Polluted Gaze Poem by Dr Igbinedion Obaretin

The drums are talking again!
Big party for the big party man,
Like it was four years ago
When he promised a road paved with gold;
Now that the roads became footpath,
He returned with flirts of helicopters.
Will he promise an airport this time?

The market square is filled again!
Women and maidens of braided hairs, dancing
In cheap party attires full of the inscription,
The big man head printed all over,
In curved hips and buttocks of the women;
The fat asses rolling with the drum, all directed
Like satellite dishes towards the big man:
His polluted gaze is firm on all.

Now I see his curious noise retracting again!
With this drum and waists shaking violently,
With all these satellite dishes so close to him
Hot hair from intestines corrupted with poverty
Must have greeted his curious noise well again.

Welcome, my big brother to the abandoned land,
The land that knows no peace, troubled
By Aliens in blue khaki, descending
From the helicopters hovering over thatch roofs, drilling
The milk underneath us while we suffer, polluting
Our rivers with this and that, sending
Fishes faraway to some land uninhabited;
Our green forests are now deserts.

And now you return after four years, giving
Bags of salt to every household.
Shall we cook without water?
Shall we cook empty pots?
When we can no longer drink from the river,
When our land has refused to give us
Cocoyam, Palm oil and cassava leaves,
When all the fishes have travelled far away,
The salt will give taste to our poverty.