Reader Rwanda Poems

Thank you for your idea of setting up this enterprise of letting people see beyond what is apparent and what they are told. This encourages critical thinking.

I am keen on writing and have poems that reflect some of the things you talk about in your messages. However, I am not able to find a publisher in ways that could give my poetry the exposure to the world at large, as I consider them to be appealing to the minds of people who know how to analyse poetry in the light of what is going on, or what has ever happened in some parts of the world.

Some examples are here. Please have a look at them and tell me if you could help me to find where to publish them.

The Island of Kittens

Once in dreadful dreams of oak
I was taken to the strange folk
His kingdom led by lot and wrack
Where souls were lost in the island of luck
These blinded minds not going forth and back
Where each of them held on its back
The load for all wicked kings to pack
To fill their ruling sacks in black
And bellies that they spit at with a beak
Like birds rubbing feathers with a beak
But they stain themselves and break
With their spiny nails that prick
And longing fingers that pick
Pockets of all deprived and weak
Who keep rubbing their mouth and cheek
With no flesh on their head and neck
While their dogs on the door bark
But they have no ears nor eyes to look
Like kittens and chrysalises in the flock
And newly born babies of a week
Without moving on and on to break
But kept in the steady island with a rock
Where the imprisoned doesn’t hear the crock
And doesn’t care for buying a bike.

Terror Drums

Terror drums were banged
To wake up minds in the air
Light heart and tenderness were swayed
And fists were clenched rough
And booming bombs echoed.

Glued to the ground people fell
As reptiles slithering in grass
Tears trickled in faces
Drops dripped slim bodies
And clothes stayed hung on bones
As I could see dummies
Like scare crows in fields
Witch tatters flying in the wind
Rumbling songs they didn’t know
Spitting venom on chained sheep
That never bleated but nodded.

The drums thrashed seeds
That hit one another in the wind
And whined over the storm over seas
And felled trees in the forest
And sew heat in fries
That lost the way and tapped
On the doors and glass walls
And holes in houses were gnawed.

Dogs went along sniffing
Rats scurried to holes
But went on pattering in thundering booms
That shook porridge to empty cups
And kids cried but parents were helpless
As doves sung "to hell terror drums".

I wish you had mentioned where it was in Rwanda that we met as I would no doubt remember you if we had been introduced.

Thank you for sending your poems which paint a stark picture in my mind of the pain and horror of the Genocide.

I'll publish them on "Orwell Today" in the POEMS section where they'll be read by Rwandans and other people throughout the world who will be able to, as you say, analyze them from personal experience or from insights learned through critical thinking.