At a moonlight story time,I asked father for a story
Seem unwilling,I shook a leg of his in sheer persuasion
'Father',I said,'I know you are hearing me'
'For you are not in trance nor in meditation state'
And when he really told me of a story of the land,I asked if he meant it,
Did all these happened in this land but leaves no trace?

He told me: son,free education once happened in this land
Free care at hospitals with effective drugs
Almost free food,less tedious works,almost free everything
I asked: are you sure it is this very land or another world?
Where are those sweet things,are they gone with yesterday?
That world of yours I know not,but I picked my pen and write thus:

There was a country
Where corruption is as regular as sun rise
Where Justice is dead,buried yesterday
Where bribery is the gate-pass
Where hospitals are mortuary in vogue
Where roads are graves,consuming everyday

There was a country
Where black gold is the resource
Where Queen Mercy is dethroned
Where Democracy is really crazy
Where people believe in the never-come promise land
Where brothers driving his kins to fifth slavery


Where hunger blind the common man in the street
Where the wise are shut up and their opposite are speaking
Where sailors boast of doing far more than Penicillin for Humanity
Where,in their own land,they live in shackles and chains
Where people always fall for the same trick of different cover
Where the smells of the stinking street and its stinking worker make the stinking country to be more stinky


Where people are displines of the ancient Lazarus
Where people remember the past good sailors in their sweet dreams
Where eternity,the sailors always say,is not enough to build a plank bridge
Where Power drowse the sailors
Where,they keep asking the sailors,is the promised Cannan you promised?
Where is the Life Paradise people were promised?

I know a country
Where chop-make-I-chop is the system
Where people always wait for sword of Damascles over them
Where they always re-come
To tell their people that they were born without no spoon
Then,I asked: father,was I born with one?

- Jimson Jaat Taofik