By Gbemisola Adeoti
When they buried grains
in the earth’s bowel
they prayed for plenteous produce
to wrest a grain of joy
from sumptuous harvest of angst –
dry-eyed sun, irate whirlwind
and flood like a mordant mob
just a tiny grain of bliss
to thaw the frozen grief
in the heart of desert dwellers
long deserted by order.
But the night barged in at noon
when harvesters got plucked
in the mid-sentence of harvest
as they cleared macabre grains
without clearing their noosed neck
from cascading foil –
perdition without permission
In the grave field of desert grains
all rights are harvested like rice
by irenic death-granting agencies
and sealed off in barns of restrictions.
War is a word that the world
stammers in hushed tones
at the harvest of a thousand heads.
The rice field is a mine field
that yields ghastly grains
in measures no one explains.
Therefore,
let the living heed the creed:
if you plant without permission
do not reap without permission
if you reap without permission
do not sleep without permission
if you sleep without permission
do not die without permission
but if you die without permission
then, you chose your own perdition.
