Prof. Remi Raji @ 50 Poetry Anthology
Rising Voices – Rythms in Honour of Professor Remi Raji-Oyelade
Edited By:
Wole Adedoyin
Senior Category
MASKS
Who can ever fathom that there is anything fleshy about the within of a coconut,
Not to talk of the exuberant whiteness in that brown dusty yam,
Can you fathom the bitter sweet taste of the bitter leaf?
Or even the thorny part of the rose,
These are facts that confront us more often than not
When we look and judge things with eyes so close
On this side of eternity where things do not appear in their true forms
It is highly recommended we walk circumspectly
If without thought, we recklessly survey a package,
We will definitely go down with the wreckage.
Who are we? Who is a man? What is our true definition?
Face value, speech, and etiquette may just be part of the deception.
What we exist as can only find expression as an imperfect clone
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
The shock may not be able to be expressed if people unmasked
So many questions that are better left unasked.
Why would we rather hurl missives of verbal insult?
Not to talk of physical assault,
On those who have dared the consequence to face the light,
And consequently shaming the night,
Unveiling the mask and showing their true colour.
These people should be celebrated with accolades and glamour.
The true hero is he that admits that he is human,
Who naturally is exposed to faults and falls,
However, in this age of ours, admitting to an error,
Is tantamount to facing a ban
For which you can be visited with terror.
When will the time come, when will it come?
When the order of the day will be openness to all and not some
When you will show your nakedness to your brother
And be quite sure you will not hear it from another.
When will that time come, will it ever come?
When all men will be unmasked and transparent,
Without motives thwarted and bent.
We long to see the coconut without the hard bark;
We want to see the yam’s whiteness from afar,
We do not want to confuse the taste of the bitter leaf with another
Then, the best way to judge the book will be by the cover!
OSO, IBITAYO OLAMIDE
Higgaion
The Leopard cannot hide his spots or dodge
In the Savanna where is not his lodge,
Under the full glare of the Noon-day Sun;
So, Feline Breed, pretentious, now undone,
Your deeds thus stand, manifest to all eyes—
You stand like that, your shame! with all the flies:
See how they prattle round your open deed,
Like round a gourd of locust-beans they breed!
You even smell like that—fermented stuff,
Decayed, putrefied, dead—hun! that’s enough!
Caught in the act—the act itself, no more!
Now, all the coins you hid are on the floor.
Is this not all you clouded from our face,
Secreted, fought to keep, and spoil your grace?
You play your games, spin your cobwebs so well,
And think yourself so clever, Infidel!
Like a blind Mole, you dig you in the ground,
Seeking dark hide-holes, who you may confound.
See him! blind one, your efforts are unmasked,
Your deeds made known, though gilded and damasked—
Your works, your darkest thoughts are brought to light,
Deceiving Elf, in coverlets of night,
Like the foul boy is smelled out of the class,
Shamed and derided, scorned on the hot grass,
Green flies, companions of his dirty hands,
Encircle, play with him in droning bands,
And all the world looks at him in full glare:
Look, run, hide where you may, they’re everywhere!
They point to you and laugh you to great scorn,
Your trousers wet, your face sad and forlorn.
They hid their face, their hands in clouds of white,
Deceived themselves, and thought they’d dazed our sight;
No, hide your deeds; indeed, hide till the Doom:
They all in bright light shall be overcome!
Shrouded in dark, they plied he roads of Good,
Unknown to them, soon, time will lift the hood.
You think, you plan, and mighty men you make,
All your devices, Chance shall shortly break—
You smile at eyes; bad thoughts pervade your heart,
Time will soon come, reveal your dreadful Art.
Why should a man refuse his wife his phone;
Or, have two: this for all, and that his own?
Dark motives lurk behind those phony screens,
Break them, they pour forth from their pods, like beans.
Tell, what could make an eager friend refuse
Forthwith, his friend his PC, than abuse?
Or, what else could be said when to a friend,
You cannot show your system end-to-end?
’Tis guilt, fear of what th’ other one may find,
And then he’ll think, so corrupt is my mind?
—Ayọ Alawọnde.
OUR WORLD
Welcome to our world
There is more than enough for you to tour
Pull off your shoes before you come on board
It’s the men’s world, you will never get bored.
No road is ever too rough
Nothing is ever too tough
For we’ve got the muscles to make it work
If ever we were birds, we would be the hawks.
So endowed we are
That He took from us to make her
So complete we are
That you can’t spell woman without man.
Hours she would spend
In front of the mirror to make amends
So that she would not become tense
When she finally meets a man.
Our culture inspires like bible verses
The reason trousers are now their only dresses
No! There is no need for glasses
It’s obvious all they want is be our fiancées.
Like a thunder, we create a presence
Not a space we give for nonsense
Never are we afraid of problems
No wonder there are more men in the congress.
Welcome to our world
Bestowed us by our loving God
Who we all drink from his golden cup
Ladies, we’ll see you at the top.
FIDIMAYE, SAHEED O
Niger Delta
Thy riches glitter afar off
Oh…, thy beauty shineth at distance
Thy treasure draweth near-
The pilgrims of the white land
Thy wealth beautifies their land
But oh! Tell me,… why?
Why are thy seeds languishing in wants,
In the presence of much?
And stranger reaping the dividend of thy labour,
Why have thou so much delighted
In the blood of thy seeds
Oh! they run helter-skelter for rescue
But alas! They found death
The trees at distance
Shed tears for thy seeds
Who is to come to their rescue?
Who, tell me! Who…?
No! no!! no one could rescue thy seed except thou
Rise in the might of thy strength and rescue them
From the hands of the wolves with an iron bar
Arise! Arise!! Arise!!!
Oh great NIDELT
And set thy offspring free.
ABIOGBA, OLUSOLA
SELFLESS SERVICE
High and bright is the sun
Smiling broadly at everyone
Lighting our path and swallowing our darkness
And never tired of selfless service, though ageless.
Some people are rays of sunshine
Shoulders on which the helpless recline
Hearts that beat for others
Lovely people – even lovelier than rose flowers!
These people haven’t gone into extinction
Men and women of great affection –
The Awolowos, the Osundares, the Rajis and many others
Theirs is image, no selfishness or corruption battered.
It’s good to be good, they say:
A saying that nobody can gainsay
Selfishness makes man an elf
Does the sun rise only for itself?
AJAYI DAVID T
Pages of truth (First Prize Winner)
There is a mile I never walked
And it is deep inside of me,
The feeling that stops me from a total slumber
A mile that shades the lies
To total darkness
We embrace a word just to cry
Play with a thousand stars
And smile all in our minds
Sweetness above our heads
Pain beneath our feet,
What do we need to realize……………..
Our eyes or senses?
Either way we are humans
Realizing only when the inevitable happens
Just when we deny reality
It is our turn to fall down,
Dreams and reality
They can never be the same
One in a box,
The other in its will,
Even when we close ourselves
We float at a will beyond us
And that is reality teaching us how to dance
The rising sun says;
Everything is as it seems
But we rather count the stars
The truth hangs by the thread
But we choose to savor the lies
Salman Mohammed Jiddah
Forty – two Gun Shots
This rod, the road
this road, the rod
the Libyan road
The Libyan rod
Ah! the man
the road man
the rod man
Mour man
GA – DA – FI
Forty two gun shots
forty two roads
forty two rods
roads of death
rods of bloods
roads of greed
Dead wisdom, reasons
plagued in options
Option A, I am
Option B, I am
Option C, I am
And voices in Tripoli rising for the ROAD
the road to freedom, the road to death
harvesting deaths
and scooping bloods
bloody holidays on carcas of souls
NATO’S forces in metalic booms
for the ROAD
Chants of Allahu Akbar
chorusing blood in the house of ROD
in the city of sirte
city of rod
fallen rod, fallen road
And the rod rust
and the road roast
the red road rusty rod
in the tunnel of death
Allahu Akbar!
Allahu Akbar!
chorus of tears
chants of victories
chants of justice
for breathless souls
bartholomew akpah
THE BROKEN POT.
What could be worse than lost love?
What could be more killing than a broken heart?
Like a dropped porcelain doll or an egg
It shatters and can never be pieced together again
Even if pieced, will never be as smooth again
I sat curled up like a frightened kid
Not knowing where to start from
Should I pick up the pieces?
Or should I just let go and simply waste away?
What is the essence of life without love?
Alone in the world, what am I living for?
A jump in the ocean will end it all
Suddenly a ray of light came through
Dazing my vision, I started seeing stars
With the vision came good things of life
I paused to think
There is light at the end of the tunnel
If I pick he broken pieces of the clay pot
If I re-polish and re-glaze it
I just might get the desired effect
No matter how broken you are
No matter how shattered you are
There is always a reason to re-polish and re-glaze
There is always a reason to continue fighting
GIVING UP IS NOT A CHOICE.
mopelola ajao
UNMATCHED BLOODS#
We have come this one way street
We have whispered echoes of love
Into the itching ears of the dawn
And you cooed birdsongs as we bask in the rays of helios
Dulcet decibels of affection into the cochlea of dusk 5
The leaves and flowers along Oduduwa Road all
Rustling with the rumour of our roses and romance
And should these all die without fragrance?
And we have become chambers of one heart
Thumping and pumping ripples of love 10
Before the physician paused our music
You know, and I do
How once our muscles became moribund
And strength kissed our bones goodbye
And our faces covered with the sweat of dissuasion 15
As we build this skyscraper of love
And we panted like stag and doe after pools and streams
Splashed on our faces the cool waters of endurance
Now, shouldn’t we set crown on the head of our toil?
And we have become chambers of one heart20
Thumping and pumping ripples of love
Before the physician paused our music
Curse the syringe that pierced our frail veins!
Curse the needle that siphoned blood from our veins!
Deeper than the test tube, the depth of our love 25
Ah! Deep in my heart, deeper than the root of coconut tree
For if our hearts marry, why not the bloods?
How can mere stethoscope know the rhythm of our hearts?
And we have become chambers of one heart
Thumping and pumping ripples of love 30
Before the physician paused our music
Our hopes match, even our faiths and love
Do oaths and vows not go into the blood, matched or unmatched?
Our red sea can bear the ships of the oath
And if the vows will not coagulate our bloods35
And the heart, not blood, keeps vows
Why should the priest say:
“I would have loved you have a love match,
Except for this blood thing…?”
And we have become chambers of one heart40
Thumping and pumping ripples of love
AKINDELE Opeyemi
# “Poem describing the disturbing and unresolved struggle between marriage, religion and medicine”
Will Oyo have ever survived without you?
To and fro we all seek your blessing
From sunrise to sunset all wait for aje
In our quest for more, we turn houses to kiosks
Bodija: a market among markets
Countless souls transact in you
You house the homeless in the night
The area boys and the compatriots pay their homage
The battlefield for smart sellers and cunny buyers
Bodija, some said you never change
Your loyalists despise your face
But in your goodness you still provide for them
Bodija; the house for all
In my dream I sometime see you
When I fly with my technological glasses
With classical superstructure build
A bodija that will give mass bury to fly’s and mates
A market with directions and checking points
Where orders are delivered on time and intact
A place where E-transact will replace cash
A Bodija that will check, control and enforce authority
A new trade center for Africa
A new Bodija that will pace Ibadan on the map again and again
Oladejo David Adedeji
Farewell! Mongrel shameless being.
Farewell! Stealer of teenage virginity.
Form innocent shredded lasting
In an orgy of absurd rape.
Being of cruel, turning flourish
Pride dignity into relic
Worth to curse
To my glimpse,
It seem batty
Of a liar like you
Worth to curse
Double-dealing liars!
You came, con teenagers for vivid things
What an awful cheater
Does innocent unaware it mean
Aware in future adulthood
Weeping in anguish
Worth to curse
You junks insolent,
Monkier than monkiest maggot
In the market of leftover.
May you sucked for sacrilege act
By the wind of affliction
I curse
May you be thundered with withered
Suffer indignity of unremembered grave
I curse
Savages! What an adulterous world you exist?
Thinking your insanity is the drug of misery?
May you be lavished by a thousand termites
I curse
Abdulsalam-Rukayat
LETTER TO MY ESTRANGED FATHER
James Corby as I heard
Thou art my father, alas where art thou
To behave as one.
For days unend, thy praises I heard,
Even thy good acts men daily sing
But now I wonder if they are all and true
Ever it seemed with tears mother toiled,
Her yield stills never enough
Then I became a beggar-boy
From dawn till dusk we worked in a cellar
These days we daily need thee
See mighty host are passing
Fathers holding their children dear
Our mother too sickly chained
But of you, livings unknown
And to us earth’s beauty was not fair
When you left, you greatly thought
As the wind to our sail we have no hope
To reach the bay, but as you are no seaman yourself
You greatly err, you did not know
That in much struggle and luck
We would paddle to greatness
Visits from you we never had
Letters to us you never forward
Right now with a strain
Only mother and I can still thy face recall
Now to our success everyone drinks merrily
Happy hails from left, right and within;
If thou art not a shy man father
Our barns will yield enough
To feed thee and thy new home
Fifteen winters rolled in lofty heights
And o’er the hills that long have we prevailed
That we still remember thee
You have your star to daily thank
Just be happy in thy victory
All that we never had
When thou were around
Beautiful castles in Ophir
And built of gold
We toilfully behold in thy absence
Therefore we do rejoice
For fair as white is our future,
And green as olive is the path
For our royal tread to renown
Now we are glad you for long gone,
For you help that never came,
We sought aimfully on our own
And at last we bid thee farewell
We no longer need thee
All wave.
