Broken

Broken
Totally broken.
Stricken
Thoroughly stricken.
Afflicted
with full affliction.
Defamed
with utter defamation.
Stripped
to bare bones.
A once thriving nation
now just a bad clone
of her true nature.
Had leaders, truculent
malevolent
Rotten to the core.

Leading
Desperate people.

Rivers defiled
Feculent
Forests burned
Pastures destroyed,
Farmlands polluted
Produce hardly esculent

Farmlands swallowed up by gullies
Unsightly gullies
dotting the landscape
and highways.
Gaping holes made by
feculent floods
rushing unrestrained.

Broken
Totally broken.
Stripped
of her past glory.

A nation of children
betrayed
and waylaid
by
Poor schools, no tools,
Bad roads, no roles
No jobs, rough hubs
Sickness.
No health care
Decadence
No conscience.
Pawkiness,
Preying on the naive
across the globe.

Poverty
abject poverty
grips the land.

Yet the oil flows
Yes, the oil flows
As the land dies
one day at a time.
As the mangrove swamps die
And seagulls cease to fly
The fish and crayfish fry
in the cesspools of oil
.
The ever burning flames
of natural gas flaring
Quite a hint of hell
Hot and fiery,
Bright and scary,
from Shell, BP and chums.

The money is flowing
The people are starving
No fish to catch
No farms to scratch
For a living.
The oil left the land
To turn dunes of sand
into rows of mansions grand
where the oil- rich float around
like fat cows in grand robes.
The people die in scores daily
All over the land.
Yet the bloated cows moo
nonchalantly.

Broken
Totally broken
What a token
of a nation.

Chinwe Enemchukwu
© August 8 2011