RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - I Died Today

I love this poem - minus line 31.

What made me cringe was not the f- word but
the v- word , surprisingly.

But who am I to query a poet?


Professor Gloria Emeagwali

________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of franklyne ogbunwezeh [ogbunwezeh@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 10:59 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - I Died Today

I Died Today!!!

By

Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

I died today.

I died today in shame and anger and annoyance.

I died today in those lifeless bodies of innocent school children of Yobe State, whose only "crimes" were going to school to conquer ignorance.

Ignorance proved too strong and fatal.
She proved murderous and self-righteous.

Ignorance not only slaughters the mind enslaved to it;
It battles to waste the lives of those who are massed against it.

The schizophrenic ignorance packaged as religious fanaticism invaded the citadels of knowledge and exacted vengeance.
The price was the body and blood of over 43 innocent young Nigerians.

I died today!
Nigeria killed me.

The country of my birth, took its posterity to the Golgotha of hate.
She had her crucified in between a troop of thieves.

I am busy dying over and over again in my brothers and sisters massacred by the fiery hate of a fanatical horde of thieves;

And the thieves of Abuja are busy DISAPPEARING billions of dollars that would have made my poor life here a bit livable.

I died today.
Nigeria killed me.

I died today in those men and women lynched by the hateful ignorance of homophobes;
who instead of pursuing solutions to Nigeria's problems,
are taking out their angst on minorities that do not fit into the conceptual schemes of their morbid faiths.

I died today.
Nigeria killed me.

I died in all who would lose their lives today on Nigerian deathtraps of roads.
Roads constructed with corruption and embezzlement, to the furthest reaches of dysfunction and non-existence.

I died today in all whom Nigeria has fucked over, and sodomized without Vaseline for so long.

I died today in Nigerians, in whom hate, ignorance and atavism have built up a cocooned vision of the world that was sired in hate and lives by peddling hate.

I died because our education degenerated into dsyfunctionality as to teach them anything.

I died.
Nigeria killed me

Emmanuel F. Ogbunwezeh
25.02.2014

* ************** *************** ****************** *************** ***********
What constitutes a disservice to our faculty of judgment, however, is to place obstacles in the way of assembling truth's fragments, remaining content with a mere one- or two-dimensional projection where a multidimensional and multifaceted apprehension remains open, accessible and instructive.


Wole Soyinka, Between Truth and Indulgences

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