I was born there
I was born in the odds,
I lived through it,
dotted the lines on my path
I was born among hyenas,
these scrambling to stiffen the last breath,
Amidst hurts and hate first from home,
A lot cast in mirage and fantasies,
Hope too soon cut short,
Survival, a struggle,
Unexplainable Fratricidal warfare,
The closer in blood, the more bloodier,
A race without consent
A badge of calumny,
Shot on the heels like Achilles,
Bore cruelty from innocence to adulthood,
Unending miasma, the debacles of a short existence,
Abandoned, secluded,
for reaction occasioned by their own bile,
Childhood stolen,
set on a slippery path as they watch a peradventure slide to my ill.
From ambuscade, they drew their swords,
Their arrows bathed in blood unabated,
Aiming at my marrows,
I groan and mourn in the dark,
Enemies as friends monitoring,
Friends as enemies watching.
This path not by Choice.
I lived through it,
A thousand bands of beasts assaulting,
Into this war, enlisted.
I was born there, buoyed by troubadour,
Somewhere in Africa,
My right are taken away from me,
Where laws are drafted by criminals,
Where the police pay themselves on the streets,
Where certificate are mere papers with payments,
I was born there ,
Where criminals are protected and sanity deemed madness,
Somewhere in West Africa
where compassion is extinct
The survival of the fittest,
Street boys kills to survive,
Scholars abandon politics to simpleton,
Where the brightest are critics and cadres prevents the ambitious
I live there,
Where certificate is a document to escape,
Lawyers now charge and bail for survival,
Doctors protesting like urchins
Poets selling cosmetics,
bankers riding "Okada",
Amongst drug peddlers,
Amongst cultist,
Where clergymen induce the gullible,
In this cage we call country.
I was born there.
Copyright © Oluseyi Akinbami | Year Posted 2024
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