The Sand of Your Silence #IAmNigeria

I asked an elderly what the labour of our heroes past was:

I can’t see one even in the bright of the sun,

the history of this land stinks of egomania;

a congregation of tongues marched towards me,

& stitched my heart to the brazier.

a poem like this is a bitter pill, should be sugar-coated.

our mouths have become graveyards of agitations,

and to attain the eld in this land,

you have to make your mouth a desert–

let no word rise, if there’s any plenitude,

let it be the sand of your silence.

for whoever raises his tongue against tyranny,

shall be skinned, shall throw up a flood of blood,

shall get his throat stuffed with bones.

freedom of speech is to speak with blades aligned on your lips,

so you’d taint oppression as simple mistakes:

a sick gun rises & throws out its bullet in a man’s skull,

his wife protested & a stray handcuff runs into her wrists.

but lift the fingers of inept, jackal leaders

off this land & behold a vastness of creatives,

a convocation of seedlings ready to rise into iroko,

a feral deft in the legs on soccer field,

a spider adroit at hands on the pages of the world’s book,

the seriosity of their brains dripping innovations & invention.

& even as it’s hard to labour in this land for a tomorrow that grows prairie & meadows,

even as there are canyons covered with grasses,

& going out is a shea butter saying hi to the sun,

there are nightingales ready to pick notes

& call for the greenness & whiteness of this land.