THE SCARLET WOMAN

There is a name given to her kind
Her trade is as old as creation
Her root is deep in the soil
Many years of excavation, yet undiscovered
Generations raise and experience her kind
She straddles races and tribes

There is no difference of culture or tongue −
She is a universal phenomenon!
Like a tumor, it keeps growing back after every cut
Her slogan is, ‘me you will have with you always’
She may not have loved her profession
Yet she finds it hard to let go
‘We are legion,’ she says
Her profession is her lover
Like a foetus, it finds comfort in its mother’s womb
Like saliva, she can’t spit all out

She is like bile that renders every part of the flesh useless
Society calls her Defeated
Society scorns and yet values her
For the momentary pleasure she affords.
She is rotten yet sweet
Dissatisfying yet satisfies
Unpleasing yet pleasurable
She gives her users the comfort they crave

She is like the dunghill
Where they dump their debris
Debris of frustration, debt, brokenness and failure
She serves their needs courteously, not hurting
So they keep calling back
All their worries they dump on her
Much semen of shame and dejection

Her life is fragmented by her many lovers
Each taking a part of her until she totally lost her identity
The scarlet woman every man can find
Her price so affordable for all to afford
She knows her lost sense of belonging
Yes, she pours her venom everywhere
She is no respecter of age and time
So long as you have the pay

Society shuns her kind
Families want not her association
Still, they share the fruit of her whoredom
So long as it can buy from the stores
She glows under red lights
She is a woman of the red zone
Finding the part of her life
Alas, the world that shuns her behavior

Lures her into the craft   
And comes in the shadows of the dark
To have a taste of her professionalism
The world gives her, her identity
‘Sex workers’, ‘red-light-district- lady’
‘Ashawo’, ‘akunakuna’, ‘okpeke’, ‘ashi’, ‘osere’,
‘Opio’, ‘harlot’, ‘aristo’, ‘runs-babe’,’ gbesegbese’,
‘One- night-stand’, ‘fast-babe’…

She has improved on her trade
As new technology and innovation unfold
Now she beams on the computer screen
And on the phone screen.
You MMS, ping and chat with her
You control her from your abode
To get the pleasurable ‘home service’
She is abreast of the changing times

She is on the fast lane
Many tabloids have shown her
Trying to crack the puzzle the world has caused
What shall we say of the scarlet woman?
Who does it ‘for the fun of it’?
And what shall we say
Of the scarlet woman
Who made a trade of her surplus means
Of getting more ready money for her discontent?

And the insatiable housewife?
And the daughters of the high and lofty?
The handiwork of a sickened world!
What justification, oh scarlet woman?
And what end in destruction!
You bid your goodbyes unprepared
Do you not know that the world cares not?
Oh, the cries of the scarlet woman!
The scarlet woman… and the agony
The scarlet woman… and her nightmare
The scarlet woman… and the miseries
The scarlet woman… and the adventure
The scarlet woman… and her darkness
The tale of you, scarlet woman
The tale of your perils, scarlet woman
Are the riddles the world shall untangle
Your help soon shall come
In the hand of the world that molds you