biola olatunde | an agonised prayer

AN AGONISED PRAYER

Here in the street,
we call it democracy
some say it’s only transition
I think it is attrition
no need for truth

Their necks have grown
from the former hungry state
to layers of drunken folds
I step away from their waste

Pregnant at sixteen,
her hopes dead at fourteen
her lover is fifty
he made promises to ease her poverty
but she only picks at the garbage
from the buses.

They loot his hopes
and dump his future
within the thighs of
today’s political whores!

This is the street
where we make politics with death
AIDS stalks his dreams
his past forgotten
his future denied
they make dollars from his hopes

Dad’s four month wage
has disappeared down
the councilors throat

If only I had a bullet for every wrong
I will send them to kingdom come!

I am

an enter-educate writer, fiction writer and poet. I have been writing for some 30 years now. I wrote a series of teenage drama stories that was sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund UNFPA which sponsored the series for television stations in my country Nigeria for more than two years. The series dealt with adolescent reproductive health issues. It was good enough for the Canadian International Agency to collaborate with UNFPA to have it adapted into radio series and also translated into pidgin as well as Hausa languages. I have also published on my own 5 literay works:

Stars in my eyes – which was about 3 women in an imaginary university campus in Nigeria | I almost did– poetry | Chants in my dreams – poetry | Tomorrow’s promise – poetry | The dream & Reality – An autobiography of my journey into writing | Meadows of my mind– a book of poetry I want to publish now. I like working with teenagers because my teenage years were not much to get excited about. For a while I managed an NGO. I am always writing for magazines, radio stations and sometimes for free.