THE FUNNY SADNESS

Okoye sits and spits
…frowns and quits
All activities which all think he fits
Staring into space as air of sadness hits
…all who meets his dreadful eyes
His father tells all about the doctor’s lies
That his abled son had depression

ONE TWO
“Depression?
Depression is just a sickness for people with no ways of expression
People whose self esteem have been burned in pots of compression
Why will my own son suffer from this ghostly sickness?”

ONE TWO THREE
Omotoke his mother raises her right hand
…to draw a circle on her head, jumped only to heavily land
…with a thug on the ground
Shouting and cursing away the bad luck which wants to bound
Her one and only son

ONE TWO THREE FOUR
“Isn’t depression another name for madness?
Isn’t depression another spirit of destruction?
Isn’t witchcraft the underlining force of that madness?
Isn’t this what happens when the devil wants to destroy in ugliness?
Heeey! Tufiakwa!
My son can never be a depression!”
This is the drama that brings the karma

TWO ONE
Many eyes watched their compound
…piling on their woes to their fears compound
The Obineke Household has turned into a movie house
All curious cats turned airs to search for many an explanatory mouse
…in their compound
Not many minutes have hawked
But rumours are swirling like poor man’s gari
And many are now tiptoeing around the Mad House

TWO ONE TWO
“Who knows what they did for their son to contract that madness?
What did that son do to contract that madness?
Could an ancestral curse be the reason for his madness?
I am glad I have no friend in that house”
Were whispers which worked the runways of their compounds

TWO ONE TWO THREE
Yet Obinna hanged herself last week
Ikem drank poison last month
Just three days ago,
Uju stood on the tallest building in Aba
…and jumped down like batman
Only to end up as paste on the merciless ground
The doctors who diagnosed depression are shunned and prayed against
Though they still live healthy lives
…most of those who were diagnosed are no more
Such is the air of the funny sadness
…in Ojo
Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia © February 10, 2021