'Let's go the Slums' by Ojembe Victor

Living below a dollar per day

They wait for no pay

Scavenging for their daily pay

Waiting for merchant at their ugly bay

After their routine sick hustle

They sit in clusters at the gate

Sipping in dry spirit

Slums beaming with false life

The scent of Akara

Dancing in their brains

Drowning every nerve cells

In a street with multiple doors

In a cramped lane

Where sinners sits with saints

And a brothel releases sensual hymns

While a church stands an inch apart

After the crows of the one legged cock

Our slums wakes from its sugary dream

Where men sips black coffee

And ladies walk in five inches heels

Young men sit in circles

While a board game cause them to release every penny

Damsels walk with trays

Swinging their backside to the drums of the wind

Hawkers with bitter kola

Watching men with sachet of gin

Pouring vintage libation

Killing their worldly sorrows

Let’s go to the slums

Walking to the edge of penury

Let’s inhale the smell of strong weed

Listening to lesson by men

Living at the edge

Ojembe Victorhails from Abia state, Eastern Nigeria. A graduate of Microbiology from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. A poet and all round writer. This poem was first published on poetry.wrr.ng

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