Poetry

EU/ECHO photo

By

Paul Oluwafemi David

Border

to places where citizens betray home

Home doesn’t raise prisoners without

breathing out his keys.

Why will a soldier beat you like an opponent

at the border if you’ve not shown him to be weak

and a thing of disgrace?

You’re bleeding blood for sport and he

ran faster knocking you the more like a champion

to teach you how to fight to earn your respect

like Muhammad Ali and wake you

up from your madness.

Fear is madness, you’re not yourself.

You’re a coward, you left home without a fight.

He’s showing you how to stand and fight like a man, like you’ve always

chorused with your hand touching your heart

while reciting the national anthem.

He’s showing you what border means through Europe’s border.

Nobody is safe at the border,

you make border to be safe.

You’re meant to defend your border not the other way round.

Do you think the border can defend you?

Border shows the strength and power of a country.

It’s only enemies and opponents that run towards the border

to be silenced by soldiers,

Citizens don’t run towards the border without its governments begging war at home.

Citizens don’t run towards the border without its power begging fire at home.

Home runs towards the border to disgrace its flag and anthem.

Home runs towards the border to defend its opponents, to defend war.

Things that chase you to the border gives you orders, instructions and guidelines.

Things that chase you to the border makes you a slave of war.

Home runs toward the border to surrender.

Refuges are citizens that surrendered their refuge called home.

Home gives up on land to become a war zone.

Citizens give up on land to become refugees, to become slaves.

Home runs towards the border to betray land.

Home runs towards the border to become prison.

Families run towards the border to become stories.

Home doesn’t raise slaves without losing its keys.

Citizens run towards the border to become prisoners.

Citizens betray land and home running towards the border to become refugees.

Deadliest Mass Shooting

A young boy was running away from his mother

when hell came to play on a two hundred and twenty Storey building,

Candles became a forest that

lighted in remembrance of the massacred.

Flowers became the only forest

with trees of memories and

unspeakable sadness.

Welcome to fabulous

Las Vegas Nevada became

the deadliest mass shooting

that a single man sponsored

alone in the history of the

United states because a man

believed answers existed.

The youngest dreamer among the diseased was twenty,

The oldest sixty-seven, with

Twenty-two men and thirty-six women tied in chains

by death and darkness like Titanic went

down through the mass shooting of icebergs by a careless

helmsman who never listened to the warnings and callings

of light because happiness is a

number leading to murder.

A man who was counting the words of Shakespeare saw

the archaic anus of the world opening rounds of

fire from the jungle and zoo of a man without

a religion and respect for faith.

To know better that Sunday was for God, Monday

for man, and death the greatest madness

that nobody can address,

Sunday is for God and Monday is for man.

Paul Oluwafemi David

Paul Oluwafemi David is a Nigerian Scientist, philosopher and poet. He’s a student of the art of Professor Wole Soyinka and Ben Okiri.Currently he’s a student doctor at the college of human medicine UNN. He has been published in Afrikana, African Writer, Bangalore Review, Kalahari Review, Nantygreens, Pride, Praxis, Three Drops, Poetry Life and Times, Tuck, Words and The Muse. He was long listed for October30Fest humanitarian Prize, 2018 Best New African Poets, Bodies and Scars anthology by Ghana Writes Literary Group. He’s the author of Beautiful Things Flower in the Rain published by a New York Press.