Musings on the Fury of Guns and the New Inventions of Death.

By Chibuzor Okoroafor

How wonderful is Death, Inevitable Death and his brother sleep. When a man gives up his interest in the outer world, he proceeds to weave many beautiful thoughts about his being in his sleep. For another person’s sleep is the acid test of our own sentiments.

Unless we are savages, we react kindly to death, whether of friend or enemy. It does not exasperate us; it does not tempt us to throw things at it; we do not find it funny.

Death is the ultimate weakness and, unless it appeals to our protective instincts, is likely to arouse in us a nasty, bullying spirit.

From a height of conscious superiority we look down on the sleeper, thus exposing himself in all his frailty, and indulge in derisive comment upon his appearance, his manners, and if the occasion is a public one (it is fatal to sleep in public), the absurdity of the position in which he has placed his companion if he has one and particularly if he has not a companion.

Whatever the case maybe, we all prefer a neat and noiseless kind of sleep, even in death.

Certainly, there are no happiness within these circle of flesh engaged in the lonely ecstasies of mirth; nor is it in the optics of my eyes to behold and applaud felicity not earned, if not so-the first day of our jubilee is death.

When we are from him, the creator, we are dead till we are with him.

United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other, which being impossible, these desires are infinite and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction.

Thus, have we  made off ourselves, as plain-as plain, prodigal daughters lacking the romantic appeal of husks, un-equal men of passion but of no parts steeped in dignified past–all in reckless–abandon of aloofness & superiority and paddling side by side–in beauty–to the booming sounds of guns; whilst, the creed of the pen gathers flames, the booming barrels takes courage; and we all contrive to forget that there are no beauty without  measures; we forget that the dead lack the passion for the un-attainable.

I’m just musing upon the ‘strange and mystical’ transmigration of silkworms.

Chibuzor Okoroafor lives in Oron where he attends the Nigerian maritime academy and writes poetry.

Also by Chibuzor Okoroafor: “Renditions of Flight II”