Literature

Survivals

We are all from an Osucaste,
those prepared for the gods of the land but rejected by the sun.
The sand we march on are our brothers and sisters, who were discriminated too.
They died a shameful death leaving their shadows behind,
Leaving their spirits wailing at every dustbins that modernity brought.
Leaving an awful images behind doors;
Leaving their emotions on the bodies of the sky to hunt and hurt us.
The noise named us into death and we smell silence through noise of death,
Discrimination tamed us and we tamed the firmament of the smoke that chase us.
You can see the ghost of my fathers in that smoke going up there,
You can retrieve the bleeding tears of my mother from the wind,
You can see the broken words of my sisters on the palms of the stars;
You can still see my brothers’ virgin fears hang on the cloud,
They died through this course, Osu!
We will gather this cowries of Osucaste in Igboland.
Part ways for the fierce spirit of ogbanje for the punishment of this culture.
Obi Okwonkwo and Clara will marry,
and Achebe’s spirit will be at ease again.
We’ll survive through the skin of the moon,
We’ll survive through this ringing tone
of civilization.
They made us learn to trade life for death when life becomes a threat.
We’ll find ourselves coming back when we die at will with their torture.
We’ll swing swords and missiles in the name of survival,
We can’t marry others, we can’t love others, we can’t speak to others, what life is it without a human relationship?
Our lives are bags of black colours,
Our images smell horribly to them,
Suffering from what we don’t know,
We have placed our plates upon the face of morning;
We have removed all our tears from the belly of the night,
Hoping that this will end when the earth and the mars cross path and we become the survivals.