BEAUTIFUL LADIES OF THE NIGHT: A POEM

Shlock bags hanging from limp fingers,
Strutting click clack through puddled portholes
Like top class models on runways;
Paris Fashion Week, cameras and lights.
Falsetto singing along with headphones,
Foreign accent mixed up with Bini accent;
'All d joung bwes and jeje girls',
These beautiful ladies,
They turn semen stains to gold.

Beautiful girls,
They drape sidewalks and streetlight poles
Waiting for the night to hide their deft fingers
As they draw down zips and cut open wallets,
Get on their knees to seek for coins to live,
Seduction in each and each touch.

Hustling on the streets of foreign ports
Barely thinking of home, they dream,
Scratching a stray cat's tufted ears,
Of how to pay for gas and water.
Winter winds rattling the eaves,
Cigarette smoke mingling with coffee heat,
Old newspapers circled with lipsticks
And faded hopes, they dream.

These beautiful ones fade slow
Into the brick and macadam
And drain into gutters and ghettos.
Sometimes they rise like skyscrapers
On the city's skyline and drop their skirts,
Pick a wig, a stethoscope,
A coverall and change their world,
Sometimes though. Most times,
They are just Nigerians,
Beautiful girls too faraway from home.

---

_{Unsplash: Nick Owuor}

---

I wrote and posted this on instagram for an instagram writing contest. Well I didn't meet with their rules; a certain tag or so, so I got disqualified. So here's my poesy for your reading pleasure.

NB: for those of Nigerian origin, whose mother tongue is the bini language, there's the tendency for language interference. This language interference is reflected in the way they pronounce certain English words. Words like;

Boys - bwes
Young- joung
Yeye - jeje.

Yeye is a Nigerian colloquialism which means useless.

---

©warpedpoetic, 2019.