Student Matyr.... Poem by Merlin Mwaura

Student Martyr….
We are the start of a good tomorrow,
A local campus will unsettle these streets,
Stop traffic for a course,
Because there are others in prison schools,
Waiting to be bailed out,
Out of an eight for fall system,
Doing K.C.S.E and coming to this domain,
The AAAAAAAAA’s and EEEEEEEEEEEE’s of a failing system.

We are student Martyrs,
Make those who come, a better place.
While we set new standards academically,
Set new standards on our fee slips,
Shouldn’t pay any higher for the same bull…
Four- five years in the same school,
Is this a money laundering business?
To build castles
We have not even stricken ….
While a Unite Of Nations threw stones at police,
We the stressed-more ask for police escorts in the evening.

A student Martyr will say the unthinkable,
Do the impossible…
To stand for what is right for all students,
For all teaching faculties to comprehend,
The institutions might not need one individual…
But what can they do when there are no students?
Have they not heard of the Domino effect?
Make one fall, and then start a chain of failure…
Build one, and build all the rest.

Life of a student Martyr,
See one and you outcast…
Hear one and you silence…
Read one and you banish.
A student Martyr in persecution.
Don’t they get it? it is we who make the institution.
It is the University of our minds,
Because in our diversities…
We choose to seek a common goal,
A universal understanding of one other!

A student Martyr in our comments,
In the murmur of conversations between us,
It is the voice of the oppressed,
The grunt of the one violated,
It is the cry of injustice outside…
It is the one throwing stone…
The one reading this poetry,
A student martyr living it!