Africa: The Kafue Boys’ Secondary School in Zambia
MELODIES OF WAR
Peace protocols detested
Amnesty talks distrusted
The UN flag defiantly bullied
The Red Cross flag riddled with blood
Peace ambassadors swallowed by greed
Peace agreements abrogated
But who will stop the spilling of blood
Like children playing a game of guns
The world now seems to fight for fun
Just how pathetic
War tankers quake the ground
War jets groan in the air
Missiles fly like birds
Rockets drop like rains
Billows of smoke darken our skies
As the so called stronger sex
Destroys our land
In a useless quest to claim supremacy
Ruining the earth by weapons of war
Oh shame!
Shame be upon you mongers of war
The spilling of blood is your ultimate goal
Your riches and power disguise your shame
But yet in the end you reap dead fame
Innocent souls you are sending to park
Down in the plots of endless dark
Why not reckon you’ve come of age
And call for peace amid stormy rage
This dragon hearted blood sucker; war
Has brought about confusion
Confusion and not only mere confusion
But a multiplication of confusions
Forcing its victims to always live
With trauma, fear and stress
This ram shackled hullaballoo; war
Has left our people with so much trauma
That they are even scared Of their own shadows
This bed less bedbug; war
Has accounted for the destruction of both nature and humanity
Forcing millions of innocent people
To live perhaps the most degrading life under the sun
The life of refugees
What a life so terrible
What a life so empty
What a life so valueless
What a life so hopeless
What a life so cumbersome
A life with no place to call home
A life with dreams so shattered
A life of being tormented by ugly nightmares
A life with a future enveloped in complete doom
A life of begging for survival
Oh shame!
Shame be upon you mongers of war
The spilling of blood is your ultimate goal
Your riches and power disguise your shame
But yet in the end you reap dead fame
Innocent souls you are sending to park
Down in the plots of endless dark
Why not reckon you’ve come of age
And call for peace amid stormy rage
May you grant us dear brethren?
A moment of silence to pay tribute
To the unsung heroes of fate
The innocent victims of war
To all those great men and women
The innocent souls who get slaughtered
By greedy human vultures
The greedy war mongers
Who craze for power and riches
To all those great men and women
The innocent civilians
Whose flesh get mutilated by bullets
And their bones get scattered by bombs
To all those brave men and women
The peasant farmers
Whose legs and arms get amputated
By land mines and mortars
To all those great men and women
The traumatized parents
Who panic with fear at the break of war
They carry dogs, goats, cats and even chickens on their backs
Mistaking them for their beloved children
To all those great men and women
The broken hearted bread winners
Who go hunting for birds and rats in the bush
Scouting for roots and bitter little fruits
For their families to eat during war
To all those great little heroes
The innocent children who get orphaned by war
Abducted by guerilla fighters
And forced to become child soldiers
To all those great little heroines
The innocent princesses
Who die from hunger, starvation
And sexual abuse during war
Uprooted from the land
They sweetly call home
Many miles they trek
Through the killing fields
Roaming the wilderness
As they flee from the ruins
Their country a crisis
And a wreckage of war
Their eyes are flowing
With tears of pain
Lamenting the bitterness
Of their humanity broken
Where death and hunger
Are two opposite ends
Of the same stick
They have since forsaken their ego to live
Their dreams are now ashes and heaps of garbage
Wagons of insults are hurled at them
Their souls are pierced beyond mortal cure
Crying and praying for misery to end
Oh shame!
Shame be upon you mongers of war
The spilling of blood is your ultimate goal
Your riches and power disguise your shame
But yet in the end you reap dead fame
Innocent souls you are sending to park
Down in the plots of endless dark
Why not reckon you’ve come of age
And call for peace amid stormy rage
Whenever I listen attentively
I hear bomb vibrations
Lingering in the atmosphere
And when I do the mathematics
I come to a total of millions
Billions and trillion of dollars
Being set aside to procure
War artilleries and ammunitions
What a misguided priority
Why not use those dollars
To improve education standards
And reduce the levels of illiteracy
Why not use those dollars
To check and enhance food security
Why not invest those dollars
To check and make a cut
On the donor dependence syndrome
Why not utilize those dollars
To support local investments
And create jobs for the jobless citizens
Why not be prudent with such dollars
To improve support to peasant farmers
And deliver them from shackles of poverty
Why in the first place
Must humanity be at war
With fellow humanity
In which manner and language
Must the victims of war speak
Before their cry for peace can be heard
Nations gone to war
Because of their distance
In political stances
Worshippers of God
Would rather go to war
Because of their distance
In religious views
Families related in blood and flesh
No longer want to relate
Because of their distance
In social life opinions
Parties in government delivering less
Because they concentrate
On arguing over policy
With opposition parties
Let’s end this tension
And heal the world
If no one is right
Then no one is wrong
Better bridge the distance
For the good of humanity
Peace can be achieved
But not from demagogues
And their fire arms businesses
But through genuine dialogue
Around a table
We rather you emphasize
On the ballot
Than you commercializing
The bullet
Formulate a trade ban
On all weapons of war
Yes!
Be them biological
Or chemical weapons
Be them atomic bombs
Or nuclear war heads
Be them long range missiles
Or Stone Age catapults
Blood stained businesses
Must come to cease
Our beacon of peace is unity in love
The voice of unity is always strong
The sound of war is so very wrong
Why not love as one human brother
Look at what we stand to achieve as one
Sticks in a bundle are hardly breakable
But count what we stand to lose as divided
You and I may convene summit meetings
You and I may connive in high level talks
You and I may sign trade agreements
But one fact we must not ignore
Unless in one love we unite as a human race
We can never be at peace with each other
Never!
All that shall be left of us
Is to continue witnessing our planet
Being shaken to its very foundation
By moral decay, global warming,
Deadly diseases, fatal accidents
Terror attacks and horrors of war
Just quite sadly but so surely
We shall continue becoming more stranded
Than a blind man in a very dark room
Searching for dark black shoes
This Poem was written by Andrew B. Mkandawire.
