The Prodigals - Akwu Sunday Victor Poem by Akwu Sunday Victor

The Prodigals


Down the drain dregs domicile dew drenched
Slivers of sorrow slit silence-sealed souls

And so it came to pass
That the pool of their hope went dry
And from the recess of the city, they are plucked
Like grains, like chaff blown to the slums
There, other walking cadavers mingled each
With his mangled history

Down the drain dregs domicile dew drenched
Slivers of sorrow slit silence-sealed souls

Houses hoisted haphazardly
Cocoon of contagious skins caged in open undercroft
Faces sepulchral, mummies from ancient crypt
Dolorous wind blew malodorous
Air from open lavatories into fleeting nostrils

Down the drain dregs domicile dew drenched
Slivers of sorrow slit silence-sealed souls

Night crawled upon wobbling, wrinkled women
Tottering homeward night sheathed
Deflated balloons flapping, pates burdened by baskets
Of unsold wares
Throes of tending tender tendrils in sun’s beak…
Down the core, drilled the taproots for morsels of hope
To be snatched by fists and callous tongues
Of bottle battered brains

Then in the heart of the capital, lodged the myth-makers
In barbed-wire domiciles
In the munitions of rocky digs, eagles on the apogee
Of the iroko, curtained by vulturous dogs and eyes

Down the drain dregs domicile dew drenched
Slivers of sorrow slit silence-sealed souls

Groping, in gaping graves, grimed faced
Fellows, fallen fabled faeries from the firmament
Frosting in fiery flames
But here again the prodigals with calabashes begging
For the nodding of our thumbs!