I was born there

 I was born there

in the crooked jaws of odds,
where fate’s dice rolled venom and shadow.
I drew my first breath amid the scramble of hyenas,
their eyes glinting, hungry to claim the last gasp of light.

I lived through it
dotted the jagged lines of a treacherous path,
born among beasts that wore familiar faces.
Hurt bloomed first from the hearth of home,
hate served as milk from the same breast.
A lot cast in shimmering mirage and brittle fantasies,
hope decapitated too soon, its tender head rolling in dust.

Survival became a blood soaked wrestle,
fratricidal war without declared enemy
the closer the blood, the deeper the blade,
kinship sharpening the edge of betrayal.
A race I never consented to run,
a badge of calumny branded upon my brow.
Shot through the heels like Achilles in his prime,
I limped from the cradle of innocence into the arena of cruelty,
carrying the unending miasma of a stunted existence.



Abandoned. Secluded.
Punished for reactions spawned by their own bitter bile.
Childhood was stolen in broad daylight,
my small hands thrust onto a slippery slope
while they watched with cold delight as destiny slid toward my ruin.
From hidden ambuscades they drew their swords,
arrows dipped in unrelenting blood,
aimed straight for the marrow of my becoming.

I groan and mourn in the velvet dark,
where enemies masquerade as friends, ever monitoring,
and friends reveal themselves as silent foes, ever watching.
This path was never mine by choice
yet into this war I was enlisted,
a thousand bands of beasts descending upon one fragile soul.

I was born there, buoyed at first by the songs of wandering troubadours,
somewhere in Africa
a land that swallowed my rights before I could speak them.
Where laws are inked by the hands of criminals,
where police auction justice on dusty streets for coins,
where certificates are phantom scrolls bought with silver and shame.

I was born there
in the furnace of West Africa,
where compassion has long been declared extinct,
and only the fittest devour the weak under a merciless sun.
Street boys kill to taste another dawn,
scholars surrender the throne to simpletons,
the brightest minds reduced to eternal critics
while cadres of mediocrity cage the ambitious.

I live there still
where a certificate is merely a passport to flee,
lawyers hawk bail and charge like desperate merchants,
doctors protest in the rags of urchins,
poets peddle cosmetics instead of verses,
bankers mount rickety okada beneath the weight of fallen dreams.
Among drug peddlers and cultists I move,
where clergymen trade holy fire for coins from the gullible,
inducing visions in exchange for silver.
In this iron cage we dare to call a country,

I was born there.
I live there.
And still
I endure.