A Cyborg God, My Country and Her People: A Holocaust, An Iconography of War and Grief – Ismail Yusuf Olumoh.
A Cyborg God, My Country and Her People: A Holocaust, An Iconography of War and Grief God, a cyborg, holds the earth with his metal hands, redeeming the sun to Himself. Is He not wonderful, filching pearls from us? An aristocratic behaviour. A sword with two eyes: happiness and its sibling. God’s acre, a cathedral for the dead. He furloughs personage to sleep, plunging his iron hands into homes first, then bodies until they are breathless. A crimson rose with the chirping of birds. Do the lenses in his binocular not magnify beyond the sky? Or how come he fails to see, in the threater section, red and black maquillage on the breast of the roads; She, a country—Nigeria, and our hands? In today’s newspaper, bodies laid there, speechless. Terrorists, blood coursing through their veins, swore to experiment on more specimens—our bodies—with bullets and grenades. Sterile patients with a Colloq broke ransom. Not even God is safe in this place, because anyone who carries him on their tongue dies, and my grandfather too. What loss has inflected in me through this incision is grievance, and I have not found a cure. Every midnight I book for cure: before I enter into God’s alcove, I sanitize my body with sterilized water; immerse my Qalb in faith.. I know, one day, I, not only me, will survive. I whistle the language He understands into the zephyr: وارحمنى اغفرلى ياربى. That is, God, before you touch me with a scalpel, disinfects me from my sins; then, rehab me with blessing. Nirvana. In Maiduguri, I asked what it costs to get home and they answered, “your life with a touch of a ransom to settle life-threatened nurses that help patients in captivity. ” As if I will go extinct. A stereotypical behaviour. I think of my country, and the arithmetic says dead | blood | no future. Here, everyone who dials for cure from illness, dies unhealing in this hill road. God, my country and her people: a holocaust, an iconography of war and grief. Contributor’s Bio Ismail Yusuf Olumoh is a Nigerian creative writer, teacher, a poet, a spoken word artiste, […]