Naija Poetry | Stay at Home

Omotayo Fatunbi

Biography: I am just a lover of nature, art, a scavenger roaming the earth in search of good painting, sculpture, music, movie, poetry; and I try as much as possible to add mine for others like me to pick up. Life is too short to achieve all my big heart wishes to, but I just want to make my little contribution before death claims me.

Omotayo Fatunbi's Profile

Omotayo Fatunbi

Wednesday 28 October 2020

Stay at Home

Or wouldn’t you?

When a killer is on rampage

Out there on the street

It is there in the air you breathe.

Stay at home

Or wouldn’t you?

When the plague is lurking

Waiting at every corner

For another captive, another victim.

Stay at home

And keep washing your hand

Don’t touch anything

Maintain social distance

Even within the family.

For death is all around

On the lamp shade

On the kitchen cabinet

On the door post

On the street light pole.

Death has melted into thin air

It sits atop the tap water handle

On the washing hand basin

On the floor of the mosque

And even on the church seats.

How quick the border closed against the importation of rice

A good move; wrong timing

But the border would not close on time; against the world’s most dreaded virus

For they still had a trip here or there to make

Their children abroad needed some time to return home.

Now the virus is imported

Whether you have an international passport or not

It has been imported for all

At a cost too exorbitant for us

For we pay with our freedom of movement.

Yes we are now staying at home

We are no salary earners

But we stay at home

Even salary earners have exhausted their chicken feed

Yet we stay at home.

Of course we would stay at home

For it is better to die at home

Than to litter the street with corpses

We would stay at home

And save the health workers the stress of picking victims on every street.

Stay at home

For the nation has only few testing centers to boast of

Our hospitals lack facilities

It is no news

Since every politicians travel abroad for treatment.

People die of malaria

People die of all sorts of ailments

Kidney disease took a lot of our loved ones

It matters not

For our leaders seek refuge in UK hospitals

The number one citizen has spoken

Only three states to stay on lock down

Two, plus the Federal Capital Territory

A promise of relief materials was made

Only for them.

But the rest of us to stay at home

At our own risk

No food, no money, no relief material

Just stay at home

And keep washing your hands.

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