The Mess (A Danfo Poem In Three Movements) Poem by Seyi Ojenike

I: The Gathering

we are all tenants of the same misfortune,
this Lagos sun, a landlord charging double,
so we flee into whatever moves.
"Yaba! Ojuelegba! Enter with your change! "
the conductor hit the top as he leaned halfway out the door,
then the chaos began, survival of the fittest,
the willing, the late, the have-no-choice,
struggling, we poured ourselves in like garri into an already hot pot.
"49 sitting,99 standing"


II: The Parliament

to think the struggle was over, to think the bus was sanctuary,
it was merely another arena: knees negotiating
space with the next person,
buttocks struggling with irons and bones,
each unsatisfied passenger filing complaints nobody would hear.
it is a parliament to observe:

a man in a suit clutches his newspaper like he mattered,
"suit and tie" under this hot sun - "This is Lagos, oga, "
there are grades to poverty and he has memorized all of them.
the market woman, her basket wedged between disgruntled passengers,
fans herself with the hem of her wrapper as though
she could legislate the heat away.
behind her, three students sandwiched on each other,
one already asleep on the architecture of tomorrow's regret.
a preacher selling his faith on his neighbour's reluctant shoulder -
"Lagos is not our final bus stop, brethren." Nobody disagreed.


III: The Legislation

then it arrived - with no decency of a warning,
the way bad governance does: silently, confidently,
as though it had always belonged.
a woman in the middle stiffened. "Jesus, " she whispered.
the diagnosis travelled faster than the evidence.
"Ahan! Who do this kain thing na? ! " a passenger thundered.
the suit-man cleared his throat: "This is highly inappropriate, "
announcing it to a bus that has heard worse.
passengers buried their noses in whatever was available
while the mess dissolved democratically into the shared air.
"Na wa o, " exhaled a voice from the back,
"person go just mess anyhow without warning."
still, nobody confessed. Nobody ever does.