MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR by Kamarudeen Mustapha

MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR by Kamarudeen Mustapha

by | Dec 3, 2018 | POEMS

MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR

by Kamarudeen Mustapha

MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR (For Leah Sharibu)
We peel peace layer by layer
Till nothing remains of our sanity
We betray all orderliness at home
Till gloating terror ambushes our
bravest hopes
Then, we start again
We pile terror layer by layer
On pedestals of our bravest hopes
Until we hatch heartless wars
Shrouding us front and black
In our fray for self justification
We have disemboweled the deodorant air
We let loose the flatulent bowel
Of the Mongudu mammoth
Choking us with horrors hovering
All over our space

 

 

Only Leah Sharibu has some faith
In the land’s claim to be secular
 
She told the heart of terror
“I am a Christian and I deserve to live …”

 

 

O let her faith suffice her
And may the land be truly secular
Like the God of Peace bides
“No compulsion in religion.”

 

 

MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR

by Kamarudeen Mustapha | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Kamarudeen Mustapha writes short stories and poems. He is a teacher based at Ibadan, Nigeria. His poems and short stories have been published in Our Poetry Archive, African writer.com and Setu inline magazine. He had also had poems published in few anthologies apart from self-publishing some children story books like Zinari the Golden Boy, Winners Never Quit and The Magic Bird among others.

THE GREAT DIVIDER by Chuks Obi

THE GREAT DIVIDER by Chuks Obi

by | Aug 18, 2016 | POEMS

THE GREAT DIVIDER

Thousands of years ago

Before we touched the world

Our fathers felt a need

That spanned beyond learning

And extended the realms of curiosity

It was a search for tenable answers

To questions that still disturb us

The theories we expounded

To attempt insoluble puzzles

Left trails of confusion

As to the river of existence

chaos-mind_00345650

The permanent lacunae

The horizonless horizon

Led us to a dilemmic juncture

To the left there was no river

On the right a sinuous stream

Some steps shunned the stream

Others plunged into its intricacies

In the bid to unveil its mysteries

There arose the Great Divider

Like a flashlight of diverse rays

She seemed to clear all doubts

KD poem plate 22

 

 

We then called her “religion”

The endless ladder to God

One could say she was harmless

She had always been

Till the day of her exaltation

When we sacrificed our brethren

On the altars of our differences

Forgetting the essence of humanity

Is in living and dying for each other

And to all worshippers is one river

Enjoyed through diverse lenses

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chuks Obi is a law student at the University of Ibadan. He has written poems and articles which have been published in magazines and anthologies, both online and in print. His poems fulfill a duty to humanity; soothing wounds with the wonders of words.

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