POETRY: Clueless Heroes

The elections have come and gone! All have played their part! All have been declared heroes, but who are the villains?

CLUELESS HEROES

Publicly honoured heroes

Distinguished murderers

But heroes they are

They saw change with blazing drums

The vultures then left in a hurry

With incessant crying all the way:

We concede! We concede!

Hail Mary queen of grace

I present to you, heroes of our time

Hear: the Naira is sickly

The economy is on crutches

Foreign reserve has diabetes, 

The mellitus, decubitus ulcer of

dollar accounts, leaky holes

Plundering, squandering, raining dollars

But heroes surely they are

The Heroes then surrendered

Heroes of beers, of deaf protruding ears

To our bitter cries, to our aching appeals

Cult heroes indeed have reigned!

There, right at the edge of the valley

Heroes faint, heroes concede

We? Addicts of unending suffering

Not our job to yell, but to smell

Conferment of heroes by the experts

For we only grumble under the ashes

Buried at the buttocks of black stoves

Swimming in the torn mosquito net

Mr. Malaria our savior, our only Hero

But they, surely heroes they are

The Hero of the Bar, brewing his wish

And now he has covered our mouths

With stinking hands of slimy excreta

Even in darkness who are we to judge

The good, clueless, lucky Hero of our time

But heroes’ diaries do snap their deeds

Scene: Pound and plunder the national treasury

View: When they boasted and drank

On the fields of blood and sorrow

Our hopes split like lips of Harmattan

But alas heroes they are

Sculptors of anguish, heroes they are

Hear? Let’s drink beer at the hero’s funeral