Insomnia

I lay helpless on the bare ground of our dark hut;
watching Omar Bongo’s men drag my father away;
six gun nozzles staring at him without a blink
Kabila’s soldiers came-And the last I heard of my mother
was a scream of sacred pain.
I woke up with a loud cry of dismay from this nightmare
breathing as heavily as though I had just run fromKinshasa to Kampala,
chased by bullets and machetes and clubs.
I closed my eyes to seduce the spirits of sleep;
to snooze into the African-Utopia and draw some strength
-to run from Harare to Addis Ababa
when the sun rose.
But I couldn’t find that fat city I hoped for;
Mugabe, Mobutu and Mengistu had ordered the
massacre of everything that once made it a dreamland
I woke up again, with a squeal; panting,
panting as though I had just seen the ghosts of
Idi Amin and Sani Abacha
It began to rain outside. It rains here everyday;
tears and blood dripping down roof tops
and gushing into gutters
Bullets have been lightning flashes, And thunder cries
have been the wails of a suffering people.
It was still very dark outside
But it’s been dark here for very long now
Some men have held day from breaking,
strong men indeed.
I am still in that dark hut wondering when help will come
- wondering if it will ever come.
I thought I heard OAU and UN soldiers coming
But no, they were footsteps of Laurent Nkunda's men,
marching towards my hut
with a commanding voice, screaming
- “Destroy everything!”