A Call To War

You have reclined with the hope of a better morrow,
Fed your kids with lies, sliding it slowly down their

throats, like poison. Tomorrow gradually becomes
tomorrow and the day after that, nothing changes.

Well, I am the wail you hear in the middle of the night,
the untainted blood of the sackless, the pride rent off the juveniles,

The moan you emit when big fists meet your stomach,
the churches and mosques disintegrated at their decree,

the result of discrimination, segregation and integration.
And this isn't a poetry of rage –

I am the offspring of prejudice and injustice.
I am South Africa, Congo and Niger Area.

I am pregnant with fire, my feet swollen with vengeance.
And this isn't a poetry of rage; this is my body bleeding and my

belly fuming. I will hit them like plagues on
the Egyptians, Greeks on the Trojans.

I have been moulded with chains and bullets, bombs and prison gates.
Herbert Macaulay, Ellen Johnson, Patrice Lumumba—I conjured their

spirits, they have been reborn in me. I am the gaze from
within the bars they built, the earth on which they thread.

The Zulu drums are resounding and chants of igba
songs shall awake them by morning. I am African history

re-written. Tell them you discovered long ago, that water
has got nothing to do with drowning!

Tell them, on the bed they lay their malevolent heads,
I will be there to haunt them. Let them know; as romantic as

pacification, we are done negotiating.

Okunlola Azeezat Olayinka _Zeeyola