"The Language Known by Every Flesh and Blood" This poem begins like a dirge
Telling people the certainty of life; People living for a period of time
Before losing way to the Mother Earth's dust

Not until eyes depicted through bizarre looks
My heart senses an incorrigible sureness of life; The temporariness of people living on earth
Before eventually laying to rest is but a certainty.

My eyes are shrouded with substances of reality
Verbalizing my status in-between grief and glee.

Today, people crowd together like an assembly of students
Each carrying hearts filled with indirect thought
In silence and grief, a folding of hands and voices takbeer
And in silence again, like a slideshow ending, they disappear
In what concerns the most of a brief life.

Today, I learned, it badly hurts beyond measure
Losing your part in life, your blood to the dust of
farewell, unplanned.

Thus, I question my senses:
What if it is my turn to swing in grief
To mourn the demise of my parents,
To pine for losing something or someone I hold dear?

Behold! Death is not a language taught to me by a teacher
It is just a language of the world; Everyone knows it better than any other tone on Earth -
Serving food for thought without a remnant of inequality. Death feeds on every soul aligning a path
Commonly, a language of the world
Known to every flesh and blood.

© Yahuza Usman Taraba State, Nigeria