DATED: 14th Feb

(From the diary of a rebel)

It's valentine's day, my sweetheart
Know I not any romantic poetry, any romantic songs
Write I can't any love-letters, because
My fingers forgot to hold a pen long ago
They pull only triggers and pins of grenades.

No more do I smell, the fragrance of sweet flowers,
The smell of rain-drops, upon a sun-scorched earth;
Hear the chirping of birds, hum a tune:
My nostrils smell only gunpowder and stinking corpses,
My ears, full of chatterings of machine-guns.

No more do I think of love, not because
I've forgotten you; but because my mind nowadays
is full of ambush plans and grief for my dead comrades
and thoughts of revenge; I don't like anymore-
Red roses; I'd rather prefer the blood of my enemies

I saw our womenfolk getting raped; I don't know
Whether you were among them or not;
They set my house on fire; I can still hear
the cries of my father as they dragged him, he was
on his back attached to their tank by a cord around his ankle

Destined to die in the Genocide,I escaped-
Miraculously; Joined the rebels- the hand that
Wrote poetry- learned to brandish a gun- the mind that
thought of love and beauty- learned to hate- and learned to
kill,torture, rape,maim- forsake mercy.

On this day, what can I gift you- except bullets?
My only possessions- neatly in my backpack
And my rifle in my hand- they belong
not to me; My only truely private possessions
being the skulls of my enemies whom I felled.

This letter, destined never to reach you;
my last piece of poetry, remains with me
in my bookpocket- to remind me
of you and the poet that was me
in my last moments
When I take the bullet in my heart.