WENDY WRITES

Title: Riot

Dressed in purple royal linen, white plaid shirts and white cotton turban

Hair, neatly cut and beard in curls.

I almost forgot to include the blue ford SUV, black Benz, grey Mustang and

The white jet stationed outside the high fenced duplex, carefully built to keep us out.

The green garden visiting the sides of the walls, the yellow flowers peeking from it’s cracks.

Today,

They will stand, hand in hand holding gold trimmed worship-facts, gold hemmed rosaries, gold plaited Bibles, gold plated crosses and gold laced staffs.

The sun, is ice cold above their head. Snow and hail falls in Nigeria.

We are the unclean, we are the poor

We cannot pass by the mansion of prayer to beg for food.

Our eyes are dried out from hunger and grief.

Our skin, is an ugly mix of heat and starvation.

Tonight,

When they sit at their table, and the bread rises to the ceilings and the wine is blood red between their teeth.

They will be drunk on power. And merry in ignorance, playfully eat their sacrifice

And we will party in the unclean, outside the walls where green gardens shelter the dull grey of the bricks.

We will dance into a slaughter of the feasting night.

Into the mud of its rawness, caressed by the warmth of yellow flowers peeking from the cracks, under the cruel gaze of the moon.

Our song,

Will be the unholy clicking of several tongues-clapping behind foreign teeth.

Our tattered shoes lifting dust from the grounds-our feet answering to every beat.

Our voices will rise above us and travel to silver of the unclean sky.

We will offer the rags covering our skins.

Our spirits will dance

Our souls will merge.

This is how we pray.

This is the riot of the apocalypse.

We will be deaf of this praise; our feet will not tire even as we bleed.

We will never silence this ‘Amen’

This is the march of weak, feet into the steady drum beats of freedom.

This is our prayer

We are the poor

The unclean

So, how can we tire?

Wendy Okeke is a Banker, part-time Poet and Writer with deep rooted passion for Women rights activism. She is an all-round lover of the Arts and co-founder of Wellspring of Haven Foundation. Wendy hopes to use her work to create a web that celebrates individuality in Nigeria.