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This poem is dedicated to a very dear friend, brother, comrade, peace loving leader,a great chemist (finalist),an examplary Tedder hall General Secretary,a credible coordinator,a meaningful pillar of Al-ansar {MSSNUI feed a soul foundation} and a colleague in University of Ibadan; ADEJUMOBI HAKEEM ADEOLA {Hay-Kay}, who lost his life in a horrible motor accident on Thursday 31st march 2011.
LEAVING WITHOUT BIDDING FAREWELL
Like an electric shock
Like a time bomb
The news of your deat came to me
Haa! It pains down to my bone.
I pray every night
If I could see you one last time
I look in the clouds
As if for a sign
I got to sleep crying
I wish you were here
But there in my dreams
you once will appear
That beautiful smile
I see on your face
Assures my heart
That you are in a better place
I know you are special
But not just to me alone.
My friend Hay-Kay,
You were different, so special
A wondrous, loving, Very humble, determined
And truly a great friend
It is hard to believe that
You are gone so soon
And it pains to think about it
But your memory will linger on!
HAKEEM ADEOLA ADEJUMOBI {Hay-Kay}
You were a man of peace
You were a religious man
You were a friend and colleague
You were a fountain of talent
You were a good leader
Why did you have to go so soon?
The last time we saw
I mean hours before the ugly incident
You look larger than the World
You were brighter than the sun
More luminous than the moon
Then, I never knew you were on your mark
Oh friend! Your exit caused me pains
But your memory will linger on.
Since I can never see Abdul-Hakeem again Till the day of judgement
I pray all those you have mentored
While on earth will water your flowers
And above all
May ALLAH be pleased with you.
AMEN
Arisekola Olubodun
A man on the iron horse
They had never seen it,
All of them were amazed
It kept coming towards them with its ghost on it
The children wandered what it was
The elders formed circles murmuring,
It was difficult to understand
What each other was saying
In tongue it seemed they’re speaking
No one had ever seen it
The oldest man in the village scratched his head
His head with scattered strides of hair
Like a farm that suffers irrigation in the dry season
As if trying to prevent lice from eating its lunch
When a small child is cutting a tree
It is the elders that know
The direction to which it’ll fall.
They didn’t know
Iroko, a brave man
Who married the daughter of Thunder
Iroko, the lion that roars at his children
He was bewildered.
They were expected to know
But, they did not know
Nobody knew what to do
It kept coming shining like a sun
They had never seen such long hair
Beautiful skin fairer than that of an albino.
They never knew their mind is black
We are black our mind is white
A small child among the onlookers shouted
‘A woman on the iron horse’
His mother standing by him covered his mouth
Everybody looked in his direction
‘Abomination!’ Iroko roars
The crowd fell into a silence
One could hear the sound of dropping wool
‘That is it, yes, the small child is right
It is a man on the iron horse’
Said the oldest man in the village
He was right. That was it-
A man on the iron horse
Have you ever seen one? Yes.
Since then our lives haven’t remained the same
Since then our mothers have began to cover our mouth.
OBISESAN, Henry Olukorede
SEASONS AT PEASANT’S PALM
I
At morn Seeds are spread over the dry yards
So the rains of the infant harmless sun anoint
At morn again Father’s mounted on his two-wheel motor
A hoe hung on his shabbily dressed shoulder
A cap to hide his baldness and scare the bees
A jar dangling at his left side
And indeed a dream to fetch a harvest
II
At noon Only for the sun to spread acidic saliva on the seeds
As well as biting their wombs
On reaching the farm Only for the peasant to behold:
Rodents dancing and feasting on the swelled heap
And Locusts peeling the skin of ripe cobs
What shall I do? He asks the clouds
Where shall I go? He asks his shocked and shivering feet
III At dusk
The seeds see no beam and sweater
Thus blindness and damp swallow them
At this same dusk
His sleep defriends him
The dreams no longer find warmth in his weedy chest and pectorals
Shall I die? Ko yara? ko Mata? ko all of us? He asks his visiting thoughts
No! I shall climb the morn-hill and plant again instead!
DAVID ISHAYA OSU
Gossips
My name is gossip. I have no respect for justice.
I maim without killing. I break hearts and ruin lives.
I am cunning, malicious and gather strength with age.
The more I am quoted, the more I am believed.
I flourish at every level of society.
My victims are helpless.
They cannot protect themselves against
Me because I have no name and I have no face.
To track me down is impossible.
The harder you try, the more elusive I become.
I am nobody’s friend once
I tarnish a reputation,
It is never the same.
I topple governments and wreck marriages.
I ruin careers and cause sleepless nights,
Heartaches and indigestion.
I spawn suspicion and generate grief.
I make innocent people cry in their pillows.
Even my name hisses. I am called Gossip.
Office gossip – shop gossip -party gossip
Telephone gossip –school gossip
I make headlines and headaches.
Remember, before you repeat a story
Ask yourself: is it true? Is it fair? Is it necessary?
If not, do not repeat it. Keep quiet!
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds
Discuss events, shallow mind discuss people.
Olawoyin Saheed Olawale
EVEN DICTATORS BLESSED GANI’S SPIRIT
Created when we were created, called to service by divinity
In same nation of super oddity
From once the colonial masters asked us to try our style
The moment our woes got widened ,when our worries worsened
When a sensible head was rewarded with a satanic sentence
When the khaki boy caged our comfort and suffocated our souls
Then began our confinement.
And the applause of the vultures inspired the butchers of our souls
And led to the gulag were our vulnerable Spirits
In quantity we lost, but all we lost not, for Gani was our Gain.
Frowned was his face when fury was the fruit offered to
us by the fathers of famine
With zeal known not to us, and passion polluted not by their peanuts
Shouting in high heavens, shouting to the creator of our lives
Battling to ensure that the owners of the tears that drenched
our cheeks of innocence were brought to justice
Incarcerations were the reward of his objection,
for the sake of we humans.
InKirikiri and kuje prisons, the mosquitoes of aggression
bowed, worshipped him and sang,:
Oh! Gani, Oh! Gani, we love you, we are for you.!
In the place of justice, he tried cruelty
With emotion mothered by facts, alive was the spirit of Dele
Giwa brought,; the victim of naked power
And the chairs at Oputa Panel were called to action
And dictators of destruction flee; the journey man of justice!
Their awards of wastefulness, he cared not for
Awards dashed like Christmas Flowers
And gifts tied to the ropes that drove our souls to the grave of disgust.
His battle he fought , like the battle of Trafalgar
And defeat his punches of bravery gave the devourers
of our common heritage
And at the time of his creator, came his goodbye
When death spoke the language he accepted.
Like never seen in our crippled nation,
came the encomiums of victory, so global in nature
At his grave side stood the beggars, the victims of mis-governance
With empty stomachs came the workers, the victims of oppression
And there came humans without human rights
To pay respect, were the journalists without joy,
the beneficiaries of hatred
Against the wishes of his haters, came not the desertion
Of his soul in death
For the lame came, the deaf heard, the blind saw and the dumb spoke
In attendance, were the dictators of destruction
And from the mouth they cursed the pregnancy that
Brought him, came their confession of defeat
And in death, Gani’s spirit stood tall
And dictators stood low and blessed his spirit.
ferdinand ekeoma
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Who’s still in doubt
That God resides in the East
His halo casts and shines as the sun?
The East is light, easeful
The West is darkness, evil
Clear the West and everything Western
That we may live in eternal light
Perpetual bliss, truly a heaven on earth
Armed with this myth and a Trojan horse –
An ash-colour Honda – 86 model (a western contraption?)
Wired up with time-sensitive lethal load
To nullify evil with evil
An Eastern extremist headed for
What he deemed a western structure (the police
Headquarters at Louis Edet House, Abuja)
Every second ticked away his life
As he tested the waters of woe
And tripped the red button
With sleight of hand, sowed death and disorder
In an institution that maintains order
Wham! a couple of causalities were harvested
The Trojan horse and other cars crumbled beyond
Cannibalization
But not the Prime Targets –
The edifice of evil was not reduced to rubble
There it still stands, a rebuke to the East
And the bluffing I.G. Bubbling with breath
Manga’s mercilessly mangled body defied
Timothy Mcveigh’s (another bomber of an institution) fate
His charred body let out his triumphant apparition
Levitating, like Jesus’ body
Spiralling upwards with oriental tilt
Into Al-Jahanna (God’s abode)
In a blaze of glory that rent the air
Killing for God is godly
Dying for His course, an open-sesame to infernal he …
Ignorance is blissful
Enlightenment is evil
So clear all western institutions
Clear the schools, and hospitals e.t.c
That we may live in liberating bondage
Clear without fear
Clear and tear
Till what obtains
In the fellowship of fanatics and Hizbollah*
Is a clear curse
Note: Mohamed Manga until his voluntary death belonged to a doctrinaire sect in Nigeria, originally known as Jamatu Ahl-Sunnati Lil Dawati wa Jihad (but popularly called the Boko-Haram) whose doctrinal thrust is – Western Education is a taboo.
I.G. Inspector-General
Hizbollah – In Iran under Ayatollah khomeini a party of Allah, mainly composed of fanatics and vigilantes determined to implement the law of God on earth
Timothy Mcveigh’s – He was accused of blowing up the Federal Institution in Oklahoma, USA around 1995.
OJEBISI KOLAWOLE JOSEPH
ODE TO REMI RAJI
The wind of life brings fortune at 50
OLU, the Supreme-Being has made you great
It is a sign of heroic greatness
Okurinmeta, the pen of the ready-writer
Erudite scholar you na well-done
May you live long
And your sole be fisted to shore of success
Ajala that soars like eagles
Across the village called global
The Invisible, The Only Wise One
Has given you the honour
Peacock is the king of birds
Lion is the king of the animals
A king is the head of a nation
You are a don among poets in your own world
Remi of honour
Remi of wealth
Remi of fame
Remi of praise
Remi of excellent greatness
You are the masquerade that dances in the grove of wisdom
The Primus inter and the afilius dei
The great Orunmila greets you
The ancient Agbomeregun hails you
You’re the muse of the great poets at the jungle of performances
No wonder Socrates hails you
Aristotle says you’re well-done
Shakespeare confesses that you’re the parrot of the poets
John Keats says Ode to the great Remi Raji
Soyinka affirms you’re more than Sunjata
Achebe ascertain you’re more than Sunjara
Okigbo says the Thunderstruck
Osundare says you’re the Village Voice
Dasylva says Odamolugbe,
Drum at home, drum in the village
Drum beyond the sea
The clap of people
The high praise of the learners
A child does not die prematurely
You shall be old as a kola nut tree
Honey is the sweetness of an orange
Sweetness is honey of sugarcane
Elephant is the lord of a hippopotamus
Akalamagbo never misses a year
Nobody dares Ajanokun to face
So be your life
Your festival of joy will never cease
Ode to an Icon
Ode to Remi Raji
ADEKUNLE IDOWU JAMES
Africans celebrate Africa
Africa is beautiful, let us celebrate,
Civilisation is spoilfull, make we moderate.
Bring the drums; let the youth echo the beating,
The grasses are green, the goats are bleating;
Our wine is white, let us drink;
Our black is beautiful,let it not sink;
Your joy can be full! Accept you are black;
Want to be Whiteman? Slavery is back.
The sun is smiling, the skies are blue
The trees are dancing, these are the clue;
The cows are slaughtered, the meat is roasted;
The yams are harvested, the yams are pounded;
My lady want to eat, her food is made of flower!
My mother is a good cook, she doesn’t need a cooker!!
Our time has come; let us live as they did!
We can be our brother’s keeper, if for love we bid!!
This is what we learn, teach and live.
