This poem looks at the lives of displaced people in Nigeria, and all around the world.
The Luxuries of Life
I can afford to bargain for an expensive guitar
A piano of my taste will just do
Relax at an Opera
In a superb tuxedo
A ticket
On the front row
In a private cinema, sounds fashionable
There is always something new on box office
Delighting the mind, soul and body
Read Also: At Night
The Camps
Chike and Usman
Who live beyond the horizon
Down the farthest creeks
Under the slums
Or far away, where no grass grows
Where ghetto is law
Where bullets make music
Where the grenades echo like in the war movies
Making Music with Death
Read Also: Goodbye,Teacher Goodman
Drums are made from aluminum pots
Discarded at the camps
Strings for guitar
Made from bomb traps
Their lips,
The sides of their mouth
And their tongues jam in unity
Other kids would hear these sounds of music
They gather around
To take in this one moment of happiness
It could be their last
Before them
They make merry
Some would gladly recite the musical lines
The ones they could remember
When there was still school
Read Also: Living for tomorrow
This is their Opera
Mama, Papa, Sister and Brother
Come and sit around
Forming a circle
Their spectators: their cinema
In the midst of a waiting happiness
They are lost in their own thoughts
Of wishes and wants
Old memories unlocked from their shells
Of good old memories
When it was…
Their ears, eyes and senses have been blocked
Too lost to hear the heavy footsteps
Of returning soldiers
And the air raids hovering
They sit at a place
At peace with their inner man
Laugh
Happy to die
And music will be made no more
Written by Oluoma Udemezue.