We Buried That Foolish Youth Yesterday

That foolish youth was buried yesterday-

At night.  In darkness. Without tears.

He wore a permanent scowl

On his face that bore scars of knives;

The top two buttons of his shirt were unbuttoned

To reveal a chest the size of two concrete slabs sitting on each other.

His gait was of a prowling violence

In human flesh;

Where he stepped, clods of soil whimpered

In mortal fear.

Old men in my village asked him, ‘Son,

Why can’t you make peace with people?

Show us your tasus-riddled, pus-infested buttocks

So that we may prick it with thorns and make you whole again.’

He would brandish his fingers at the old men

And throw words carelessly the way a drunkard would do

When hopelessly drunk in high-noon.

He had dropped out of school and would speak

A smattering of English:

“Me, we are the ones they call bad, friend; wrong number!”

“ What is this staphylococcus telling me? Do you even know what staphylococcus means?”

We buried him, that foolish youth.

A decomposing flesh, so vulnerable, it was a pity.

No one cried: the dark figures that hurriedly buried him

Just shook their heads

Those fingers he brandished in anger

Were frail, hopeless, decomposing flesh.

When the mound had formed on this unmarked grave,

The village sighed.

The staphylococcuses had the last laugh. 

C) Salem Lorot/ echoesofthehills 2017

~

For Poets United Midweek Motif-Unity

The prompt given by Susan this week was on unity. This was my attempt on this subject.