A toast to ruin
A toast-

To those who made this tragedy
A disaster worth living
As I share coke
With the wailing banshee of Baga
Whose throat takes nothing but mourning

Cheers!
To those who said we were made
In the image of the gods
prophets of doom who left out
that we were not models
Of gods best behaved but players
in the personification of their mania
and the animation of their psychosis
Cheers! As I lift a shot to Chibok

Cheers!
To the blood in our veins
Which has been seeped down
A thousand watery graves
from rugged warriors
to cheap cowards our ancestors became.

Cheers! As I share a pint with you –
who forgets the origins of your name

Cheers! To the present
For allowing the past
To decide the future he won’t be in!

Cheers! To the gods
Who are only good
on ceremonial thanksgivings
But powerless on every day else
owners of mute temples
shrines, where prayers find themselves
in a massacre’s resolve.

Cheers to me!
to the victimhood we ride
to satiate our belly
the hatred that knows nothing
but the enemy of the next meal.
Cheers to the minute silence
That became the message
Cheers!

This poem first appeared in 2015. The text published here follows the substantially revised version collected in Poetry Has All My Pain (First Edition, 2025).