Life
I have never ever
Trusted life
To be fair and smooth
You have every right
No
You don’t need guts
To shout that
Life is one hell of a bitch
The fatherless child
Making ends meet
In the hot sun
While his age mates
Are in school
Undergoing a process
Teaching and learning
He returns home at night
To no home at all
Finding shelter
In the stands at
The market place
Yet still another
Retires to a bed
Of comfort and sweet dreams
Having done no work at all
No
This is no feud
Of the poor
Against the rich
But then
Life’s one hell of a bitch
Prove to me otherwise
The single mother
Who is less of everything
A husband
A meaningful job
A home
Yet has three children
Under 5
Each with a father
Unknown
And is pregnant
With a fourth child
No
She’s not promiscuous
She’s a head porter
And like other head porters
Is constantly gang-raped
At that lorry station
She passes the night
Each evening
Imagine
That guy
Who makes all the noise in class
And is never seen going the extra mile
Yet still comes tops of his class
At the end of each academic year
While another
Who always is behind his books
Struggles with those who miss school
Like 3 or more times in a week
As to whom should gracefully
Carry the class to Jordan
Life cannot just be fair
When your application
Is one of the strongest
And you think you easily
Will make the cut
For that college
Yet you do not gain admission
Whatever then went wrong?
I am in love
For like the umpteenth time
This time round
With the girl I met at the mall
We have been quite close
I keep making advances
And always
She shows me the red light
And what a shame that is
Yet she only sees a picture of my cousin
While she looked through my picture gallery
On my laptop
And she’s already asking for his number
How fair can life be?
Think of even my onetime next-door neighbour
Who’s playing sugar mummy
To that small boy
And thinks every poem
About love and heartbreak
I put on facebook is about her
I wish I could tell her
To wake up
‘Cause we really
Won’t ever get anything started
Yet I can bet
She goes to sleep thinking about me
Wishing I had answered her call
At half past ten
To hear her wish me
A sorry goodnight sleep
She’s dying for me
And I’m for someone else
How fair is life?
Life
He who wants never gets
He who gets never wants
The woman
Who is been married
For as long as a decade
And is still childless
Her stomach begins bulging
Ignoring the abdominal pains
She feels at night
She thinks she’s pregnant finally
Carrying a baby
A doctor’s diagnosis however
Shows she’s pregnant indeed
Not with a baby
Fibroid!
Yet another
Only opens her legs
For a fee
So low to even afford
Her a handbag
Gets pregnant a dozen times
And takes that concoction
Aborting them
Another dozen times
How fair is life?
When you have the best qualification
For that job
But that young lady
Whose qualification
Is nothing to write home about
Gets the job
Simply because
She’s a fine lady
And happens to be the cousin
Of the employer’s old mate
How fair can life be?
How can we be paid
The same monthly salary
Simply because
We have the same first degree?
Anyone listening?
Our respective jobs
Demand differently!
Is life fair?
Can it ever be?
Life is a bitch
I won’t take this back
Not even for a million bucks
Life sucks to the core
But then
Some would argue that
Life really can be wonderful
It somehow depends on how
You make it!
How true can this ever be?
(c) June 2 2011 Owiredu Albert Kofi
