Refugee Poem by Tony Adah

You know me as an indigene
Son of the soil
A payer of taxes
The authorities are reluctant to collect
Enhanced by the elephant
Slaughtered in the niger delta.
I have been driven southward
Desolate, I am without a livelihood
By the lunacy of the killers
Of the north.
I have become a refugee
In my own fatherland
And this is the needle
That pricks my heart.
No, I will not go up there again
Not with the horrendous
Blood stains of the mortally wounded
And the eyesore of the brutally murdered
I will keep the howl of my anguish here
Be a beginner again
Bear the centripetal forces
Of my dear country
That have me tossed southward
From where the golden fleece
Sojourn was made, thinking that
I have a country!
So good I am southward
Here they will plant me in a place
Where my kith and kin will see
When I finallly expire
And remember me as a citizen
Who was internally displaced
In his own fatherland.