Ode to the Vampire god
By James Eze
From five decades of convenient sleep
They stir awake with a new song;
Vendors of new truths –
To lend grace to defaced history
It is once again the harmattan of fate:
When faith froths with hate
To slake the bitter thirst
Of a vampire god
Bus-loads of headless bodies
Crawled in cold convoy across Benue-bridge,
To strangling wails of aged mothers,
Widowed virgins and calloused orphans
They claim that history was on recess
When pristine hate bled Jos to death -
When Maitetsine’s blood-minstrels
Sowed darkness at mid-day
High on the opium of faith
Misplaced angst induce cries
Of dispossessed placenta and angry household gods Mourning the loss of supplicants.
We have seen it all before.
We shall see it over again -
Minstrels of misbegotten faith
Ride oligarchic silence to Kaduna’s killing fields
O the stifled yawn of calloused orphans
… Wilting tendrils –
…Widowed silences -
Douse this flame of misbegotten faith.
With the incandescent innocence
Of a child’s first smile
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