I – am not a poet

Because poets have purpose

And I am often confused

And eaten by self-doubt

I – am not a poet

Because poets have a way with words

And my words are often lost on their way

And when they finally reach me

They are struck by a “writer’s block”

I – am not a poet

Because poems are often glorified

Tumblr-fied

Tweet-worthy

And my pieces are just provocative

semi-erotic

and often painful

I – am not a poet

Because I will never get published

I never follow the “ten rules to make you a better writer”

I never accept constructive criticism when it comes to self-expression

My poetic pieces are pieces of me

How dare anyone say they can be written “better”?!

I – am not a poet

Because I am all flaws I fail to own up to

And I always find other poems a tough act to follow

plus, the flow of my pieces is often broken

and the only thing keeping my lines together

Is grammatical mistakes

misplaced in random sentences

But I still write

I write for the African minds

The Arabized

The colonized

The ones who realized

That post-structuralism is irrelevant without our past

That racism still thrives post-independence

And that orientalism has been internalized, over the generations

We now like it when we get called “Exotic East Africans”

I write to fight the fake religious fanatics

And to shame the sham elections

We still want bread, freedom, and social justice

We also want stable electricity and cheaper gas, for a change

I write for the hijabi gone atheist

I write for the convert who found the light

I write for the non-hijabi Islamist

Slandered for not having a piece of cloth on her head

I write for the girls brainwashed to believe

that they are nothing but uteruses for future jehadies

and the girls beaten to believe

that domestic abuse is love and protection

I write for boys

Forced to fake machoism

Feminism is on your side when it isn’t misunderstood for misandry

I write for the men

Forgotten in medical records

The ones you never hear about

The ones raped and abused

But had to “man up” about it

Fold their pain and keep it in their back pockets

I write for the activists

Who were recognized after their death

But lived for years on the edge, with the rest of the forgotten

Martyrdom reduce their legacy to statues and street names

I write

To stretch my heart across pages

Of old memories and regrets

I write

To forgive and to forget

Those who never meant anything to me

Those who didn’t amount to a single line in my poetry

But still keep finding their way to me in late night lonesome

I write

To make a future home for my poems

In dusty shelves and abandoned drawers

I write

To blend in with the background

…

to be forgotten