Osama Bin Laden is not in Hell

By Alexander Opicho

I am singing this song from the new inferno
Where Dante did not meetVirgil in the days gone
I'm in unknown pouch of the eighth circle
The colour of my skin brought me here
As a migrant from the shit-hole state called Kenya
My host is Satan himself and myriad of his footmen,

My chagrin is the missing Osama bin Laden,
He isnot anywhere in hell, he is in paradise,
I am taught he occupies a Palace in Paradise
Still holding abakora-walking stick in his
Left hand and the beads of prayers in his right
Walking strong in his gangly body
Exuding wisdom and resistance to oppression
Glorified in Palatial archin Paradise by his faith
For he died while witnessingthat LaIlahailla Allah
Wana Muhammed urRasulallah!
They all enjoy comfort in the Palatial abode
In the heart of Paradise; Osama, Gadafi, and
Sadam bin Hussein, they are enjoying benefits of martyr-hood,

They desire not anything on earth, perhaps one more chance

To be martyrs in duty to Islam, resisting forces of oppression,

They bask in the morning sunshine of paradise with Mahatma Gandhi,

Maria Montessori, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Mother Theresa and Nadine Gordimer.

But I am neighbor to Jomo Kenyatta, he is ever chewing his misfortune,

He occupies the dark-most place in hell, punished to clean by use of his tongue

The anus of J. M. Kariuki and all the landless men and women of Gatundu,

Killed by pressure of poverty for lack of land, robbed by wiles of Jomo's politics,

Sorriest of all in hell is Tom Mboya condemned to suffer eternity of scorbutic skin,

In the most unlit corner of African hell, for his political sinscommitted in Nairobi

He had knowledge of one or two things, about deaths of Pinto and Kariuki,

But eternity of his rotten skin is a recompense for killing a two weeks' old

white-baby, that his wife sired out of adultery with an American Ambassador,

if only the living could know, sin of killing a baby is the most punished in hell,

I pity those that shot dead Samantha Pendo, and other babies of the powerless on earth,

Id Amin Dada is not in hell, they share a room in paradise with Julius Nyerere,

Exalted to paradise for their power to pray and seeking for forgiveness,

Allah of all creations forgave Id Amin Dada, who are you then to be un-forgivable?

There female companion is Winnie Mandela, but Mandela himself is in toilsome part of hell,

Condemned to eternal punishment of splitting firewood andquarrying rocks,

for the sin of child-neglect, he perpetrated bydivorcing his wife Winnie

for non-avoidable mistakes that all human beings could commit.

A pouch next me heaped with fire-wood that can burn for centuries

Footmen of Satan say that it is set for serial liars and political murderers,

I asked them to share with me the probable victims,

Their list is long beyond my good memory,
Though the name of Olusegun Obasanjo skylarking the list,

Just as the names Killers of Jacob Juma and Robert Ouko shine bright on the list

Unfortunate Barrack Obama is on the list, for his hand in the death of Osama,

Uff! Bill Clinton is number ten on the list, for lying to the world

Only to bomb Sudan for no other reason, but a smokescreen,

Behind which lurks the office filth with Monica Lewinsky,

Jonathan Goodluck and Abdulsalam of Nigeria are spared twelve brown virgins,

To serve them down to time eternal, they had to build peace in Africa

On the wild wide wounds of war, their paradise space

Is the cleanest, swept every day by Christopher Okigpo,

On a punishment for choosing the tribe other than being a poet,

Chinua Achebe is Ogikpo's comrade in retribution
for the Igbo like darkness in his heart for the country of Biafra.

Achebe shares punishment of eternal disgrace with Kissinger and Kennedy,

They both wore the blinkers on the global sore of mass killing in Vietnam,

All Catholics and Christians are heaped in one malodorous pouchin hell,

Their punishment is sorriest, they are condemned to eternal silence

Foot-soldiers of Satan took away their tongues, lest they repeat murmuring

Wrong type of worship; that Jesus is God when he was only a mere messenger

Send down on earth to serve God, I tell you the dumb silence of Christians is scaring

Most scary when you look at the lugubrious faces of all the dead popes,

They are silent and dumb like sculptors, most dumb of all is pope Gregory,

If only the living could know, it is the time to know how to worship,

For the noise of pastors, figurines of popes and the bristling of street prophets

Is only fattening you the living for the future slaughter in hell,

It was wise you had to ape Osama bin Laden in witnessing that;

La Ilahailla Allah Wana Muhammed urRasulallah.
Alexander Ernesto Khamala Namugugu Islam Opicho is a published poet, an essayist , literary critic and short story writer.He was born in Bungoma, Western Kenya, but now he lives and works in the Savannah region of Lodwar, in North-Western Kenya.