Letter To The Grave. Poem by Desmond Okon

Dear lonely and desolate grave,
How long shall thou lie in wait to satisfy thy soul?
How ye show the glutton of thy forebears in fiery flow?
Row toll the gong of the shattered homes of the late,
Yet, with open arms, ye grin to doom you anticipate.
How multiple are thy riches?
Thy crops yield fat from the blood in thy watering-can,
Brawns, and brains project thy affluence, ye delight!
We danced in the moon, not knowing whether to cry or laugh, or curse or bless, yet, we sang along!
From the wail of the talking-drum, drank we our tears with thy spoon,
And chorused their names in a farewell derge on a long odyssey.
Marched a garrison to the gravestone,
To scrub out their names with chants of war, yet they walked thy tracks in organogram.
Tell thy children to be repose in their company, for ours are innocently recluse,

Tame them from their bites!

Thy ancestors' perverse ways, ye brew,
With the same hands as theirs, felony and drear ye blew.
Tell them their span is close to their rear,
They shall pass on like sea shells and sand on the sea shore
Shall drag in muck their feet.
Dried are eyes of babes,
Layway are thy claws that pierce their naked feets,
As they saunter through isles of 'orphanhood'.
Ye watch slyly and smile,
And wish they soon path that line, where sonorous voices echoe the roofs and knell relatives.
Tell,
thy mother and father,
To cease fire,
As the hearth singes hard and leaves cold the heart,
Tattooed faces' of our loved phantoms etched on our hearts as scars,
As
We huddle up in the comfort of crippled memories.