If Your... Poem by Shachia Oryila

If your torchlight
Could shine as bright
As a dull yellow bulb, or
For once like the deep yellow lights
Of a bush lamp now in vogue
Listen! Our space would become
As white as teeth after a whitewash!

If your candlelight
Could burn as smoothly and as quickly
As a polythene caught by fire
On a windy harmattan afternoon or,
Oyei inferno over charred scores
Of scoopers in half a second a mile
Sure! Our world would become
A veil of neon and lush at night!

If your juicy contracts−
the idling of men-at-work
in helmets, overalls and jungle boots
unable to morph a track
through a spot since hands changed money
or, the presence of heavyless-duty machines
broken down or abandoned by the roadside
and overtaken by weeds and rodents
followed by a faking of innocent faces−
were as sweet as words, mek and ouni
Trickling down your honeycomb
When you traded words for votes
Bet! Sugar now would be everyone's name!

If your tortoise steps were
As brisk as the chameleon's
For all the years white-caps resumed
Where they stopped decades ago
When jackboot boys dipped their fingers
In the full pot of soup late at night
Believe! Not even the wind
Could dry a jet of spit before
We arrive Maiduguri from Lagos on foot!

If you could watch without blinking,
Watch without dozing, watch without smiling
As lovers are wont day and night;
If you could sift the bin of shredded evidence
The dirty exit tracks of millions or billions
And put fillers to the gushy stash of cash
The crooks should bargain their ways behind bars:
A decade to the one who went with a penny
A generation to the one who moved a kobo
A millennium to the one who coveted a naira,
With all life-long savings and assets seized
And no paltry slap on the wrist as substitute.
If you could watch with no flicker of eyelid
Note this! Even the eagle would doff
The sharpness of the cricket's vision!