for Ken Saro Wiwa

[erzulie]

Father for Ken Saro Wiwa
by Z.I.





Father, they killed your name

in the burning sun

they pulled the pride of your skin

over the hollow of our fear

like a muzzle of fist.

Father, they staked your peace

to chainsaws and daggers

then bloodied your resonance

with british pounds bursting

pipes like arteries

clogged with despair.

Father, they boiled your bones

in the tea of their sickness

then stole the porridge

from your mother’s bowl

and drowned your seeds of ageless soil

in the pit of their gluttony.

Father, they carried your power

to the guillotine

where only music knows your sharpness

and oil bleeds with your grief.



Father, the cocks rally for dawn

without your thunder and

rain that was once blessed

is a cloudy pissing

thick w/ shame and frozen skulls

spinning into nothingness

Like snow on our heads.



Father, they sawed off your laughter

labeled your fingerprints poison

torched your feet with staleness of pages

twisted your baldness into linear time



Still the sea         Father

Opens her mouth to you

Still the stones         Father

Sing the tale of you

Still the trees          Father

Shape their hands for you



And the children         Father

in the noiseless wind

Blinded by a Shelled hell

Carry your rage in the dust of their landless dream.