IbukunFilani
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I’m not a physician Healing haunting illnesses In ailing human bodies I’m not a surgeon With sorcerous scalpel and syringe Slashing, slitting and scraping skins Supplanting silly sickly cells And suppressing searing sores I’m not a churchily sanctified saint Schooled in the sacred scripture Sitting in the synagogue Selflessly serving spiritual salvation I’m not a sanctimonious servant Spending several seasons In a secluded sanctum On sedentary solat Studying sacred scripture And seeking solemn solutions To society’s sins-caused syndrome I’m not a celebrated sorcerer Whose startling spells Soothe sorrowing spirits And save soul-sapping situations I’m not a soothsayer Whose spiritual sophistry Stirs up sobering souls I’m simply a writer A wizard at weaving Words of wondrous wisdom Never mind the rags I wear Simply heed the words I bear I nudge awake the complacently sleepy In their silly sickening slumber “Why sleeping?” I ask, “When the ravenous robbers Still are rudely raiding The oil for which they soiled The soil on which you toiled And smears they’ve made to buoy On your vast watery joy I’m not a rabble rouser I’m just a writer A righter And a healer |
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Adebesin Akolawole |
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THE HEALER |
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I’m not a physician Healing haunting illnesses In ailing human bodies I’m not a surgeon With sorcerous scalpel and syringe Slashing, slitting and scraping skins Supplanting silly sickly cells And suppressing searing sores I’m not a churchily sanctified saint Schooled in the sacred scripture Sitting in the synagogue Selflessly serving spiritual salvation I’m not a sanctimonious servant Spending several seasons In a secluded sanctum On sedentary solat Studying sacred scripture And seeking solemn solutions To society’s sins-caused syndrome I’m not a celebrated sorcerer Whose startling spells Soothe sorrowing spirits And save soul-sapping situations I’m not a soothsayer Whose spiritual sophistry Stirs up sobering souls I’m simply a writer A wizard at weaving Words of wondrous wisdom Never mind the rags I wear Simply heed the words I bear I nudge awake the complacently sleepy In their silly sickening slumber “Why sleeping?” I ask, “When the ravenous robbers Still are rudely raiding The oil for which they soiled The soil on which you toiled And smears they’ve made to buoy On your vast watery joy I’m not a rabble rouser I’m just a writer A righter And a healer |
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Adebesin Akolawole |
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Another Country 11-11-11
The smiles grew from the one face
to next and the last.
we at last find a country
where the children can play
and be bruise
with a touch of spirit
rise to play again.
The road was still full of dust
from the marching feet of the villain
on the way to the oblivion
The filth settled on our brows
a reminder of what we gave
a payment for what we did
and a check on what we couldn’t become.
The inner yards were full of artifacts
and winners trophies
scapegoats of the ousted spirits
left back to roast.
The laws we made
are by men who had bled for it
and would rather not do it again
one is too many a fight.
Our children could play now
on pasture that once grows on our flesh
watered with crimson rivers
straight from the hills of our heart.
The rune that tell of us,
of our nobly deed
or un-deed
the song that would tell them
what our future couldn’t be.
Emmanuel Oluseyi Sams
TEMPLE
PRIEST OF THE WORD TEMPLE
My pen darts into an acrostic shelteR
As I tread the entrancE
Of the word knitter upon poetic palM
The keeper of words in vented locI
REMI
His names are written
in boldness Through fame
with letters of Indelible worth
But like a royal bad to a king
I tread by his leadings
Through a priesthood of words
He- the priest
We – the apprentices
One of these days in memoriam
We shall point into legacies.
We shall mention a whole lot of them.
The fathers before the sons and grandsons.
But we shall mention him among
The sons who loved the grandsons
For he has built a castle
Into which the sons shall run
And brood like chicks
Away from the clatter of rummaging violence
He teaches us the bullets in the ink
The spear in the spoken words
And the boundless power in ….
…Silence…
Words rolled down my helicon papeR
Refined like a piece of siennA
But this November, I lack a word for the J
In that fifty garland name of REMI RAJI.
WISDOM HANSON .S.
MY SHOPPING DAY
The day is done
and I had fun.
I went to town
and bought six brown
round crispy cakes
That Lara makes.
Lara the baker
Is the maker
in a good size
of nice fruit pies.
So I bought three
to eat for tea
then went next door
To get some more
chicken and meat
that I shall eat
tomorrow night.
Oh! What delight
it is to try
to find and buy
just everything
But now John King
my day is done
and I’ve had my fun
So off to bed
you sleepy head.
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A Place I Knew
I know of a place where nothing and everything ls possible
A place where a drop of tears destroy a day long laughter
A place where everyday has it own reproach
A place where the memories of yesterday hurts
A place where love has lost its inspiration
A place where nothing is everlasting
A place where everything is controlled by a force
A place where we only hope but do not see.
I know a place where trust is absent
A place the good memories of yesterday
Are only written but no longer enjoyed.
A place where everyday is full of struggles
A place where you cannot relie on your brother
A place we struggle hard for success.
I know of a place where dreams seems so far
And only a decimeter intervention can make it true
A place where other people tears is others laughter
A place where nothing is tangible but vanity
A place where sunrise and sunset fight for supremacy.
I know of a place full of pretensions
A place where friendship is unkind
A place where there is no faith again
A place where goodness is the last thing we prefer
A place where time wait for no man
A place where age is a disgrace
A place where beauty is a waste.
I know of a place where justice is a dead!
A place where good nature decay
A place where the truth warrants death
A place where law is a mere session of contention
A place where religion is an avenue of death
A place where morality is dead
I know of a place where dust is proud
And praise himself above his worth
A place where humanity lost moral sense
And swim in the waters of immortality.
I know a place where the clouds is full of tears
And casualties celebrate gone casually.
A place where we will all end our journey and head home
A place where death is inevitable.
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Ayo |
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THE FIRE WITHIN I observe the fire with dismay like a mad man, it ravages my knowlege cannot cope with this still my determination is firm this exeperience is laid to others but they seem not to understand… and I suffer in silence ah! life is a school! but all I observe is the pain wiping me like a cane but pains will always go like travellers on the road I know this white truth: a wounded spot when healed gets stronger… |
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Ojo Adesina ojo
LITTLE DID I KNOW
Just look at those knowlegeable hearts ,
That are well endowed with a lot of experiences
That are swimming in a stream of wisdom
They even breastfed or every blank spirits
On how to administer this bell successfully
Talking about moral, reason and capacity
Are they not the knowlegeable soul
Who taught many mind to be moral and hopeful
What a saddened event on them!
The philosopher turned to be a dummy
In the face of ignorant souls
That are worshipping him in silence
Tell me, who says there is absolute honey
In this sinful hell of Adam’s seeds
My living and dancing daffodils
Who says there’s is absolute honey
When you look at some beautiful roses
Whose appearance justify sweetest event
That can melt any hard soul
That can enrich any poor heart
That can create comic from violence
Are they not possessed enough?
With many valuable mundane materials
Talking about gold, Silver, bronze and cowries
They were still running upperdown in panic
For fear of snatching their valuable ingredient
By those gutless, notorious and wicked heart
My smiling mind
Do you think absolutely is in this hell ?
Just look at many abode and their roses
Where they face with problems of right flowers
Just look at many matrimonial temples
Where their is a lot of anxiety and misunderstanding
Where their fruits are opposing the wish of the roots
Just look at many asylums
Where the barrens are dying for just a seed
Just look at many betrothed haven
Where they smile today and murder tomorrow
Just look at the face of many ‘wisdom’
Where they are running up and down
To make this planet worth living
Just look at the valley of reason
Where the innocents are serving in the gaol
Just at many generous hearts
That are ready to curve any ailment
Were they expecting full compliment?
Oh, they were awarded with fool compliment
Just look at every open and hidden planet
And tell me in a joyous are convincing manner
If there’s absolute honey in the hell.
MORAKINYO, KAMORU ADEKUNLE
time for ceRebration
Tall dreams of our nation
– realities or mere imagination?
Aspirations of our heroes gone by
– within reach or still sky-high?
Half a century of independence
Half a century of impatience
Half a century of decadence
Half a century of ambivalence.
Groomed bribery till bribe–groom became our nickname,
Lustfully eyed corruption till we betrothed same,
Sharpened fraudulence till it assumed a cutting edge;
Kidnapping replaced our anthem, and BokoHaram our pledge!
At 50 years plus, it is called “menopause,”
Middle age assumedly taking its full course;
But one thing does bug my mind at this instant:
What 50-year-old remains an infant?
But how about “menostop”?
Men-oh-stop the slaying, stop!
Men-oh-stop the betraying, stop!
Don’t pause but stop, please stop!
And so trade bloodshed for a national watershed
– watershed of bloodless patriotism instead;
That in lieu of these guns, those bombs, or that arrow
We’ll thoughtfully unite and face the morrow.
Rivulet
At 51, rather than the eating and drinking in celebration
Why not do the thinking and thinking called cerebration?
OKE OLUWABUNMI
A social network site
A site for all and sundry
A site for every Tom, Dick and Harry
Harvard graduate is the originator
Mark Zuckerberg is the creator
It all started as a Childs play
But now everybody is in the fray
Many students are now on face book
From primary to tertiary
No exception at all
Many young minds have quit their books because of you
Oh ye! Facebook, many‘ve embrace thee to the detriment of their studies
Dawn, afternoon, evening and dusk, you will find them there
Posting one comment or the other
Whether germane or not, good or bad
Some people called it Blackberry madness
On the street, lavatory, laboratory, church, mosque and classroom
The concentration is on facebook
Alas, see mass failure in various exams
Most students are no more interested in books but in facebook
I want to have more fans and friends than you do
I want to post many comments as I can
Students it is high time we get serious because
A stitch in time saves nine.
Abiola Olufolake
OUT OF THE ASHES
Out of the ashes – a phoenix
Like a dull song with a pulsating new remix
I rise, lifting the cities with sweet melodies that release
Harmonies of hope that promise great increase
In pursuit of destiny, fragrance of hope emitted
Breath of fresh air inhaled, despair of masses deleted
Out of the desert – a camel
Like a boring program switched to an exciting new channel
I come, plowing through the heat and sandy earth
Fueled by evergreen power – true love flourishing, even in dearth
Juggernaut on the move, unhindered power on irresistible journey
Converting even the bitterest experience to one as sweet as honey
Out of the ocean – a sea turtle
Like a full glass of champagne traded for an empty old bottle
I swim, gliding over chaos and darkness, sailing with innovation
Joyous recycling of storms and tears, manufacturing celebration
Bright visions and hope, daring plans implemented
And deliverance for many as devices of hope are invented
Out of the darkness – an owl
Like a brilliant smile traded for a twisted scowl
I chase, moving swiftly, unhindered by the night
For the strength of my vision makes all as clear as daylight
Free from the weight of gravity, floating life set apart
No longer bound by others’ opinions, a new life now I start
Out of jagged mountains – an eagle
Like an old stiff waist renewed to do a youthful wiggle
I soar, scaling high boundaries with effortless power
Reaching heights where I stand on even the most exalted tower
Laughing at adversity, discerning the times and perceiving life’s signs
On a preordained quest to unearth Destiny’s treasure mines
Out of the furnace – pure gold
Like a vision born out of afflictions untold
I am, no longer comparable to any, unique work of creation
Formed by the Hands of the Eternal, with the breath of revelation
Purified by suffering, released by divine fission
Ready to dominate the earth, primed for a holy mission.
Olajide Akoni
THE NEW NIGERIA
The trees tilt much,
Dry leaves shake and fall
Displaying its fruit as much
As that eaten in a brunch
The land has been found
Safe from severe disasters around
Endowed with milk and foliage
This is the greener and whiter Nigeria.
Parted by two golden bodies and bight
One to the left and the other, right
Depositing along their body,
Resources and every other trophy
a blue cloud dawns this hour
After which comes a victorious rain shower
Listen, then you can hear it a mile yonder
Hope it washes this past mess forever
Dances and shakes from all directions
A hug in a standing position
The Nigerian performs his greetings
His mouth and nut locked in a meeting
Then music of joy comes from another
Hop to the right and left, my brothers
move like his large raffia weaved hat
As it dances to the melody from his heart
Truly, no paradise is lost
We will be stronger in diversity and trust
If we abide in unity like fellow brothers
This is the picture of my new Nigeria
AWOYEMI TOLUWALASE AYOBAMI
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Poem
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The bird perches with comfort on the tree,
Comfort and unity, so immeasurable,
The thunder,clouds and sky in rapport,births rain.
The heart so close to the eyes,
Envisages and fathoms heights surmontable.
Let the daggers drawn, be sheathed.
Let the “arms” raised be broken.
Let the heart quake, by man’s quake, be soothed.
So long strife, so long pain and pangs.
So long disharmony, in the street of honey.
The white dove, once again perches. PRETTY OMOIKE
A Letter to Mama
O Mama! Have you not seen that
He finds it hard to chew and swallow?
He said he loves me but his words sound
Like the message from an old, weak talking drum.
He said he will take care of me
That again, I do not believe
As he had not kept the same promise to
Mama Ife, Mama Ore and Mama Segun, his wives.
They are only sweet words for the wooing ear,
So sweet sometimes that one can forget the reality.
I turned him down and I’ll do it again.
Baba Ife may have so much to offer us as Papa always said,
But the truth is still before us.
We see Mama Ife, Mama Ore and Mama Segun,
We see Ife, Tola, Taiwo and Kehinde,
We see Ore, Fayemi, Ibukun and Solademi,
And we see Adesegun, Adebisi, Adebimpe and Adegbite.
