Litany of A Broken Sacrament; How I Carry My Brother’s Sins
I shall rewrite my heart
into my eyes
and squeeze out a whole river of tears,
sprinkling more than a thousand drops
at the visage of heaven or
anywhere synonymous to the presence of God.
Behold, melancholy is a taste, clinched
on the tongues of our lives like tribal marks.
And just yesterday, my brother’s entire body
was shape-shifted into a
flaming ball of anguish,
he ripped the pages of his holy book, burnt them
into ashes
and murdered the name of God from
his thoughts, so I have carried the penance for his own sins
as I drop on my knees, counting prayer beads
and mouthing intercessions to God
so my brother doesn’t become a withered flower
in the garden of our land,
so, his life doesn’t become a masterpiece
of broken tales, or a snapshot of anything dead.
So he doesn’t morph into a lonely house_ haunted by
the ghosts of dead gods!
Say, I’m searching for the listening ears of God in my series of prayers
for behold! I pray thee oh, Lord
that if my brother becomes a night in the belly of this world,
or a hovering darkness
in the blurry sight of every man, give him oh, Lord,
another chance to breathe,
a chance to live.
And make his soul worthy, make him a replica of anything holy.
ABOUT THE POET
Daniel Aôndona is a lover of arts and culture, a young, prolific, and award-winning writer who hails from the Konshisha local government area of Benue State, north central, Nigeria. He is a member of the Hilltop creative arts foundation, the founder and mentor of The Newborn Poets. He is a spoken word artist, short story writer, book reviewer, a poet and enthusiast of literature-in-English who writes from Abuja, Nigeria with his works published or forthcoming on literary magazines like, Synchronized chaos, Spillwords magazine, Arts lounge, Power poetry, Words-Empire, The muse journal, Words Rhymes & Rhythms, World voices, Paper Lanterns and others within and outside Nigeria. Aside being a writer, he spends most of his time studding, playing games like word_search puzzles, graphics designing, drawing and painting, as well as making comic books.
Daniel can be reached on his social media platforms@ Facebook_ Daniel Aôndona_ Instagram_ daniel_aondona_ Twitter (X)_ @aondonadaniel30
