Crab Brother

Crab Brother!
Odeku, Godswill A.

Vast mangrove teeming wealth:
For food, for fair, for fanfare.
This forest of flavours,
Enough to grab for endless ages,
Yet Crab Brother with hand-pincers
Grabs on!

Gathering hands, crushing pincers:
Left, right; from pot, from fire;
None for siblings, none for quislings:
The grabbing goes on!

How you forget your people’s plight;
The charred lands,
The castrated mangroves,
The deprived livelihood,
The demeaned people;
How you forget beats me!

Your reward dead in the grave,
The smile-sneer your lot,
The threshold the limit
Of the fawning perambulation;
Beggars, lunatics stay there too!