Two poems by SHEGS

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Grief took a Voice and Told its tale

Show me a night we have not died in,

A dawn that has not drenched our happiness

And I will show you our purple starched heart

Gotten from our dreams being bashed

over and over again.

Show me a noon that has never set our skin on fire,

As we work in servitude in our motherland

for a meagre income that would not feed a hungry baby

And I will show you

Snakes with safe as stomachs for gulping millions of naira,

Elephants that are good bank robbers.

Even if your holiest deity wanders carelessly

into our land,

He would become a yahoo boy.

Show me that fellow who never came across

our kinsman—

Uncle Hardship

And I will lead you joyfully to our land

Where evil and sorrow are two brothers

We know deeply—

For they are our fellow countrymen

And hope for a better future the only tonic

for our perishing soul.

This Is Not Home

Father said it was here he laid the foundation of our structure

And drafted our whole constitution

But no, surely it cannot be–

A land where we have swallowed and digested

tons of anger and frustrations

so much

our madness limit now tends to infinity.

This type of insanity is a 100 madmen’s madness in one madman.

Even the devil now flee at the mere sight

of our clueless shadow.

She told us that this is our motherland,

Where she carved us with dignity and nobility

But no, surely it cannot be–

A land that stole our peace and shred our hope to pieces.

it would steal your dream,

not as a thief in the night—

but a thief thieving in the broad daylight.

We now live under the façade of false hope,

Laughing mirthless-ly.

Suffering stylishly stifled with smiling.

This is not home. Not even a refugee camp.

This is a graveyard.

We are all walking dead, acting out the script.

Even JayJay who said the land would not end him ended his race few hours later,

A stray bullet to his fucking head.

About the author

Aliu Oluwasegun Moshood is a Nigerian student at the University of Ibadan and was shortlisted as one of the top ten contestants of the Chris Okigbo poetry contest 2020. With the pen name ‘SHEGS’, he talks about societal ills and mankind at large. His works are forthcoming on Kalahari Review and Kreative Diadem.

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