The Story of a Country.
Art by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash.
—after watching a documentary on the Liberian civil war
The world has become a banana skin—
soft, slick, and deadly underfoot.
The men of my country slip, one by one,
into graves, like your father’s photograph falling from
the wall and shattering.
And I can’t help thinking this place is called a country
only because everything must be named.
I watched men strung like clothespins on a line,
their bodies offerings to a field of blood.
How do you bear the grief of people you love
leaving you while living with you,
tears rolling behind tears, tears beside memory,
memory beside loss,
as the drowning of the past becomes indistinguishable
from the suffocation of the future.
See how heads once meant to wear tomorrow’s crown
are now wrapped in green leaves and white cloth.
They strike a match, and conscience goes up in smoke—
along with innocent bodies.
They’re singing:
“Anybody that doesn’t want Gangay, we’ll treat you like a dog.”
Somewhere in between, a boy prays to a great gray god,
his heartbeat racing faster than light.
Note* Gangay was a rebel leader at that time who wanted to be a leader.
Art from Europeana on Unsplash.
Ode to Literacy.
We no longer wear
illiteracy like a garment.
They come to cast our bodies
into the streets,
flooding the city
like rivers in the rainy season—
so the police
can kick us around
like children playing ball.
We ask the agitators
about their sons and daughters,
but trust me—
they won’t say:
“One is on vacation,
the other abroad,
studying.”
Just like the doctor
who won’t look you in the eye
to say your loved one is gone—
instead,
he offers a thread of false hope,
soft-spoken,
cold.
But even then,
we were not fooled.
For too long,
we surrendered
to their polished lies,
like children spellbound
by spider fables.
Still, we were hooked,
like fish to shiny bait.
They led us, chanting:
“Kill my Ma, kill my Pa,
I’ll vote for you!”
And we—
lost the nation
to ash and smoke.
Again we followed:
“You know book, you no
know book, we will vote for you!”
And the country sinks
into the deep well
of underdevelopment.
We bore the silence
of an Englishman in a tribal
language congregation,
our tongues knotted
in the cord of ignorance.
But today,
we refuse their call.
Because literacy
is a candle
burning in the dark.
It is the lantern
we carry through shadows,
searching
for our true selves.
Art by Olga Kovalski on Unsplash.
Reverse Chronology.
To ease the pain that accompanies the birth of your silence,
this poem has found a way to begin where you ended.
You returned from being with the Lord, resurrected,
we haul back our tears and everyone departs.
Swiftly they forgot the unity they preached at your funeral,
we return their offerings given only for your departure.
Your echo appears while your body resurfaces into time,
our prayers shed your name, the radio announcement too.
You gathered our belongings from our Aunt’s porch
to take us home as responsible fathers do,
As she tossed them outside, the moon’s eyes opened wide,
like a curious witness watching us swallow our pride.
That night, we didn’t talk about how you see survival
as striving, through the lens of a gladiator in an arena.
We entered the house the way soldiers enter ruins—
knowing everything left standing had already been broken within,
That we are alive only because we were meant to be.
as the moon starts to dim its borrowed light carefully,
You talk about how your partner walked out of sound,
like silence was a room you both had learned to live around.
This now-whole body once held sickness,
you said it clung to you like a leech in flood season’s thickness—
Draining slow, hiding beyond the eye’s reach,
so stealthy it lingered until the wound was seen.
You talked about the many things you endured
to acquire education—long walks on tired legs.
Each step, a quiet hymn in a language of hope,
an attempt to festoon your future with light.
You study under fireflies—lights that flicker,
soft in the dark, but no less alive.
You never called this suffering—as if it’s another way of staying,
as if pain was air and breathing it meant obeying.
Through your mother’s womb,
you entered the heavens because you knew this world could never be yours.
Maybe you always knew:
this place’s hands were too feeble to hold your silence.
Time, never an anchor you could hold onto.
Maybe that’s why you listened more than you spoke,
why your footsteps always sounded like broken farewell.
You gave what you could, stayed as long as you must,
but you were always half gone—do you remember
The fire incident, the war injury, the
long protracted illness—all show your tethered history.
Now we understand, with softened bone:
you weren’t leaving us—you were going home.