So much promises and hopes for them, but the reality tell us enough.
If I go to him, how many more will he not have?
Now, he does not chew well nor can he swallow his balls of fufu.
O Mama! Let me be. Let me be
For I am still young, strong, intelligent and beautiful.
A better life awaits me.
Please, do not let me go to Baba Ife
For he will only be like the bad food that sits in the belly of a great hunter,
That makes him sick and useless, all day long.
O Mama! Let me be, for my soul longs for no one else but Ominira.
I dream of his return day and night.
His firm and gentle caress, his soothing and loving embrace, I desire so much.
His tender kisses and warm strokes I yield to.
He is my sunshine, my strength, my courage and my hope.
Indeed, he is ewà.
In him alone, true beauty is found.
Please tell Papa, my soul longs for no one else but him.
And I go to no one else but him, Ominira, my beauty and my tomorrow.
ADAM, EZINWANYI E.
The day is such
The day is such when the cry is heard
the day is such when mothers waited
the day is such when a mother waited
the cry of a baby full of blood
such is the entrance into this world
such is the day of destiny
crawling towards making a stand
standing towards making a walk
walking towards making an expression
day by day, months by months
as the years move unstoppable
such is the growth
knowing left from right, right from left
then full of strength or weakness
such is the day the baby ends to live
the day is such when death calls.
Obafemi Olulaja Abayomi
I NEED A VOICE
Right the wrongs;
But as you write to right the wrongs,
They keep wronging the right.
Like ruptured texture of multi-layered denture,
Like crooked legs of a tilted frame,
Our wound and woes have confused roots.
Bloated bellies belch on
Amidst sulking stomachs in marketplaces.
they boast …
‘while you toil in the burning smiles of sun,
in running showers of the sky,
we rape our commonwealth s..e..r..i..a..l..l..y…
irate grey pens shoot at us,
they even poke pauperised haggards
to raze down our rocky roofs.
but hundreds of hoes and countless cutlasses
cannot level our hills of booties,
firm our heels remain.’
Akin Tella
Midnight song
swiftly soon,
the noon climaxes in rushing silence
…only the midnight hawks memories
from far tabernacle of the moon
the wind’s rhythm scuds the hen’s anus
…song of elusive seasons cloud the skies,
Skies’ tongues pluck midnight song.
the noon shoos and the night bursts
wind reminds and rewinds times…
in memories of shadows,
memories coloured by wear of tears and fear
i hear wailings of colourless times
and divide into monologues of millions
…those swaying in silence, stormed by want
*
at the clock of fear, echoes
the thudding of restless hoes, homes and hopes
of tones and bones squeezed in sacs of tortures…
I roar into tears of million
Many million, moaning in The Labour MOCKET
like several yester seasons…
souls bleed in the continuous carnivorous carnival
of Abuja chameleons… and others
whose faiths only feed on flesh and blood.
I stir testimonies of trapped memories,
of scavengers scuffling gawk times
young and grey scavengers weeping at wide web
of bills, empty laws, proposal, visions 20:2020…
of dreams burnt by bullet of uniform-thieves
stealing sweat on starving roads.
*
to those trapped in the mercury of this midnight hymn
… I see only in dreams.
I see behind this horizon of dearth and death,
Of earth pregnant with pains and pangs
I breathe the breath of new dawns
Hear wiggling offerings of coming mornings
Rolling through the armpit of west wind…
Only in dreams….
Emmanuel Adedeji
D’SOLDIER
So ride on soldier
And shoot into the skies of remembrance
Don’t say i did not tell thee
Of the times before remembrance
Where the men did declare the war
After the ideas of peace
I d bardist speakest peace to humanity
But you rent the earth with your swords and weapons
Blood flows, gruesome murders, Captives of war
Sinks into the wells of remembrance
From whence thou cometh up again
Servant of hell
Messenger of the war Lords
Shoot down the angels of peace in heaven
To thee:
War is honour
Peace a disdain
Waka for earth
Like devil pikin himself
Or are you devil incarnate
Appear again
To cause war on earth
Go thou soldier
For it is not your fault
Go thou soldier
For it is the politicians from hell that send thee
Go, Go away
We do not want war again.
Lanrewaju Babajide
AT GOLDEN AGE…
After the very blessed day
When Mum labour in pains
Dad tries to hold the pace
Here comes a colossus of bright fate
Who holds everybody with faith
And never hesitate
To show a smiling face
At everyone on the stage
After the eight day
Though life is full of stage
Even all at different age
Where no one surface
To come to your aide
All the time you get different date
Just to have people to chase
And only one to tame
In order to have a frame
That will continue the game
Now the time has come
To call everyone of us
To a gathering in the hall
And make it all
By playing the ball
That is just in your court
At the age some people are halt
From things they hunt
And blew away the blunt
Life is not a bed of rose
Not all glitters is gold
To some the journey is old
But one needs to take the hold
So as to praise God for whole
From the Ancients of the old
That has given you gold
Of years with this whole
And make everything fold
Dedicated to Professor Remi Raji-Oyelade for his Golden Jubilee birthday and to enter into the Prose Writing competition
Fakolade Samuel
The day is such
The day is such when the cry is heard
the day is such when mothers awaited
the day is such when a mother awaited the cry of a baby full of blood
such is the entrance into this world
such is the day of destiny
crawling towards making a stand
standing towards making a walk
walking towards making an expression
day by day, months on months
as the years move unstoppable
such is the growth
knowing left from right, right from left
then full of strength or weakness
the day is such when the baby ends to live
the day is such when death calls.
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PATRICIAN AT A PLEBEIAN PLAY
Haunting feelings clutch as I stare
“Innocent ones in guilty fray
Clad they are in pietic ray”
Stay they plead I must not dare.
“Upwards” home I trot
Smiley taunts yield the thought
Vengeful thoughts yield the rot-
Mean means, means am no mensch.
Haughty smile, spread on my brow
Twas I was called, thither I went
Scion of a peacock to grace: fluent
Play of withered rose incase in a love show
A scene to say, be-settles me
A concerted “play” to spite m’lord
Hatched from wit-full orb bore
By dire-stricken men.
Regaled by fear, a proselyte is born
To bid adieu the gnaw of guilt
Which like termites had built
Patiently o’er my heart a corn.
At last atonement winged here:
Penal penance meets penchant pension
pending pendant of pendeting dominance
To which the hangman’s noose stands out.
To paradise I come, sad to die
Glad to be so bound to whence
A “patrician” play awaits me. . . .
OGAR CHRISTOPHER OGAR
Does it Matter?
If the springs run dry,
Refusing to flow to the
Board of its brinks
Does it matter?
When storms accompany
Torrent rain,
Deepening graves within the earth
Does it matter?
Wounds in the soul,
A heart of bruises
And gaze of darkness,
Does it matter?
Has it ever mattered?
The cock refusing to crow,
The goats-hater of bleating.
Alas! Elephants even fly
Really, it matters less.
Olusegun Owoseni
My Escapades I
The door of the mind’s mind
Set ajar.
The streams of memory flow,
Not to an abrupt end.
The pangs of pain,
Stretch-marks of stress,
And pride of gains;
Brightens the beaming smile.
The crooked ways
Promiscuous affairs with daughters
Of Jezebel,
Re-vibrates conscience’s nagging voice.
The academic prospects,
Scotching from the flakes of the sun
To the heartbeat of the rain,
Paints the world with Durkheim’s world:
“Survival of the fittest”
The gloomy epitaphic inscription
Of the, “search for the uncertain end”.
Noah Balogun
My Escapades I
The door of the mind’s mind
Set ajar.
The streams of memory flow,
Not to an abrupt end.
The pangs of pain,
Stretch-marks of stress,
And pride of gains;
Brightens the beaming smile.
The crooked ways
Promiscuous affairs with daughters
Of Jezebel,
Re-vibrates conscience’s nagging voice.
The academic prospects,
Scotching from the flakes of the sun
To the heartbeat of the rain,
Paints the world with Durkheim’s world:
“Survival of the fittest”
The gloomy epitaphic inscription
Of the, “search for the uncertain end”.
Noah Balogun
I Waited
Gone in spilt seconds
One. Two.
I almost lost count,
A decade or two
So it seems.
Woke up this day
To see it is the dawn
Of the third.
Yes, my eyes
No tears found.
My heart, yes
Caress the presence,
The absence, it cherishes more.
This familiar terminus
The sole of my feet once tread.
Stiff and still
I waited for a cozy flight
Happy! I got this lift of hand.
But, why offer these golden thorns?
Deserve I less a crown of trust?
I would await……
The glamorous homecoming
That befits my heart to blossom.
Omolola Ajayi
Bid Me the Path of Truth
The Ancient sings the tale
“Thales drowns the world, with water”
Anaximander pleads safety
“Water tendeth fire, fire tempeth air,
Conflict”, he says, “O thou, Apeiron”.[1]
Plato rejoiceth;
“The World on a platter of gold ideas is founded”
Homer; so awesome in his poetic stature
Romances and seduces the maiden world
Off her feet.
Not to rejoice long
Skepticism afflicts the world
“I know I know nothing”
Restive Descartes to the Rescue
“I no longer doubt; I know I think”.
Reluctant to let go
The blasphemous spite,
Bishop Augustine flashes
The Torch of Faith;
“Reason by faith, O brethren”.
Nietzsche dismantling
The lines of Thomas Aquinas,
Dares the devil, forsaking God, says
“No holiness, no church,
Tom! God is dead”.
Escort of truth, Absolute in spirit
Shoulder”er” of the Book of Dialectics[2]
Engulf the wrath of the Order
In the Chronicles of Experience,
Echoes aloud its priest’s voice, Hume
Wailing; “Physics without Meta”[3]
Levy Bruhl hums his colonial whistle
“There comes the Primitive Continent”,
Up in the air raved placards of Protest
“We are Africans”
Du Bois in the league of crowd,
Senghor, hip-riding the Negro Horse
Rings the bell of emancipation.
Hountondji stares through his Western lens
Concoct; “Afro-centrism, barbarism or ethno-centrism.
Wiredu in Olusegun Oladipo
Calls for the breaking of the kola.
In any way, not for the Elders
But a thresh in kola machine-shell; calling
“Let us reason, which path; blackened – white or whitened – black”
Away or with the whitened – blacks, to leave or stay?
Bubbling the gum of science from the Western casing
I ask with curiosity;
Where forth do I turn?
Wish I be bid the Path to Truth.
Adewale Owoseni
[1] “Apeiron” – Means infinite substance
[2] “Dialetics” – Hegel’s notion of Reality as spirit
[3] “Physics without meta” – A coinage from “metaphysics”.
FATA MORGANA
Even though she is a quicksand
and I sink standing on her erosive land
I am buried sluggishly in the abyss of her dearth
My love for her never wanes.
Even though she decays with time slowly, slowly
and more than half a century of misery
has brought seasons of vicious harmattans
of penury leaving her beauty like ashes
lying on the charred pages of history
In my heart, love remains an indelible print.
Love is a fata morgana
that makes the most lethargic traveller
run with the wind of hope
So I choose to love her still.
Umukoro Karo.
MEANING MYSTERY
Several seasons seen
Men make moves
Wits wandering with wisdom
Yet, meaning means mystery
Seasoned scholars strive
Thinking theories through
Wielding witty wings
Yet, meaning means mystery
Reference readings wrought
Brilliant books bought
Many minds mocked
Yet, meaning means mystery
Several sources sought
Many meanings meant
Reasoned reasons read
Yet, meaning means mystery
Why is it a mystery?
Why is it not known?
Perhaps, it’s a mystery
Men may never make out
AJAYI TEMITOPE MICHAEL
WE ARE ONE
From the same origin
Progeny of the same progenitor
Birds of the same feathers
One parent procreate us
Life is just a privilege.
Our parent eats the forbidden
When in the garden paradise
Then our teeth- burnt
And our tongue- sour
The reward of disobedience
We are paddling the same boat
When the wind blows
It rummages us on the sea of life
Tossing to and fro like a pendulum
But when our creator calms the storm
Tears of joy cascaded our cheek.
We are one
We carry the same mentality
Corruption in our blood
Hatred our foundation
An ancestral inheritance
Lineage transmission.
But all hope is not lost in that
Until we practice the egalitarianism
Channelling a new course
Reprimanding our flesh
Of making shipwreck of the brotherhood
Until we eradicate racism
Discrimination and age grade
And see ourselves as one
Progeny of the same progenitor
Then, we will enjoy life.
We are one and soil
Either black or white
Purple or brown
Rich or poor
Old and young
Airy or scarring
Privileged or proletariat.
For when death draws its curtain
We have nowhere to run to
Even the best athlete
Becomes deformed
Then we smile like Egyptian mummies
And all turns to soil
So, what is left of the wealthy?
What is left of the proletariat?
Vanity upon vanity.
