Tears are in the season of mourning (For Grace Usheng)*

Tears are in the season of mourning

A backlog of water scalds our eyes

Tears rebel, go dry, leaves us pondering

Over piddled anger, infused daftness

And misread faith, immersed in faithlessness

Soon, tears will drip sideways, not down

Tears feel grief, it sees death, it knows

Tears have followed death into unsaid places

But this death of dying and dying again, again

Tears have seen, and have watered over much

Over this, over that, over death: flared, penciled

And baggy-ed into untailored madness. Sewn

Into lies that power its might in lawful presumption

Tears have declined threading down cheeks

This time tears will run in those souls that maim

It will drip against gravity, deepen ache, then free us

Now that tears are in the season of mourning

We’ll cry with blood in absence of water

Hopeful; those who bring tears in others

Will be soaked in tears that won’t drip their ache

Sure tears come all the time, only this time,

Only this time, our tears run as pus

We live, knowing that life is more than bum-issue

* Grace Ushang was a young Nigerian woman who had every right to expect a bright future. Now she is dead merely because she was female. On the day that Nigeria celebrated its 49th Independence Anniversary on 1 October 2009, NEXT Newspaper reported that Ms. Ushang from Obudu in Cross River State, a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) serving in Maiduguri, Borno State, was raped to death by some men still at large, who, according to the story, “took offence because she was wearing her Khaki trousers – the official uniform of the youth corpers.” More