Poetry: Jos Crisis!

Jos crisis!
Like a tree it has its branches.
An aspect through every angle
Through the eyes of even the little Ruffle that stiffened cries of the masses
Where blood in memory gushes
I heard beautiful stories
One of beauty, another of warmth
How she was a mother to all
Never complained about differences
Instead a home to all hypocrites
Scheming everyday a way to maim
Looking thirstily toward a day that came
One wanted her legs, another her arm
How to divide without killing her?
How to separate a hand from a finger?
Her beauty couldn’t be tampered
She looked good still in red
The effect of the tempered
Left her beautiful body un-smeared
Her brows remained on “fleek”
Her eyes still shadowed the meek
Her creek still stayed in the creek
Booing loudly at the weak
Jos sits beautiful still
Despite they went for the kill

Hybrid
===============================================
They saw fire and explosions,
I saw lightbulb fireworks.
They saw carcasses,
I saw bodies transforming into living spirits.
They saw blood, water, pain and disorder,
I saw flood, the kind that makes
Grains look good on the farm.
They saw a broken city,
I saw standing walls
They saw past glory,
I saw future promises.
I carried in my hands
Sands where happiness stood,
I spread them over every mourning street.
This city knows nothing of pain.
The faces of these rocks as they feed their mothers
Carry memories that speak of years when
A feast gathered angry mobs,
A birthday was a funeral,
Elegies were sung in a country churchyard,
And our daughters were still proud
That white sheets could drink their wines.
They saw a broken city,
I saw standing walls.
I carried in my hands
Sands where happiness stood,
I spread them over every mourning street.
This city knows no more of pain.
This was Jos the beginning,
The crises made me remember my name.

Leonell
==============================================
A love poem without bitterness
is a tale I will tell tripping upon tiles of lies.
When you see my tears, think of Joy.
Don’t think of the blood dripping from our first floor.
When you hear my laughter, think of hope.
How my night was covered with morning pain.
Look deep in my eyes and scratch the walls for tears
or for the journey that followed each body back to its maker.
Those by the road
loving up with fire and dusting into ash.
I have soon forgotten school never resumed
because I was busy counting the trucks that took our dead teachers for a trip.
They said they will return
only if my poem will not hold sadness.
So I write these words without a wrinkle of a waif.
I will not hold darkness like the smoke that hovered over Ismail’s house.
I will become a bird after this poem and fly into numbness.
I will not know pain or memory
I will not write about the stain in my memoir.
I will only tell with no bitterness.

Ruddapoet
===============================================
He signed the cross and signed his death
He welcomed the light
After all he had suffered long
But after the dust settled
Nobody knew that he had prayed for death

When the town’s gossip
Came to tell how his attackers
Bowed their heads three times to the ground
Before sending his head
As a peace offering to the moon
His wife quickly shut her down,
“If it wasn’t for mama Aisha
Whose husband and son
Were burnt by men whose names he had known
My daughter and me would have been raped after my husband was killed
So do not spread the message of hate for men you never knew
Or harbor hate for a man you never loved
Let the hurt flow in kind words”

While these proceedings went on
Sarah and Aminu held hands in a corner
Quietly watching
Grateful for their kind of love
That only misfortune could cement
Their ten year old has become the talebearer
For convictions her grandfather held.
He had begged his brothers to forgive the men that had caused them pain.

So when someone lamented about the house that turned to ashes
I looked to the light in my mother’s eyes
Telling me to be grateful that we had a way of escape
a peaceful dwelling and roof over our heads
for love often comes with gory tales we may never understand
Like the love of a woman for a mad man
or the love of a belief that sends us to kill
But we must teach our hearts to love
It may be the only escape from hate.
If death can free from the pain of life
then maybe love can make life less painful

Jennifer
===========================================
Today my pen must lie!
His overflow of truth will cease.
He’ll write of war as though peace,
Bleach justice with compromise
And shut the door to know not how cries are.

From the rooftops of our homes
Under the clouds of blood
We once sat with violence,
Ate coconut and date with bombs,
Drank nono with cans of bullets,
And smoked our souls soaked
With wails of our neighbors death!

