Poet-Today: Mujahyd Ameen Lilo ~ The Arts-Muse Fair




SEASON OF WAITING
Grateful that I have graves
to kneel before and spit prayers on
to put flowers over them

Grateful that I have graves to sit on
and spend my season of waiting
that my waiting is not the sort
where I sit on my bomb ravaged land
waiting for my daughter and wife to be freed from the hold of Boko Haram
for them to show me the inerasable scars the got between their legs
to recount to me how they breath the same air with the demons who find joy
in Haram
in the making of men rams on Big Sallah day.
My waiting is of the time
when my shroud will be measured
to join my daughter and wife
As I wait, I spit prayers on their graves.

Grateful that my thoughts are not
of whether my daughter chants my name as she's being raped
My thoughts are of the sound of the bullets driving into
my wife and daughter's bodies, of the gushing blood.
Grateful that these thoughts don't slice my heart with their knives
when I see I'm left with their bodies not forced to leave them
for vultures, for ants to scurry on their bodies
but that they are here
safe
beneath the earth
in the best of homes
the home of truth
and I spit prayers on them:
Allahuma raham hum; Allahuma gafir hum.

LUCK
Luck here
is not winning lottery or scholarship
is not your first novel winning Pultizer

Luck here is
when your dead body : a hill for ants
meat for vultures, decaying in the deserted town of Baga
and suddenly a caravan on camels arrives,
wrap you in shroud smeared in Musk
place your face to face the Kaaba
pray you the salat without ruku'u
and digs you a home

Luck is when you are
gifted with the bullet-riddled body of your daughter
not led to Sambisa.

Luck is when lumps of blood flow down your legs
and there is no life to force out 'inya, inya'  out of the orphan
and you are saved the task of telling it
how they drag the father
and slit his throat like a ram on Big Sallah day
saving you from offering  explanations
on how you got your scars.

*************


Mujahyd Ameen Lilo is a Secondary School student in Kano, Nigeria. His works have appeared in Daily Chronicles, Daily Focus, Triumph, Tuck, Praxis magazine, Leavestory, Story star and Daily Trust newspaper.  


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