A Dragon-Mouthed Lunatic Poem by Chima Ononogbu

Oppression everywhere; people scurrying,
scurrying away from a lunatic,
a dragon-mouthed lunatic drunk from a cocktail of blood.
No one is safe;
safety is old and abandoned;

no, crushed,
ground to a dusty pulp,
by its steel-ripping claws, terrifying
the rocks tremble and fall a splitting fall.

Soldiers hooves thudding,
raging boots with teeth as a saw,
the walls yelping cracks,
fretful horses whinnying and waking sleeping nights,
and frozen people scaling through clapping windows.

Turmoil wreaks the peace of peace,
towns beleaguered by red-eyed khakis with guns in hands,
bullets flying with lightening speed,
burning the streets;
freaking out, the rattled nocturnal air smokes smoke.

Broken fleshes everywhere falling like chilled dumps,
melting cell by cell.
What a nation!
A saber-toothed bug is on the prowl,
drilling blood in the marrow of freedom;
feeding notorious fear,
shredding the flesh of voices to a broken silence.
Brutality roams the street, terror in legions.

A government - a dragon-mouthed lunatic - the dregs of humanity
in a convolution like a dog wagged by its tail.
Oh Nigeria, when will life be life, and not terror?
When will swords be sheathed away in their scabbards?
Guns in their hosts?

Never, never, I hear;
your voice writhes life with furor of terror.
You are an unchanging terror
sewed up in oppression of them
in cottages so lowly - people so voiceless.

A government, threading thrillingly on injustice wide plains,
while stigmatizing justice as a sprawling dung.
Democracy is supposed to taste as a sweet nectar,
but this democracy swings brutality like a grim reaper.