POETRY – NO LONGER AT EASE – Osowe Oluwagbenga O

I feel no longer at ease about this nation,

For our President acts like the enemy within our shores,

Like Jero he has undergone metamorphosis,

And he no longer gives a damn because he’s the Commander -in -Chief

He-who-had-no-shoes is now a palm wine, nay cassava wine drunkard,

 “Why are we so blest, yet so poor?” The question of the little ones

 Like ugly birds with beautiful feathers,

Having so much, benefiting so little

Building houses of hunger where men lack grains of wheat,

So many are homeless, living in ramshackle buildings, poverty their constant companion,

Yet our President’s mansion continually undergoes renovation,

Why so much poverty in the land blessed by God

Weep not child, I say to the little ones, because I have no answer!

The 1st lady lays claim to death and resurrection like the biblical Lazarus,

How I wish her grammar was expunged so she’d no longer suffer us,

 I dare say she must have been made from a crooked rib,

Daily preening her not-so-beautiful feathers in vanity of speech and thought,

Now she demands an edifice for her pet project

When countless women are denied the joys of motherhood,

Some delivering stillborns, others bearing dead infants in their arm

All lost to the cold hands of death

Justice has been kidnapped in our country!

And no one is willing to pay a ransom

Let’s all trudge out and find her,

That we might save the wrong ones, who are in the dock,

While big thieves have been set free,

His worshipful majesty is no longer an incorruptible judge,

Crime now pays in my country, and she pays in hard currency

I remember Reuben,

We all thought he was a man of conscience,

Now lies spew forth from him for he’s now one of the king’s men

Dining and wining with the other interpreters, I call them the King’s fools

Beware Soul brother; karma, they say is a bitch

Though she waits two thousand seasons, when she bites don’t say you were bewitched

Cry my beloved country, and ye youths, heed the voice of revolution

Don’t participate in the violence of silence, for this is the year of uprising

Don’t just sit and watch while things fall apart,

Observing the smoldering charcoal as it feeds on the burning grass,

One man, one machete, one woman, one club

Come one, come all, for the field is ripe for harvest,

Come pick petals of the blood of corruption and poverty,

Let’s pick the cowries of hope for it’s no easy walk to freedom,

I long for the day when tales of crime and corruption in this country will be past,

Until then, this is not a country.

 

FOOTNOTE: (Trivia) How many book titles can you identify in the piece? List them…..Happy #WorldBooksDay in arrears.

Thanks

I am @gbengaosowe

photo credit: google images