Then came a chef with refined win
Who taught us with rules to dine:
‘Both bitter and sweet birth it whole –
The joy of a smile is in its frown’.

Those we lost to the ground are seeds
Grown to the sky, free
Are the flags of their leaves
Waving at us with freedom as peace
And the gifts of its fruits, love.

Bamvi
===========================================
Sunshine undone, happy rays escalade.
Hovering around in joyful noise.
Prey’s happiness is on happy feeding.
Splashes of mixed feelings.
What we’ve done or undone can’t be said.
For merry and cheer is belle filled with violence.
Wrapped summer in little explosions.
Love strongly held in desiring chains.
Loud disturbing silence.
Branched roots about those leaves.
Drop dead diva season in ragged joy.
A jostified thought clamouring silence.
In voodoo dolls, we are tied.
Bullets fired in yellow and sky blue pieces.
Sweet waters jared up.
Seat please, get served your burnt flesh,
Alongside a refined wine of your brothers blood.
We are zombies feeding on each other.
For in that instance we are bliss.
Not just a city but a brand.

Hypermind
=========================================
Foggy air with smokes and spirits
Silence was murderous noise
Machine guns roared in defence
Our hearts vibrated in reply
Awaiting the unknown
I yearn to remember but,
My foggy thoughts refuse to recount memories, while,
My spirit taunted me
She yelled bad news was a sniff away
I smelt the sulphur of death in the air

We will never forget,
Our succour in God might get us killed
We never understood how worship could turn bloody
Bodies burnt on the altar of malevolence
My foggy thoughts refuse to recount memories
It reminds me of women
Heavy with souls
Sliced with swords
Their fetus were harvested
A gruesome sacrifice to whom?

Omolola J.
====================================
I have heard of fences
that made good neighbors.
There are machetes
That cut cords of discord.
There are evenings when truth
Will water our appetites
And drive our hunger
Downhill.
There are blood that’s spilled
For want of perfect sacrifice.
Of the crises,
I didn’t see.
Of the victims,
I never saw.
Of the outcomes,
I heard they heard
And couldn’t remember
To forget.
All the bitterness are now gone,
A pitiful lie of course
That wilderness grows crops,
That wild tempers
Calmed every storm.
Of the memories,
I’ll never understand.
Of forgiveness,
They’ll build another clan.
The color of peace may be impending war.
The conscience of war seem to fight for peace.
What is not love, is not love.
This is Jos the way i remember.
How the harvest was wasted
And lives left love quicker than
Bullets from stray guns.
I heard and i still remember.
I read and the portraits “collaged”.
I know not of losses that are bitter sweet.
There are colors that bring death,
And life is all of them.

Rachel Charles.
===========================================
After the smoke and dust settled;
The after-caucuses arrived their new home safely,
She still stands beautifully on the shoulders of her hills
Smiling graciously to the wooing advances of the sun.
We struck with the sole aim of making her wail
Yet, she sat back and watched us fail

Our bombs and gunshots was music to her ears
To it’s tune, her brushes and bushes swear
With the corpses thence, her ground is fertilized

Though Musa and Moses fought,
It only made obvious the fact that she is tough.
We made to smear her
But she shines like a wall coated with tar.

We died her dead and cried her tears
Now she lives, rid of all her fears,
Streaming with the hands that meant to unmake her
Against all odds, blooming with the first light of dawn.

She tells the tales only thought;
A myth made manifest
Stars will still shine not withstanding the clouds.

Tee2emm
========================================
I just painted the house again
But could not erase those places
Where your finger touched my heart.
I remember how we stood
At the pantry door
Watching the receding rice,beans and yam
Disappear without a thought
And that hand you placed on my shoulder
I cannot paint away

After the blast ,
That tore the town
And the foetus,lying beside that woman
From whose womb it was ripped
My eyes left the television screen
And turned red
Changing the colour of our love

I have painted the house again
To see if I could see you anew
In lighter colours of peace
Removing the tones of fear
And agitation, wiping away the pain
That I saw in your eyes
But the colour of the paint
Has not changed the colour of our love .

Bose