08/08/2026
I wish this was a poem
But I'm tired of writing things
no one understands.
Change is all around us.
The ancient tree, hundreds of years rooted, now felled in the jiffy of human greed.
The younger ones, planted in my childhood, gone too.
In their place, concrete stems and branches reaching to the sky.
The Chinese foreman,
With a smile, says, "E kaabo"
New lord of the land
Master of the tongue.
The Indian forwarder,
Who ships the prized lumber, Motivates his workers
With Igbo Christian worship songs
"Just for the fun of it".
The Americans studying Fulfulde
To better grasp the orchestra of insurgency
In Northern Nigeria, say,
"This is neither sweet nor easy".
And the Nigerians?
They are out there in Toronto and New York, proudly spewing their Edo, Kalabari and Hausa;
In Calgary and Birmingham,
Chicago and London, Brussels and Berlin
"We have come to colonize the colonizer," they say.
And the other Nigerians?
They are back there in Ibadan,
In Lagos and Abuja, Aba and Kano
Ground down by poverty and ignorance
Gasping for air in their land of plenty
As our half-naked children dance to unintelligible music.
Nothing feels the same.
Nothing is the same.
Change is all around me
But I'm still stuck in the yesterday of moaning trees.
And poetry feels like
A waste of energy.
