I cannot stop thinking about the love of the past
I lived, The misery of walking discalced.
Walking crossing rivers, ridges, forests
Traversing the wilderness with spears and nets
Carried on shoulders, walking to nowhere athwart paths
Of the wild.
I can’t stop thinking about that joy of lasting love.
The time when death was but a long visiting guest;
So soon gone to remain a memory of the strong mind
That recalls but put to the front of the modern days
Where life is worthy a fortune.
Where laughter is earned at the last breath-
For leaving a puke-soaked place.
That brings the tune clear to dance in my grave
When the poverty-stricken wearily wait for their doom
In happiness of leaving, living in a tattered State where coath is
Like a war to face in an open battlefield with nowt
But miserable muscles; as the commandants are whistling-
Blowing on their flutes. They charge in to levy high with own medics
And stir more vigour into the battle frontals for hype in casualties.
Oh no! We are happily dancing in our graves.
—
Emmanuel Tumwesige is a Ugandan and from Busoga sub-region. He fell in love with literally pieces in his primary, first with storytelling until he joined the school choir where he fell in love with the arrangement of the stories in the songs. This built in him the foundation of creative writing.
The spirit didn’t die, in his high school, where he wrote a short write-up about prayer which was to be presented as an opener on the young child-up talent competition, which later caught the attention of the church youth chaplain and made it the cardinal liner of the competition. This ignited a fire in him to continue writing. He started writing poems on request for competitions within and outside Uganda for children and girl-child advocates. He has also featured in BNAP 2020, 2021, 2022, Ode to Love magazine 2023, Kirabo writes Magazine 2024, and looking forward to featuring in many anthologies and magazines all over the world.
—
Read – Forgetting and Oblivious – A Poem by Odirile Aubrey – Botswana
