Pawns and Stringed Puppets

–Stephen Charles

StephenCharles77@yahoo.com

To the right, to the left, to the right again, Checkmate!
We are pawns, pawns on a death match.
We are puppets, puppets on strings bent to the will of faceless players
“They’re just numbers and don’t count”, they say to themselves.
Bam! Another pun is lost to the diagonal move.

We are instigated against our fathers and brothers,
We wage senseless wars against our sisters,
And rip out the unborn child of our mothers
to realize the aimless and obscene political goals of our detractors.
All it takes is mammon, and our reasoning is kept away for later re-installation.

Night to Night, Day in day out, under the scotching sun we toil.
Still alive, above a hundred degrees our own bloods boil.
Our brains run low on water; the biting cold dries our trembling lips.
Dark brown ditches appear below our sullen eyes.
Yet, our string bearers do a bunk with the dosh.

They are the kleptomaniacs with suckling filaments.
They’re the jagged faces behind pretentious smiles.
They’re the jinx behind our unmitigated stupidity.
They’re the seemingly immortal incubuses that have plagued our lands for 58 years.
They’re the vicious pythons and mythical monkeys that swallow our collective treasuries.

They’re the mafias that save up our gold and stash away our silvers
Not for us, but for their seven generations to come.
They’re the extravagant fools in hopeless causes.
They are the anus over-fed teddy bears
that call us lazy in front of the white man.

They peel our skins and make laws that forbid us from crying.
Our hearts bleed until we’re bloated and are on verge of explosion.
Owing to their bloody games, our loamy soils have become red clay.
Our once bright future has become bleak.
Amidst affluence, we’re made to feed on flies palm kernel nuts.

The whistle is blown; we heave sighs of relief; the game is almost over.
But our string bearers make truce even with their diehard rivals.
They exchange handshakes, change their skins.
Once again they buy our senses and pay us to advance their hopeless causes.
As always, the game continues; our great grandfathers, forever our string bearers.



UCJ, UNILORIN.