“CORRUPTION”
-i-
You are a ten-letter word
a virus cast in letters of vice
the flesh of a tumor
scrawling over our body like a pox.
You are the seed transplanted from a foreign land
from a garrison of greed and lust
to flourish in Niger’s parchland of worms
the lice on our overgrown hairs.
You are the pest of a hot tropical forest
the fly that perches on tan open wound
spreading leprous fingers of guilt and mud
on bodies sloshed with greed.
You are the offspring of aliens gods
they who reap where they did not sow
who came to plunder and steal with iron hands
what belongs to the naive and innocent.
You are the sum of all our sorrows
a drain in the mid-harmattan haze
a ten letter word with a house in our homes
in the notorious zoo of give and take.
You are the mountain of a mistake
A badge of shame of slavish inheritance.
Of taking without being in the right
Of giving without minding the cost
Predators beget predators
Itching fingers beget greedy mouths
Releasing staunch vomit that pollutes the land
From a ten-letter word cast in vile marble.
-ii-
A spelling of doom
For a nation in gloom
That is what you are
CORRUPTION
An heirloom of shame
smouldering in the pangs of birth
A dank drilling of fissures
in the patchwork of words
plotted in foreign lands.
A metaphor in letters of bile
in the dance of shattered dreams
You are the ten-letter word
Our spelling of doom
A spell (cast) in sin-word
The death-knell of our common breath
The putrid flesh festering in the sun
Father of shit
Mother of sleaze in the tropical forest
A glass house without a shield
You are the louse that has struck our body
Sucking blood and marrow
You have fattened the barn of a few
You have taken the bush for the forest
The public for the private
How can we use fat to sweeten the soup?
How can we eat with the elders of the world?
-iii-
There is war in our front
Against the spelling of doom
A war against a ten-letter word
We cannot win with psychedelic guns.
A war that discriminates is
Shooting without aiming
A war with prisoners
Is not the war we need.
This land is desolate
Desiccated in places
A war of differentials
Is a war against our common flesh.
The war we need
Is the war against the doom
The alphabet of death
A war with a gun inside our head
Not a gun shooting in the air
To kill the serpent
Spelling our common death
We must move before the quarry.
We must shoot beyond the target
To open the jaws of worms
And slit the doors of moss
And the target itself.
He that aims, must aim to maim
He that shoots must shoot to kill
This war is not for the half-hearted
A barking dog only disturbs the air.
Aim for the eye like the cobra to blind
Spew out the venom like the mamba to kill
He truly falls who is on the ground
And utters a cry of surrender.
-iv-
IT IS like a loss of their fabled garden
to the serpent in their backyard
Corruption formed in the cradle
The sybarite of naked greed and lust
It is
A sour apple of doom
And a paradise lost
From Eve to Rebecca
Two conniving matriarchs
Each for her own greed
Sealed their uncertain faith.
In the dance of betrayal
The battle of supremacy
Between Good and Evil
In the charmed garden of a serpent.
Battle of disinheritance
Between two siblings
In a hunter's game of heritage
Like Adam betrayed
Pa Isaac could not help himself
The hand of Esau
The voice of Jacob
And a mother between.
A MAN who fiddles with his promises
He who is the godfather of scams ancient and modern
How can he be the patron of my salvation?
HOW can
Their cruel joke of destiny
Become my people's lot to bear?
Their grape of perfidy our wine
To gulp?
In our own creation story
Our world was a bliss until
A woman's Indiscretion
With her bloody menses in tow
Alienated the sky and God and
Made them permanent exiles from our delight
Cosmic conspiracy of two world views
Sealed the fate of feeble mortals
Yet, my salvation is a different journey
My life a cycle of rituals
Of sacrifices to regain my freedom
Of initiations through seven rivers of life.
How can I sell my salvation for a quick fix?
For a bowl of rotten soup?
The fight of twins in a fractious womb
Like a she goat in parturition
The desire and greed for rotten eggs and meat
A clash for parental blessings
Brewed the rankling of two fraternal nations
A cosmic complex
AND
A chance meeting
A spelling of doom
AND
A ten-letter word
The lines on our palms
Are the lines of destiny
Who can change his destiny?
From generation to generation
Exiles in time and space
We are all disinherited. Diminished.
Cockroaches lying upside down
In the middle of the day
It is in the contour of our palms.
[Image Source: unsplash.com]
