BILLS ON HEELS
In a land where sunrise once whispered hope,
The land is green echoes lushness of plenty
Green white green gives signs of fruitfulness
With a pride of giant of Africa humming tune
Now it groans beneath debt books that never close
Ink bleeding like wounds across paper, thin dreams
Hunger hung to the last shred of dream
Nigeria sighs, and the silence knows.
Bills rise like tides with no ocean to blame,
A ceaseless surge, a merciless swell,
Each Naira stretched till it forgets its name,
Each pocket a story it’s forbidden to tell.
Electric ghosts haunt the meter at night,
“I pass my neighbour” noise our usual melody
Other’s candles weep wax tears of defeat
And even the darkness shines too bright.
Food prices rise like a raging storm,
The morning’s price is gone by night,
A luxury now in its rarest form,
While hunger dims the masses’ light.
Oh, these bills, keep rising
Bills on a heel dancing to the tune of the rich
These tyrants in tailored Babariga and Agbada
Marching in rhythm with unseen drums.
Bills knocking on all doors with pride
Knocking like fate on fragile doors,
Astronomic increase everywhere staring
Demanding more from empty stomachs
We live on heels, not of glamour or red carpet,
But of pressure, sharp, unkind, surreal,
Tiptoeing life on a thinning line,
Balancing burdens we’re forced to feel.
Dreams deferred become debts unpaid,
Future mortgaged to present despair,
Hope pawned off in a crowded market
Where survival is the only fare.
More queue up the Embassies daily to “japa”
Anywhere is good far from home
Our home turned to a dry land for the masses
While the colour remain green for the vultures in power
Hyperbole hangs in the humid air
“Tomorrow go better,” the age-long tune
Yet tomorrow limps, delayed, denied,
While yesterday’s promises disappear.
And still we move, oh, resilient breed
Metaphors walking on blistered ground,
Our laughter a paradox, cracked yet loud,
A fragile anthem, a defiant sound.
But tell me, how long shall heels endure
Before they crumble, before they kneel?
When every step is debt unpaid,
And every breath signs another bill.
“Bills on Heels,” the anthem we wear,
Not stitched in silk, but stitched in strain
A nation dancing on pointed edges,
Holding tight to hope less we fall off “yakata”
Every pain is twisted into a viral laughter
We cruise yet “Shuffering and Shmiling”
Just like the Abami Eda tune of ’77
Learning to smile through constant pain.
Clarion calls beckons from deep reservoirs
Of workers, of market women and the masses
Time to rise and fight was yesterday
Tomorrow too late to regret not fighting
Alayande Stephen T.
2.26am
1st of May, 2026
Written for the Commemoration of the May 1st Workers Day in Nigeria.
