They said the moon would weep with us when death
eats supper in our huts but as soon as the sun slept off,
she sharpened the claws of the stars &led them to our huts
Watch how you hold the words of this poem ‘cos they
are stained with blood from my brother’s neck.
&Night is the scaffold on which he was murdered.
Our farmlands hum a familiar tune, with its lyrics in the
mouthparts of a swamp of migratory locusts whose
wings are death’s blade &the messengers of holocaust.
in our land, sunset is a pallbearer, his shoulders bore the
cold lyrics of dirges, wrapped in shawls of beats to the
internment of my brother &his child, the one who drank
from the calabash of death ever before he tasted life
At the confluence town where the flood &blood meets,
history weaves a bridge with the bones of the fallen,
&hate together with vengeance readies to walk thereon.
as surely as the smoke from our burning grief ascends-
diffusing boundlessly to the generations unborn, Today
owes Tomorrow apologies. for this smoke, is the undying
voice of a fire that can reduce love& unity to ashes.
Just as the chorus of crisis in Agatu’s throat came bursting
on Makurdi’s lips, the day is coming when their silence will
return home with the head of peace on the shoulders of a
full blown war, & they’ll see that silence is not a blank sheet;
it is a note of affirmation, written with such tiny fonts that
becomes legible when placed under the microscope of logic
So, when a man who has shared a table with wars &knows
the bitter taste of abattoirization, decides to roast his regrets
in the coals of counsels, salting it with tears &oiling with sighs,
our mouths must eat some for dinner &make reserves for breakfast.
