A People Abandoned Poem by Chima Ononogbu

I know of a people abandoned,
whose dusk never turns to dawn,
light has refused to flush away their nights,
so their lives are lived in the hours of an owl;
under skies in midnight apparitions, they tremble and fall,
riding roughshod over them incubuses.

I know of a people gasping for life,
whose world is sorrow's cup,
whose hopes are as crushed clays
soaked in waters of despair.
They dwell and toil in burning swamps;
on slick hillsides with drifty temperament.

I know of a people chased away from food,
stung out by hunger, driven down the back alleys of kismet,
where cries wall up to a watery fortress.
Around them, eerie dungs of poverty pile up,
creaking under the tiny paws of children hawking for pittances,
whose tomorrow is immolated for the greed of today;
these children, don in rags, starve around riches.

They're the people beaten down by political oppression,
cast away by a social class with teeth like a great white shark;
they're the abused, whose faces are grim tales of despondency,
slashed and scarred daily by the whip of injustice
and, with thorny tendrils, leashed to the gates of horror.
What a people, a helpless bunch!
littered carelessly along the reeky streets of Nigeria!

They've cried themselves to fear, their voices bound by threats,
now can't talk, nor whisper,
their tongues are heavy with tragedies;
their legs from the beatings of political cudgel swollen,
and can't carry them.
Around them, vultures gather,
waiting upon their fall, upon the loss of their bid for life,
to make a feast of their soon abandoned carcasses.