After The Wedding Poem by Divine Idiong

Something lies somewhere:
Thick and dark,
Which aroma reaches all corners
Of the streets.
And it is everywhere.
Once they found it out
No one could sleep again.
Even the fishes in the waters could not.
They run and run day and night
And they die a sleepless death.

Those who can speak
The tongue of exploitation
Shall drive jeeps and sleep in mansions.
They shall attend night parties
At the villa
And be given a shed
At the factory.
But the commoners must run helter-skelter.
They must not go to school
Lest they begin to learn new things.
And they must not have hospitals
Lest they wake up from many sick years.
Leave them there in the dark
If oil shipment must go on.

Someone saw something.
He was going to sing
But got stuck with eight others
In a kangaroo’s noose.

After a night
Even the hangman’s noose
Could not hold them again
They dropped in apparition
To the deltas
And spread like gas across the feet of the niger

And they cannot sleep again
All who wedded exploration
To exploitation.