KAMARUDEEN MUSTAPHA

A Palestinian Widow Remembers Rahab

                               1
Rahab, I measure your unshed tears in a
giant sieve, and weigh it side by side with
that shed by Judas Iscariot as he put a 
knot of rope around his holier neck.
Rahab, I gather the innocent accursed brethren
Blood of men women children and succulent
ladies of Jericho in tankers and storages,
side by side with the innocent Palestinians
blood shed to irrigate the planted settlements
of Gaza strip and Golan heights like parasites
flowering rose redder than blood of infants
massacred in the much-sung village of Darwish
brother poet.

                              11

Rahab, I wonder what delight you felt in you
as you thrilled to the caressing fingers of
Salmon of Judah after he had wedded your much
prostituted self. Tell me Rahab, did you still feel
like a bride, over aged one at that? or a spoil
of war that killed your many paramours and
brethren’s? War fought with divine dynamos of 
horns and hossanahs that razed your birthplace to rubbles

                               111
Rahab, some called you a divine traitress 
(As if there were things divine and infamous)
for having sold your people and your land
into death for the thirty-shekel prized possession
between the thighs of Salmon of Judah, just
like they call divine and holy the annihilation 
of my ancient uncles and aunts to moral justify the 
lust of marauders and oppressors. Therefore
I will call Judas more divine and holier for 
having sold my Lord Jesus for thirty shekels
as a sacrificial lamb to reanoint this 
paradise lost for God.

Why Could We

Why could we just allow them to die?
Why could we just allow them to die?
Why could we allow the missiles to keep
on falling?
Why could we allow the missiles to keep
on falling?
Why do we hold our cowardly peace and okay this pogrom?
Do we call this civilization?
Or brutalization?
Why does our humanity defy so huge a savagery?
Why do we know the truth and refuse to
say it?
Why do we know the right path but loath
to tread it?
One thousand and more people in just a night!
Twelve thousand people in less than a month!
A race being exterminated before our very
modern gaze!
Why do we call the ancients savages?
What killing machines have we become!
Like lions in the wild, like marauding leopards in the jungle
If we can condone this vegeance of vegeance of vegeance of vegeance
Hatched in the deepest darkness of ancient time
To lick a people clean, heads and toes, 
Roots and branches, stems and tendons, 
Today and tomorrow, from the face of this earth,
If we could shout annihilation from our corners of hurts
And have it echoed across all civilized patios
Sure, the barbarians in us have never gone to sleep
The Huns are here holding sways in the grand Roman Curia

I Have The Right Of First Comer

I have the right of first comer
I am not of the mushrooms
That sprout just over the night
And spread like the sea and shore sands
I come of the oaken groin
I have grown over millenniums

Do you remember Melchizedek?
He was my father
A priest of the Most High God
 Do you remember Salem
That was my city

I was birthed by truth
And peace
But you brought spears and arrows and deceit
From across the Sea of Blood
And you brought dynamos too
When you came from the West
And the trails of peace
Have since absconded 
When you stole the earth from beneath my feet

KAMARUDEEN MUSTAPHA is a Nigerian writer who writes across genres. His poems and short stories are published in various online and offline platforms. Three of his children’s books, two novellas “Winners Never Quit” and “Born to Rule” and a poetry volume “An Onion of Many Layers” are in the current approved list for students in junior secondary schools in Oyo State, Nigeria.