The building stands on stilts, a story, told in idioms of 
stones and rusted wood. If water once flowed here
it has vanished, sucked dry by lips of a starving 
earth. My legs crossing the compound is my body, 
going back in time, seeking histories and etymologies. 
Past pillars that look like ships coming into shore, past 
a gate that smells of abduction and rape, 
up stairs that tremble with grief and through a 
door, crowded with death. A quorum of judges 
stares at me as if come in, we are waiting to eat you. 
Their heads blond, wigs blond, words blond. Blond 
is a lion when it leaps among a herd, a python 
when it ropes its appetite round a deer. Blond
is the colour that crippled a people, left us 
blindfolded, stumbling in colonised circles.
To understand the past you must sit in a room that 
smells of the past. Here men gambled and drank while
men stumbled down ladders into the maw of earth. 
Here men called on gods who cared for nothing but 
baskets of kola nuts and calabashes of palm wine. Here 
they labelled us wild, untamable, unsalvageable, 
split our lands into portions rich in copper and zinc. 
Here where now I sit, citizen of a new country, 
descendant of warrant chiefs and district officers, 
nothing has changed. Money moves from hand to 
plutocratic hand. Blood flows to placate angry gods. 
Power spreads to engulf the poor and simple. 
Here where a judge speaks softly into a microphone,
measuring his words like a housewife measures 
grains of salt, I must prepare for a 
voyage across the brutality of waters…

Lokoja was Nigeria’s first capital city during the colonial era

Victor Osemeka is a Nigerian of Igbo extraction. His poems focus on the perennial issues of disruptive politics, war and violence and its ultimate impact on humanity. He has been published in Brittle Paper and African Writer. He lives in Abuja, Nigeria.

Poetry submissions to thursdaypoems@gmail.com