The lines tracing the sacred lawn to where love resides
now broken on the head of humanity with darkness
Where wars and bombs could see through
The hollows struck and shadowed by mean beings
To secure sick silence at the other end where prognosis
Is belittled by faded today and abetted by stained yesterday.
The circle where jury circles like a moving bicycle
Now derailed on the pierced axis by arrows of favouritism
Travelling with the speed of light into jungle judgements
Where sorrow is left on masses’ brow with lawless blow
Making flowing tears glow on the plight we nurse daily
To form our cyclical living into anguished angle.
Holy lies have thrust hope’s veins again on trust with vain
Laying on the high ill hill where only whiff of change
Can heal the nauseous sore graced with prickly mirage
Beneath our skins where misfortune is the blood
That swims to the joint where despair collides as cells
Producing anguish mixed with sweats of bruised innocence.
Silly season of sorrowful sirens
Invaded the silent streets of raw dreams
With the bones and bloods of our brothers
Where possibility to breathe seconds to come shivers
Under the roofless prognosis of what today’s axis holds
Behind the punctured culture where change is a tattered norm.
Thumbs that do spit truth now made dumb
By the spell of false bells banging deceitful voices
Into eardrums quietly filled with corrupt noises
Of happenings which wrapped history with bombing tales
In our pounding heart which are no longer untold to the unborn
For they already perceived the fumes from heaven.
Trade saw currency dropping the values she carried
Centuries ago on the borders of bothered quarters
Where a Naira’s equivalence there triple hundreds here,
For beggars are lodgers at those burdened borders,ask them!
Only if the whiff from their hairy cliff
Allows you take an oxygen which represents a worthy nation.
Where are those that preached about transformation
Just to redeem us with condemnation on derisive pulpits?
Where are those brooms we also perceive brought lies
Not booms to sweep our filthy rooms littered with doom?
Now listen!
What we want is not your change but changed state of mind
Towards our dying fate,
As we cry under the solemn voices of bereaved tears.
SOLEMN VOICES by Mesioye Affable Johnson
