Orochi C. Joshua Poet Free verse

RADIOACTIVE NATION

They do not hear the ticking —
yet the clock is wound with fire.
A nation's soul disintegrates,
not in war,
but quiet decay,
like atoms split beneath the skin
of time.

Invisible,
but certain.
No sirens sound.
Just silence —
thick with warning.

From the Delta’s oil-slicked veins
to the scorched bones of the Northeast,
from Biafra’s unburied grief
to the herder’s unmarked trail —
the land hums with fracture.

We are splitting.

Like uranium dreams,
rich but unstable,
our unity held by brittle bonds,
our leaders shielding lies
instead of truth.
Decay is now destiny
unless the core is cooled.

Justice bleeds in whispers:
the child in Benue
whose school collapsed;
the mother in Kano
whose hospital never came;
the youth in Onitsha
whose voice was muffled
before it rose.

These are not isolated cries.
They are chain reactions.
Critical mass is near.

You cannot weld a nation
with oppression.
You cannot seal cracks
with slogans.
You cannot bind brothers
with bayonets.

Fission feeds itself.
Discontent is now isotopic —
passed hand to hand,
wound to wound,
like fallout.

So who will neutralize the core?
Who will cool the rods of injustice?
Who will wear truth
like lead-lined courage?

Not tomorrow.
Now.

Because the half-life of a nation
shortens
with every lie,
with every stolen hope,
with every silence
where justice should speak.

And when the break comes —
not with a bang,
but a vanishing —
let no one say
it was sudden.

We
were
warned.

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