

instead he is another man i never knew i'd know

stronger than the stuff of fairytales

because fact is stranger than fiction

and reality is stranger than fantasy

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

the man who i can't express enough about having found,

a cutesy antique found on the shelf

my love cannot be found in the same space as your's

it is usually found hidden away in the dressing drawer or cupboard so no one will see

but i would like to use the space you've always taken away from me

you give me an inch and claim that's enough

but you've always had the bigger and upper hand

always preferred more

if i have to see another forced unnecessary no chemistry hetero story again

i think i will puke

because you think we see ourselves everywhere

but just for once can at least we be everywhere

because you've had a lifetime of everywhere

but we've had a lifetime of hidden

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

my love is more than just your stereotyped view of grindr profiles and a different home,

my love is men who are gentle and soft

and don’t find straight people romanticization of abuse funny

my love is the man who majors in literature and wants to travel the world in disney parks

and always has a kind ear

and holds me into a safety found nowhere else

my love is beautiful like a rainbow

he isn't made for your consumption

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

a quiet walk in a forest that doesn't end

winter leaves rot and a world grows from it

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

the man i never thought i'd know

who measures his money in how many bags of dollar-store candy can one buy

who tells me not to buy a thirty-dollar crate of gushers off of amazon

because then i'd be called the gushers guy

for the rest of my life

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

and now i finally do understand

the songs and stories

i wish i could find myself in the songs and stories

i finally do understand

a thing as simple as the small sketchbook covered in drawings of rainbows and cats

given for christmas

i finally do understand

why all the hardship is so much more worth it

i wish i didn't have to go through it though but

i finally do understand

 

he is beautiful like a rainbow

and now i finally do understand.