Skip to main content

I know what death is

I know what death is It is the sad atmosphere of nothingness which takes residence where laughter and voices once lived. Its the absence of matter Which once stood here and there That walked, that sang, that loved,  that lied, that feared, that reaped That now lays in stillness Immobile in its stance Over there in the sands I know what death is Its the hollow clasp of an embrace now empty of what was there before The Warm Sweet lips of dear Bola who once kissed me now: Pale,  cold and sealed for good. It is a supper table of five seated sadly, Where six once chatted off gladly I know what death is Its the call of the dust Like the muezzin does; To those who stood just and unjust The echoes go past The house of the old frail man lying on his bed in the arms of his posterity as they kiss his head The drug dealer just shot in the head: gasping,  crawling to what was his prize now his death It bids them welcome to the crematorium,  the cemetery,  the evergreen fields… As their wish or demise deems fit I know what death is Its the singular and long sustained beep of the cardiac monitor accompanied by the flattening out of its waves For now the patient is qualified for funeral rites Its the gentleman withholding the sycthe who took poor Racheal’s with him I know death He is the black adorned faceless chap who danced every time there were mishaps that … Continue reading I know what death is

from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2gXEVsn

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Sphere

Photograph by Elena Saavedra Buckley. Once when I was about twelve I was walking down the dead-end road in Albuquerque where I grew up, around twilight with a friend. Far beyond the end of the road was a mountain range, and at that time of evening it flattened into a matte indigo wash, like a mural. While kicking down the asphalt we saw a small bright light appear at the top of the peaks, near where we knew radio towers to occasionally emit flashes of red. But this glare, blinding and colorless, grew at an alarming rate. It looked like a single floodlight and then a tight swarm beginning to leak over the edge of the summit. My friend and I became frightened, and as the light poured from the crest, our murmurs turned into screams. We stood there, clutching our heads, screaming. I knew this was the thing that was going to come and get me. It was finally going to show me the horrifying wiring that lay just behind the visible universe and that was inside of me too. And then, a couple se...

DEMOCRACY DAY SPEECH BY PMB; MAY 29 2016

www.naijaloaded.com My compatriots, It is one year today since our administration came into office. It has been a year of triumph, consolidation, pains and achievements. By age, instinct and experience, my preference is to look forward, to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead and rededicate the administration to the task of fixing Nigeria. But I believe we can also learn from the obstacles we have overcome and the progress we made thus far, to help strengthen the plans that we have in place to put Nigeria back on the path of progress. We affirm our belief in democracy as the form of government that best assures the active participation and actual benefit of the people. Despite the many years of hardship and disappointment the people of this nation have proved inherently good, industrious tolerant, patient and generous. The past years have witnessed huge flows of oil revenues. From 2010 average oil prices were $100 per barrel. But economic and security co...

The Private Life: On James Baldwin

JAMES BALDWIN IN HYDE PARK, LONDON. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALLAN WARREN. Via Wikimedia Commons , licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 .   In his review of James Baldwin’s third novel, Another Country , Lionel Trilling asked: “How, in the extravagant publicness in which Mr. Baldwin lives, is he to find the inwardness which we take to be the condition of truth in the writer?” But Baldwin’s sense of inwardness had been nourished as much as it had been damaged by the excitement and danger that came from what was public and urgent. Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room dramatized the conflict between a longing for a private life, even a spiritual life, and the ways in which history and politics intrude most insidiously into the very rooms we try hardest to shut them out of. Baldwin had, early in his career, elements of what T. S. Eliot attributed to Henry James, “a mind so fine that it could not be penetrated by an idea.” The rest of the time, however, he did not have this luxury, as pub...