HOLLOW

The sun adores
        your gold-rimmed tyres
Screeching
Melodies on your marble roads

Naked eyes and brown teeth
Lurk- invisibly
Around your visible compound
Separated
Low, suspicious wall
Evil gate which strolls, ‘éémo’

These naked eyes
See your children’s blindness
Brown, indignant teeth that
   love your kola but hate you for
Stains, decay
Seeking to taste your blood-
Perhaps, brown go red, love’s own colour

The cloud resents their heads
Torrents lift roofs
Fearlessly
Send landlords scampering
Jackboots stumping pedestrian paths
Shameful stains from mud splash
Your armoured machines
Stampeding their brothers
For generous tokens
Floating in the air, freshly minted
Released from silver-laced hands
Hands of god.

Their children see your children
With clear vision.
Keep their faces in  the tight
Grip of their middle-class brown teeth
Whispering, not in Queen’s English
You use to keep them down,
But native tongues
You refused to teach your children
Perhaps, one day, through it,
They overpower you.