This is Aba

This is Aba

The dreamed Japan of Africa

A dream turning nightmare

In the grabs of choking claws

Claws of politricks

They have throats of iron

This is Aba.

A city surviving on small generators;

The two stroke engines

That belch and fart out blackened smokes

And choke even the empty air

But nobody coughs

Cough and get quarantined

The engines raving cacophony

can deafens elephants’ ears

Yet they see and live on

As if with protective veils

‘cos signs will do

As long as darkness can’t swallow them

This is Aba

A city drowning in putrid murky water logs

That harbor giant tad poles

That seize the wheels of hefty trucks

Yet they fold their trousers

And waddle on like through red sea

Not minding the suffocating stench

Of the odoriferous toad ponds

That sleep in the day and growl when generators sleep

Where tranquility is a crime

And fresh air is divorced

But they breathe on with invisible oxygen masks

This is Aba

A city under siege

By roads with corrugated potted jaws

So cars desert the roads

And heads stick out from keke napepe

No social stratifications

And no seeking of escape

They crawl on the slow train of self sufficiency

With everything home made

Made in Aba

This is Aba

Where nights frown like stones

With faces of ojuju calabar

That cause convulsion on women and children

Most males turn dogs at night

Dogs eating dogs

Where women pray against night fall

Against the boots that shatter doors at night

Yet they sleep on and snore in crescendo

Like newborns

Oda eshi!

This is Aba 
where morning greets with rising smokes
smokes from flames of burning corpses
corpses of night marauders
corpses of daytime light fingers
corpses of hands that held daggers before
hands that slapped and snatched wallets
even legs that wore jagged boots
but they move unperturbed
no one sees the rising flames
not even the hands that rolled the tyres
the tyres that fueled the flame
not even the fingers that lit the match
all in the blackened  smoke
that choked the birds too
Evenvulture fear and desert the air
they now eat leaves like herbivores

To be continued….