Where I Earn My Living. Poem by Tony Adah

In Big Qua town
There's a light green storey building
On king Fasal street
And this is I earn my living
Behind this building
Are two makeshift structures
Paralell in location and function
One for the church of the bible
And the other for the church of the bottle
Two choirs of solemn hymns
And a hip -hop gyrate here.

The king Fasal street
Ends at a four corner junction
And this is the heart of Qua clan
Where the paramount chief lives
In a house white and red rendered of paint
Neat shaven guardsmen are always
Faithful to their duty
And apart from the noisy automobiles
A pin fall could here be heard.

Waiting for patronage
In Big Qua are carpenters, tailors, seamtresses
Masons, painters, auto mechanics, welders, alumaco workers
Groceries and a computer business centre
There are a labyrinth of unpaved ways
Gullied here and there by flood
With stinking gutters bushy with weeds.

At one point
Adjacent a carpenter's shop
Is a small retail joint
Made of three or four sheets
Of brown old zinc
The clan's gin, bitter kola, cigarettes, sweets, biscuits etc
Are the wares it sold to customers
Who word almost curly brown hair
Their lip sore red
And prominent clavicles
With deep hollows in their shoulders
Their eyes buried in the socket
And their mien febrile
They are not sick of any disease
But of penury they are.

From above the light green storey building
Where I earn my living
On king Fasal street
Big Qua town
I give freely this canvass
To the whole world.