Lagos

Lagos you are dirty Your sand is soiled Your fruits pithy. I am tied to you in a strange land by lines that queue up for foodstuffs you should be eating but ship off to me here where I stand on check out lines and marvel at the cost of one paw paw, just one mango singular, along and apart from you my dirty city. O Lagos, your streets are packed and pollute the air while here in a smug smogged city I choke. Your cord cuts my throat. I am hurt and I cry like my Mami market mothers who go home night after night with the same tin pots. Their food is rotting and ought to be thrown out to the birds and beasts of the forest/ but the lines! O God, these lines are so long and between the houses and the foodstuffs so many palms must be oiled. Nairas are dripping with black gold and yet a beggar man’s lot is the same/ He covers his shame as best he can and little boys skip school. A policeman holds his right hand out a green car passes him dash. And we go dash you dis and we go dash you dat and mek we do business. O Lagos, Lagos, ah say, you don tyah fo dis? Yousef wey you de com fom? Me, I long for the cleanliness of sand roads that breathe long in carefully spaced intervals between cars running wild like mustangs roaming the plains. There are no drivers to speak of. They have vanished over the hills and into gulleys. The seeds have been planted. It is a bitter harvest we reap. The deeds have been done. What has been sown is the flower of our calabashes on the eve of harvest. If only the waters in the Marina If only the waves would whisper louder the secrets of her beaches I would know all/ My harbour is named after a queen whose son’s footprints are planted like a bad seed on the headdress of my children. Lagos, lay your plans carefully. There is no way to stop the rise of bicycles and lorries, hopeful bodies and empty pots. You divert dash for food, care for business. We are not an oasis in a dying desert/ Have we not learnt, o Lagos, the sound of seductive songs and sights that blind us between need and life there must be hope/