INITIATION

I sit half awake, half amok
Carried away by the chants
Of empty scary black masks
Droning chants of nineteenth century druids
Seasonal migrants to our lands
Coming with the birds to breed
Souls and life taken with them.
On the day gboya* and I made four
Exchanges of souls, oaths cursed
Dust mixed with the ceremonial broth
Cooking at the square, now four days
Humans used to skin drums
Bones made in to khalils^
remnants end up as bodily markings
Away to a place strange
Where dementors are harmless
And back through an interswitch
here am ushered in to manhood.

* - masquerade in Nupe (A Nigerian dialect)
^ - A Jewish flute