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Contemporary Ode To A Mother Crying Out
To Her Children…
In the presence of all to see, her world turns
and runs red with the blood of her children:
Blood flowing like a wandering stream.
The bloated bellies of surviving youth
mock aborted pregnancies of liberty;
and her once luscious breasts now sag
in union with the sinking faces of lost hope.
Lost hope---disappearing like solitary
ghost smoke of abandoned fires;
abandoned fires---dying in waning time.
Hollowed red eyes of fleeing lovers look backward
onto the wholeness of nothing---smiling death
sitting and waiting on the coming feast.
Though the heartbeat of hope struggles
through the valleys of shadows of death, she
must yet believed that God has not forgotten her;
Indeed, it’s yet believed that in the midst of the ethnic genocide
in her Dante-like hell, this wretched mother---clinging to time
and its history---will once again experience the restoration
of her Pan-African unity and great African glory.
A great glory of continental liberation
sown in the brave hearts and liberated minds
of her children who---scattered throughout her lands
as well as in Diaspora---will eventually bring to fruition.
Remember, wherever you are, Mother Africa is;
and you’re indeed, her liberating children---
Umbilical bound to restore her collective glory.
