ON LIVING NOT JUST FOR THE SELF

by Balogun Abdulmueed Adewale

 

This dejected world of ours, punctuated tonight by dim flickering halogen bulbs,

sprawls before me like an endless marble walkway— teasing arrays of logical

answers to my age long caravan of myths.

 

The enchanters of night: wingless crickets: strum and keep strumming

the strings of their ancient lyres, making the same threadbare music

again and again, night after night.

 

To be alive in this age of perfidy is to have a brazen purpose to live for, like those ancient

chroniclers of rhymes & rhythms, and to always see where others see nothing but ruins and

devastations: a stubborn form like yourself in the background vehemently saying yes to life,

is indeed one great miracle like coming out unscathed through the deadly jaws of the great white 

shark.

 

At a crossroad between stardust and sunshine, I was asked by my conscience to verify my claim 

of being human, I pointed out the deep gashes on my festering chest then said:

 

“unable to muffle the eerie screech of my burning brothers and sisters in Gaza, incapacitated by the wicked fangs of fate to satiate the fierce, flaming appetite of the children my daughter’s age rummaging dumpsites for crumbs in Sudan, ignorant on how to nurse the festering sores of my beloved black brothers and sisters in Congo, unequipped yet by life with a divine salve to soothe the debilitating pains of my anguishing neighbors... my guilt morphed into a four-fanged beast then charged at me in the middle of the night.”