adminno honey flows here
where children scavenge the streets
in search of mildewed bread in the bins
where schools lie gaping at shadows of trees
and teachers grumble ceaselessly for unpaid salaries
where youths of brains and brawn
hawk fuel in gallons by roadsides at odd hours
where darkness is the electricity in our homes
yet we pay bills to fatten their paunch
where streets throng with sweating boys and girls
in long quarrelsome queues of trickling taps
where hospitals are littered with many sickly folk
and doctors are treated no better than a drudge
where gutters swell with debris and diseases
while they blare out health for all projects
where the roads are like the pathway to hell
and huge budgets are ever earmarked for repairs
where oil streams rich in some villages
while the indigenes languish in soot and in sickness
where esteemed lords hoard public wealth
even as the people groan in acerbic anguish
where those chosen to lift the lamp of hope
create gloom of ghosts and ghouls everywhere
no honey flows here…
just the undying bitterness of a land shackled. (10)
*Culled from Dark Through The Delta By Uche Peter Umez. 2004
Reproduced with author’s permission.
Kufre Friesenhan
NigerDelta Lit
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