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1 " How long would we continueto hear in the news our tomorrows silenced like the lives of flies? "
― Valentine Okolo , I Will Be Silent
2 " YouthYou are the breathof dandelion seeds.An explosion of fresh fuzzinessand abundant zeal,unanchoredby the laborsof this life. "
3 " I have walked through many wars, carried the infant from the mother in a pool of red. "
4 " I will not speak of the woman,round and heavy, like me,who will give birth to a child she’ll be ashamedto name. "
5 " I am yesterday’s newsabandoned in a heap, patiently waitingfor the recyclers bin "
6 " On this dayinnocence was drowned in water,and puberty terminated by the blade of the guillotine. "
7 " What does it matter to thoseliving across lines of hate and insanity,spawned by centuries of oversight,their border posts fortified by rifles? "
8 " When your mates tossed soccer ballsand braided each other’s hair,you were issued a Kalashnikov,given a rag tag uniform, and set upon the path of Hannibal instead. "
9 " The color of hatred is not the rage in a woman’s eyes,jilted by her lover in the eleventh hour.It is the deployment of kids as arsenalsin a holy war that’s not so holy. "
10 " Come with me to this backroom of greybehind a fortress of blood and steel,where girls who would be mothers,are carted away, codeine eyed,to quest the Holy Grail on alien soilby women who should be mothers to them. "
11 " I am content, but I’m sad. The sadness, it seeps through my hooded eyes. "
12 " You area water nymph from the ocean rising. "
13 " FlameYou burnlike a candleor a hurricane lamp,your eyes, shut like a window at dusk.Your hair, orange ropes.The flames from your aurareveal a rapture of release,I see in the cleft of your teeth. "
14 " This young maiden,blossoming in the rays of youth,my teeth chalk-white,my breasts, mangoes, ready to be plucked in season, red and ripe. "
15 " I witness the crimson siegesstarted by overlords in gas maskswhich cause chaos clouds to formover the living to steal their liberty "
16 " Woman,may you always remember your birthright. For you are salt;the jewel of the sea,the maidenwith a thousand shimmers. "
17 " Her executionersused her innocenceand sent herinto the midst of the rest,a living grenadewearing a hijab. "
18 " Black GirlYourskin is dark chocolatedipped in honey.You area delicious shade of melanin. "
19 " In genocides rape is most times weaponized by the aggressive side, and the suffering sides to such wickedness are women, old and young. Such actions tear at my core and reveal mankind’s depravity at its worst. "
20 " I most times don’t plan a poem in advance. Some poems, if I may use the expression, fall at my feet, almost fully formed. They are a few poems, however, that I do make plans to write in advance. And in order to write them I have to enter into a period of poetic gestation. A period in which I allow the idea of the poem to take root and grow within me until it is ready to be birthed. Sometimes the gestation period may take a few days. Sometimes it can take months or even years. "