Patriotic Killers

by Leonard Masauli
(Malawi)

A loud deep-scream from a distance
Pleading to live…
Please have mercy on me…then a sudden silence
As she coughed, blood bled from her nose and mouth
Finish her! Idiot! ‘She should not see our faces’
She cried, but no voice came out,
She jumped in struggle but nothing worked
Tightly, she was squeezed to nothing
Slowly her eyes shut, as she bid farewell
She is hacked, and chopped in pieces like vegetables
Yet she was a mother, innocently, to fend for her kids,
A widow and the only helper around her home
She is an albino, born 35 years ago,

But until when, shall we tear with grief,
For their blood continues to flow
Innocently the souls are diminishing,
Just for the crave for bones inside their melanin,
And they are haunted like a magnetic missile
When did you realize this culture of extinction?
Where have you learnt such a diabolical myth?
That today, a frequent visit to the graveyards,
To exhume bodies of albino is not an abomination,
That today, a fellow human being is worthy a penny
And mercilessly, heartlessly, you hack them to death
Under their skin the bones you assemble
Your nephew, daughter, niece and a sister,
For rituals and you offer them for sale
But the same patriotic Malawians,
Are the same patriotic killers
Spare the souls and spare their time to live…