IF I WERE TO WRITE A SPEECH LIKE MARTIN LUTHER KING

IF I WERE TO WRITE A SPEECH LIKE MARTIN LUTHER KING

If I were to write a speech like the great Martin Luther would I even know where to start?
If I were to write a speech, I wouldn’t know what else to say than the groaning of my heart

If I were to write a speech like Martin Luthers’s
I don’t know to whom it will be addressed
Will it be to my people? The ones who do not see themselves as my people
The ones who make me think our nationality is a product of an imagination that’s fickle

If I were to write a speech like Martin Luther’s, will I be addressing hearts?
Will the words that pour from my soul
Rip into shreds and parts—
The very fiction that divides us
From seeing the divine umbilical cord that unites us?

If I were to write a speech like Martin Luther’s
Will it pass a drip of patriotism
To the veins of your soul?
Will it undeaden your hardened skin
And burn through your hardened walls like Sheol?

If I were to write a speech like Martin Luther’s
Will you see the picture that brings me peace
The picture I see with my kids and yours in it?
Playing in neatly kept parks
Reeling with laughter from liberated and unified hearts

If I were to write a Speech like Martin Luther’s
Will the dead in you arise?
Will the Phoenix flames birth new magical life
Will it cease the strife?
Will it cut sharp like a knife?
Release you like an ocean dive?

If were to write a speech like Martin Luther’s
Will it make you see we were made to be brothers?
And not have our heads at loggers
We were made to be giants,
And not crippled wailers
Who complain about things so minute
Eyes too dark to see the greatness in them
If I were to write a speech like Martin Luther’s
Will It show you a vision of heaven
Of GOD’s only begotten Son
And how He sees us as one
For it is written, He was not ashamed to call them brethren

If I were to write a speech like Martin Luther’s
Will your heart break, will it disintegrate,
Collapse everything you have ever thought was
Tear it all apart
So you could be given a new heart and we could have a new start?

If I were to write a speech like Martin Luther’s
I’d say, Dear Country Man
I have nowhere else to go
With you I have found a home
Could we stay together and build a Nigeria of our dreams
Or should we let the world laugh us to scorn
Of how we lost a chance at a beautiful thing?

Temitope Ola-Sunmonu
13/10/15