PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

As if I could ever stay away huh? Another installment in the life of Billy Boarster the incurable bum. Another egocentric saga of self-pity and cynical gibberish to entertain your empty souls. Another venture into unabashed self-degradation and undignified honesty. Strap yourselves in, here I go…



Aaah, Nigeria… just clocked up my first year anniversary the other day. An entire year endured on the soils of the most fucking corrupt, polluted and hopeless nation on this earth. Another year chasing the dollar… Another year spent without the company of my own son… or his mother… or any other fucking family member or personal friend that give a smidgeon of meaning to my life. ‘Meaning’ left the building a long time ago… ‘purpose’ followed shortly thereafter… the last virtue still clinging onto the fence must be ‘sanity’.



As we drive I stare. I stare straight or sideways or any way… I just don’t focus my gaze upon any motherfucker on the side of the road. It’s just become too much of an inconvenience. Beggars, hecklers and seller all want my gaze. They are on constant 24/7 lookout for it. As soon as they find it, they jump on it with the vigor of a grizzly bear slashing a salmon out from the stream. Oh, if you’ve only seen two bread sellers running after a minibus of very poor passengers, losing their sandals as they try and outrun each other, just to make that N10 commission they get on a loaf of bread (about 10 Aussie cents, but it’s probably less than N10 as for the commission they get).



Ibadan… the second largest city in Africa, as far as area goes, and probably the largest shanty town in the world. An unknown number of poor souls wander these streets, estimates putting it at around 9-16 million. It is just a never ending sprawl of rusty shacks and run-down buildings in bad need of maintenance. There are no shops representing the west at all… the entire city is served by 3rd grade street sellers and proprietors who don’t give a fuck about quality of service or product, just the quality of profit margin.



I want to go home… I want to enter an alternate universe… I want to lie in bed with my arm around you… I want to smell your hair as I softly breathe into your ear… I want to be hanged in a public display of goodwill, for the people, by the people… I will crawl away and die… sooner or later.