POEM: A TRAIN OF SQUALOR BY GBOYEGA RICHARD AYEPOLA.

Ayepola Gboyega Richard is a Young, Talented, Upcoming, Nigerian Poet and Novelist who sees poetry and Literature at large as worlds of unchained expressions.

A Graduate of the Department of English from Nigeria’s Premier University(University of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria).

Some of the extracts of the chats between Gboyega and PoojaBlog:

WHAT KINDS OF POEMS DO YOU WRITE?

“I see beyond the ordinary when I write poems and I believe the authenticity of a poem is determined by the deepness of the source of inspiration. In other words, the beauty of a poem is determined by how intense and vivid the inspiration is. I write and speak for the masses, I adore the African culture, I write about inadequacies in Governance, I write about love and Religion and I write deeper poems pouring out strange emotions from a mind I don’t understand sometimes. All in one, I embrace versatility.”

YOUR POEM TITLED A TRAIN OF SQUALOR HAS RECEIVED GREAT APPRECIATIONS FROM THOSE THAT HAVE VIEWED IT. DO YOU HAVE A DEEPER MEANING TO THE POEM AS OPPOSED TO WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS?

Well, to a large extent, Meaning in a work of Art is often determined by the reader’s interpretative ability. A Train of Squalor mirrors a society through a train that passes along the Ikeja Express way. The poem reveals the predicaments of two classes of people in the modern day society of Nigeria; The extremely impoverished and the Traders, and it reveals the rich man’s dispositions towards the moving train through the last line (the train is noisy, so they say). It is a moving train, hence it is a symbolic representation of that squalor that seems unstoppable and moves continuously on the soil of Nigeria and Africa at large.

Enjoy the Massive Poem after the cut….Please leave your comments and share...

A TRAIN OF SQUALOR

A train it is! Yes, a moving train

A train at the centre of the heart of a turbulent city

Humming and booming with smokes not black but burnt

Carrying the toilers, the labored, the sick, and the disillusioned beleaguered

Jam-packed like rags obsolete

Body complexion unbalanced like those of my grandfather’s chameleons

Sick in the head, sick in the mind, sick in the body but strong in the eyes

A moving train it is! Accommodating on the outside than the inside

Cheap enough to lock up worries of the mighty cash

The conveyed on the outside are properly seated on it

Seated and stronger than the incorrigible noise

With their burnt hands rolling up the lighters

Smoking away anguish and a frustration that seems inherent

In a glimpse, you know their unending plights,

Bones not at ease in those dirty mats called cloths

Lives geared towards a labor in restless endlessness

They all leave in the cold, early morning,

Running helter skelter to leave by the moving train

For their destinations of negativities

Servants of survival, battling against hunger and not wants

Uppermost red in the eyes, with no love for a fly

But want for food

Their dark slums are the best palaces of comforts

Higgledy piggledy, with something of lifelessness

And faeces loving rats, on the lookout for an heavenly drop of nothing but faeces

And then, the Masses at the rail tracks!

In the glorified names of traders,

Hands clanging with the common man’s needs

Life made cheaper for the destitute

Comforts hung in the air

And the kingdom of heaven brought to earth.

The “Traders”, soldiers of the scorching sun and the merciless rain

With a battle against wants

And a dogged will to embrace hope amidst uncertainties

I see them running with their unsold sacraments in upmost fear

From a furious moving train of squalor, unstoppable and unreachable

And coming back stronger when the moving sadist is all gone

Look at the takers! The bosses of influence and creators of affluence

Watching the endless train

Silent in their big motor cars,

Illuminated on the inside and dark on the outside

“The train is noisy”, so they say.

                    

                           GBOYEGA RICHARD AYEPOLA.