Fool’s Glitter

“ Like a baby still-born

Like a beast with its horn

I have torn everyone who reached out for me.”[1]

---

Nestled in the pregnant ground

The ancestors tamed me.

Midwived by the Companies’ adventuresome greed

I mewled and seduced, fed fanciful needs

And then

Lionised, I nurtured organised terror

I roared out my unholy power

I took humanity

and shoved it down my hole.

Gold

Solhan’s choke hold

Diamonds

Kailahun violence

Cobalt

Goma’s child soldiers

I took insanity

Fed it gas so it would explode.

Like a bankrupt billionaire

Like a unicorn turned bear

I will tear all the values that came before me.

I take humanity

And shove

it down

my hole.

Dedicated to the victims of the June 2021 Solhan massacre.

[1] From Bird on the Wire by Leonard Cohen

About the poet: Yarri Kamara is a Sierra Leonean writer living in Burkina Faso.

His Silence

Too much has happened here

He has waged silent warfare

Socially learned neglect as norm.

Avoided glances and eye contact.

Shut doors and cellphone for finger tips.

His attention, his smiles, his affection-

reserved for those who do not make him feel ashamed of his own existence.

His conversation, his loving touch

for those who validate his struggle to climb to the respect table

where I should be but could never attempt/ing to reach.

Too much has happened here

He has left the smell of polite smiles at my efforts to be worthy of acknowledgement.

He has eaten in putrid quiet that reeks of anger at his childhood, while she has scrambled around looking for her way out in festive dishes and perfectly set tables.

I hear his fear in the hallways muffled by her regret and suicide attempts.

She has mopped over them with parent-teacher meetings, over investment in our lives or over loving everyone and the attached parts of herself.

Too much has happened here

We have fought over clothes and accessories

We have competed for titles that nobody told us were birthrights

We have placed the judgment of our worth in him, her and the institutions that massacred him and her - left them in present bodies, drowning in wells of broken down barely breathing unsure souls.

Too much has happened here

I left.

I have identified, then co-identified to find I mis-identified for the books to tell me not to identify at all.

I have nightmares of the boy I let touch me

Strum his curious tunes across the keys of my skin

To unlock his unreadiness and flee from too muchness.

I have nightmares of the love I felt for him and the disdain he felt of me.

His was always a lock I picked apart while the mirror in the keyhole made him cringe with memories of too much happening in his mother’s home.

He has replied emails and love letters with one word answers while he questioned everything about hating how much he needed to love me.

Too much has happened here

We wake up in sweat in the middle of the night

Panting

We hear whispers of failure and gossip about how we did not win the competition for titles nobody told us were birthrights.

Nobody ever yelled love at us

Nobody ever shook respect into our hands with stretched out palm.

Nobody ever painted peace in green walls around us.

I do not want to be alone in this apartment.

Too much has happened here.

-By mw.

Ten Long Years

For ten long years

we spared no one

on the theater of war,

where no glories were won,

only the wasted lives of our kinfolks

and the tired frame

of a battered nation,

where we were prey and predator.

From humble Bomaru,

agony rode through our veins

to the death of heroes and villains,

when blood relatives of this land

hunted one another

with apocalyptic grudge,

fighting to conquer themselves

in a land divided against itself.

We had forgotten the peace

once shared in the noise children made

when they played hide and seek

on nights illuminated by moonlight,

when adults sat around the fire

sharing legends of their land

and the illustrious heroes

whose bold steps cleared our path.

We had strayed too far

from the luminance of Naimbana

and the bravery of Sengbe and Nyangua

to where we became lab animals

in the murderous hands of intoxicated children

controlled by savage hands,

possessed by evil spirits

conjuring our bloody end.

When our neighbors

in green and blue helmets

arrived to keep the peace

our fire had burned too far.

Those with any life left

rose from cinder

like feverish zombies

groaning and trembling to life.

Now let our ruin be our rebirth

as life itself springs from death,

a new country consecrated with blood

germinates with zest and courage,

with a firm commitment

to never again

turn to violence

to settle scores.

-Joseph Kaifala.

Joseph Kaifala is a lawyer , scholar and human rights activist from Sierra Leone.

In The Sun

a good poem to me is like food when I'm starving

you're poetry

a book battered and burnt

but still legible

i read you

your skin is fragile parchment full of stories of your past

the tattoos on your neck are new

a rose choked by its own thorns

a dead man hanging from a noose

i read you

black boy i can't love. black boy i can't have. black boy i can't call mine.

i found your book buried in the ashes of an old fireplace inside a haunted castle

i brought you home with me into the light where you don't need to hide

behind tattoos, behind thorns, behind costumes of monsters

like you, i used to be starving too

but you,

battered, burnt, blue black boy

fill me

i read you all summer long

right here

right here in the sun.

Adeola Carew is a writer and poet from Sierra Leone.

Mi at sidɔm saful

Mi at sidɔm saful by Anni Domingo

1. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

pan ɔl we di wɔl tɔnɔbɔ ɔlsay

sɔm pɔsin dɛn de we de wok

de ɛn nɛt fɔ ol wi ɔl tayt

so natin nɔ go ambɔg wi.

2. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

pan ɔl we wi de bay wisɛf,

ɛn wi nɔ de niya wi kɔmpin,

wi ɔl na wan ɛn de fil ɔl

wetin wi kɔmpin de fil.

3. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

pan ɔl we ɔlman lɔk insay os, in wan gren,

di wɔl dɔn big. Wi de tɔk naw sɔm kayn we

wi nɔ mɛmba se go apin wan de. Ɔlman na

wan, ɛn wi bisin bɔt wi kɔmpin dɛm.

4. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

dɛm wan dɛm we nɔbɔdi bin de braskitul sɛf,

na dɛm de bifo naw. Dɛn nɔ de na grɔn igen,

wi abop pan dɛm. Na so wi ɔl de klap fɔ dɛm.

5. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

wi kin manej naw witawt bɔku bɔku tin dɛm.

Na pɔsin, nɔto tin dɛm, go mek wi layf bɛtɛ,

Ɛn tɔn dawt ɛn tabitabi to op fɔ tumara.

6. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

Dis lɔkdɔng ya so, nɔ min se wi fasin insay.

I mek wi at swɛl big so te wi ebul fɔ

pre fɔ dɛn wan dɛm we dɔn lɔs dɛnsɛf

ɔ dɛm bɔdi dɔn brok wit tumɔs wahala.

7. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

ɔl dis bɔku plaba go tap wan de.

Ivin na dis kres kres tɛm ya so

Wi dɔn fɛn tru sori-at ɛn ajo,

ɛn wi at de sing wit jɔy.

8. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

tide na bunya, ɛn wi nɔ no wetin go kam

tumara bambay. We wi ɔl sidɔm na os

di grɔn dɔn gɛ tɛm fɔ de mɛn insɛf.

9. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

ɔltin we de insay wi at, na di sem tin

we bin de fɔstɛm, bikɔs ɔltin na wan

i sidɔm na wi at, ɛn fasin wi to aw

wi tan lɛk dip insay, to udat wi bi.

10. Mi at sidɔm saful bikɔs a no se

wi dɔn gɛt bɔku bɔku tɛm. so lɛ wi

tinap, lɛ wi lisin ɛn memba se,

wi tranga, ɛn bay ɛn bay, wi go ebul

fɔ blo kam dɔng igɛn .

Anni Domingo is a British-Sierra Leonean actress in Theatre, Television, Radio and in Films.

Note: Ms Domingo would like to acknowledge Amadu Bangura and Esme James  for helping with

official Krio orthography in this poem.