Like a supple maple leaf
In luster and splendour
I’d thought of every word
Rarefied for every world
I grew in a slum
Like Makoko in Lagos
And favela in Brazil
Where everything goes that man may live
I am not a victim
But a member
Of the wretched of the earth
Plastered by poverty
I grew to see all as right
As far as it gave me food
That I may be in tune
With the mood of a survivor
That has been my way
As I live seeing every month of May
I live like in a jungle
Where only the fittest live the longest
Feeling of dread
No longer treads my heart
As I take spills of pills
To peter out gloom and despair
I am not a victim
I am a member
Of the wretched of the earth
Stuck to drugs like a mother to her baby
I don’t know what’s right now
I live but my friends think I’ve got to mellow
That I may reconnect
Doing what’s right for the many
I try but all hope seems gone
To stop seems but Herculean
And since I’m not Hercules
I rest restless in my bewilderment
It’s neither fiction nor fantasy
But a realism of life’s reality
I’m not a victim
But a member of the wretched of the earth
Is there help coming
That may make me homely and dearly
In a way that my pills I’d spurn
O help me God
But my pills now I’m taking
I don’t know if it’s wrong
I’d been taking it to survive
O help me God
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