How do I get out of here?

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Ohey there! Do you remember
Your first venture
To a city centre
From a remote corner
You happen to be born in and reared?
It wasn’t the best of time -
I was very ill and infirm
When father took me to the city centre

Seeking God’s amnesty with the help of the hands of a doctor.

Bless the Lord! When I did slowly recover
For a change I was taken for a walk on a boulevard.

Wondrous was the boulevard on it own right

For guy that was me

Who slithered in narrow mostly canopied streets,

With my feet bogged in slough.
What I saw, fresh in my mind they are,
I do still remember.
Long chains of cars,
Running bumper to bumper

As if suffocating the road,
The variety of items being load or unload,
The cleanness of the street,

As if they it is a plate,
Guarded by trees obsequiously lined up in a straight,
The cinema halls,
The picture on the walls,
The multi-coloured dazzling lights them all,
Buildings, wide and tall,
People moving up and down,
Without lifting their feet from the ground –

I know now they are called elevators.
I felt this must be it
Where God, the fortunate few meets.
Giant windows,
Fully dressed mannequins in their bellies swallowed.
I remember the first time I stood and talked to one,
Thinking it was a real human.
A wall endowed with magic recess,

With similar if not more power that of a church’s apse,
If only you were one of them hallowed,

It poured banknote when touched on the face.

Many years later being a city dweller,

I took my mother for a walk -
That is when she came for a visit
And see how I exist,
We came across a bank
And I decided to give her some francs
To purchase the sort of things - bric-a-bracs.
What did I get instead of thanks!
Words that hit my chest like pelted rock.
"You are mean as a devil,
For money that freely pours out from a side of a wall
You have to give me such a small,

As if I hadn’t served you flesh and soul!"
I laughed at her but she was no stranger,
For I did remember,
the first time I visited the city centre,
I myself could have uttered,
the same words as hers.
When I was taken for a threat,
To palliate my predicament,
Though such threats were far in between,
I had a conflict of interest set in.
The desire to gazelle the whole lot in a sweep,
And hang on to it for keeps,
Because it was such a sweet.

Now I am a city man, a country life behind,
Dear oh dear, my eyes must have gone blind
I see no more such a thing I saw as a child.
My sense organs must have gone dull;
The roasted coffee once that oozed aromatic smell,
Now tastes extremely foul.
I no longer smell the pastry,
Coming from the chimney of the bakery.

Curse the costermonger who keeps jamming the pedestrian route,
Where once delightful waft that used to come from the assorted fruits
They no longer do even when peeled down to their roots.
And the cars are the culprits;
Producing such a toxic smell
I have difficulty to in-hail.

The hustle and the bustle,

The money, the drug, violence, brothels

The prison, the castle,

The people, oh yes, the people,

The devils in patrols,

The TV that non stop talks,

What can I say ........ , They are all impossible.
Dear oh dear, city life is one big hell.

Tell me, How do I get out from here?
Copyright Haileselassie Girmay
13/11/98