Photo: Glamour.com
On the streets,
Mothers raise the kids
Cos fathers leave no leads
To where next they’ll unleash
The dragon that is within.
Plus, the alimony
Is really no money
Mere chicken feed.
A mother has to leave
Searching for a means to live
Not able to censor
What her boy, Nonso,
Would hear, see and know.
She pictured paradise in her head
When she was being fed
The lies and semen
Which in time led
To her putting to bed.
She said,
“I’ll do all I can
With the help of my man
So this child will be better than
All that I can plan.”
But her man
Sees another one
And chases for fun
Till he has won
And even that one
Does not satisfy his loin.
Before she knows,
He’s on his nose
Sniffing for another rose
And when he comes home
He reeks of overdose.
She does not divorce him
Till after he pours in
A new offspring.
Now Nonso has a younger sister
By the same mother.
At thirteen,
Nonso learns all the gang signs
And crawls through crack mines
Scaling fences, sniffing white lines.
His sister, only three years younger
Has become a serious matter.
She causes her mother heart aches
Older men are now swimming her lake.
Fast forward five years and here’s the picture
His sister’s robbed of a future:
Given a kid and an STD.
The once innocent Nkechi
Has a fatherless child
By a fatherless child.
When mother garners
All that she has gathered
She begins to scatter
From one church to the other
Sowing seeds on different altars.
Society scorns her daughter
For being no wiser.
They dare not talk of her son though
For the fear of blood flow
If truth be told
The streets are cold
His soul his sold
He’ll plant bullets, he’ll turn them cold.
You watch movies and read books
You seem able to read looks
How come you don’t see through
His frown into
A place longing for affection
That was smeared by rejection
How come, how come
How come you’re judge-some?
Happiness was an episode
In his series of pain
So he bides by the street code
He feeds off his pain
Reading a selection
Off the revised edition
Does not give you permission
To suggest perdition
For the fruits of rejection.
He can’t even sleep
Too afraid to dream
Bomb shells in his deep.
Implosions, no scream…
He sees his mother weep,
His nephew lacking cream
Sorrow reaches its peak
So he tries to leave
And he tells the gang
His mother sighs relief
Just then the police hangs
His mother in utter grief:
His cell shuts with a bang.
Nkechi takes up the cue
She decides on what to do
But STDs and the drugs she used to do
Comes to claim her life too.
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