Ode To African Sex Workers Poem by alexander opicho

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)


let me begin my salutation to you
by expressing my angst about your ghastly night experience
that you go through when in the hands of the policemen
who often walk around in the name of security patrols
while in truth they bettle terror in the show of evil mighty
they swop you down and arrest you spreadeagled
asking for bribes substantially the money of your proceeds
from the ware of your trade your body the temple of christian God,
Wherever your lack money
your beauty saves you as they go on to rape you in circles among themselves
as they glorify the power of your bossom in their policeman's slang,
where beauty, tyranny of bossom and your bribe is absent
you are forlornly arrested from the streets of Nairobi and Lagos or Johannesburg
then rounded down to a dingy police cell to be charged
with heinous crimes of prostitution and vagrancy,
when the true origin of your fortune's tomfoolery
is powers that be as they glorify anti woman crude cultures
beseeching a girl child into despair and depravement,
they are these men who refused to see you as a beacon of glory
they always link you to the filthy bedrooms from which you ennoble not.