My love
Musa Okwonga performed his poem 'My love' at a memorial service for murdered Ugandan LGBTI activist David Kato on May 18. Originally written for Eudy Simelane, the South African lesbian footballer who was gang-raped and murdered, the poem also features in the forthcoming '.
To some people
My love is somewhat alien;
When he comes up, they start subject-changing, and
In some states he’s seen as some contagion –
In those zones, he stays subterranean;
Some love my love; they run parades for him:
Liberal citizens lead the way for him:
Concurrent with some countries embracing him,
Whole faiths and nations seem ashamed of him:
Some tried banning him,
God-damning him,
Toe-tagging him,
Prayed that he stayed in the cabinet,
But my love kicked in the panelling, ran for it –
My love! Can’t be trapping him in labyrinths –
Maverick, my love is; thwarts challenges;
Cleverest geneticists can’t fathom him,
Priests can’t defeat him with venomous rhetoric;
They’d better quit; my love’s too competitive:
Still here, despite the Taliban, Vatican,
And rap, ragga in their anger and arrogance,
Calling on my love with lit matches and paraffin –
Despite the fistfights and midnight batterings –
Despite the dislike by Anglican Africans
And sly comparisons with those mishandling
Small kids, and his morbid inner chattering
My love’s still here and fiercely battling,
Parenting, marrying, somehow managing;
My love comes through anything
© Musa Okwonga
* Musa Okwonga is a poet and musician of Ugandan descent.
* This poem appears in Sylvia Tamale's ‘African Sexualities’, a groundbreaking volume, coming soon from Pambazuka Press (ISBN: 0-85749-016-8).
* Watch the animated version of 'My love' here.