THUS WAR SHE SOUNDS
Thus war she sounds! A demon on the steps of the doctor my mother visited,
She took him first, strangled the life out of him asking him to pay with the tablets he gave till he
had none,
The calluses on his thumbs when he pressed the syringe empty and devoid of healing, tales of
time passed through a horror,
He stood tall this doctor of my mother's, till he saw a broken doll bleeding and a man crying for
her to return to life!
The madness had not hit him then till his wife was a memory in the town square when a bomb
dropped,
And even then he had time for tears, he had time to worry about his soul and time to wonder
about the future,
She was 8 with a smile that spoke of a day the sun wouldn't stop shining,
The demon kept its demands, its hands ready for more payment,
But he had run out of oxygen tanks and the patience to see blood on his coat, he told the
demon not,
And when it turned to her…
God took her home.
Thus, war she sounds! But my mother's doctor with poison in his blood heard it not.
Thus war she sounds! The loudest drums you ever heard on the governor's door,
She didn't take his mother because a foreign hospital clutched her so tightly in its arms,
The governor only had to tell his people what the president said on TV in a calmer voice, with
words only his county folk could understand,
He had not yet heard the drums of war!
In his suit, he was safer than Jesus on Crucifixion day! For no men called him a Messiah from
the war, only Mr. So and So who said President So and So said we're safe from the war,
And so, we must be safe from the war!
It was the illusion he painted in his walls with the cash he so smartly robbed, war does not come
to the rich,
They buy guns and cars and maybe aeroplanes to fly above the fighting men,
Deaf to the drums of war!
Till the madness took the President over the phone, his ministers running around screaming
here comes the war!
Here comes the war! He heard the drums marching to his door,
Here comes the war, the airports are gone. Mr. Governor had forgotten to build a helipad like
the rest!
Suit still on he saw his people in his dreams, headless folk and bleeding bodies in the town
square!
And when the fighting men stormed down his doors, the madness had overtook him,
For when they brandished guns and sprayed the bullets all he cried for was for the drums to
stop!
Thus, war she sounds! The endless drumming bleeding the governor's soul.
Thus war she sounds! The sea that swallowed my mother's clan and their sons,
It started with words about the other clan, their horrid ways and how much they do not deserve
any land,
My mother's father's grandfather did not know why, but he remembered when the white man
had smiled more at the other clan,
At least his cousin's uncle's father told him so,
He had talked about the job's they missed out on and the tracts of land they lost because and
the power of government!
The cousin's uncle's father had pumped his fist into the air his voice loud, but no one in his
family ever took time to learn what governments were really about,
And words flew some more, vile creatures called the Agpesaa and the stupid ones called
Jofishermen!
They could not be neighbours even in a land that Allah had separated for them with a lake,
It should have been a sea, it should have been a sea!
They did not ask Allah for this sea and instead sought to make one with arrows, angry politics
and stones!
My mother's clan called to their boys healthy and strong, the ones who knew more about video
games, movies and music than how to throw a stone,
The ones who had rallied for a good political cause a few years back rolling with the campaign
of "No tribe but one tribe, my Country! "
No tribe but one tribe remained as they each fought for their country while the old men yelled
into radios!
The leader of them all had advised against the TVs very strongly because TVs carried pictures
that showed how large the sea grew,
So they fought a little at a time, picking up the sand as they went, in schools and late night
events,
The hole they dug kept growing ,so much sand they dumped into it laying the bed of the sea,
Till one spilled the blood and they all kept coming,
My mother's countrymen fell to stick, word and stone while the big boys dined and chatted about
it!
With each drop grew the sea, the sea that swallowed my mother's clan and their sons,
Thus, war she sounds! Beneath the sea that swallowed my mother's clan were the heavy
burned bones of their daughters too.
Thus war she sounds! The man behind the camera told of the smell of bullets and sound of
dying men,
But they were not just dying men, no my charred dictionary said they were something called
journalists,
The brave men and women who made the world their diary, telling of the atrocities man wrought
from the hate in his hands, the greed in his heart,
Foolish, the man behind the camera called them too,
Idiots who thought holding up a mirror to the people of the world would be enough to recognize
themselves and the truth!
You are war! They are war! He is war! She is war!
They all said in different languages and with different captions, but my favourite remains '
President Orange face declares war on men not as orange as his face! "
You are war! The man behind the camera kept yelling when asked what is war?
He had seen it all, guns and bullets, rockets and bombs, jets and tanks on the street,
Yet after he showed the world his documentary films, he kept saying war is the creatures of
flesh, bones and a little brain,
You are war! Only human creatures make war!
Ere his death he spoke of leaving his town hungry for a story about hungry children and tired
women who held them their backs to the soldiers’ guns,
He had been young and radiant, a little boy,
But the war aged him a thousand years old, cursed to relive the days of every life his camera
saw fall,
His eyes grew old with every family he saw burnt to death, his ears by the sounds of screaming
women the soldiers raped and his hands by the weight of his partner's body,
He was an old man when he spoke his last words to me, I remember my mother was younger
than him,
The words he spoke are words that the war could not turn to smoke, "There is a madness to
war, and the madness is that only men are war, only men are war!"
Thus, war she sounds! The man behind the camera told of what made a war, only men are war.
Thus war she sounds! She is still loud upon my mother's grave,
Just as she was when my father didn't come home from the clan member's meeting,
He was nobody's son, so he was not counted amongst the dead in the sea,
She is still loud as when she stopped going to market because the farms and their farmers were
all burnt and dead,
She could do without tomatoes for a day, a week, a month,
My mother did not sit down at the table for bread in the morning for a year before her death,
Allah had made her black as coal, yet after a month of bombing and planes her eyes seemed
darker than the devil’s soul,
She mumbled about her husband coming home, "My Johnny will come home soon. I must make
his favourite meal. "
I wish I had been brave enough to tell her that the soldiers had shot her chicken laughing in her
face.
When she called her doctor on her final weekend, he answered screaming that he had no more
tablets for her broken brain,
I'd like to believe that it was his words that finally condemned her to the grave, (my favourite lie)
I did not cry when she went, I had wasted my tears on the pages I wrote about my country and a
girl I loved forever,
So, think about me please, the madman under the tree mumbling about peace and love when
you think of war,
Think of me when you write up your agendas of war,
Think of me when you beat your partners and your children,
Think of me please when you dream of new gun designs and your fake peace deals,
I do not dream of war,
For when war she spoke to me, I discovered she wore a man's face!
~FRANCIS SEAN