Death in Africa carry heavy stories

Like the words use to announce death, 

How we die in Africa,

Sometimes a deadly disease possesses our

Village like demon, 

The harvested herbs are cooked, libations

Thrown to the gods, 

Yet I am buried every day like the past. 


The other time sorrow broke our fence

And caught us unware, 

Alika is a taxi driver who was chewed to death

By the teeth of potholes,

From Anambra to Enugu on new year eve, 

It was a tale we do not know how to tell, 

For his unborn children were left for his broke

Mother as his wife is a story of the past. 


Sometimes conflict steals our love unware,

And quarrel become the love that bind us together,

Papa become a predator preying on mama, 

Sometimes our home become a television where

We watch mother being beaten to death by father. 


How we die in Africa,

Ola was sick the other day,

Where Would he be treated? 

The health centers are filled with staffs-cockroaches and spiders 

Throwing a party for my corrupt country, 

Private hospitals a vampire eating one before its death, 

Demanding high cash before disease is dealt with, 

Ola died unattended because of no wealth. 


Death deals with us in Africa,

Frustration is the meal we eat inexhaustible,

Schools after schools, yet when the cap is off, 

Job keeps running into the hands of the rich,

Hunger highly open-handed to us,

Till we know no road to survival and we choose

A wrong road heading to suicide. 


War is a tale you can not tell without us, 

Have you forgotten when I was broken into 

Pieces like a bottle shattered on wall? 

Oh, south Africans you have killed your spirit 

Of  negritude,

You have watched me naked in your own home,

When you have enough clothes in your hands.


How we die in Africa,

Is a bitter story too long to end, 

Too sad to be told  without tears, 

So each time we begin this story, we do not

Go far because we’re always caught by sobs, 

And so this poem has not end, 

Let me weep for my dear Africa.