Poetry – Back To Town Slum.

Dead by day
Alive by night.
Nocturnal beast of pleasure
And leisure.

Kpa!kpa!kpa!
Gun shots in the air.
They’ve come for the hoodlums’ lair.
Fill the vans with them,
get some ransom,
Send them back to their ill ways.

Two brothel inmates fighting.
One for her pay.
One for him to stay.
Cling to my fallen breasts she say.
I will kill my bastards for you
If they stand in the way.

Am thinking of ‘thinking corner’.
The sad faces in the corner.
Of sorrows liquor cannot drown.
The drunken-to-stupor fellow lying down,

Of buzzing flies taking a sip of ogogoro too.
They’re laughing to their sick jokes,
and ecstatic beer parlor talks.

I am at the gambler’s table.
“There are three cards here
Two spades and an ace.
I’ll shuffle. Pick an ace,
You win.”

One unlucky fellow puts his all,
Like a puff of smoke it was all gone.
“Damn! I thought that was an ace”
Oh! It was a charade, a connivance.

We’re the good folks of the slum.
Another child is born.
Another growing up.
Don’t be like them,
Mama warns.

Soon we become the children
Mama warned us about.
Maybe the shanties we live in is cheap,
Maybe it’s comfy,
Maybe not too far off.

Princess has taken in.
Junior in prison.
Whose fault is it?
Maybe we talk too much.
Aim less and make lame blames.
The joke is funny when it’s not
On you.