Poetic Justice (6)

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.

Kalashnikov-whipped

and thrashed

and trashed

and trounced

and bounced

and battered

beyond recall,

and stultified

by a morbid fear

of death,

my people

are befuddled

with foolery:

and so today,

they shall rise

at dawn

like slaves

and mourn

the demise

of the cancerous tumor

that reduced our clan

to beggers

of leftovers

of the fruits

of our own

sweat and toil -

my people

fatuously bewail

the stray songster

who callously conducted

our kinsfolk

to the gallows;

their sole crime

was to have loaned

rather than stolen

from the public till...

dear death-boat's

ferryman,

"Kukyiame,"

father was grossly misguided

in his fondness

for the ruthless cause

of you and your gang,

Trokosi-Shabab...

not the bloody

aspect of it,

though,

but the misplaced

sympathy

for a grievance

more chimerical

than real -

for comfortably settled

among the genial hosts,

he mistook

your cold-blooded screams

of greed

and pillage

for undeserved

anguish

and pain,

such is the generous spirit

of my clansmen

and women,

globally hospitable

to a fault...

and so,

alas,

being naive

to your wily ways,

we let our guard down,

we mistook

you and your

murderous kind

for our own

and awoke

to find

our bodies

tied to stakes

with severed heads -

my people

have lost

their way,

they have become rudderless,

strangers in the land

of their birth;

we have become rudderless,

and so

our guests

have now become

our hosts...

10/11/13