DAY 18...18/30-Rwanda

This Poem is close to my heart.

It has been 15 years since the genocide in Rwanda.

The whole world watched.

A lot of people died.

This poem is for them.

Because people have forgotten, but not ME.

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TEXT:

My fingers travel from

Head to chest

Shoulder to shoulder

For the 10,000 deaths that happen daily

400 every hour

7 every minute

while the whole world watched

The sun never stops gleaming on the pearl of Africa.

And though she kisses the continent awake with each dawning,

there is something

Different about this April.

This april

Something about the way her rays boldly blasting through satin curtains,

declaring her the fairest of them all

April has never been this beautiful.

Then comes the memories,

Of gaudy, bloodstained diamonds dangling like lynched bodies from the ears of rich, white women

As they place freshly picked daisies in the ponytails of their daughters

Believing that their sweet radiance will save them from karma.

Its sometime in April

Sometime in April when morning’s glory greets them at their doorsteps

And isn’t bother by the season’s rain

Its sometime in April

But this April was different

Like little girls who no longer sat by the river and waited for their chance to dance with Nile.

Instead their fingers frequently traveled

From head to chest

Shoulder to shoulder

Observing the 10,000 deaths that happened daily

400 every hour

7 every minute

while the whole world watched.

Blinded by the sun, that had stopped gleaming on the pearl of Africa.

Dance steps clinched feet to resemble Hutu chants

Pawa, Pawa

Pawa Pawa,

Burning soles fell hard on dusty roads

Legs sprinted away from the scent of soul’s burning in the hearts of villages

Red, yellow, and green strips left to mirror Hitler’s swastika 15 years later

And the thick stench of death still intrudes upon the senses

Caressing the morning’s air

This is for Rwanda

Gutted and filleted like a fish to feed the corporate greed

Of those who want what Africa has, without asking for it

This is for every carcass still left rotting in Murambi

For the mamas in hastily tied lappas,

With emptiness in their bellies, clinging babies on their backs,

While trying to race with the bullets of men who nurse AKS in their palms

For the children forced to protect other children against faces familiar enough to be family,

For those who turned down the audio on their video, as soon as they saw the faces were black. This is for Bill Clinton, who sat home playing his saxophone to the tune of

10,000 deaths per day

400 every hour

7 every minute

While the whole world watched.

This is for the men gone mad,

For the masquerade of them who were force to forget that behind their Hutu masks originally lied a Tutsi

Men who kicked their ancestors to the curb, so they could trash the vaginas

Of African women with impunity, and stomp black babies ridiculously,

While pale puppeteers laugh hideously,

At the holocaust they designed, deliberately.

15 years later and the everlasting flame still burns for you

Never calling you the unknown because I know who you were

We remember you

We remember them

the 10,000 who died dailly

400 every hour

7 every minute

While the whole world watched

Until they grew bored and changed the channel.

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