Daddy, please don't be a drunker anymore
Give us joy and happiness like before again
Show us that your love is still in your heart
  
Just after you made friendship with alcohols  
Haughtiness afraid of passing our house by
Loneliness gets in our house like you gave it
  
Please look at our tears and make us smile
Take away our pains and make it a home  
Where we can find our family's love again
  
Please change to before you were alcoholic  
I beg you with the tear and pain from inside
Daddy, please stop drinking what made you bad

They're blinding us...
Indeed, all throughtout our lives we've been fooled
We didn't know who they really are,
and we didn't know what they can really do,

They made us believed that they care,
but for all we know it's all for their own benefits,
for their own good,
and for their ownselves.

We are under controlled by the people
we thought giving us what we need
But when you see them?
they are laughing at us,smiling widly showing all their teeth
while thinking we are all stupids and fools believing to their f*cking lies.

They do promises,
they out stretch their hand to us,
they're offering help for us
But behind those promises there's gonna be a broken hope
behind their hands out stretching to us they're gonna use alcohols
behind that help offers there's gonna be just waiting for nothing

They don't really rule,
they are controlling..
They don't really care,
they are really fooling.

She had her stall by the corner of the dusty inroad
just four sticks square and palm fronds for roof
a cool shade from the biting sunshine
we call her Mama Leaves
because she sold bundles of leaves and large shards of banana leaves
she would wave at us as we walked by to school
and when in the afternoon we returned she would still be there
though most of the leaves would have been sold

she did a brisk trade
corn meal, cassava porridge, bean cakes and a lot more
came cooked and wrapped in fresh leaves
at the markets the butchers wrapped beef cuts in leaves
kola nuts, pounded yam and even slabs of pig fat came in leaves
and you've not lived until you eat charcoal-grilled
pork bellies with pepper sauce off a banana leaf
yes! Mama Leaves had reasons for her wide pleasant smiles
some days her teenage daughter would sit beside her
sprinkling water on bundle of leaves to keep them fresher

I grew older and went away to college
I no longer wore shorts but trousers now and some fur
had begun to spurt under my top lip and my voice was hoarser
and mama Leaves was no longer at her stall
no bundles of large green leaves in buckets in front of her stall  
no neatly squared cut banana leaves laid heaped
on that old weather beaten table in her stall
the rustic olde wooden shack now had corrugated tin side panels
as also the roof
and inside her daughter now sold gaily coloured plastic bags
and thousands of small clear transparent cellophane

I asked my mother what happened
where is Mama Leaves, where are the Leaves, where is her smile
young man, mother replied, we have to move with the times
The Ministry of Health says leave wrappers are unhygienic
cholera, Tsetse fever, small-pox and all kinds of transmutable diseases can be easily spread
now we wrapped everything in plastics
they come from England and all the civilised top nations
look around you, see how everything is nicely wrapped in plastic
Mama Leaves has retired, her daughter now sells plastics
that's progress and modern civilisation for you, young man
when you're older with your own family you will thank plastics

last year I drove my Mercedes past my childhood home
my car came minted new plastic wrapped from Germany
the locals call such cars 'Tear Plastic cars'
as you spend days tearing off plastics from headlights to console
to gear stick to steering column not to mention the seats

Mama Leaves stall was no more, in place an asbestos built store
they sold Alcohols, Coca-colas, tapes discs, all things plastics
all things imported from England and all the civilised top nations
Mama Leaves and my mother are no more
my mother had said
"that's progress and modern civilisation for you, young man
when you're older with your own family you will thank plastics"
I wonder what she'll say.....today!

On the date he ate, but she never seen him take a bite. He enjoyed the conversation at the bar, they talked about what alcohols they consumed. This was his first date so it would be memorable for him. She was different or so he thought. He'd find out the truth instead of these ideals hyped up in his head. He thought he found love blinded by infatuations. Addicted to the idea of them living happily ever after. It would never happen forever consumed trying to escape this toxic within