THE HOUSE HELP

Soft winds whipping unmercifully every matter in its path,
transcribing the disarming sounds of children in the enclaves
with the static motionlessness of my puddled world
wandering spicy aroma of bush meat swarming from a remote place in my imagination
these are the emblems of the sweet convention I inhabit
the scattered pixels of colourful but wishful tomorrow
like the ones my folks sung to me; of a land where every element stood sovereignly
as the fingers of the palm frond under the one-eyed watchman in the sky
yet all I feel is raw odium
hot tears that scald my face these dark days
salty insanity of the senselessness of my predicament
the conjectural madness of the irony of the world I was born
and the maniacal defect of my DNA
of some genetic code for bad luck and a fate embroidered for the ill-winds
from sun rise to the end of its circuit
my heart is constantly punctured with the blade-like edges of cussed words
but I -
it is the physical assault enforced at the slightest provocation
as of the forecast of a quack weatherman
the debasement of the deviously enchanted words from my madam
peeling me alive, every flesh off my rattling bones
like the million pinches from the teeth of soldier ants
and it reminded me of my place like the blast of alarm from the mountain top
couched at the steps of my weird fantasies
Never!!! I could never be Cinderella
‘cos I’m holed up in the deepest darkest abyss of my mysteries
No one would save me from myself, least my madam
Laughing hysterically for nothing as if possessed by a diabolic matter
And then the green-back lizards, the crawling ants, the birds, the one-eyed star in the glum of the night
They stop, to stare at me pitifully
With searching glazed eye and questioning looks as if communing metaphysically at some soulish realm
And me?... I looked back too
They are at peace in spite of all the present and future danger of their short life
Then I’m reminded…
Of the frostiness of the Harmattan night
the darkness of that melancholic ambience
Under the lightning bolt signature
The symbol of Sango
The blast of a sultry windless air most nights
Naked on the ungraceful abattoir
Of the vastness of the soulless earth
Mobbed by an army of Anopheles
Sleeplessness from singeing slashes on the curves of my pubertile body
Paint splashes of red welts and jarred festering flesh
The tattooed maps of a new continent on my bare back
Its mystery language; a runic inscription of countless physical assault
That made me look spotted like a leopard
Like an un-comely Virgo
An accident…an unsightly unearthly
And my being holding a totemic invocation to everyone that looked upon me
I see - the children of my madam
Contempt in their stare
Like ‘why was should born in the first place?’
Yet I never asked to be born
Didn’t ask for this life
maybe better to have been rotten in the wild devoured by microscopic sentinels
the knight Templars of the natural selection process
and to the world spinning on its axis
I really don’t exist
Non personified persona
And what good is fortune to crave for
These stuffs that people talk about
I was born damned
what other appeal can be pursued?
Christened by the name ‘house girl’
And don’t ask about my folks
Like in all transaction
They were the willing participant and I
The slave girl carried off to Rubicon for a few pennies
And whose freedom could never be bought except by death itself…