"Cry of the wrecked" by Iwuchukwu Jephta

I'm blushed in the streets,

Whip me not again

With your malicious words...

Gun me not

With winks of your eyes.

Like a river, lies the pain in me,

Drunk am I of its bitter sweetness;

Not of my will but of adversity.

II

Innocent am I, a minor

Wrecked in innocence;

In the freshness of my age –

In mint condition…

Let the world hear me!

Cast me no stones,

cast them the stones – those hoodlums,

Monsters in sagged dirty jeans

Whose  beards and hairs

Outgrow the forest of death.

Hawks in search of street prey...

Vectors of infirmity;

The one I now bear, uncurable for life.

III

Found they a specimen for their manliness?

I, the strength of their youth?

With wrest, did they break all barriers

Leaving me hapless

In turns, they wrote forcefully

With their large pens on my virgin page,

spilling papy inks into me,

Planting this seed of hatred.

Germinating and growing

Like weed into ominous fruit of spite,

Protruding into unknown fortune.

Bastard – product of crime!

IV

Let the world hear me!

What's life lived in ruins?

Open wild ears to my sonorous

Wail, in audible silence.

Harangue me not in the streets again,

Call me no names, I'm not

Of easy virtue or of the streets!

It's only in my life's journey

Have I become a victim –

Victim of circumstance,

Living in sugared pains

Of life's cruelty.

Iwuchukwu Jephta is a 200-level student of the Department of English, School of Languages, Faculty of Education, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria; an affiliation of Federal College of Education Kontagora, Niger state. He hails from Imo state, Nigeria.