Watchmen on the Walls

Guava green gleams in the dilated eyes of Stosh Mugisha as she bleeds
Adrift on her back, in ocean of green grass and soil
the orchard of her childhood rises up around her and cannot stop this assault or even name her toil

Her thrashing has stopped
She no longer refutes the devil atop her
because it's like this, in Uganda, that homosexuals will be conquered

You see she loved to walk amidst the trees in the first
moments that the sun would take to its podium
 and orchestrate the morning's breath through this ensemble of guava leaves

 but the farmhand found her there
his loins decidedly the cure for her disease
this lesbian whore refusing the truth that only men belong between her knees

it was an act of compassion
from an aspostle of the church
the new right wing in flight over Africa sees an epidemic of detachment,
a condition to be cured

these are the armies the legions leading America east
at the boundaries of the Dark Continent
they hoist their torches and cry out for the beast

they drop money
like leaflets instructing surrender
'we'll help you fight AIDS if you help us fight homos
 just promise us abstinence and you'll find our fold tender'

our countrymen convict us
their campaign's our foreign aid
and our stoic silence makes us complicit in their violence
as absent participants in a bigoted craze

a gospel of violence is not defined
by the way it summons fists or guns
but by the people its banished to the margins
while its apologists distract the masses in a mist of cryptic tongues

now the laymen plays the doctor and the vendor
selling tickets to his own stage
where by gods grace he'll dismiss the rumor of naturally gay
as he did to the myth that virus causes AIDS

Africa, sound the siren
its a new wave of the old invasion
that aims to buy your troubles up with a currency that barters to define abomination

America, sound the siren
your sons select this century's witch
Uganda their Salem
they stoke the fire a sacred pyre
with slander inscribed on a crucifix

the match to the cross
the cross under foot
watch the faggot dance
atop the flames we've conjured from parliament's books

A daughter's scream is born in her stomach
crawls her throat
and escapes to fly and find her father

"there are serpents wrapped around my wrists, daddy" she says

"daughter forgive me," he responds,
"my legs, moving quickly, fail as i stumble and trip
you see, they dress up their fear in costumes

some look like prophets
others are just incoherent anecdotes about vanishing family values
but when one breaks its chain and anger gives chase
they tear off their robes and litter this path with all of hatred's fake names

but I can still hear you screaming
in the face of that demon telling him again and again and once more again
of the love you're still going to believe in
and I promise you the kingdom of god was built on a back with less spine than yours"

and now that god sits aloft, and calls her lover to her side
and says "look at my creation,
she's defending exactly the kind of love for which I'd send a thousand sons to die

the watchmen they've installed on these walls have missed the threat completely"

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