Conflict in Africa: A jolt of savage fear Part 1 Nigeria: The Cacophony of Machine Gun Fire

“Let me be free to speak out of the bitterness of my soul” (Job 7:11)

I am seized upon the essential of the scene to which I have devoted my review, with these in mind I create novelty in the awareness I sought to construct from the conflicting state, that the person or scene depicted may seem secondary to source, and in the poetry to merge together into an interconnectedness… to merge with truth of what it really look like in the Shelled Creek

Recoil not from the sound of awful sorrow, Beautiful literature entwined with dead corpses, Please listen to an incident of the delta war, Were the greed for oil enemized everything, Painting the landscape with impending darkness, On graveyard as large as the antiquity of all suffering.

 A corpse collapsed beside my review, And his laughter was cruel unto death, He ask for words to resurrect the creek, Rhymed to the cacophony of machine gun fire

First it was a child face stained by combat

Then the indigenes came running, running, running

Appearing like spirit from the coastal mist

To join the routine screams filling my mind

There was a wedding of Oyinbo helicopters above the jungle, The whip, whip, whip of rotors pounding like my pulse, Of more expatriates coming to rape the soil, Already killing the swirling sunflower, meadows, nature that surrounded me, encompass me, seems to reach out to me always

Research said the Government mounted a counter offensive, Seemed pressed by fear that there could be a shortage of bodies, And the frightened native population streamed ahead of the clash, As the gunfire started mowing the grass… And that it was like a shooting gallery

Research says the militant fight back by wielding the law, And the Government calls the militant outlaws, Because they operate with independence, Are horribly efficient in practical term, As they walked and killed these who raped our oil

 Now there is no peace here

Only violation as in a state of war

That symbolizes the chaos of killed voices

Like the soft auburn of decaying cocoa leaves

Have you ever met good manner in battle? In the jungle you are always surrounded and so is the enemy, There is no clear demarcation between good and bad, It is a deadly game of hide and seeks, Were the enemy will never appear before your gun, Unless there is a negotiation of ransom

Their commander could never be certain of what they could do

Because they killed on the basis of prospect

They lost the idea inherent in the struggle

They are now phantoms fading through the creek

Like Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni eight

Who is our enemy I ask, An enemy oil-painted the colour of our screams, Like the sighs of living demons, Obscuring pampered graves, The enemy who will be to one side or behind your back, Day after day, week after week surrounded are you, As each develop a cautious pattern of insanity, And the country as a whole suffer,

Who is the enemy?

How many years had the air been full of smokes, cordite and screams

How much red was there, of fire of blood and mangled flesh

with oil Like the red pulp of Maiduguri tomatoes

Now you have heard the ruckus, Of skull beating to dirge, The clamor of each wail, The slack lip, The jutting tongue,The weeping of hollow faces, That once had known peace

Who is the enemy?

Violated homes stood like ancient thumb stones

The dead buried in symbolic beds

That is why the skull survive

To be collected by CNN called Jeff Coinage

Who studied our dead like pre-historic mammals

Churned amid the violated graves, Today the shattered vegetation wedded, The shattered work of men, and total darkness could seem a blessing, Of a poem sunk in the knowledge of horror,

Who is the enemy? When helicopter hosed the jungle with rocket fire, And the flame were real, as real as cooking dawn, Into the impenetrable umbrella of the motherland, With plenty of fresh graves unsettled,

Who is the enemy?

As the population continues to practice its ceremony, Hand forming the circle in death poetry, And each ethnic group create a spirit fence, Hungry fortitude that flew across the landscape,

Who is the enemy?

Now that the corpses are exhumes in each Review, But are alive in the famished land of the valley, Becoming one with the ravaged and oil watered soil, A country’s consultation with the sworn enemy,

Who is the enemy?

When the living tried best to forget the dead, Howling and weeping in their relentless quest, Where upturned graves in the fight reviews, Corpses flying upward in the bombardment,

Who is the enemy? When Villages are rebuilt, rice paddies are tended With the bones of the dead shining spectral, And moss soften the tread of mercenary and thieves, And pries into these darkest places

Martin Luther king, one of the fathers of non-violence, once said in reference to a quote by pres. J f Kennedy that, “when peaceful revolution is made impossible, violent revolution is inevitable”. Does this quote have any relevance at all in helping us understand the violence we see being committed by in Africa today?

Thanks you Please join me to make the poem below written by a community poet

a reality Peace is a chariot of fire.

It runs in teams across the troubled sky.

It gathers the youth of the world into a force of change.

Its heroes fall only to rise again in the arms of others,

holding high the torch of nonviolence.

This is no lonely flight of Icarus into the rising sun,

no risk of falling into the headstrong sea of error.

For those who would drive the team of peace

must link arms on either side,

harness their anger against injustice,

conquer the fears of centuries.

Those who would run the course of fire

must run in waves that shift their lands from strife to shared endeavor.

Those who would follow in steps of heroes must heed clearly the voice of the people and shape their dreams into visions.

For this is no journey of turning back,

no force that can be denied.

A culture of peace is dawning

and all will be changed in its light