Of Despots And Slaves Poem by Osazee Dankaro

In my country, there are two species of us:
Those who sit on our heads;
And we down below who bear their crushing weight.
They are our rulers
We are the ordinary people.
We are flattered to be needed by them to get the vote
So that when they discard us immediately thereafter
We do not mind.
They collect on our behalf
Our dues from the foreigners across the seas
Then they give us a cup of water,
Use a bucketful for their immediate needs
And warehouse a drum full in the land beyond the seas.
We are a hundred million
They are ten thousand
Yet, we see but we cannot change anything
For which slave can talk back at his master?
So we suffer on in silence and in anguish
Our state now is far worse than it was in the past
For they look like us and speak our tongues
But are farther segregated from us than the white men ever were
They do not invite us for their christenings or their weddings
Those are strictly by invitation, attended only by them
But when they die, they encourage us to line the streets
As the gold coffin is taken to the city centre
For great men are buried by multitudes.
When the cameras are turned away
We queue in silence to be paid
Cash enough for a day's feed
For a day's work standing in the scorching sun.
How else would we eat?
They said it was more necessary to build airports
So we create footpaths and swim in ocean deep potholes
To connect our house with those of our neighbours
And when we pack ourselves into the rickety commercial buses
It takes us 5 hours for a journey of a half hour.
By our silence,
We have doomed our children to the same fate:
Slavery.
By out inaction, we have condemned
Ourselves and our next generation.
And for this mortal sin
When we die, we'll go to hell
Same as them.

22/08/2017