Poetry

Reuters photo

 

By

Ngozi Olivia Osuoha

 

 

 

If You Were A Pensioner

 

 

If you were a pensioner

Would you prefer the past:

The days your children went to school hungry

The weeks they walked miles on feet

In old raggy uniforms,

The years they dropped out of school

The times they were sent home,

The examinations they missed and took all over

Because of fees?

If you were a pensioner

Would you sign off your arrears?

 

If you were a pensioner

Would you praise the past:

Those months salaries were unpaid, delayed

When you borrowed all from all

When your enthusiasm almost cost your life,

If you were a pensioner

Would you sign off your arrears?

 

If you were a pensioner

Would you rather not be at peace,

Would you not have been at rest,

Would you not have utilized your gratuities,

Would you have signed off your arrears?

If you were a pensioner

Would you have fallen sick without money and care?

 

If you were a pensioner

Would you have worshipped the powers that be

Or adored the government that ruined you?

If you were a pensioner

Would you have cursed the integrity you maintained?

Were those years of selfless patriotism regrettable?

If you were a pensioner

Was trusting your fatherland a nightmarish betrayal?

Would you have signed off your arrears?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conquered And Defeated

 

 

Swords of vengeance in humming caskets

Fanning their blades of death,

Vultures and serpents

Punching their adversities,

Monsters and mermaids

Pounding their adversaries.

 

Cohorts of witches in their covens

Bees of bondage in huge romance

Advancing troops of lust

Shuffling legions of hate,

Galleries of passion, clustering

Bands of zeal thundering, begin!

 

Home of skulls, caves of skeletons

Mission for peace, mission in pieces

Fathers of agony, seeds of disharmony

Brothers of rage, battles of siege

Defeated in victory, victory for defeat

Conquered and vanquished, victor unhappy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cup Of Bitterness

 

 

In the frailty of our frame

Hides the vanity of our fame,

And the fogs that freeze our freedom

Instead of saluting our stardom,

Yet a feature on the future of our fixture

Beyond the sanity and our shame.

 

The muse of the fuse we refuse

Bends and sends the echoes we lend

Because the fine wine we line

At the edge of the village

Stands tall behind the wall of our fall.

 

Though the bitter letters glitter

Far from the honey that ruins our money

Together they boil and foil and spoil

Like the digger that daggers when we gather

And steps up the cup of bitterness.

 

So like fishes we frolic

Trying to fence our defence

Like a flock, we block

Wanting to patch and hatch

Yet that cup overflows

With hate, violence and war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ngozi Olivia Osuoha

Ngozi Olivia Osuoha is a young writer from Nigeria. From a family of eight, including both parents she is the second daughter but fourth child. She read Estate Management and has some experience in Banking and Broadcasting.

She has published some works in a Liberian magazine, Ghanian news platform and an Indian poetry publication.

Many of her works have gone abroad for evaluation and publication. She wrote the longest poems/rhymes in the world, yet to be published. Writing is life.