Blood Government

We bled for truth in the mouth of wolves,

feet bare on cracked streets,

dreams splattered against iron and smoke,

their bullets feasting on our names,

the soil drinking from our broken skulls,

and still — we rose,

with fists that remembered the sun.

The Blood Government sits fat on stolen breaths,

tongues like razors, laws like nooses,

they built prisons out of hunger and silence,

mothers bury their sons with trembling songs,

while power sharpens its blade on our grief,

but even in death,

we whisper louder than their guns.

We counted bodies like fallen stars,

names erased before they were ever sung,

the rivers clogged with our cries,

and in the darkness,

they laughed — drunken on our mourning,

but our ghosts do not bow,

they march.

They think fear will rot our bones hollow,

but we are carved from rebellion,

from the ancient fires of Mau Mau forests,

from mothers who never forgot,

from fathers who wore exile as armor,

we will stitch their lies into banners,

and burn them under the merciless sky.

They came in unmarked cars,

kidnapped dreams in broad daylight,

disappeared voices into unmarked graves,

but we —

we wrote their names in our hearts,

in our chants,

in the cracking thunder of our anger.

Every June now smells of gunpowder and lilies,

an anniversary of rage and remembrance,

we light candles where blood once puddled,

we carry stones in our pockets,

ready to tear down their golden towers,

ready to dig graves for corruption,

ready to reclaim the breath they stole.

Do you hear the boots pounding in the night?

Not theirs — ours.

The boots of a generation unafraid,

teeth gritted,

mouths full of fire,

building a storm from broken prayers,

coming to rewrite the ending.

We will not forgive the murder of hope,

we will not unsee the red rivers,

we will not trade justice for speeches,

our memory is a blade sharper than steel,

we are the unfinished business of our martyrs,

we are the rage that curdles their champagne,

we are the reckoning at their gates.

Raise the banners high —

stitched with the blood of the fallen,

sing the songs they tried to bury,

march with the weight of a thousand graves,

let the Blood Government tremble,

for we are the children of unbroken dawns,

and we have come to end this silence.

We swear by the graves —

this land will be free or it will burn,

we will tear the rot from its roots,

we will not relent,

we will not bow,

until every thief is dethroned,

until Kenya rises clean, whole, and ours.

© Bunguswa ™