Samuel Joseph
THE PRAYER OF A SOJOUNER
O lord of land, sea and wind
Lord of the earth and skies
oh! mighty lord up high.
look upon your son with compassion
you brought me in wont you lead me out?
the might lion of lions
are you not the ruler of the jungle?
thou who reads the heart of men
i know my heart is blank
wont you reduce my burden?
he who eyes don’t blink nor
his eardrum cease functioning
wont you listen to cries of sorrow
like those of a defeated warrior
If I ask anything of thee
I will make it worth giving and receiving
I ask as a recompense
like a father who opens his arm
to a worthy son
I ask as a compensation
I ask for power in me
like that of a thousand great warriors of old
give me the bravery of a lion
whose roar shakes the forest
give me the sight of an eagle
to oversee the deeds of fellow men
and make a go at opportunities
give me the flight of a hawk
to reach heights all dread
I ask for the courage of a camel
Who grunts but never weeps
When faced with challenges
I ask for the authority of the midday sun
That no will look me in the face
I ask for the radiation of the moon
that makes all things beautiful
if my wishes are impossible for thee to grant
I offer my life to thee
I beg to return to mother earth
to be made dust
where rest shall be forever
where no step can be taken
I wish to return
anyhow, anyway, anytime
David Esu
Nostalgia of Tomorrow
Ours is a funeral of fortune
As gnashing clashes of blades
Orchestrate mourners’ wails;
From the locket of a city once charming
Our green, smoked in fire
Like paraded bangles of fishes
Fiery furnace of devouring blasts;
The fireworks celebrating our cruelty
Crimsoned is our white
The emblem of our harmony
Drench of innocent bloods
On our frail vesture of reputation
When will my country be cleansed?
When will the cracks be mended?
Will our sunken hope someday stand?
As the dust-mount of tireless termites
The children are gifted
The youths, passionate
But their time is lurking
In the sunrise of a distant tomorrow
Oluwafemi Olomojobi
TELL THEM
In our threshold,
there are many broken walls
and many promises for the aggrieved-
there are fences that hide the graves
of sons of men, and the many songs
we must learn not to remember
draw us nearer to the smoking cannon.
I know there are walls
that teach hearts the meaning of silence
when tears become one with flood.
We know how batons feel
at the backs of the hungered, how men
are reduced to pillars of ashes
by the god’s other sons.
In the land,
it is in silence
one hears the silence of the despised.
It is in the land
one sees the rot of the earth
and their foolishness thereof.
Shola Balogun
The Sun Has Gone Dark
At the first crow of the cock, I awoke with a start;
Hearing the early goat’s bleat, made me run and dart;
I bent over my soft bed and stepped out;
The startling thing I saw made me cry and shout
Where the early morning sun once had stood,
It was all dark like a wolf’s food;
My heart gave a bitter moan and a shrill cry;
I wished I could pry open the sky
It is neither folktale nor story;
It was a truth unacceptable as a sight so gory;
That the sky upon our land has gone dark;
It has brought us to a standstill and made us park
Our leaders have darkened the bright moon,
An impending doom seems very soon,
They have lost the welcome ovation,
Thrown deep gloom upon the great nation
Now to us comes the clear clarion call;
To redeem our land from this seeming fall,
Take back the glory and restore the sun’s brightness,
And at last make this sky regain its whiteness
ONELE PETER CHUKWUDI
The Dead Angel
Last night an angel died at the other street
But many would not cry at her grave
“She was foolish not to have lived” some said
“She was full of herself” others said
“But she stood by her fate when death came knocking” I said 5
“She should have opted for fate and not faith?” Shadows said
But death took her away silently to live with shadows forever
“May life continue even when the flames of grief feast upon her maiden soul” I prayed
In her repertoire before death, she sings:
Wherever we miss the road, we find a new path 10
Whenever we meet an end, we find a new war
For every beginning is an end
And every end is a beginning
The longer the road the shorter it is
In our sins we find repentance 15
In our repentance we find redemption
For the sun rise to set and set to rise
We love to hate and hate to love
And the farther we are from our love
The more intimate we are to our fate 20
Life is beautiful
Death is great
To live is to lie
To die is to be honest
For every desire their is a fire 25
But for every fear their is fame
And when we remember the last straw that took the deepest breadth
We are forgotten because the ages of hope has gone into the abyss of the past
Only those remembered live
Only those forgotten die 30
For death is in the heart of the leaves
And not in the heart of the dead
For every spear raised in the rains
The day falls
For every war fought 35
The night dies
In the midst of all I wished I have my freedom
But the more I’m enslaved
The good slave is a free man
The bad son is worthless than sin 40
Goodness brings freedom
Strife brings incarceration
No one has freedom except he has it
You still live if you read this
You are dead if you know it 45
For it is written in the wholly ghost manner
And the spirits of heavens have keys to it understanding
And the day we fall on our knees facing the sky:
That day, we have our freedom!
Farinde Adedamola
…AND THAT NAME REMI
(For Remi Raji)
Within the clouds of beauty
A name appears for this generation,
Remi.
We were like beautiful dreamers
From the day we agree to be friends,
Those hands of friendship extended to us.
With open arm we embraced it
And pray it grow.
Like a seed in the hand of a sower,
On rainbows glorious bend
You meet upon the colors,
With beauty that transcends
In honor of your sacrifice.
You’re held in high regard,
The silent voices.
The voices of tomorrow.
We prostrate in appreciation,
Hoping that only providence and passing of time
Will tell our heart how well you have done for us.
Your life you gave in earnest,
For now we may not know the gains.
No matter what the plight,
Even at the expense of your dear life,
Be our guide.
And there beyond the rainbow,
the stars are shining bright
with diamonds that are perfect .
But I from here,
the land of the rising sun,
I have you to be happy for.
The joy of your torch divides my heart
And make it lighter,
A mind at peace with all below
A heart whose love is innocent,
That thread that ties our heart together
And leave us smile.
The sunshine of our life
Remi Raji
Emmanuel Ugokwe
GONE ARE THOSE DAYS
Gone are those days
When the mores and the norms
Of the land have many says
In drumming our cultural tom-toms
Gone are those days
Sweetened the mouths
Mothers’ morsels
With iru* and sorts of aromatic plant
Jointly buried in an earthen pot
Gone are those days
Gladdened the hearts
Past pastoral tales
With which our lads wrestled minds
In the yards at the moonlight
Gone are those days
Sheltered our ancients
Old hamlets
And no burglar burst in
Journeyed their journeys
With four-legged fuel-less vehicles
Or their two staggered sticks
And no blood watered their way
Is there any god of this day
Who will seek, see to it and say
If those pleasant days that gone
Will ever have a good return?
BAYO SALAWU
THEY HAVE COME
They have come
With their hoods, sheathed machetes
raised for the kill
Devouring hyenas who prey only on the low
They have come
With their long legs, crooked hands stretched forth
to pack up the booty
The robust cow on our field is milked dry
They have come
With eyes red like glowing coals
The squirrels whimper in despair
Hurrying through the tortuous tunnel
They have come
With heavily scented perfume, clogging the nostrils
Rustling rich frippery garments
overflowing the dry parched earth
They have come
With promises forgotten in the midst
of ominous nightmares
Deafening silences filling the hollow hearts
They have come
Compatriots turned pirates
Plundering the land of their forefathers
Like mad men stealing from their own farms
They have come
When will they leave?
Watson Ifeoluwa O.
Shall the Eagle fly without reason?
Shall Oyesola dance in the market
And drums of history silence awake?
The drummer and his drum may silence appeal,
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
In days of innocence I heard the Eagle’s song
Amidst a lawful and lawless race.
The Eagle’s song, an hamattan
A pill to the upright
A thorn to evil men
What a challenge to JAH?
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
The Eagle soared in a hot sun
In the day, what a trouble?
In the night – among fear and despair
The TEMPEST rage among the tempests
Walls around the Eagle cracked and fell
Yet, the Eagle flew high with a song of freedom
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
When the Eagle danced, the Ravens head a talk
Fowls and ducks, all in panic sat down
A meeting of conspiracy was held
In the Eagle’s territory
A dice of warning flew in the air
A sword of unlawful judgement
In horizon danging
The Eagle stood and watched the play of Giants
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
When the Eagle soar high,
The globe heard and saw Him
The seeds of Yahweh praised Him
The fragments of Lucifer berated Him
And some on the valley of indecision stood
Asking where do we go from here?
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
Then, in a doubtful state I looked
With fear and uncertainty
With hope and hopelessness
With bewilderment ant dejection
With Niger in a turbulent world
I asked,
Could there be Eaglets again?
Jeremiah Clement Ojameda
(In eulogy to Remi-Raji)
It is you
The
(R)avenous, rabid watch-dog,
(E)arnest and ebullient in descrying
and unmasking the masquerade of mediocrity.
(M)instrel that forges words into whips, the slothful to flog,
(I)illustrious bard from whose veins flows the river of charity.
It is you
Erudite scholar that demystified the myth of death,
and restored ‘time’ to this fleeting age-of-the-Jet.
It is you
Sagacious explorer that found the undiscovered vowels of
the Lost Alphabets,
and trapped living-water in the belly of the dribbling
baskets.
It is you,
Wind ever present
that offers the charcoal burning breath,
It is you
The singer whose tongue will never seethe
in the Medusa-moment,
It is you
Artisan extraordinaire, that transforms relics into monuments.
It is you
The valiant Ant
that dares the might of the monstrous Elephant,
It is you
the harping bard
Whose pungent songs
Are a fume that disinfects of weevils our cotton yard.
It is you
Who brought the ‘Harvest of Laughter’ to the ceremony,
You who restored fortune to our famished ,muse-purse.
It is you
(R)oot of the Iroko,
(A)droit and aesthetic king, and keeper of the sacred forest.
(J)anitor of the blessed forrow;
(I)mago, ever ready with seminal-milk to soothe any who thirst.
It is you; another of Gods previously published awesome work..
Nathaniel Soonest
Gossips
My name is gossip. I have no respect for justice.
I maim without killing. I break hearts and ruin lives.
I am cunning, malicious and gather strength with age.
The more I am quoted, the more I am believed.
I flourish at every level of society.
My victims are helpless.
They cannot protect themselves against
Me because I have no name and I have no face
To track me down is impossible.
The harder you try, the more elusive I become.
I am nobody’s friend once
I tarnish a reputation,
It is never the same.
I topple governments and wreck marriages.
I ruin careers and cause sleepless nights,
Heartaches and indigestion.
I spawn suspicion and generate grief.
I make innocent people cry in their pillows.
Even my name hisses. I am called Gossip.
Office gossip – shop gossip -party gossip
Telephone gossip I make headlines and headaches.
Remember, before you repeat a story
Ask yourself: is it true? Is it fair? Is it necessary?
If not, do not repeat it. Keep quiet!
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds
Discuss events, shallow mind discuss people.
Olawoyin Saheed Olawale
Our land knowing fully well,
Cataclysm,the catalyst of our unlimited catastrophe,
We’ve learnt of the violent struggles for freedom by our past heroes,
We’ve heard of the gory details of bloodshed in the quest for emancipation,
That evil ended so also may this!
Many homes lamented like Deor,
After the shrink of blood and fire in Jos,
The snivel of victims gone with Biafra still roams in the lane of
remembrance in my memory,
names gloriously transformed to Mara at end of Niger Delta struggles
is still unforgettable,
I remember that year when pollen booths turned to death booths.
Those evils ended so also may this!
Now!
weevils encroached on our farm and sucked it dry like a flat breast,
we are afflicted with misery and woe like Jacob’s perils,
with viles and stings of terror,
looming upon our heads like scavengers
is threat,
Of bomb blast and murder of our infants.
They’ve turned us to prey,
rejoicing in our bloodshed.
Those evils ended,so also may this!
Adebayo Sakiru Damilare
She was the unexpected Rumble
The Rustle under dead leaves
Our desire; her fresh breeze
She was the nettle twisted around our arms
The soft velvet on which we laid
She was the camera, we needed to show our faces
She was the minty soap that tingled our skin;
We prayed to see her come
Her arrival was affirmed-
She took up the bricks without pains
She stood up without our consent
But clothed our heart with spring fields
Oh! She was that miracle we needed,
Like burnt caramel
Our taste hated the feel
But we sat and gulped
Wishing it was flavoured
We sat – undisappointed
Has she basked in her element
She was the hip that swung the throngs
One, two, three, four, five till she hit…
Orugba Biuwovwi
PROFESSOR ADEREMI RAJI OYELADE
I may not have met or seen you physically,
But certainly for a man to be celebrated like this,
Means he’s definately an icon,
A man of honour,
A man of integrity,
A revered leader,
A distinguished prodigy and a patroit.
