And………

A year since the bombings
Killed the flock by the shallow hill,
The ones the poets would write about
To remind history to pound on memory.

I’ve read of the wartime poets,
I’ve seen the hussle of the men,
I’ve lived the life of captivity,
the one of an ambushed homeland,
the one of a homeland dissolved in blood.

The heavy scar of a bullet,
Is as coarse as that
of the wary politics that run the lights downtown;
The lakes turn sour over time,
The walls still remember the sounds
And
the children bleed dry.
And
I’ve watched all hell unfold,
And pain is all but a distant memory.
But what more can i ask?
Except for the preservation of that anger?
The anger that holds hope together,
The anger that remembers,
The anger that liberates.

The outlines of this poem,
Are simple,
like the ones that came before,
The ones that remind the world to care
The ones that attempt to build a bridge over the measure of grief.

Because the enemy held my brother’s maimed hand
As they mocked the heavens above,
Because the enemy in the state’s armour,
Shinny and strong;
Creeped into my forefathers’ soil
As he ripped through the cartilage of one of its sons,
I know that liberation comes at a price,
And we pay that price with blood, red and dark.

And I could toil on about the misfortunes and frailty of mortals,
And I could combust the air with a storm of complaints,
But not at the price of liberation.

My homeland weeps,
And must we never
In all the ways we can,
do away with liberation;
Not for the love of a few funds;
Must we never,
do away with our homeland,
Not for the wants of power and greed.
Must we remember;
The price paid, and lost.
For all of glory and all of glory’s deceit,
Collective memory remains.

For so long that the lilies bloom,
Over our graves,
This poem will live and die,
For so long that spring comes and leaves,
Memory will stay.