Opinion
By Chuks Iloegbunam
Market don close; alarm don blow!
The horse-trading has sputtered to a stop.
Dem don use the bullet of Never Again
To shoot down the mart where ten lives cost a kobo.
Not just for today but for every day.
Buyers and sellers of hot air have called it a day.
Traders with stalls have locked up, their key bunches dangling from their belts
Traders without stalls have piled their wares cartons high
Or on wheelbarrows for the energy-sapping push to overnight storage.
Their muscles will ripple again with the first cock crow.
For a new market.
For chewing never knows peace until the last chewable finds sleep in the stomach.
Scavengers are through with foraging for odds and ends,
Done with fighting over the globs of phlegm from those born on Luckday.
They have fled the scene
One step ahead of cleaners aching with broken backs and
Sweeping bits and pieces into pits and bins.
Yet, you are still about, Owl Eyes, limping, floundering.
You are wandering under the deadweight of an outsized head of shattered dreams,
You blobfish, you skunk demanding to be embraced.
Finding no one about you look up
Right up to the iroko’s top
Your rheumy eyes settle with some alarm on a staring Eagle.
How you stare!
Wetin you take see me?
Why do you sound like Mr. Dirge?
Eagle screeches a guffaw in response to the query.
Why do you come across like Mr. Comeuppance?
Eagle again screeches delightfully.
Could it be because Lore said an owl hooted at night and the baby died in the morning?
I am no owl; no eagle exerts a sinew to lance a carrion.
But I am very much alive!
Can’t you hear my orchestra serenading the town, the gown, the gavel, the garment,
Even the wig and the starched uniform?
Eagle is amazed.
You deceive yourself, Owl Eyes, because the hare since sped past, leaving only the grass trembling.
Yes, you delude yourself because those still clapping with one hand
Are unthinking flies to be interred with the carcass of their unblinking worship.
Watch the feet of your spindly k-legs, bloated, emitting puss by the pints.
Even pickpockets since turned to face their sleeping mats
Or to invade nightspots for goodies that daylight denied the itchy finger.
Yet you linger
You dawdle starry-eyed, eager to higgle, to haggle with your fellow dead.
Meanwhile, your ulcerated frame sprinkles a deluge of septic waste
That, at home and across seven seas, commands palms to cup nostrils.
The vultures, ever patient, are on your trail.
They hover while, covetous, you rail fatuous claims to existence.
Who handed you a connection between carcass and palpitation?
Who fabricated a carrion with a pulsing heart?
But Owl Eyes doesn’t get it.
His questions tremble out of lips like sodden biscuits:
Can I not buy a pacemaker, at least?
Can you not hear the jangle and jingle of gold coins in my swollen pockets?
Even inside my knapsack?
Can you not see gold bars peering from my every orifice?
Can you not remember that I own mansions across the oceans
And bank vaults, and vehicles, and private jets stacked in gold?
Piled high are my megatons of gold in any direction that you turn!
Is it no longer true that things beyond the reach of copper and silver coins
Are readily commandeered by the sheer force of golden ones?
No, Owl Eyes, it is no longer true.
What is through is your restless and throttling run of excess and impunity.
For the dead foetus, the contingency of daylight is less than zero
The forged foetus, slimy and smelly, has its place – in the unfathomable pit.
Fetch water! Fetch detergent! Bang on the gong!
Summon the inheritors of a new age, the cleansing has begun.
A new day can come, crackling like the laughter of a lively three-year-old.
T
October 6, 2023 @ 20:21 GMT|
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