Before words become raining bullets
Showering on the leaky roofs of the Delta
And preaching become blood
Coursing through the veins of the Rivers
Before the Bible and the Quran
Become Trump’s wall
That divides the south from the North

Let us take a minute to inhale
The healing fumes of tolerance

Before we give our parting shots
Fiery words spurting forth
From tongues made of vicious blades
Vile and mendacious vitriol
prying open the soft flesh of our conscience

Before we depart from our faiths
With hate speeches
Acerbic diatribe spew from pious pews
And horrendous verbs jeering at the Jews

Before the pulpits go up in flames
With rhetorics for the slaughter slabs
Acrimonious chorus
Offensive jabs sneering at the Arabs

Before the Holy books become alley
of pages where we hide our ignorance
And the rosaries; the abacus where we count
our latent bigotry

And our cassocks are smeared
With vituperations against the innocents
Scathing invectives
Pouring out from the minarets

Before the holy grounds absorb the blood
Sacrificed to our ruinous minds
Parochial paths
Shrouded in rancorous fogs

Before words become blades
To lacerate our souls
From purgatory
Or sweet smelling incense
To evanesce our essence to Al-janat

Before words become raining bullets
Showering on leaky roofs of the Delta
And preachings become blood
Coursing through the veins of the Rivers
Before the Bible and the Quran
Become Trump’s wall to divide the south from the North

Let us converge these words
Into a lullaby
To rock soulless nights
Into repose in the warm embrace of crosses and crescents
On their trail to Arabia and Calvary

Let our rhetorics ooze out sterile juice
To cleanse the festering sores
Of the many souls decimated
In senseless religious purges

ADEYEMI ADEOJO
HANNIBAL
17022017