When the Sun Refuses to Shine...

For Fallen Biafra…

In Appreciation of Ngozi Adiche Chimamanda,

Who spat out that dead “Half of the Yellow Sun…”

When the Sun refuses to shine,

And the Air stood still mourning its loss,

Yet, the trees swayed, they swayed as if moved,

Moved by the Spirits of those long gone,

Their memories-Faded pictures of Our lives’ tattered Albums.

We were drunk with our own urine,

Mixed with the sweats of our labours

And the “butter-like” mucus flooding down our noses,

Our excrete filled our stomachs,

Salted with sugar made from the stalks of bitter-leaf tree

Steamed with the remnants of a month-old palm wine,

We drank our wine from their gourds

With the barrels of rusty guns as drawing straws,

Emitting the sweet-flavour of gun powder and hot bullets.

We sat on fiery cannon balls,

And walked on thorns.

…yet, the Priest came and told us-God is alive!

We scoffed at him miserably.

We do not doubt the existence of a God

Who sat in His stately chair up there,

And watched all these happen to us.

What we seek to know is why His ways seem unjust at times,

We heard Sleep eludes Him,

So we can’t ask Him if he were sleeping

When they butchered us like cows.

But why has the blood of our fallen brethren

Not cried out in vengeance like that of Abel?

Or has God suddenly become tired

Of Judging the world He created?

We existed only for its sake-Existence,

Our homes were abandoned anthills shared with spiders and worms,

As healthy sores made love with our Skin

Birthing Pleasurable pain of “uncoaxed” orgasms.

Where was the world when we died…?

We died, yet we lived…

Silent defiance coursed through our emaciated bones.

Let them kill us all,

Our souls will live to haunt their future!

It is not suffering…we do not see it as that,

It is living life.

This is the side of the coin life has offered us,

And accept it or not, won’t destiny prevail?

Still, we know our cause is just…but reasonable?

We came from the Land of the Rising Sun.

Where the blood of our massacred kinsmen

Have drawn beautiful patterns on the black earth…

The country of the unsung fallen Heroes,

Not of war, but of its casualty.

Yet, the world shall never forget our story.

The story of a race, who despite all odds

stood against evil with their lives.

“Ejima m, Bia”, let’s go home.

It’s late already, and we found no food today.

We shall cook the corpse of your dead lover.

We need protein!

If the Sun refuses to shine, We will make it shine…

1:42pm, 19/03/2015

Aunt’s Home, Lagos