Category: Guest Writer Poetry

Collectively, we bear the pain

Where people have to suffer

Pains of ignorance.

They lose their rights to freedom

Before they find solutions.

Collectively, we bear the pain.

There remains an underclass 

That groans in pain.

Their fellows unjustly find their way to freedom

And turn into a serious problem

Wrap themselves in influence and power

That birth dirty riches and wealth.

Collectively, we bear the pain,

Where injustice and suffering 

Is exchanged for truth

And men sleep under bridges 

With stones as pillows

And cartons as beds

His fellows who claimed to be exalted

Pass by and smile

With arrogant speeches.

Collectively, we bear the pain,

Where you sit on bare floors

You beg before you eat and drink

You stand and talk like them

You are condemned and rejected.

Collectively, we bear the pain.

From time past until now

There remains an under-class

That groans and struggles through life alone

Suffering as if you must ATONE.

By: Napoleon Saigbovo

I was full of youth,

Not yet abused.

The road ahead was distant.

Walking to school on bare foot,

Not sure of a meal afterward.

Early in the morning,

The harbingers of the dawn whistle into my ears

And I woke up suddenly with inflated eyeballs.

Riding on my father’s 1947 ikeke  

With a machete in my hands

Straight to the African jungle

To help mama uproot cassava

For the morning and evening meals.

Sometimes the ikeke was borrowed 

From neighbors who disappointed at will.

I was not as strong as Hercules

Yet, circumstances bequeathed energy in me.

I had to toil on the barren soil

To help mama put food on our wooden table.

In the moment of despair,

I cried.

In the rains,

I cried.

When it was sunshine,

I cried.

All day long

My eyes were swollen. 

Often times, hardship pressured me 

To wet my iron bed.

What is worse?

POVERTY!

You are cursed!

By: Napoleon Saigbovo