Dear Future Generations

Location

Nigeria

Dear
Whoever
Whoever you are from whenever and wherever
Yes you from the future who is sitting there reading this message from the past which is addressed to you directly

Sort of

Strange, isn't it
You might be ten or twenty or hundreds of years in the future
And you're reading something some girl you don't even know had typed on her phone long before you were even a twinkle in your mother's eyes

Or maybe
You are listening to someone read this

Whatever
It doesn't really matter I suppose

How's life?

Is school still the same?
Day in and day out
Learning at the same pace as all 30 other kids in your class
And you're falling behind
Because you don’t learn that way?
Do they still use those stupid and crude standardized tests?
You know
Even the inventor of those said they were crude and should not be used
Bet they still don't tell you that in school
Do pep rallies still only celebrate the athletically inclined?
Or do they clap in the academic team?
Debate team?
Photography and newspaper club?
Slam poets and writing contestants?
What about the Chess team?
Does the drama department and music department get shorted on funding?
And what about the teachers?
Are they still underpaid?

Do you still listen to music?
What kind of instruments do you use?
Are all your songs still reduced to men having money and women?
And women having to over sexualize themselves
In order for their songs to be deemed “worthy”?
Do you know who Handle is?
Or Tchaikovsky?
Or even Bach and Mozart?

And what about the polar bears?
Are they to you what dinosaurs are to me?
Something you’ve only seen in story books
And lands of make believe?
Well no
I guess that's not entirely true
I mean
After all
We had nothing to do with the meteor that killed the dinosaurs
What about the pandas?
Are they still there?
And what of trees?
And flowers?
Whatever happened to those?
Did we
As the so called “smart dominant species” destroy those too?
How's the air feel when you go outside?
What's it smell like?
Taste like even?

Oh wait
Can you even do that?
Do you know of these things that I talk about?
Can you believe that they were once real?
That my childhood consisted of running barefoot through this thing called grass
Covering my legs in mud and dirt?
If you go out in the countryside,
Do you hear cicadas singing
Drowning out everything else?
Does the air smell so heavily of this plant called ‘honeysuckle’ that you can’t smell the bonfire burning down the ways a bit?

Wait
Is there
A country side?
What about a jungle?
No
Not a concrete one
A rain forest
Where monkeys swing from vines
And sloths crawl along branches?
Can you still go to zoos and see hundreds of rare species?
Ones from foreign lands that you dream of traveling to
Or is there only two or three there
Because
You know
We killed them all

And are there still penguins in Antarctica?
Did all the polar ice caps finally melt
Submerging us in a tall sea?
Like Noah’s flood?

Do you
Know what that is?
Do they still have church?
Or did my generation
Of politicians
And those who
Step over one another
To climb to the top
Or even just to survive
Make the world so corrupt
With its pollution
And greed
And lies
And destruction
And war
That even someone as forgiving as God himself
Has turned his back on humanity?

This poem is about: 
My country
Our world

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