When music is made no more

I can afford to bargain for an expensive guitar

A piano of my taste will just do

Relax at an Opera

In a superb tuxedo

A ticket

On the front row

In a private cinema, sounds fashionable

There is always something new on box office

Delighting the mind, soul and body

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The Camps

Chike and Usman

Who live beyond the horizon

Downthefarthest creeks

Under the slums

Or far away, where no grass grows

Where ghetto is law

Where bullets make music

Where the grenades echo like in the war movies

Making Music with Death

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Drums are made from aluminum pots

Discarded at the camps

Strings for guitar

Made from bomb traps

Their lips,

The sides of their mouth

And their tongues jam in unity

Other kids would hear these sounds of music

They gather around

To take in this one moment of happiness

It could be their last

Before them

They make merry

Some would gladly recite the musical lines

The ones they could remember

When there was still school

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This is their Opera

Mama, Papa, Sister and Brother

Come and sit around

Forming a circle

Their spectators: their cinema

In the midst of a waiting happiness

They are lost in their own thoughts

Of wishes and wants

Old memories unlocked from their shells

Of good old memories

When it was…

Their ears, eyes and senses have been blocked

Too lost to hear the heavy footsteps

Of returning soldiers

And the air raids hovering

They sit at a place

At peace with their inner man

Laugh

Happy to die

And music will be made no more

Written by Oluoma Udemezue.