Moments (POEM)

Is there such a thing as the right moment?

Is there such a thing as the wrong moment?

Do we wait because they are two sides of the same coin?

The coin of circumstance, the currency of life

I said how I felt and waited

Lost no hope to a future not yet unfolded

But doubt finds me in the present

And reminds me that life is but certain

Is hope present when we believe in the right moment?

Well, I don’t believe in that

There are just moments

Not right nor wrong

Just moments to each thing

Whether now or tomorrow, they are moments

Knit together to give us a life

That one-piece births the other

So how can we call any of it wrong!

They come to you unbidden, and yet compelled to be

Compiled together to give you an identity

For the universe holds no mercy, it sweeps away those that are comfortable in confusion

Don’t you all see, these moments save us

They save us from repetition and cycles

They give us an end so that we may crave a beginning

they teach us all the great lesson that none of us are a waste.

P.S: The picture was taken by my annoying friend Joshua Ishimwe.

What History Means To Me

What is history and culture to us all? is it something we venerate because we can never do anything to change it. is it because it is far from our reach and yet so unsettlingly close? Growing up I had a fascination or let me say an obsession concerning history and later it expanded to mythologies, I would read anything I could find on ancient civilizations. My attention was mainly focused on Ancient Greek, Egypt and Rome. I had this story where I grew up around dig sites and would eventually become an archeologist.

In time where life was going upside down, such ancient stories held me together, I grew to form a connection with people I will never meet, individuals that were bones by the time I was born and yet the thirst to know and understand their existence helped understand mine.

From the great accounts of Hatshepsut to the exploits of Cleopatra paved my own resilience to pave my own path. They are often depicted as monumental historical figures and yet in their times when they were still flesh and blood, they were women fighting a system, they fought it in their ways. At that time, it probably felt like a footprint in the sand, which will be erased with time and the wind. And yet today their very existence is footprint enough.

To me they were such the greatest heroes that ever lived, not because of how great they were but of how they transcended it. from Alexander to Constantine The Great, they were more alive to me than my next-door neighbor. their lives were about living to above certain mindset or stereotype. i wonder do we set out to do something knowing it can resonate a hundred years from now? i have read stories of those that never lived to witness the manifestation of their work. and yet someone who lived in those very privilege is grateful to someone they never met.

Those were the thoughts running through my head when I was 18 years old, when I accidentally fell upon Rick Warren’s book “Purpose Driven Life”. This gnawing feeling in my heart there was much to be done and yet no idea how to go about it. was the anger I felt when I saw a book in the trashcan or pages burnt to make a fire enough? Was that burden my purpose? That I had something to protect and preserve? Or just a beginning.

Five years later and I am nowhere around a concrete answer. Or maybe I mis-defined what the answer was? is it career? When you are rich? When you are well connected? At 18 years of age I found the will to start that journey and now I am just trying to keep going forward. I think the more I grew older the more I found out that a difference is that one small action and that one person you help out, but don’t let it ever be enough.

P.S: The image is of the Great Sphynx of Giza, one of my favorite historical monuments.

Afraid (POEM)

I’m not afraid

At least I think so

Because the fear that I know makes mine alien

What can I call mine? If I’m not afraid of what I see

But afraid of what I think

Afraid of what remains

Not what initiated it

I’m scared to close my eyes at night

For the fears that take shape without my consent

For the fears that take control of my fantasies

To make ugly my beautiful world

I’m afraid to look, for they take eternal shape

I can’t tell, for it would be to self-proclaim myself insane

I’m not crazy; I’m just scared

I’m not losing my mind; I’m losing my courage

I lay at night screaming to a void

A vortex that comes to swallow what I fought to create

What is a fear of the unknown, a fear that you know you created?

I’m losing my wits to what could be tamed

I walk everyday afraid of where my eyes will land; for my soul shall remain

I envy that fear of the outside

That fear where you scream for a second and laugh the next

Not that fear that claws from within

For that fear that keeps me awake

I walk like a soldier from a battle that left me scarred, constantly looking behind my back

Waiting for the fable of my imagination to strike

Hoping it doesn’t impale through my soul.

Model: Keza Fiona