When The Sky Learned To Scream Poem by Emeka GOC

WHEN THE SKY LEARNED TO SCREAM
A Long Poem in Four Movements

I. THE PLANES — From Wonder to Terror
Once, the sky was a playground.
Children ran outside barefoot,
lifting their small hands toward the heavens,
waving at the silver birds that sliced the clouds.
Shouting in anticipation, 'Azikiwe, send us some gifts'


The engines hummed a beaming dee
a sound that tickled the air,
tickled their chests,
tickled their innocence.
But war teaches even the sky
to change its voice.


Soon, the planes were no longer wonders.
They were warnings of imminent danger.
They were shadows that made mothers freeze
and children dive into Ojukwu bunkers
before the earth could swallow them whole.


Some nights, hope flew in
the legendary Joint Church Aid planes,
the only " Air Jesus Christs, "
gliding under moonlight
to drop milk, beans, and salvation.


But daylight brought the other kind:
MiG-17s and Il-28s,
their bellies full of fire,
their pilots strangers to the land they burned.
They aimed for markets,
for community hals and hospitals,
Youth playing groumds and for schools
turning the tickling sound
into the soundtrack of genocide.


The sky became a battlefield,
and childhood learned to fear
what it once adored.
What he need to abhore


II. THE KITCHEN

Surviving the Famine
Hunger became a language.
It spoke through swollen bellies,
through trembling hands,
through the silence of pots
that had forgotten how to sing.
Kwashiokor was our new vocabukary


Food was rationed,
measured like medicine.
A mother of five,
with seven cups of garri,
added one cup of white sand
not out of cruelty,
but out of desperate love.


Her children, maddened by hunger,
would eat the dry grains raw,
stealing tomorrow's survival
for today's relief.


So she mixed sand into the bowl,
forcing them to wait
until water could swell the garri
into something that resembled fullness.

Garri filled the stomach
but not the body.
It was carbohydrate without mercy,
a meal that lied to hunger
but could not cure it.


Yet mothers kept stirring,
kept hoping, lingering
kept fighting famine, determined
with whatever their hands could find.


III. THE UNBORN AVENGER

Myth, Trauma, and Resilience
War births stories
that logic cannot hold.


In the darkest nights,
when soldiers prowled
and fear pressed against the walls,
the people whispered of miracles
of unborn children
who refused to wait for birth
to defend their mothers.


"The child in the mother's belly
brought out two hands,
snatched the gun,
and killed those attacking her."
A tale impossible, yet necessary.


It was trauma speaking
in the language of myth,
a people imagining protection
where none existed.


It was the womb becoming a fortress,
the unborn becoming warriors,
the ancestors returning
through the bodies of children
not yet named.


A story of pain, and of hope,
of a people refusing
to surrender even their unborn
to the cruelty of war.


IV. AFTER THE FIRE


The Price of Survival
The war ended,
but survival did not.

"No Victor, No Vanquished, "
they said
yet the land told a different story.

Fields were barren,
schools were rubble,
and bank accounts were flattened
to £20,
no matter how much wealth
had been saved before the war.

Families returned to ashes
and began again.
Meals were shared
a single yam divided,
a small fish stretched
across many mouths.

Children walked miles
to makeshift schools
under palm trees,
their feet dusty,
their uniforms patched,
their determination fierce.

Education became the new rebellion.
Zeal became the new inheritance.
Resilience became the new identity.

From malnutrition
grew ambition.
From scarcity
grew enterprise.
From ruin
grew a people
who refused to remain broken.

The Igbo rose
not because the world helped them,
but because they helped one another.

And in the quiet strength of shared meals,
long walks, and relentless hope,
they forged a future stronger than the war
that tried to erase them.