The Nile's Neck

I quietly sat by the Nile’s neck

Slowly and surely washing the soiled linen of my heart, my emotions

Her banks were looted by the unscrupulous heat of a virile summer

That saw sons being pawned in Africa’s game of power

The gestation of genocides, the genealogy of generalities

The gross gruesome guillotine called generals

Kings of the ashy and skeletal hills

Providers of fodder for never-to-be-attended funerals

Dreams of a future are now ghosts of a past

The living have also died inside

Hearts hollow, hard and sacred as baobab

A living landmine, a breathing gravesite

The brave have fallen by the side of innocence

Cries of mothers are swallowed up by gun claps

Death applauds

Grief takes a standing ovation

Daughters bow by the wayside to light candles

In memory, a father’s cry is his patriotism

And sometimes the tears are silent

But sometimes they break the Nile’s neck