Monday 23 September 2013

Elegy For The People Shot Dead In Kenya, Nairobi




The headline said 68 people murdered in Nairobi,
and I thought, no, they got it wrong, it’s not murder, this is war.

Bullets can buy anything in shopping malls.

Digital Cameras.
Coffee.
Revenge.

Kenya is a dropped shield
in the blood of Somalia.

The knees
of the Indian Ocean.

The red in that African
vein -
              a
                   long
                              distance
                                               bleeding.

When sixty-eight people die
because a shopping mall
is built in the middle of a war

crossfire becomes
another word for innocence -

another way to say
He was just out
with his nephew having coffee
when he got his temple shot.

People that might’ve been poets
like Muhammad al-Ajami,
Lorca or Kofi Woonor -
      taken to darkness
with bullets and jail cells.

who believes in a God
that makes sense of a woman
chattered with an AK-47
across her child bearing womb?

Why is this happening in a country
where let us all pull together
is an anthem?


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