The balcony puffers with their squat
bellies of gasoline out-number all
our pores.
Your skin and mine.

Power generators plug their pipes into
our narrow alley-ways,
lined with hair. Exhale,

inhale. Carbon-monoxide smoke
lays eggs
in infant lungs. Our faces,
palms
ripen into crimson fruits
then, become black, the colour
that enriches the fading into
oblivion.

The National Electricity Company crows
a darkness,
mid-way between Lagos and Abuja
like an impotent rooster .

Enter the balcony puffers
invading lungs with locusts of smoke.

For breakfast,
we eat bread baptized with spongy
spores of carbon. The butter is
laced with soot. Lunch is

beef of carbon barbecue.
During dinner, the tyranny of
smoke hugs balconies, rampaging
through heart chambers.

Red blood cells commit suicide like
clouds caught in a storm.
The balcony puffers give black-ribboned
gifts. We flee their last
embrace.