Within And Without... Poem by Olanrewaju Shomefun

Ill at ease,
Our breaths come in tensioned rhythms.
Caged within our red hearts are latent
Anxieties and patent anguishes;
The size of half humanity's graveouos grove
And twice the mass of hell's hellish hounds.
Scarred by none other than direful economics
Of daily livings, we are pierced through
-without mercy and pity-
With the red-hotted searing blade
Of outrageously-priced necessities.

We who the tentacles of hunger
Scad with its deathly pincers
Become a jewelled chalice haplessly
Marooned between a rabble of soulless
Deviants and a fray of bankrolled simpletons.
Our lives, like meatless bones, are tossed
And flingged about by jungle dogs,
Until, at last, we slip into Morpheus'
Eternal pit, never to feel the air
Of new dawns and relapsing dusks.

Under this pristine tree of demoncracy
Where time and tide have assembled us,
In hope of a lasting and durable shade
Against life's virulent shifts,
Our eyes are full with moist bitterness,
And we snicker with glistering despairs
As demoncracy bares it grotesque fangs
Upon us, with speed and spleen.

Wail for us,
Ye howling wolves of the dark nights,
And roar with molten fury,
Ye dragons of the magical heights.
For within and without,
Are icebergs of fire nibbing
Away at our mortal core.

©Shomefun O. Joshua
14-06-2021.