The Masses

August 31, 2025 by Edozie Udeze

How astonishingly disturbing it is!

How despicably the scare registers

It is almost bursting my brain,

Nearly tearing it to pieces

It is like a scourge in the air

So dingy and pillared on crag

Smelling awfully bad; congealed.

And yet no one can stand it

Even when I look beyond it,

Stretching my neck so far afield

Read Also: Tinubu’s FX reforms position Naira as export engine – Yakubu

Ah! What do I see?

See, you say-

Nothing; I see nothing so precise

In the distance is a yawning space

Filled only with noisy rancorous group of people.

People drooping and groping endlessly

So confused in themselves.

Now, clapping, gasping and gyrating

to the nuances of life,

They can only laugh in screeching undertone

Some kind of ugly, bitter hilarious rancour

So nebulous that I stop to stare.

They are far gone now, still confused

Clapping, gasping and gyrating

‘Cos they know not what they do

With the future so bleak and brash

It is all a long-drawn abracadabra caught

deep and square; like a cocoon of

endless yawning confusion; those deprived

Depicting the Nigerian masses enmeshed

In this whirlwind of forward never, backward ever.