My Ramshackle Poem by GEORGE AMADI

My Ramshackle



Tucked away from Main Street,
my retirement abode,
atop a two-storey
ramshackle,
sits pretty
with a vantage view
of the sky-line
hugging coconut trees
hiding Atlantic Ocean
from view.

A sea of rusty roofs,
face-saving caps to tainted
shacks, all mindlessly
spread out
around the edifice
I live in -
an apartment building
not more than a miserable
patch-work without
a garden -
stuck perfectly
dead centre of
a notorious slum,
painfully draws
even greater attention
to the potentials of
this 'missing' sea-front,
thereby doubling
my misery.

Every move made, and many
there have been,
albeit half-heartedly,
at giving the neighbourhood
a face-lift
in sharp disagreements
ended,
not least of all,
drilling a gutter
through its hundred-metre,
unpaved road
characterised mainly
by gullies.

In the evening of a chequered
life, I would have treasured
nothing more
than the serenity
offered bountifully
by the rolling hills of Nsukka
but, pray, why is it that,
every now and then,
I keep returning
to bedlam
and squalour
which funky Lagos never
stops
poking in my face,
time and
time again?

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