Why are you bedridden like an invalid?
How did senescence creep into your childhood?
Why has your sun lost man-hours to the moon?
Why are you drowning, yet dying of thirst?
Yesterday,
I paid you a condolence visit
I sat by your hospital bed
I lost my voice, I ran out of words
For my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth
In silence, as in the similitude of Job’s friends
The ward was filled with
The murmurs of a jaded stethoscope
That perforated the roof of my ears
The syringes did well to vent their frustration
For they had searched in vain for a vein to fit in
Just when I thought of advising you
To deposit yourself in the mortuary
I saw the doctors returning to medical school
They complained not to have covered
Your illness in their exhaustive syllabus
The thin line between cretinism and dwarfism
Is the terrain of your nameless ailment
But I dare not blame you
For your parents placed you
On an unbalanced diet from age 0-55
Feeding you with only fossil meals
Causing you to suffer from
Political kwashiorkor and social marasmus
Giving you a good reason to grow down
While your counterparts grew up
Slumbering sons of Adam Smith
You have invalidated
The like-father-like-son theory
Political pilferers
Polithieficians as a friend nicknamed you
Will you arise from your bed of selfish theories
Before her life support fails?
The doctors’ hand may be tied
But yours are not
OGWIJI EHI-KOWOCHIO B.
