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THIS THING AROUND OUR NECK


Is life this thing we rescued from two haggling dogs;
the colonial masters and the colonels?
This thing we carry for the ruling others;
this thing around our neck.
For we are not permanent entries in life's log books.
We have appeared because of the need for  black,
when white is to be identified.
we are the hum that comes before the song,
the tapping of the fingers before the Gong.

Some say we will be  reimbursed by death because we really never lived.
And naturally, dying should only come after living.
That we cannot give account of a body we did not use,
but merely moved about!
For all we did was to  breath out gases just like any exhaust pipe!

Is this thing we are doing called living...
Is life really our tennant or the other way round?
this thing that comes and goes!
If you cast a net in earth's oxygen sea,
we're the planktons you're meant to catch.
the living preludes, the election consumables.
We are not the beer but the foam before the beer.
Not the flora or fauna but their dried drools
We are what you waste before you get to what should be wasted.

The elected dictator have said so.
And so does the silence of those who taught him English.
But some will say we do not know how to resist.
but Is the screams of oxygen in our ransacked bodies not loud enough?
Or the thousands who run out of hope before  they've used a quarter of  their birthdays.
The story of which some of us must live to write.
Until just by breathing,
 we obtain the target number of signatures of a billion cubic litres of exhaled air!

© SAMSON ABANNI

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