Trapped – A Poem by Mwangi Ndīritu, Kenya

In the broken bottles are men
overweighted by marital issues
drowning dreams in streams of
fermented drinks, bodies ashamed
of their roles in an existence captive
to a cycle of recurring mistakes.

In the aisles of gods, broken women
piously pray for miracles to free them
from vicious violent blows
as they kneel on thin carpets of veiled
sin, heads bowed worshipping, while
the echoes of their prayers are drowned
by the politics of the clergy’s greed.

Broken bones heal, but these scars of time
tell the story of young minds trapped in
a circuit of reincarnating ghosts.
Day after day in this erosion they grow older
— the fumes of hate wafting from their own
desperation leads to a stupor of indifference
when they see their dreams dissipated into
the polluted rivers, drained into the lakes of
a political system’s unquenchable gluttony
— and in the classroom, the teacher stands
preaching water to a room full of thirsty kids,
while he sips from his thermos of liquor,
trying to escape the darkness.

This Poem was published in the January 2023 edition of the WSA magazine. Please click here to download.

Read – Fleeing from the Shades of Gloom – A Poem by Allen Laika Tatah, Cameroon

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