LABYRINTH OF ILLUSORY SUCCESS

(With tears and pains ...)

Through the maze we traverse

On a journey to nowhere safe our destination.

The weather lacerate through our skin.

In too deep, it cuts like the surgeon’s knife.

And at a point, same weather scorched fiercely;

Burning through us like the blacksmith’s fire.

The fire in us unquenchable by the rain;

We traverse through the desert of pain.

Undeterred by the tears on our women's faces;

Forging ahead despite wailings from our children.

Wailing echoing like the ‘Timbrel of Miriam’,

On the zigzag path to success we tread with hope.

Like a rabbit warren, the network of success

Sometimes so difficult to link. Yet this opulence

We seek with blood dripping from our body.

At a point gushing out like ‘Ikogosi Waterfalls’

Body so cold with fever; blood so warm with cold.

I saw blood! Blood of the innocent red as scarlet.

This journey drenched our soul in blood

At a point, we couldn’t move our feet, but

When we think of our destination, we smile.

Standing to face the uphill task like it's no stress

At all. We walk. Walking or dragging, we couldn’t tell.

On this labyrinth of success we traversed undeterred.

Like Elliot in his 'The Journey of the Magi', we too

On this journey, saw death; and there was a birth.

A birth of a new life in us, full of hope & desire.

We walk tall at the sight of fulfilment. If the

Success that had been our plight we can't have

Nothing then is worth having, not women or drinks.

At the gate of success, with regrets we stand,

For it appears our journey has come to futility.

Shrieks of our women and children echoing in our ears,

We've brought them to vanity, for the journey was futile.

With tears and pains we voyaged for vainglory.

The illusory success disappeared like a wraith.