And Benue Tears Cried. Poem by John Chizoba Vincent

Let's create two cities: death and tears,
We'll name our tears shitholes because we've forgotten why we were called so by he whom power rests on his shoulders.
These memories of ours we titled death are fragments of our mistakes left in the bodies of innocent Benue.

Let's bake this situation in hundred feet fold in a foot of messages,
We'll peel and slice our tears to the cries of those blood shattered in the cascadingground of Benue; we've failed ourselves!
If by this mourning we tried to live before we die, we will die before we live.
Leave your breathe in hundred fold and allow your nose to smell rusty agony.
Tears are sweet savor of pains in the eyes.

And Benue's tears cried in the gory melodious hand of Fulani Herdsmen!
If we fail to write to right now, we will right to write wrong days to come.
When the blood of my brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and Children quaked in the darkest street,
We kept mute, run into snail's shell to cry,
We Watch the faces of those killing and smile, remember, Karmais nearer.

I have written to my mother about
My oath I broke yesterday in tears
I have written to my father about the consolation we could have had in mind,
About those skulls that rained like water
About you and me left before the lamp goes off.
We are in between the fingers of a split rock in the forest of manslaughter.
Leave your laughter and search for those broken clay where tears are hidden,grab your portion cos,
it is time to cuddle and cry for our misfortunes in the land of Benue.


Yours Poetically,
©John Chizoba Vincent