Author Information
Sam Obaloker : Tears of South Sudan
I am Confused with suffering
I told of my suffering, it was heard
I fathom the North
I saved it, my suffering grows
Some say the North read Sophocles;
On the flipside, I read the bible, and gained some common historical experience
By insidious intent, confusion is a festering wound in my schooled suffering.
I see a cheerless crowd on the freedom square
Each holding dear a fluttering candle in the wind
Smiles do no good to these sad faces
Where once light collapsed beneath the happy masks
And worried faces linger like long shadows by the campfire
Like butterflies hanging on the blade of grass
As no conference call, a miscalculated guess, damnations or little fights
Would bring back a drop from tears of South Sudan
I am mad with my limbs
I cut them off, my disability begins
I am full of complaints; I talk Ideas Mountain, and have brilliant plans
I plan everyday and keep on to the next, but I am crippled.
Someday by the foliage stench on my yard, tribe and region,
The unspoken battle will become open war
And by my own spear I will fall deep under
Once crippled, and as the sunrays shan’t brighten the darkness,
My world of wounded conscience and suffering;
Of endless complaints and backlogging can built to the glories of the North and her god!
For ingenuity, I seek reality; reality of a sort, one inherent in the world of man; a world of shadows, fate, and glamour. Merits, yes, for ingenuity alone is not enough! Masked man run the rails to the last station of the line as clouds of dissident ignominy clasps breathe of living souls by the shadows from castings of the settling African sun!
During this troubled time, a cocooned oldie was once said to have died along the trails of the elephant and the rest who walked his trail survived the peace by slings and hinges. Flattered souls are known to wonder beyond the elms of the home carnage seeking, beyond those wavering heights of sealed covenants beneath the coconut tree where night dancers once stomp the earth each full moon, pure love with the world!
I have met the defeated Halloween child puffed with the mistaken believe of a reality far-fetched to reality itself, where blossomed ridicules set with the toils of the rails seeking, looking, begging, and fighting a war of sorts; a war similar to meaning for the many poor souls along the crowded corridors of the world’s un-needed expendables.
Several things have happened. Several they have been. Once herds of carcasses flooded the Nile; once sounds of rattling AK47s filled the sky and whizzing shelling of civilian targets took away those we once knew and loved. This is open war against all creatures on the land. Fleeing like caricatures of defeated fighting morals carrying large emblems of courage; death by the trails of the elephants was no shameful business to the unfortunate oldie. This is the big picture. This is it!
Die when it isn’t your time to and you will be lost to history. Die alone in some quiet jungle of south Sudan seeking refuge within the phenomenon called venturing. Die seeking justice of some sort. Die while fleeing from yourself, when every single thing stood to meaning come crushing to your feet like infested roads of war torn Sudan decorated with land mines from beneath. Die from want and grieve. Die seeking love; to be loved and love, and to find that which every soul long for. Die in the promised-land where troubles of its own define the infinite fear of this new way of life where man eats man. Die in yourself complaining, compromising, and struggling for want in the den of lions and jackals; a jail instituted to defeat the mind and break the soul! I have already served my time in my own jail but now a free soul holding dear to my piece of the vow on the earth beaten arena where our battles are won and lost…for it is here lays my truth: freedom !
Sam Obaloker