I called him an ICON because he has annured himself as life transformer and a world changer,
I called him a man of HONOUR because he is a man that has gain respect across countries,
I called him a man of INTEGRITY because his strong moral principles has taken him to places,
I called him a REVERED leader because he is a genius in poet writing,
I called him a DISTINGUISHED PRODIGY because of his incredible achievement in his youthful days,
I called him a PATRIOT man because his love and passion for this great country has made him changed the poet world through his writing skills which will forever be remembered in years to come,
Professor Aderemi Raji Oyelade,
My wishes for you are long life, prosperity, more wisdom, more knowledge and more understanding,
Has you celebrate your golden jubilee,
May you live to see more fruitful years ahead.
ADEBAYO ADEOLA OLUWANIFEMI
NDI IGBO…….
Authority flew on wings to our Motherland
No father to rear a people of laughter;
Betrayal smiled across rivers of brotherhood
Our man to failure he went to abode,
But tomorrow is our pregnant mother of hope.
Guns coughed and tears stormed towards the desert,
In the uniforms lay the agony of our yesteryear;
Words travelled to the vanity of strengths
What was wrong if freedom sang for us?
But tomorrow is our pregnant mother of hope.
The yellow rising sun shined for freedom in bullets
Arrows against freedom to the east they laughed,
Death was a giant in our land of tears
Yet the last bullet wasn’t a positive venture
But tomorrow is our pregnant mother of hope.
All in one but bread to the cattle,
There is mirror on the knife of sorrow;
What is wrong if freedom sings for us now?
Our eyes had blinded to the world of the throne,
But tomorrow is our pregnant mother of hope.
UGOCHUKWU ASIEGBU
The Saviour’s Hell
Pained and peeved by the hospital’s hell
Bearing anguish in his bowel
As the failed physician phantom
Stared satanically back to him:
YOU HAVE KIDNEY IMPEDIMENT!
Traumatised by this travesty of tyranny
He trudged from the doctor’s den
Without a thin thread of life
Streaming like sea weeds
Ghosting…
The tragedy of the urine test,
The pains from the ruined privacy,
The sorrow from the saviour’s scaffold.
In this heavy hell
Ailing nurses in vociferous violence
Ushered us to the blatant teeth of death
As their quarrel rose with the sad sun
Patients pierced by the bladed nail of negligence
Their heads rove in whirling wind
Swelling their sicknesses to the brim.
He coughed a confession amidst trembling lips :
I know I’m not dead
This dramatic screen on the silent wall
This show. This action. This music
Shore me back to life…
I know I’m not dead
As the screen moulds the fragments
Of the split-selves
I’m not dead. I know I’m not dead!
Cursing the laboratory playfulness
Flooring the flaws in their result
Reclaiming his place among the living
In the second test.
O’ sick friend
Wobble down to this righteous screen
This philosophy. This vision. This hope
That does the physician’s Job!
Fix your unseen eyes
To this serving screen strapped
To the willing wall
Like the saviour’s son
In the Golgotha’s cross.
Kekeghe Stephen
A SONG FOR SIMEON
Lord, the Ibadan hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land. 5
Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease. 10
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my
children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords. 15
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease, 20
Let the Infant, the still unspe~ing and unspoken Word,
Grant Ibadan’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.
According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision, 25
Light upon light. mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and
prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
, Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart, 30
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after
me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.
Amb. Jimoh Oyetade Akeem
We are the songs unheard,
The amputated hands
Begging for mercy from the kinsmen
That fed us with river of drought.
We are the fading light,
We oiled our lamp with bloods
And soaked our clothes with tears
We are the rising songs of pain,
We can only dance without drums
And lament without response.
We are the flooded dreams,
The piercing eyes of battered glories,
The leaves that lulled anguish and
The buds that sprouted out whirlwind
We are the deflowered moon,
The squealing sounds of agonies,
We are the cloudy hands that tabled
Unseen freedom to the passage and
The reminiscence songs that hanged
Fallen dreams at the passage of doom…
We are the stranded travelers whose
Hope of going home is shaken
We are singing of harvest time
And our seeds bow in the soil
Waiting for rain from sealed mouth
Of the wandering face of earth
Songs from my land where
Mourning monodies cuddles our mouth
After the departure of strangled smiles.
RASAQ MALIK GBOLAHAN.
WHO DO I TELL?
You use me for your course
I run errands for your purse
Even at the abuse of my thought
I mute as I turn from your wrath
You call me and I come
You wink and I storm
I carry and I weary
In dreary and in sundry
. . .
Then you come to tell me am stuffing you
You now know I no better some tissue
Now you know this one better me
And that one “goodder” than me
. . .
Poor me!
Who do I tell. . .
How I do smell. . .
For what I doesn’t pelt . . .?
Who do I tell?
ADEBIMPE, Adeyemi Philip
The Needle and the Thread
I
Seated lone in an unpeopled class,
undressed, staring at a cemented wall;
semi-literate, bare of the fancy of colours.
A pupil in wait for the tutor, I stare.
My tutor arrives,
a wristless index finger,
writing on the wall:
things unfamiliar to the eyes,
things indiscernible to the mind.
The writings form a thread;
the wall fuses into a needle.
I swing through the eye of the needle
hanging on the thread;
bearing the pains, the madness, the bliss-
I pass into narrower depths that broaden visions
reading these words:
Forthwith, you are no minion to your masters.
You shall know what they know
Having sought what they sought.
II
Air is breath, fill my lungs. Give me life!
Water! I won’t heed your call; the river could well my cup.
Fire! My back is turned; undying ashes could burn out my little fire.
Earth! I am not in a hurry to go. Let my successor not come now; I pray.
III
A picture says a thousand words, they say.
A sentence speaks of numberless imageries, I cry.
I cry in the hold of the winged elephant of creativity.
I cry, swept away by moods.
Like bodies, I cannot create but recreate.
I tremble in this grip no wished-for can kill.
Only a likely remedy in the hands divine of man’s link to his ancestors.
My head forbid!
Thrice, I tap my fingers over my head.
The spirits of my forbears disagree!
I call comfort into my life:
I water earth.
IV
The way that inhabits the needle inhabits the thread.
In this art that plaits words into beautiful patterns,
I darn the dear and daring eyes of ideas into clothes of words
not to give a cup to the cravings of ambition
but the fulfillment of a passage
as does the clapper in the hollow of the bell.
The way that inhabits the needle inhabits the thread.
This art that is no indolent mind’s treasure,
I won’t discontinue, for, unblessed my body with a spine
proud enough to game macho with oddities.
The way that inhabits the needle inhabits the thread.
I give myself to this gift of burden.
The wagging tail of the dog is praise-song to its owner.
I give myself to this burden of gift.
May my snail know no splinters in its shell.
Akeem Akinniyi.
THE JOURNEY
It was revealed a journey..
the end was not known..
but i am ready..
‘cos the old man said to me “BOY find your way”.. (BOY)
and so i started walking..
and i walked and walked..
i walked for long..
but still no home in sight..
the sun is scorching, my feet is burning..
and then thirst sets in..
i can’t continue, i’m weary..
is this the point i fall..
and slowly i start to fall..
face dropping, sight fading..
a call from the ground.. (Transition)
a voice from within said.. ‘don’t fall’..
inaudibly, i said… ‘i can’t continue’..
but behold, a sight approach..
and faintly i saw the pace closing in on me..
she gave me water and then pointed to me a direction..
she said “Home In Sight” and gave me a smile..
i regain vigor, my strength replenished..
and i moved on and on and on…
then behold my sight, it’s a GREEN LAND..
i started to run, my pace got faster..
and i came to it, it is beautiful, peaceful..
i saw a stream filled with pure water..
i bent to drink and as i drank..
i saw a MAN..
oh, lo!!! it’s my reflection..
I’ve become a MAN and now my land is GREEN… (MAN)
MOHAMMED ABDULRAHMAN ARIYO
JUST ONE IN A MILLION
The news becoming more horrifying,
Day to day been turned off by the media,
Deep within and without I know it‘s ending,
This life, the breath, the hustling and bustling,
Are we the only nation in the world of men?
I need not worry; we are just one in a million.
Even when the power seat was left vacant for ages,
Or even still PHCN cutting off my lines into darkness,
My neighbor surpassing me with nothing but a small ‘gen’,
It may seem as if my case is the worst,
Yet, I need not worry; I am just one in a million.
The state of affairs becoming sour each day,
Roses turning black, aura gone off the love,
Sacrifices done yet nothing coming forth,
Most definitely, you need not worry; you are just one in a million.
Your dad an alcoholic, your mum a whore,
Your sister a drop-out, her life’s in a slum,
She needs not worry; she is just one in a million.
Even when suicide is pertinent and death an option,
We need not worry; we are just one in a million.
Like Haiti, we need not worry; we are just one in a million.
N.B: GEN means the small tiger generator commonly used in Nigeria
OLUKANNI, ABEL OLAYINKA
Epistolary Ode to Saleh
(Saleh Abubakar Labaran)
Long time scouting for horizon of coldly day
Film of freeze, during tours, drizzled way
When mingled lots of songs shared, shivering show
But your reggae poetry climatised not callow
Saleh, though your weaving but our weaving
Pilgrim that descends misty epigram
Reminiscing Art matters and hope that trampled
Which obscured eyes must with your pen trembled
Labaran, this name frightens me howling
Even the sky kowtow you never crow
Morning dew bequeaths you flavour of fabric
On your thread perched all birds that sing poetry
You must add to this bough of woven world
Sprout out! Perhaps whitish-cloud may perch,
This stitch of idioms already makes our shawl
We must come crawling for horizon of muse
Because this creativity craving
Silencing their “create-activities”,
You!
Make our ears grow sensitive words
Which wrap our filthy garments with hope
Abubakar, your piece withdraws sword to its scabbarb
Do you know or……? Then,
Throw let open your aural layer
And follow my wits…
Among all birds eagle stands out
All hills open their heart espousing you roost
Flying high with wings cipher of your fans
What mark bears on your face symbols glory
Parrot talks awake of slumbering teens
But no melody of eagle gory imagery
Wanton gifts possessed make your poetry dazzling
Saleh, your scribbles soar high to immortal Keats.
Muideen Adekunle
DYING DEATH DIED.
Dying death dying,
Dying death died,
Dying death did die.
The air is desecrated with death-rot.
A poltergeist is unleashed.
An oppressor is discharged.
A ‘sapien tormentor is unbridled.
To around corners wait,
Ready to swoop when least expected
Dying death did die,
A ghoul very foul,
Decimator of souls,
A shepherd of the underworld.
A harbinger of perdition.
A sad tale to an end.
Dying death did die,
Waiting to own you and I,
To our souls lead in the direction of hades.
But with a swing of hammer
A pile of nails
And a crown of thorns,
Dying death is knocked back dead.
With a deep sigh
An earthquake
And the rent of curtains,
Death’s stale stench of death-rot is expunged.
And by He who died to defeat death
A cowl is created,
To shroud him wills to deliver a deathblow to death.
He awaits you,
He who killed death waits by;
Signify if you would like want His succor.
OLUWASEUN ADEBAYO ADEGBOHUN
GADDAFI, GADDAFI, GADDAFI!!!!!!!!
How the mighty have fallen
Tell it in Tripoli
Proclaim it in Misrata
Let the inhabitants of Benghazi be aware
For 42 years, he ‘ad been ruling
From 29 years of age he had been on the throne through bloodless coup
Claiming the Alpha and Omega of Libya
Swifter than eagle
Stronger than lion
Oh ye Libya proclaim freedom
The land flowing with crude oil makes a loud noise of joy
GADDAFI, OH GADDAFI
The self acclaimed king of kings of Africa
The imam of Muslims
The iron-fisted ruler
You who vow to provide house for every Libyans before your own family
You who silenced the opposition with overt killing and incarceration
You also gag the press
You‘ve brazenly resist the interference of world powers
Alas you became power drunk
Like a fly that that parched in to a beer and continue to drink to stupor and finally
Died inside it
Power corrupt, absolute power corrupt absolutely
Claiming that nobody can unseat you
Vowed to die on the throne
Until you were dislodged by NTC and NATO
Called it a western conspiracy
You are damn right
How the mighty have fallen
The weapons of war have perished
You African leaders in general
And Nigeria in particular
Know that power is transient
And the seat of throne is ephemeral
Whatever you do today is a story tomorrow.
Oladapo Oluwadamilola Blessing
IN MEMORIAL
The lightening so great could lead to blindness,
The sound in the air so deafening,
Men and women of different race all around,
What is going on around here?
I have to see for myself.
This must be the grand opening of the world cup,
Or what else could have brought so mammoth a crowd together?
Could this be the long awaited 2014?
The year the entire world will pursue just one goal,
Becoming the world champion just through the round leather.
Probably it is a king to be enthroned and endowed a crown,
The red carpet, gaiety and merriment,
The whole thing becoming more of a scene,
From the swearing in ceremony of a president,
A display of great power, excitement and flamboyance.
No! No!! No!!! Could that be my name on air?
The praise, talks and admonition from all,
Incredible! My pictures all around the hall,
What is really happening around here? I need to know,
Faces so familiar, yet some unknown.
