DIVIDED WE STAND; UNITED WE FALL(David Onojah)

The lamp on your feet cannot brighten

the whole earth.

Lead your people to the path they would follow.

The son of man drowns in the blood of his siblings,

that floods through the nation's streets.

Still, in silence for a thousand years

Our leaders betray us with a quiet eye.

We have suffered enough under their cruel watch

Mocked with their faeces

left at our doorsteps

The scorn, the waves of laughter, the jeers

fell on our feet.

And our faces glowed with a caked smile.

Our hearts rumbled

with echoes of a dying era.

We read our country's anthem

with tears in our eyes.

A country that serves you

a cup of your own tears

And feed you with a loaf of stone

You barely digest.

I'll rather marry pain than death.

United we fall, divided we stand

Hold your breath in the palm of your hands

Let everyone be responsible for their own death.

We live in a country

where silence prevails and truth hides in the lips of prey.

© DAVID ONOJAH (DAVEPOET1)

THE SAD NOTES OF A GENERATION (David Onojah)

    

You see me broken,

like the soft hands of a glass,

fix me and let the pains hurt less

We are a sad generation with happy faces

that the world refused to see

but through the blurry images of darkness

we dim in the rays of hope

The sun burned the back of our neck

that hot afternoon, as unarmed protesters, in Lekki

with lips and words that fought for freedom

We watched as a thousand bullets,

swept some from the face of the earth

What sad notes should we not write about

In a season like this?

And that night, it rained heavily

I saw through the broken windows

the suffering of people in the dark streets

Their tears that echoed in the rain

Drained them in the room of leaking tops

As our leaders lay on their bed of paradise, Alas!

It's a sad reality,

that we read like pages in our heart

our notes are as sad as us

And when dawn sleeps on us,

the sounds of freedom awaken our spirits

We are the sad notes of a generation.

- David Onojah