SUNDAY SAUCE: Miss Jamaica's plight
Published:Sunday | May 23, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Oxy Moron, Contributor
In the days of her youth, people came from near and far to behold her beauty and feel her warmth. Then she became a jewel in the British Crown, and she sparkled under the Caribbean sun.
She has lived through the scourge of slavery, the joke of Apprenticeship, the hypocrisy of Emancipation, the irony of Independence and opted out of Federation for what it was.
Now, a sorry shadow of herself she is. Her countenance screams decadence; her gait betrays her fragile state.
Her once mass of luxuriant curly hair is now a tangled mess of evil and guile, refuge for 'shottas' and 'dons'.
Eyes are blinded by the ever-present glare of doom, destruction and death. The nostrils are garrisons fortified by green and orange people.
Ears are bombarded by the sounds of bullets, babies' cries, and the wails of women weeping for fallen wayward sons.
She cannot speak - tongue is tied by the vicissitudes of time; lips shut tight by fear for her life.
Neck is straining under the weight of a problem-filled head. Weary shoulders droop into the realms of hopelessness.
Breasts are flattened by the ravages and pull of gravity. Beneath them is a heart beating fast for she is pregnant with dread. Bad blood crawls through her narrowed veins, streets of mayhem and lanes of carnage.
Hands are scorched and sore for she has dipped them into the fire of iniquity. Legs are weak and shaky from her multitude of perilous journeys.
She looks to the hills of needs from which crooked rivers of greed flow through valleys of collusion to the sea of corruption that surrounds her.
Mountains of malice rise majestically into her polluted air of envy.
Rains of bitterness fall upon her once verdant land germinating seeds of bigotry, which will grow into trees of anger, deeply rooted in the soil of self-hatred.
But what we can do to make her pure and beautiful once again?