Westgate Cento

Chocolate corpses children Mars bars

Animals religion excuse kill

“Please forgive me, we are not monsters”

photographs of bodies that were still

Poet's note:

Poetry is therapy for me and writing poems is one way of me dealing with and processing the tragedy that happened at Westgate Mall.

Cento is latin for "patchwork". It is a poem "made up of passages from poems by one or more authors, a patchwork of quotations, a literary collage, a pastiche..."
Source: Poetry dictionary, page 53.

This cento was created from two articles that appeared in the online version of The Guardian.

 

Kenya mall attack: eight-year-old among six Britons confirmed dead

Father of Jennah Bawa described the terrorists as 'animals ... using religion as an excuse to kill people'

Kenya mall attack: four-year-old boy tells gunman he's a bad man

Elliot Prior confronted terrorist, who later asked for forgiveness and gave him chocolate, after his mother was shot in leg