Afrika, fate’s gilded casket with stained-glass eyes
Stitched with dry veins of irascible children turned colour
of tarmac they trot with rifles.
Afrika, of suicidal commissions ransacking votes and
collateral concessions
From bones of violated girls turned promiscuous incubators.
Afrika, a colossal abattoir of dreamers greased by lightning
Wailing death’s symphonies in maimed forests burnt silent
and indifferent.
Afrika, purring in dissonant slumber among raided jackals
and minor men
Bred of sharp steel and gun-powder stolen from abandoned
barracks.
Afrika’s infants yawning iridescent warnings of blood,
rosaries and chains
On electric souls accosted for bills and malnourished
toddlers.
Afrika is draped in fishnets and landmines hurled in fields
and acid streams
By profiteers from forgotten slaughter-houses and gaols.
Afrika, when will you desist from your hymnal maladies,
Your melodious prayers to your neighbour’s gods with
nameless crimes?
How will your human-factories flourish under probation from ancestral sentences,
Your orphans journeying the cold belly of a shimmering bejeweled underworld?
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