CRUSHED
Crushed, the sickening sound
Like squashed melon on hard ground
Under an elephant’s foot, halted traffic;
Heads turned to the ghastly graphics:
Eruption of volcanoes of brain
Matter, blood gushed from
Human skulls under a train’s
Wheels. Two lives forcefully succumbed
To the will of violence and death
As Duncan to the blade of Macbeth.
Again traffic recoils back to activity
Like a snake easing out of captivity
As racks lined with pickles.
Parked articulated vehicles
Are lined along each lane
Making free traffic hard to maintain:
There is less value on life here
And road management, it appears.
How will I erase the images of crushed
Human skulls forcefully squashed?
(c) Nwafor Oji Awala
About this poem
CRUSHED expresses the reality of fatal road accident and it's related shock of sudden death, from a passerby's perspective. CRUSH is ripe in diction and in use of imagery in relating a true experience on the deplorable Eleme section of the East-West Road that was long abandoned by the Federal Government of Nigeria.
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"CRUSHED" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/187973/crushed>.
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