Poem: I Cry for Orlando

I cry

For love.

Twelfth June

Twenty sixteen,

Queer men kissed

Omar Mateen Seethed.

Fed on rancid seeds of hate

In his hands, he held their fate.

Oh, the queer pearls we lost,

Forty-nine souls the cost.

That dark Latino night

We froze in fright.

Oh, Orlando,

For you

I cry.

- End-

Orlando Pulse Club Mass shooting

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a terrorist attack inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida United States. Orlando Police Department officers shot and killed him after a three hour standoff.

Pulse was hosting a "Latin Night" and thus most of the victims were Latinos. It is the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S history and the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since the September 11 attacks in 2001. 

At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in the U.S., being surpassed the following year by the Las Vegas shooting.  

This poem is a tribute to the fallen innocent pearls. Commentary from Wikipedia. 

Poem: The Thief

The Thief

The Thief

By Christopher Emmanuel

Lo!

My soul

Not heartless,

Yet without a heart.

My soul not breathless,

And yet I have no breath.

A thief in the night

Stole my heart

And he taketh

My Breath

Away.

 - End - 

Poem: Man in the mirror

The Man in The Mirror!

The man in the mirror!

When I cry, he cries

When I smile, he smiles!

He walks the way I walk

He dances the way I dance

And laughs the way I laugh

A perfect likeness.

The man in the mirror!

His lips move in speech

I hear not his words!

He shouts when he is angered

I hear not the noise!

The silence of sound

His sword.

Like a snail

He lives in a shell

The mirror on the wall

His shell to dwell

A closet so frail

He shatters it and dies as well.

To be his likeness.

© Chris Emmanuel

Poem: Daredevil - A Tribute to David Kato Kisule

 "If we keep on hiding, they will say we are not here," David Kato Kisule, departed Ugandan Gay Activist.

Daredevil

"Hang them!"
BHANG BHANG!
Judge Giles' evil gavel.
Ominous echo in my ears,
As he ripped our queer masks.
And under the dark gloomy clouds

An eerie breeze stealthily wandered,

Taunting our naked kuchu faces,

Sneering our sad kuchu hearts

Fear, Fright, Flight!

Lo, our father,

David Kato Kisule!

His feisty spirit prowled,

Undaunted, loud and proud

Daring to wrestle the evil wind,

To maim and kill her loathsome spirit.

Fighting to free our queer hearts to love

To douse our queer faces hues of pride.

Twenty sixth January, twenty eleven,

An evil gavel smashed the daredevil.

Grief courts the rainbow children,

But your spirit that dwells us,

Repels her dreary fuss.

We miss you David.

Rest in power.

----End---

About David Kato Kisule

David Kato's face and address were published in Rolling Stone in October 2010

Born in 1964, David was perturbed by the consistent promotion of the perception that there were no gay people in Uganda. Having recently returned to Uganda from a short teaching stint in South Africa in 1998, David dared the intolerance and stigma in this conservative nation and he called a press conference and announced he was gay!

He was promptly arrested for a week and he became very recklessly resolute in liberating the gay people, thereby sowing the seeds for a fearless gay rights movement in the East African region.

Kato was among 100 people whose names and photographs were published in October 2010 by Rolling Stone, a Ugandan tabloid. The article called for the execution of the homos, with the caption: Hang them!

David, together with Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera and Pepe Julian Onziema filed a case against the newspaper which they won. Three weeks after the ruling in their favor, David was bludgeoned to death at his home in Mukono in the morning of January 26th 2011. We miss this Daredevil!