Poet of the Week: Sabiqah Bello
Seeking Peace Do I call it home? A place of insecurities Where I’m vulnerable to beasts Whether or not I will wake up to my family If only I sleep I have no certainty To have a dream But realise it’s a reality Where I run hither and thither From bolos and grenades A […]
Sabiqah Bello
Seeking Peace
Do I call it home?
A place of insecurities
Where I’m vulnerable to beasts
Whether or not I will wake up to my family
If only I sleep
I have no certainty
To have a dream
But realise it’s a reality
Where I run hither and thither
From bolos and grenades
A nightmare
Rather a daymare
Where is home?
A burnt down building
With my family in ashes
A graveyard of individuals
Cut in pieces
Burnt beyond recognition.
A house of relatives of the victims,
Mourning from interments without corpses.
And what is peace?
Supposed to be
Of gunshots, bomb outs
Smell of barbecued Humans
And wails of the oppressed
But I ask again
In hope, in search
For a better response;
Where is home?
What is peace?
Marked
I fought the lion and I survived
Look!
Look through my eyes
Tell me what you see
Tell me I can be
Tell me that you see the beauty
The boldness
Look at my skin and see beyond the scars
To the power in bones and being
Listen
Listen to the stories they tell
The songs they sing
Stories and songs of bygone yet still existing trends
The everlasting history of my ancestors etched
On hearts and tongues and skins
Don’t you see how it beams on my lusty body?
Body made of cocoa, gold and resilience
These marks are a legacy
Of the pride in our identity
Of the essence that emanates from between the scalpel and the flesh
The blood
The sacrifice
Now feel the pride that radiates from our entity
See the art we are and have made
Unearth the history
LOOK AND LISTEN!