Last Week Poem by Tony Adah

I do not hope
That the episodes of last week
Will visit my life anymore.
I do not have a partisan congress
In my household,
Still my government went down
Into a shameful shut down.

I look at the melodrama at the top,
The top itself swallowed by
A tortuous xanadu of tenure elongation
And its vicarious agony
Of the missing Chibok girls.
I look up again like a pregnant mother
Summoning up courage to
Sum it up my expectation
Of an archetypal leadership
Hopeful in its rescue
Again hollow in my hope.
I have taken the road
That provides only for the teeming griots
And yet a worthless hope
Hovering over our own languid heads.

I look up to the torch bearing few
Their pens profused and wry of thought
But their words silent,
Gagged.

I look up to myself
In the middle of this month
Still expecting last month's pay check
To fly to my work table.
I look up to my children
Innocent as they are
Bearing my transgressions
Healthy as nature bestows
Hungry as society detects
There is a letter from school reading:
The fare for knowledge's journey
Into their heads is hanging.
And I am still waiting
Like a hen fo teeth.

I look up to myself now,
A near carcass to microbes
And a cannula on my arm
Me, my country and a neighboring rescue nurse.
If this is my national laurel,
I resent it a present to the inner city.
Last week i thought
On the extrication of my type
Down the the existential ladder,
From this dilemma.

This week i am still gropping
Like a blind man
In the daylight that is dark
My country continues to clutch
On the debris of this river
Like a drowning man
Struggling in a torrential flood
Still it is not an accident of geography
Or the goodwill of history
That I find myself here
So I am a citizen.