Tell me I will be alright, my wrecking mind

needs to be fed with some soup of validation now.

 

The bloodbath like raindrops, please persuade me into believing will

cease soon. Tell me protest fields will halt to morph into abattoirs every time

 

we demand for a sunny life, for the right to inhale and exhale, every night we want

to resurrect strangled justice from its grave. Assure me please, that my brother will

 

return unscathed from where he went to air his deprived voice, please and please

sweet-talk me into a new realm where I can perceive the fragrance of freedom

 

even from a thousand miles, paint my questioning mind with the hue of affirmation

that my unmatched mother’s soul will not be catapulted to the shore of afterlife for

 

frowning at inequity. Men and women of this anguish-strewing land, justice-mourning

settlement, unveil to my yearning eyes: the time, day, week, month and year,

 

when we will have bliss as neighbors, when we will wine and dine

without dread knocking on the doors of our hearts, when our minds

 

will truly certify this land, home. Tell me now,

now, now or forever be a graveyard.

 

Death of Another Night

The sunshine cocks have crown again, signalling the death of another night

that will never grace the streets of the sky again in this era, the radios have

risen with a shriek to their daily ritual of feeding your ears with worms, loading

the cart of our frail minds with tons of grief, narrating tales too sore for a boy

my age– stories of dirty uncles brewing nectars out of their unripe nieces’ thighs

when eyes were shut like doors, of blood claiming a northern street, of statesmen

turned python swallowing a nation’s vault of golds in a stretch. The radios in

the neighborhood have christened me– coward and so– their owners.

I tremble at the perch of radios’ baritone at dawn on the twig of my ears

like a bird staring at its death two feet away. Elegies and bloodstained news

are no oceanic views to awake to, neither are they sunshine to grace your dawn.

I Want to Live Where II:

religion doesn’t breed walls

and enormity amidst inhabitants.

skin pigmentation is not a

yardstick of being, of value,

of bliss, of essence, of wit,

of impact, of sanity and sanctity.

compassion— a river of goodwill

flows with rage across the city,

for compassion no matter how little is pivotal

in keeping this moribund world breathing.

natives wake up every morning 

with winsome smile on their faces,

highly inebriated on the wine of motivation

to dream beyond the clouds, not with sigh,

not with hiss, nor a face laden with

remorse, you know every night here,

we pray to God to make dawn

to our souls an unattainable feat.