Through the red carpet I have to tread,
Feeling like a star, truly that’s what I am,
My praise still in the air, name and pictures everywhere,
Wait! What is the box at the other end of the hall?
Not too long, I’ll have to check for myself.
Half opened, part closed!
Seemed there is something inside the box,
God! What is this? My body! No! Is this my coffin?
What’s happening here? Could this be …..?
Just in time, I woke up in sweat, it’s a dream!
In memorial! What would have happened?
If it were to be true that my eyes were closed in death for real?
From the world I was, what impact have I made,
The world touched or just nothing but a path,
If truly in memorial, what would I be remembered for?
OLUKANNI, ABEL OLAYINKA
YOU REALLY ARE MAD!
Are you not?
Round the clock you work
Nothing to show for it
From 8am-6pm you teach
Don mad, don fatigued
The brain’s delicate cord
Holding your reason togethere
Will soon snap you into stroke.
Motley mascaras you wear
Unfashionable masquerade
You really are mad.
Orange-size foofoo you buy
But on countless chunky pieces of meat you lustily feast
As if there is no tomorrow
Wasting the day’s wages
Your liposuction days are numbered
When your kolomental will vamoose.
That thin-legged thing you follow
Around sheepishly as if hypnotized
The mother of your children is at home
Sweating it out to make your home
And you are bent on frustrating her
One day is for the owner
Infamy is hanging on your head
Like the Damocles’ sword!
Your students you tell
‘A’ is for God; ‘B’ is for you
‘C’ is for them maybe…
Elephantine shame on you
Because you really are mad
Transferor of aggression
Mother aggressor,
How did you fare you in school?
You agree to sleep
With that foul-mouthed
Pot-bellied, k-legged,
Thick-lipped bloated pig
You have reduced yourself to a letter
For ‘A’ or ‘B’ grade,
Your destiny you mortgage.
Political peculator
Pen robber, figures editor
Sugar-mouthed Squealer
Prancing Sycophant
Because you have no conscience
Ride on to your infernal doom!
You pack people like sardine
No horn, no rear light, no wiper
Yet you charge appallingly
You really are mad!
OLUSAANU, James Boaner
The god inevitable
Widen heaven open
Sky drop his stars
Tears from the cloud
Torrent into an ocean
Mountains cracked, seas dried
Cries amongst the air
Blesseth be thy day
Thy sun bore her
Out of the soil
Thine has been made
Thy womb; a nation
More as the sand
By the river bank
Priestess hewn from stone
Hair of thy head;
Weeds in the tropical
Skin tanned to deep mahogany
Sons of the earth
Shelter in her womb
Bristol of thine breast
Mine day square meal
Upon thine spine
Lay thy ultimate bed
Me, crawl with tears
From babyhood to adulthood
Thy love continueth
Awake O awake
Bring forth your tender heart
O priestess
From the hill top of hope
Mountain of despair
With thine I lay my eyes
Mine eyes of faith
Though faith in fate
Thou standeth by me
MICHAEL OGUNDELE
HOW LONG MUST WE WAIT?
In the gathering of their lamely dressed words
We rumbled alone- the forgotten proverbs awaiting awakening.
Conjured from the dying lips of forced national circumcisions,
We pranced alone at the cowardice of their raving elucidation,
Waiting for the long whispered uhuru.
We squatted- waiting; offspring of an erudite incantation,
Inheritors of the unclaimed pregnant pause- we,
The battered heartbeat of a million wandering bones,
Clearing the ‘seven point agenda’ of this Military exorcism,
Exhumed upon our waiting souls as diffidence of democracy.
We drifted around, waiting on time; braider of all ripe harvest.
Is this not the land of the barrels of activist’s guns?
Whose relics the women of Aba aroma their soups in 1929?
And de-apartheid South Africa extracted colours for their rainbow?
Is this not the enlarged Umuofia, where many Okonkwos breathe on?
And gather barns of aspiration for a voyage across the atlantics?
Is this not Nigeria, who lowered the vociferous Union Jack?
And send an iniquitous English armada asunder to the history pages?
Let’s all stand, vibrating. Waiting to wait no more…
We have sat for too long on the edge of this wild fire,
Pretending it only warms our buttocks against the Harmattan cold.
Must we speak of the aged swallowed seasons shivering?
Or of the oiled lips, these alluvial gods cheesed on, with induced trembling?
Must we, chanters of the enslaved promise coiled again and again?
We have sat and watched the swaggering of their half-crazed polemics,
From round tummies, shaped with the oil-dollar of our raped Niger-Delta.
We have painfully listened to money-caressed stupidity
From feeble minds, tutored only by the contents of blabbing beer bottles.
We have heard their tribalised noise and Googled thinking-
We watched, animatedly at the hollowness of their starched Agbada-minds.
And pondered at the octopus reach of their reckless stench of corruption,
Sicken; let us spring forth- the thundered word, calling Amadioha–
How long must we the sitting masses seat on, doing nothing,
While these political prostitutes ejaculate dead semen into the nation’s future?
How long must we, braiders of the sacred word wait? How long?
ANEFIOK AKPAN
MIRAGE OF GLORY
Like a wraith it appeared and disappeared in a splash.
A spectre of glory unleashed, withdrawn like a bash
Of fistful force unrestrained and let loosed like trash.
An image of illusionary grandeur with apparition,
It came into sight and vanished like a phantasm.
Phantasmagorically, in sequence it appeared to disappear.
We waited and slumbered, so weak and weary a condition.
We waited in great anticipation of a moment long gone.
Gone like the good old day; we felt undone.
The Holy Book speaks of the latter glory
Being greater than the former. Struggle of gory
With all the blood wasted calling for vengeance.
With so much force we seek for peace in trance.
On the cause of this we seek for the appearance
Of what the latter glory will bring with it in its ambience.
With tears we planted with hope of joyful harvest.
With lachrymosity, morose untethered abreast,
We toiled and laboured not for personal gains, but
We exert ourselves for the glory that lies ahead in the west.
Working our fingers to the bone not to outwit, but
We moiled, paddling in mud, just to standout among the best.
We, like Trojan, worked hard, pulling and prodding under;
We, seeking for something to go beyond the yonder;
When weariness beckons, doggedly with sweat in the heat
We find energy in hope that metamorphosed into zeal.
When failure beckons, with hope of success so real
We thought of the glory ahead and fail to fail with a beam.
We lost love in lust, and find lust in love, all in the dream.
If we knew our glory will be lost in trance, we could
Have forever abided in stupor. Dreaming would
Have been better than living. At least the glory would
Have been realisable. But the reverie could
Not outlast the reality. We awoke to the crude,
Unrefined, barbaric coldness of verisimilitude.
Hundreds of brothers and sisters from the hood
Toiled with us for this optical illusion. As we stood
It’s obvious the glory we seek was a mirage yet so true.
Clement Adebayo Oloyede
the garden of promise
conflicts abounds
chaos the tradition
un-trust generated
bitterness manifested
why the bile?
reason for the discord
i’ll love to know
for this familial dissonance
great, wealthy, renowned, all in the past
now unstable, disintegrated
pride of days gone past
leper of the present
fear abounds within the same intestine
all things stand to be contradicted
accusations predominate
lies sit on the ukpo
1
what promise remains?
that of rancour
what garden is planted?
that of fracas
garden of promise
lacks the lodge of refuge
legacy broken
by a generation so unpromising
1
Throne.
Nwachukwu Egbunike
The Nigerian Situation.
A Great Confusion,
Of Dynamic Effusion.
An Endemic Circumstance,
With A Deeper Assertion.
A Cognitive Action,
Without Prior Consideration..
A Clear Invitation,
To Absolute Destruction.
An Introduction of Chaos,
Into The Embodiment of the Nation.
A Minute of Promise,
A Decade of Disarray.
A Whisper Afar,
Now Uproar so Near.
Catastrophe Looms the Air,
Making Everyone Despair.
Let This Government Hear,
What Makes the People Flee.
A Threat so Rare,
Even Other Countries Fear.
A Faceless Enemy,
From Afar and Still so Near.
Another Issue is at Hand,
The Issue of Fuel.
We feel like its Cruel,
Being in this Duel.
We see it as Unfair,
For Those in the Helms of Affairs.
To Play With Our Future,
Keeping us in the Puncture.
Tell us what is Wrong,
Let us be a Part.
In finding a lasting Solution,
To Our Nation’s Problems.
AREWA OLANREWAJU ALIU
Africans celebrate Africa
Africa is beautiful, let us celebrate,
Civilisation is spoilfull, make we moderate.
Bring the drums; let the youth echo the beating,
The grasses are green, the goats are bleating;
Our wine is white, let us drink;
Our black is beautiful,let it not sink;
Your joy can be full! Accept you are black;
Want to be Whiteman? Slavery is back.
The sun is smiling, the skies are blue
The trees are dancing, these are the clue;
The cows are slaughtered, the meat is roasted;
The yams are harvested, the yams are pounded;
My lady want to eat, her food is made of flower!
My mother is a good cook, she doesn’t need a cooker!!
Our time has come; let us live as they did!
We can be our brother’s keeper, if for love we bid!!
This is what we learn, teach and live.
IbukunFilani
LETTER TO MY ESTRANGED FATHER
James Corby as I heard
Thou art my father, alas where art thou
To behave as one.
For days unend, thy praises I heard,
Even thy good acts men daily sing
But now I wonder if they are all and true
Ever it seemed with tears mother toiled,
Her yield stills never enough
Then I became a beggar-boy
From dawn till dusk we worked in a cellar
These days we daily need thee
See mighty host are passing
Fathers holding their children dear
Our mother too sickly chained
But of you, livings unknown
And to us earth’s beauty was not fair
When you left, you greatly thought
As the wind to our sail we have no hope
To reach the bay, but as you are no seaman yourself
You greatly err, you did not know
That in much struggle and luck
We would paddle to greatness
Visits from you we never had
Letters to us you never forward
Right now with a strain
Only mother and I can still thy face recall
Now to our success everyone drinks merrily
Happy hails from left, right and within;
If thou art not a shy man father
Our barns will yield enough
To feed thee and thy new home
Fifteen winters rolled in lofty heights
And o’er the hills that long have we prevailed
That we still remember thee
You have your star to daily thank
Just be happy in thy victory
All that we never had
When thou were around
Beautiful castles in Ophir
And built of gold
We toilfully behold in thy absence
Therefore we do rejoice
For fair as white is our future,
And green as olive is the path
For our royal tread to renown
Now we are glad you for long gone,
For you help that never came,
We sought aimfully on our own
And at last we bid thee farewell
We no longer need thee
All wave.
Awokoya O. Oladapo
BODIJA MARKET
Will Oyo have ever survived without you?
To and fro we all seek your blessing
From sunrise to sunset all wait for aje
In our quest for more, we turn houses to kiosks
Bodija: a market among markets
Countless souls transact in you
You house the homeless in the night
The area boys and the compatriots pay their homage
The battlefield for smart sellers and cunny buyers
Bodija, some said you never change
Your loyalists despise your face
But in your goodness you still provide for them
Bodija; the house for all
In my dream I sometime see you
When I fly with my technological glasses
With classical superstructure build
A bodija that will give mass bury to fly’s and mates
A market with directions and checking points
Where orders are delivered on time and intact
A place where E-transact will replace cash
A Bodija that will check, control and enforce authority
A new trade center for Africa
A new Bodija that will pace Ibadan on the map again and again
Oladejo David Adedeji
If only we can forget
Then there’’ll be no regret
If only we cannot remember
Then we’’ll have a sweet December
If only we can forget special
moments
Heartbreaks won’t bring us
torments
If we can’’t recall the battle
We won’t feel treated like cattle
If everything ends only at sight
Rumours never will cause a fight
If painful memories could vanish
at once
We’’ll all live like daughters and
sons
If a child, adults hadn’t abuse
How best will youths be of use?
Truly we can forgive
But memories stretch as we live
To forget our gone brethren we
try
Yet we wake up at nights and cry
So many things we try to forget
Because pain is what they beget
But really if events can’t be
stored
Life itself would be core bored
If we don’t learn from the loss
How do we become the boss?
Left and right, night and day
The creator made things that way
All we do is wish and hope
But the answer is learning to
cope
And with time as our healer
We’ll conquer the mind-killer.
