Parody: My Country of Contrasts

Today

In our national television i saw malnourished children staring

At our pallid faces, children with sunken eyes wedged in

Overweight heads, flesh-ridden hands and mouths

Clinging on emaciated breasts.

 

The reporter says those are children from

The patched, arid lands of the Turkana, vulnerable

Like children from some God-forsaken, war-torn country.

 

Today

In the national television too, a Trans-zoia farmer retorts in desperation:

"Where's the government's grain silos when our grains are rotting for

Lack of market and store houses?"

 

An Olkalau farmer fumes with founded fury:

"We're pouring pail of milk for our already overfed dogs

And the local milk factory has taken to its full capacity!

Who'd compensate us against these collosal losses?"

 

Today

In one palatial home in Runda or Muthaiga where

The priveleged few pore over plasma screens, a man's child would ask,

Mouth stuffed with meat-balls: "Papa is that child a Kenyan?Is Turkana in Kenya?"

His little mind unregistering how a fellow child could be so deprived.

 

Today

In my middle-class appartment at eastlands, while sipping minute maid,

Pondering over my mortgage service, i too could be reawakened

By these contrasting images of my country and wonder how

Man's priorities could be trully misplaced and wanting.

 

Yet

This's our land of glorious sunshine and revitalizing rain

But the middle class and the rich, competing to win top prize,

They would persist their right to life, along with the myriads of

Economic disorders in our nation that stand out like blisters.

 

 

 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

ar

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a.griffiths57's picture

  An astonishingly truthful

 

An astonishingly truthful account of your country has been created by you in this poem. As you so markedly point out there is never any excuse for such extreme poverty to exist, especialy when products are being wasted to suit a monetary market and economies. These essentials may as well be distributed to the poor rather than go to waste: as they are in my country and many other countries around the world. Your poem made me think well about these issues, your government should do something about the starving people's plight, even susidising food prices in order to help the poor from starving as they do e.g. in India and many other countries around the world. By saving your people this way, an economy can exist because and for the people, rather than atrocious scenes of starvation and waste and no economy. As I said your poem made me think, a good Government is a humanitarian one and looks after the well being of their own people.


 

 

http://www.postpoems.org/authours/a.griffiths57

meso's picture

Thank a.griffiths for your

Thank a.griffiths for your honest comments. if only people and the state can take advantage of what they have, this world could have been quite accommodating to everyone, and we would have enjoyed a vibrant economy- everyone of us.

 


milton

Muin's picture

Pure, powerful, and

Pure, powerful, and hopeful.

 

Blessings to you and to our lands.