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.
Beautiful. I love them.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I want my work to published in your site?
ReplyDelete