What to do? - A poem on a POW on deathrow

I wrote this poem after watching a documentary on prisoners-of-war (POW)s and genocide. It was some years ago. I found the slip of paper somewhere in my room last week and decided to post it on the Net because I’ve stopped writing poems.

The POW is in anguish, mentally and physically, over the fact that today is the day he has been decreed to die. To be shot at the back of the neck with a pistol. He shares a cell with other POWs which is a dark room but the nails are not in the room, only on his body and his psyche. He knows he’s surely going to die today and there is nothing anybody can do about that. Very sad!

I titled the poem: “What to do.” There is nothing you can do if you are a prisoner awaiting your death. Nothing at all.

          What to do.
          Ghouls assail me left and right
          Moaning I beg the heavens to open
          To accept me after my sudden death
          For I can bear this burden no longer. 
          Like a walking old man with a sac
          Defeated by time, war weary, hungry.
          His legs hairy, forlorn thoughts aplenty.
          I ask them, comrades avoiding my gaze
          Smiling like yesterday’s green lawn:
          “Do you know what it is, this assailing
          Clubbing my every being with nails?”
          With long sighs, speaking to the wind
          Surely earless though with much to say
          Words that only the gods can hear.
          The pain, the pain – the scale is rising
          On the weight where depression sleeps
          Waiting in vain for an answer that
          Will never come – this anguish, my secret.
          The chamber of nails and bars, darkness!
          With roaches running about like slaves, to 
          A scroll written by two vermin who decreed
          That I die by a shot of the pistol. 
          Do I break the laws of transport
          Fight a battle only the heavens can plot?
          The roaches will know nothing but the chant:
          “What to do – What to do?”
          By 12, midnight, the pistol will come silently
          The roaches before; the scroll read to my death. 
                                           ---- Nnaemeka David

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