CARICATURES AND PENURY



I wish I could be a little of everything
So I can understand and behold every estate
-Its joys and its pains.

I wish I could be that mother
Who struggles into a trotro everyday with a child saddled at her back.
She marches on relentlessly in a pool of sweat- a mélange of suffering and hope.

I wish to be that young lady
Whose secret is misery and whose fears lie within herself.
Under those thick sheets of make-up, long claws and a mini-skirt
Is a fragile soul at the verge of breaking.
She struggles in silent anticipation that tomorrow will be better than yesterday.

I wish again to be that young man
Whose hunt for a job has deflated his ego.
He has been rendered useless to his waiting family.
A hundred mouths to feed;
A well-statured young man with no crutches for his amputated dreams.
He limps into the sunset and awaits another day.

I wish… but then I am trapped together with them
In a cage of corruption standing under a merciless sun.
I wish to make my voice heard without losing my senses.

And then…I look with scorn at the minister who went wining and dining yesterday
In a plush hotel and in the bosom of women other than his wife.
He is the treacherous  tick who does us wrong.
Bloating on the red of our bloods as he sucks our flesh, souls and bone marrow.
And after he has belched in a long symphony of corruption,
He leaves us naked in penury, shackles and disease.

I also look on in hope…nothing but hope
That perhaps someday I will wake up and be told it was all a dream
The suffering, the pain- all a dream.
Caricatures, ticks and poverty- all a dream.






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