Civil War

Sunrise came and ushered in a new anarchy...
With the arrival of the rebels and their enforced liberation
The sound of mothers weeping in Soweto, in Rwanda, in Congo echoed in the fields of Kailahun*...
This Open wound...Infected by corruption ...like a dying limb needing to be removed...
As you smile and ask me ‘Long sleeve or short sleeve?’ as if the right to choose is a privilege..

My countries course re-written by history’s white hand ... in a language used to oppress us...
This brought the technology used to suppress us,
Only to have my own people repress us... in a language that has come back to hunt me...
Incarcerated in this false patriotism and emancipated by our people into the boundaries of slavery, held hostage in my own country.
How do you look into the deep brown pools of your own eyes then shoot ?, then hack away at your own humanity... while hands and feet fall to the floor ...like shards of glass this window is broken .

As I wonder through each lonely street clay, dust, earth ... eclipsed by blood, the smell assails me
As I crossed borders you were here ... in there ... corroding out of existence ... I wonder if the smoke got you first ... or the heat ... the intense flames ... or did you die from sorrow, despair, the completely overwhelming hopelessness as you watched your legacy part ways with a world they barely knew ...Nyanje, Nyakeke, Nyadegesya, Kainya, Mother, Father, Brothers, Sisters, Uncle ....each and every last one taken..

Souls drop to the floor as the darkness shrouds us... Harmattan encircles us with fear... the thick dry taste of Fear and then tears
These furious hot tears ...as we wait ... heartbeats, rustling of leaves, the sound of machetes slashing through nature’s womb...
The familiar chant of the ‘Soldiers’ clad in Khaki ...encased in oblivion .brown brown* blurring the lines between depraved and sadistic.

The ... spine chilling howls escaping the corrugated iron roofs , mothers, Sisters, daughters torn open their innocence stolen...Like Déjà Vu my village is swollen , infested , congested ...bursting at the seams like the huts, schools and hospitals where they burnt my future ....

As sunset seals the windows of hope i wonder after ...48 bitter years, of endurance , of violence, of intimate poverty , of Independence .. If we could start again should we have chosen dependence?

Kailahun- A town in Sierra Leone
Harmattan – Harsh African Winds
Brown Brown – A mix of heroin and gun powder