Why keep mute and fold hands,
Why are we so blessed
beyond imagination,
Yet so poor?
Why are we passive,
In the midst of active oppressiveness?
Why seem depraved,
In the midst of so much life around us?
Why live to cherish,
terror, horror, trauma, torment, carnage
genocide, raping, pillaging, stealing
land- grabbing, bloodshed, abductions
as if nothing is wrong with us?
Why the gay?
when it’s never hay,
all the way,
till this day.
Why jungly junta
In civilian facades with their masks
so disguising,
eroding civility, sanity, chastity?
Why seem desperate
Of greed, corruption, power
without humanity in us
In guise of progress?
Why seem to live as dictators?
With songs of unlawfulness,
brutality, killings, shamelessness,
like those of Nilafu herdsmen or Kobo marah terrorists
so disgusting in sights and sounds
Why seem so indifferent?
In poverty stricken hardship,
Of others, as so keep aloof,
It’s such inhumanity!
Ben Ezeohagwu is the 2017 Onigraffiks Prize winner in Literature; Chancellor and Professor of Graphonomy, African American University, Porto-Novo, Republic of Benin.
+234 817 3175 540; benezeohagwu@yahoo.com
