# Blank Verse Essay on Intentionality in Queer Fiction

Author: Rob MacWolf
Tags: Blank verse essay, Iambic pentameter, Poetry, blank verse, essay

#36 of poetry

You must admit I did threaten to turn this journal--https://www.sofurry.com/view/1707174--into a blank verse essay.

I will not say here, 'no more happy ends.'  
I won't presume to undercut the need  
For stories of queer heroes of queer worlds  
Where homophobia has never been.  
For gods of sunset, moon, and winter know  
That if no tale but such as these were told  
From now until the day I breathe my last  
It would not serve to mend the deficit.  
Let tales of worlds where homophobia  
Is not, has never been, and never will,  
Be told. Let them abound and multiply,  
And fill the too-straight world, and it subdue.  
Let prince love prince, let princess princess save.  
Let warriors own of no gender but war.  
For each tale, after all, will be the one  
For someone, that first opens up their eyes  
To see as in a darkling glass, themselves.

And yet. If tales but such as these were told  
From now until the day I breathe my last  
And none besides, why, I would breathe my last  
Believing that the life that I had lived  
Was not a life, and all the love I'd loved  
Was not entirely love. How could they be?  
The lives and loves of all my heroes would  
Be lived and loved in worlds too bright for me.  
Too just. Too perfect. Far too welcoming.  
Their shining worlds where homophobia  
Is not, has never been, and never will,  
Could have no place in them for such as I.  
Behold my history, all dour disowned.  
Behold my heart, by sword of sorrow pierced.  
This is my body, old before its time.  
This is my blood, which I cannot donate.

As in the days when out of Hamelin town  
The sons and daughters, by unearthly song,  
Were led on paths unnamable and strange  
Into a paradise of innocence,  
Save one. Just so my soul is long since lamed  
By grieving for my griefs, by growing in  
Closets too cramped to ever stand up straight.  
I cannot walk as fast. I reach the gates  
Of Bergentruckung only just in time  
To see the shining world where all my woes  
At weary last be laid to weary rest  
Before the door shuts fast. And I alone  
Escape to tell thee: aye, I yet remain  
In this same world where homophobia  
Is yet, has ever been, and likely shall  
Outlast the day I draw my final breath.

So let there too be stories of this world.  
Let love admit of base impurities.  
Let prince love prince, but furtively, at some  
Discreet motel room at the county line.  
Let princess save princess, from homelessness  
In flight from foul conversion therapy.  
Let warrior own of no gender but war  
Against the bulk of laws heteronorm.  
And aye, let tales of perfect other worlds  
Be told as well. We have yet need of them.  
Alongside tragedy. Alongside grief.  
Alongside seedy and outright unchaste.  
Alongside bitter, dark, unhealthy, grim:  
Not to be emulated, yet still seen  
And recognized. For which of us have not  
Beheld such, in a dark glass, in ourselves?

 Yes, tell me stories of how love should be,  
Should have been always, and has never been.  
But tell me also tales of how love is.  
And how perforce it likely will remain.  
Let not it be that all our stories are  
Of worlds where homophobia is not,  
For none of us will ever live in one.  
I do not say here 'no more happy ends.'  
I rather say 'put some within my reach.'  
For, gods of sunset, moon, and winter know,  
That reach is not long as it should be.

Source: https://sofurry.com/s/keNZdpeG
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