Wages: Poem by Chidinma Ahika

'Your limbs are lame' The brine from our hands are trifled, But the harvest it sickles, Taste sweet to smash your expenses.

Our sweat will be cooled, In the beauty of vainless toils, Hovers as illusions, Our brains are wired to plot.

With disciplined vigor we've burned ourselves, Like slaves we plough to weary, You kick us behind, in front, and eventually out, From the work zone We'd have loved to scheme self-retrench.

Then we ask ourselves: Why should another deprive free born From natural rights? Or are we yet in bondage, freed by delusions?

On cross over Sundays of every month, You're the first to kneel before Abba Father, Always on a spring to sow the most daring of vows, Giving to His works, neglecting your workers: The powerless He's sworn to fight for.

One day your edifice will, surely, bag a trophy, Yesterday, you came, as Most Mrs Sempe, With your face, glowing in Jergens attire. In pride you tilted your hair against the wind, To invite all eyes, even the uninterested, On the latest, professionally attached Peruvian.

The rays are over generous In reflecting the tinkering of your blink blinks; Nose, ears, fingers, wrists, and even ankles, Protracting the gaping distance, Between glitz and mundane, Employer and employed.

Is it not your luxuriance That pushes us to austerity? As we drink garri, even at recess With no shame but transient satisfaction?

The modest rags, We wear to soil for you, Owe much to the grace of 6:30am, Aswani market, bend-down-select. Thanks to the makers of Aswani: Nakedness might have been the latest Fashion of our kinds, Thank God for Aswani!

You table statistics: Melt down, decline, debts, But only our reality suffers From their ailing touch, Yours is a miracle of the reverse.

Madam, your deeds have motivated us, In burning limited fats; Going three-days straight, Directing fires to camps, Binding and losing ancestral vestiges.

Albeit, madam, the scales are falling off, It seems you're the administrator of darkness, Who believes labourers are not worthy of their wages, And would rather mismanage profit At your whims Than commit to the reward of your labourers.

Madam Sempe, tell us no more nonsense! Give us our measures, Pressed down, shaken together, Even if you'll not allow them to run over, Give us our measures Steal our sweat no more! Or are labourers no more worthy Of their wages?

© Chidinma Ahika.