Written piece
HOPES AND DESERTIONS
Chibuikem Anyanwu
Nigeria
About this piece
'Hopes and Desertions', is a stark meditation on faith,survival and violence across a fractured commonwealth. Like a pack of cards, power,memory,and loss collide,yet hope lingers.
It calls for a shared humanity beyond crossfires, urging unity...Within an ensuring collective.
HOPES AND DESERTIONS
From this bloc of hope,
They carry out hideous feats like
Pauperous Raskolnikovs who when told,
Turn to the Wall, scallops on Petals edges.
The sounds of their Kalashnikovs
Know no bounds, while they grope
In the darkness of our communal quilts,
Hiding traces of their murderous threads.
Like broken cisterns which hold no water,
Crime and punishment; and the forfeiture of retributions
bind our hearts—
A forgetfulness on this cross of departures.
Today comes with the promise of a holy torrent:
Splashes, slicings, verdigris on fallen skulls,
All in the name of a self-preserving God.
The essence of this commonwealth
Is swept in blood that bursts through capillaries,
As those in Agbada, Suit and Tie,
And the Fourth Man in the fire
Say: what God has joined, no man can put asunder.
A traveller sets forth at dawn,
A mother in expectancy,
A peaceful man with legs dipped in black gold—
By dusk, remnants of the Bantam's streaks on this glebe.
All souls traverse.
Hope burgeons from heavy breasts.
We die to be revived
By the last struts of this torturous survival.
We breathe—
And do not live solely for this crossfire.