YOUR TURN: A PIECE OF XOXA...

Hey people, I am featuring this piece by friend and sister, Xoxa Icha... I hope you enjoy it!

MY NEIGHBOURHOOD

I live in a hood where everything is for sale
Money talks, walks and steps on those who fail
Consciences, truths and witness all tagged with prices
Where virtues are suppressed to uplift vices

Where I live boys are men and men are boys
And women save a select few, are turned into toys
To make a better life happen faster
The dream of climbing higher
With a bunch of colored paper as master

Where I live the law is the robber
And the robber is the law
Positions are bought and sold
Not earned anymore

Where I live fruits come before the seed
Students don’t write exams
But yet they succeed
Good jobs no merits
Others worthy but jobless... loaded with credit

For those who go to school and choose to make honest grades
Find learning a tiresome yet worthy wade
Through a sea that seemingly has no end
Under broken bridges that never mend

Where I live rocks fall in place of the promised rain
The silenced men below struggle to stay sane
Their silence outweighs the collected bribes
A better life-an idea imbibed

In my hood people die when the truth is told
Honest men are few and hardly grow old
The liars capture them
Not just at night, even in the day
And bury them unashamedly with anything they have to say
Some men look on and others look away

The jails are filled
Yet the guilty walk free
Gnawing at an inheritance left to my brothers and me

This is my hood
The real picture
This is my area
My neighborhood, Nigeria