The Way I Was Born
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

where do I start to speak
about kicking down these doors?
how do I speak
of wrecking these mountains?
how do I tell you in numbers
that life crumbles under my feet
with a full-blooded house?
how my blooded whispers in the midnight
have become a bloody cacophony
with an empty head?
and the orchestra of silence rumbles
in the aftermath of crumbling stones;
when in the swamp of peace
I fight with myself, my demons
who reach out to me at the right time,
without forgetting anything.
I sing of giant stones crumbling
in the light of the day,
of an elegy written in the day
with no one mourning,
of stones lying across our path
engaged in warfare against peace
against all that work together
against stumbling stones.
that’s the way I was born
like midnight children
on a tilted globe
against a tilted axis
where reason mixes with passion,
and love has different pieces
mixing in a puzzle
and they are false.
I was born like a first-draft
unedited, unexpected
a sudden rush of fluid
down a crumpled paper,
a story swopped down a generation
of hungry souls,
a baby lying in a riddled cradle
awaiting civilization