Don'T You Just Want To Live Poem by Ahmad Abdullah

Don't you just want to live
For the sake of your nation as a whole
with its many languages and dialects
fusing to form a uniqueness, like a song, sonorous,
that neither the saliva of the bus conductor,
nor the sweat of a frustrated passenger
can make you go over the edge.

Don't you just want to live,
wake with a dawn of blinding smiles on your face,
and let the rays of the emerging sun...spread and shine it.
on all the yellow buses with wary souls,
beyond their shoes and their clothing.

Don't you just want to live
and create a whole new place,
where the act of living is a dividend,
to a smiling face, a green land, a pure air...
...regardless of the depleting ozone layer.

Don't you just want to live,
and try to share some peace,
despite the madness of hustling and bustling,
or the nightmares of aching car horns and traffic,
to comfort loved ones who are in need.

Don't you just want to live,
and warn, Ibadan and Abuja,
where life might be relatively saner,
to be wary of emigrants like you...
...who might decide to take their millions along
and reshape the saneness into madness.

Don't you just want to live,
eat good food and have mad sex,
growing wings from within,
in the euphoria of the goodness life has to give,
and shout in ecstasy,
that the pain might be worth the while.


For if everybody just want to die,
death shall come in no time,
and despite how much we still try to cling to life,
death shall still come in no time.
so, how about some hope and faith,
and a face full of singing smiles,
to justify our struggle, our pains, our aches,
in the short little time we shall live.