DO NOT SAY MY COUNTRY IS BROKEN

I know the locusts have perched at Abuja and eaten her into the desert, I know there is something death with our roads, Something hunger in our laughter, And I have seen rain begin in our eyes falling into a lagoon of what we have become. But there is still a rainbow about my country, Like those colors that paint your heart when your woman accepts your proposal, Like that happiness hanging on your cheeks when you hold your newborn baby, Enugu is a lady gradually making up her broken face, There is this feeling growing into a tumor of hopes each time I touch her, I know that time will message development on her. There is nothing Bornu about every state, Nothing sambisa about Benin, Nothing Benin about cross river, Nothing Benue about Lagos. Do not name my country Bornu forgetting Lagos, Do not write Benin into darkness when there is light like that of Johnny Drille, Do not think that Benue has been broken like bottles that lost their destinies on a wall of a bar, There is a forest of hopes in which we wallow in my country, Misery has made us chemists of our pains, There is how we crack our problems into jokes to heal our wounds, There is how we find joy in telling our stories as we hold an armor for misery, Like how we use a liter of fuel riding our bike from Lagos to Abuja, How our bikes are dried of fuel and we blow life into them again, How our super eagles lost their wings and are flown by airplane, Their necks always hoping for golden medals of failure. Do not say my country is broken, And that there is something yahoo about every boy, That we’re hungry doesn’t mean we are thieves.