My country is a hurricane
She swirls her hips like a mad woman
And devours anyone who dares to dance.
She is a wildfire spreading fast,
Her flames, consuming any life form she comes across.
(My country goes really well with bad metaphors.)
She is shameless, unmindful that her name
resonates outside the continent like a church bell rung by a drunk exorcist.
At least, I am ashamed to mention her name.
Here, our lungs are filled with the corruption we breathe each day,
Our ears are withered because of the vain promises the leaders spit from their sugarcoated lips.
But what do they know about the sufferings?
What do they know about the cries that rise from empty stomachs and bereaved chimneys?
Everyday, poverty eats through countless homes and you can still see the marks of its teeth on the walls if you look closely.
Somewhere there is a little girl holding on to the pinkie finger of her mother;
She has dust on her cheeks,
Oil stains on her gown,
And her lower lip is cracked like every street in her home town.
The streets of my hometown are littered with forgotten dreams and lackluster happiness,
With rubber slippers, charcoal stained fingers and roast corn sellers with babies strapped like ammunitions to their aching backs.
Insecurity;
sweeps around, creating an atmosphere of fear and formidable distress.
Religion;
has become a masquerade for both genocide and mendacity
Death;
tiptoes on the mattresses of starving families like a ballet dancer on crumbling ice.
So whenever you call your compatriots, tell them to rise only because their nation has fallen,
Tell them their fatherland is polluted with the blood of nursing mothers and defenseless children.
Ask them how they can dig the earth in search of peace when their hoes and cutlasses do not swing in unity.
My country hovers like a half-winged butterfly,
Lacking the knowledge of how to evolve.
She is an eagle with wings but there are arrows on both her shoulders stopping her from soaring;
For the colour green is weak, fading fast into a canvas of a quenchless, tainted white.
©Samuel Jr.