Okanlawon Kazeem
ODE TO REMI RAJI
The wind of life brings fortune at 50
OLU, the Supreme-Being has made you great
It is a sign of heroic greatness
Okurinmeta, the pen of the ready-writer
Erudite scholar you na well-done
May you live long
And your sole be fisted to shore of success
Ajala that soars like eagles
Across the village called global
The Invisible, The Only Wise One
Has given you the honour
Peacock is the king of birds
Lion is the king of the animals
A king is the head of a nation
You are a don among poets in your own world
Remi of honour
Remi of wealth
Remi of fame
Remi of praise
Remi of excellent greatness
You are the masquerade that dances in the grove of wisdom
The Primus inter and the afilius dei
The great Orunmila greets you
The ancient Agbomeregun hails you
You’re the muse of the great poets at the jungle of performances
No wonder Socrates hails you
Aristotle says you’re well-done
Shakespeare confesses that you’re the parrot of the poets
John Keats says Ode to the great Remi Raji
Soyinka affirms you’re more than Sunjata
Achebe ascertain you’re more than Sunjara
Okigbo says the Thunderstruck
Osundare says you’re the Village Voice
Dasylva says Odamolugbe,
Drum at home, drum in the village
Drum beyond the sea
The clap of people
The high praise of the learners
A child does not die prematurely
You shall be old as a kola nut tree
Honey is the sweetness of an orange
Sweetness is honey of sugarcane
Elephant is the lord of a hippopotamus
Akalamagbo never misses a year
Nobody dares Ajanokun to face
So be your life
Your festival of joy will never cease
Ode to an Icon
Ode to Remi Raji
ADEKUNLE IDOWU JAMES
SELFLESS SERVICE
High and bright is the sun
Smiling broadly at everyone
Lighting our path and swallowing our darkness
And never tired of selfless service, though ageless.
Some people are rays of sunshine
Shoulders on which the helpless recline
Hearts that beat for others
Lovely people – even lovelier than rose flowers!
These people haven’t gone into extinction
Men and women of great affection –
The Awolowos, the Osundares, the Rajis and many others
Theirs is image, no selfishness or corruption battered.
It’s good to be good, they say:
A saying that nobody can gainsay
Selfishness makes man an elf
Does the sun rise only for itself?
AJAYI DAVID T.
“My blood”
My blood! though littered everywhere
still united in the turn of sphere
wasted as a result of brutish acts
the thick flow of it in the paths.
I will cherish the blood that bathe me
soaked in the cultures of him that fathers me.
In it grows the heritage of a monument
tilt in the mixture of races for the moment.
I will wail and bewail my blood
whose “DNA” was traced through the flood
that took me to a strange land
where fetters of chain is my brand.
My kinsman in pretence of love
made my life a sacrilege of Jove
enrich his pocket and family worth
with my blood and stuff.
Alas! A stranger traced my blood to my soil
revealing my kinsman evils rapped in the foil
of my blood in a strange land for a toy
receiving the praise of my land for a joy.
I will rather weep for my blood
that my kinsman betrayed with a flood.
Instead of a ‘stranger’s evil’ in my land
To wit, I will seek to implant.
OKE, FELIX BAYODE
GUN
That instrument of peace and war
Used to maintain law and order
That metallic weapon of defence
That metallic weapon of mass destruction
Extremely vicious in the hand of a wrong handler
From it erupts metallic killer seeds
That puts an end to the life of its victim
Sending him on the expressway to the grave
Thus inflicts pain on its creator; man
– the creation turning against its creator –
Makes people mourn their beloved,
Makes parents childless
And children orphans
O gun! How cruel art thou.
MOMODU VICTOR
THE BANISHED NUT
Can e’er it be swashbuckling?
Or an emblem of swingeing atrocity?
The glimpse of your art is inebricating
A pure sway from codes of equity
When my sense grappled with your flaw
Scrolls of tears unfurling in flock
Beneath my nose and around my jaw
I see the sylph banish the muck
The sylph and muck; mother and son
Never was it long that it came forlorn
Detachment of a leaf from the branch
The ‘handy life’ sent furlong back its porch
Trends of such trudged steadily
In my sphere and head
Lilliputian stars battered like an effigy
All minds of sanity have greatly fled
Noble gentlemen suffer early martyrdom
For seedlings like them are squelched upon
Should existence not cling to freedom?
I see so the morning lights knocked on
O! The rumbling thunders are victims
Destined to package their rage in the dark
They spill self pity and His names
‘Olodumare! See the completeness we lack’
The Almighty Deity then whispers
‘No more than emaciated monkeys
And never above trampled flowers
Will these deeds blossom in Venice
Or in Persia, Sudan, or Nigeria
The dogged murderers of light
Would gabble life on Parousia’
Can e’er it be swashbuckling?
Or an emblem of swingeing atrocity?
Opeyemi Saheed
THE ROAD TO SUCCESSLike the Slippery watery floor
So also is the road to success
But even when you slip
All you need is to
Push up on your hinds,
Garner up your strength
Dig in your feet
That you may not slide
With deep focus thread
Unless you wobble, tumble and crumble
Like a piece of cake
Often times
We are almost there
Envisaging
All that needs be done
Is capture our goals
Just then! The smooth sail,
Across the calm ocean turns turbulent
And it seems as though our boat
Will not sail safely to the harbor.
And though it be like this
A thousand times
Never lose sight of your dreams
Fasten your eyes on your vision
Let your desire dwindle not
Let your dreams dissolve not
For definitely you will get there!
To pluck that juicy fruit,
You have long thirsted for.
LAMIDI OLAYINKA MOPELOLA
Another Country 11-11-11
The smiles grew from the one face
to next and the last.
we at last find a country
where the children can play
and be bruise
with a touch of spirit
rise to play again.
The road was still full of dust
from the marching feet of the villain
on the way to the oblivion
The filth settled on our brows
a reminder of what we gave
a payment for what we did
and a check on what we couldn’t become.
The inner yards were full of artifacts
and winners trophies
scapegoats of the ousted spirits
left back to roast.
The laws we made
are by men who had bled for it
and would rather not do it again
one is too many a fight.
Our children could play now
on pasture that once grows on our flesh
watered with crimson rivers
straight from the hills of our heart.
The rune that tell of us,
of our nobly deed
or un-deed
the song that would tell them
what our future couldn’t be.
Emmanuel Oluseyi Sams
POWER PLAY IN AFRICA
Power has become the architecture of conflict
Struggle and quest for power has destroyed great African leaders
Quest for power, ingredient of man’s inhumanity to man
How has the mighty fallen?
Power in Africa, tool for oppression
He who has power feels he has everything
Sustainable peace has now become a contested concept
To the extent that African countries depend on western powers to restore peace
Founding fathers meant well for the continent
But unending greed of leaders has undermined continental peace
Major challenge still remains the attempt by the incumbents
to stay in power beyond constitutional mandates
Leaders want to stay in power till eternity
Not knowing that change is constant
As they struggle for power
They forget that leadership is not static
The earlier African leaders realize that peace is synonymous with development
The better for all Africans
OKOLIE-OSEMENE, JAMES
AGEING
The sepia-edged photograph
Entangled in the gathering cloud of cobwebs
On the rusty and rickety table
Serves as a mnemonic device –
That nudges his numb consciousness
To measure the flight of time
His youthful years, are a story
He relishes recollecting
But the shrinking future, is a sight
He struggles to shun
In vain, is the veneer of vitality
Spread, with a daub of cosmetics
Sitting gingerly on the corporeal –crust
His body now a bizarre bundle
Coiled up by the bind of ageing
The numerical appreciation of years
Inevitably, leads to the depreciation of his
Life
He turns the fuming faggot
Burning in the fire of ageing
Here, I here nothing
Except the chirp of insects and birds
The whirr of wings and wind
Wind, moving to an indeterminate destination
And the murmur of stream
Here, I see nothing
But the seamless silky counterpane above
The greenery carpeting the ground below
And a stretch of vacant space
Now I must acclimatize myself
To the voiceless void
And the deathly silence
That pervade this place
For the grave beckons
And this Israelites’ wandering in the
wilderness of life
Must end one day
Shorn of strength and weakness
I will be shrouded in solitude
My remains will be: me and myself.
OJEBISI KOLAWOLE JOSEPH
MY SHOPPING DAY
The day is done
and I had fun.
I went to town
and bought six brown
round crispy cakes
That Lara makes.
Lara the baker
Is the maker
in a good size
of nice fruit pies.
So I bought three
to eat for tea
then went next door
To get some more
chicken and meat
that I shall eat
tomorrow night.
Oh! What delight
it is to try
to find and buy
just everything
But now John King
my day is done
and I’ve had my fun
So off to bed
you sleepy head.
OSINAIKE EMMANUEL OLUSEYI
Stella
I must recall a current fad,
In that night, fastened in sleep.
Where i drew a red rose card,
Spangled in memories of love so deep.
Mother laid, beside me still,
Fastened in sleep, strong of will.
I dreamt of love at Halloween,
Heaven and hell, i stood between.
Heaven was kind and fair to me,
And Hades hall beckons on me.
Reminding me of a pious fool,
Who gave another his working tool.
So i pulled my red rose card,
And jealously to it i clad.
All but to pay my way off hell,
A stranger there no more to dwell.
Lost in myself amid confusion,
Sickened of this unsteady notion.
A torrent of darkness turned to light,
behold ! the son of man in glorious flight.
Rejecting the other, i got this chance,
Now in salvation i have to dance.
Redeemed, restored,denied of hell,
My fear relieved, i felt so well.
Then cried Mother, tranced in sleep,
Pointing through a tunnel far and deep.
Behold a mirror naked and stark,
From afar revealing a crack.
Abortive effort to save the glass,
Short-lived my effort was placed alas.
Shattered in pieces unable to mend,
My soulful body couldn’t easily blend.
Why, on a dark strait morass land,
Pieces of glass caressing the sand.
After twenty-two moonlights in October,
That transient dream revealed was aired.
In circumstantial manner,
So mysterious and weird
The Mother of children less privileged,
Mighty in love, beauty and wits,
A genial mother of many bits,
Adorable woman of peaceful life,
Whose heart was placed on the street,
Endlessly to save bent minds.
In-spite of our intercession and pleas,
cuddled in the cold hands of death,
Stella Obasanjo fastened in sleep,
Sis decades only, she lived from birth.
Ugboduma Marcus Ovie
time for ceRebration
Tall dreams of our nation
– realities or mere imagination?
Aspirations of our heroes gone by
– within reach or still sky-high?
Half a century of independence
Half a century of impatience
Half a century of decadence
Half a century of ambivalence.
Groomed bribery till bribe–groom became our nickname,
Lustfully eyed corruption till we betrothed same,
Sharpened fraudulence till it assumed a cutting edge;
Kidnapping replaced our anthem, and BokoHaram our pledge!
At 50 years plus, it is called “menopause,”
Middle age assumedly taking its full course;
But one thing does bug my mind at this instant:
What 50-year-old remains an infant?
But how about “menostop”?
Men-oh-stop the slaying, stop!
Men-oh-stop the betraying, stop!
Don’t pause but stop, please stop!
And so trade bloodshed for a national watershed
– watershed of bloodless patriotism instead;
That in lieu of these guns, those bombs, or that arrow
We’ll thoughtfully unite and face the morrow.
Rivulet
At 51, rather than the eating and drinking in celebration
Why not do the thinking and thinking called cerebration?
OKE Oluwabunmi
BRAVING THE STORMS OF LIFE –
Life’s billows many a times blow us to the base
Weary we thus become in this life’s cruel rugged race
We then discover that driven are we by its pace
Alone we but run with no help like an old piece of lace
We sometimes wish we could brave these storms by playing an ace
Defeat only but stares us in the face like a wretched flower –vase.
But when to the Lord a tour we make and our trials pour
He comes; our anchor, shield, defender, strength, rock and takes us to the harbour
These pains of the race we share with him, though before alone we bore
And he at last wins the race for us and he conquers for us this war
Braving, quenching and calming our storms that are sour.
Looking up to him does but gives us faith
He changes us and makes us reject the devil and his cruel fate
Then him who hath decreed perilous days for us him we hate
Knowing he will be captured and tortured on a date
But to brave the current core storms on the good Lord we will trust and wait.
ONELE, Peter Cole
I NEVER SAY DIE
At the foot of an icy snow-topped mountain,
Behind a small bushy path leading to a beautiful fountain,
I once met a middle-aged man at the hamlet,
Known for his charms, talisman and potent amulets
His story had widely been announced,
His determined doggedness and tenacity had been pronounced,
Myths had it that a hundred times had he attempted,
He failed in all and to throw in the towel; he had been tempted
In spite of his daily failures and constant disappointment,
He was always back again to make an appointment
Though it was rumoured that defeat was his sour fate,
Never did he ever lost his determination and grim faith
The mountain-peak had his ultimate focus,
He daily set out on the course and locus
Climbing and clambering up and up;
Till at last on a day he got to the top!
This story was told to million humans,
Of the best attitude for each a man, his words:-
“I Never Say Die and I Pay the Price”
Without grudge, nor grumbling to get the prize”!
ONELE Joseph Seun
PURGE THE LAND
This land it was our ancestor fought for and won;
With their vigour, sweat and blood tons,
They engaged in various struggles,
And at last delivered the land to us after much haggle
Though this has been a long done affair,
We their children haven’t treated the land fair;
Our atrocities and abominations have desecrated the land,
The many sins we perpetrated with our own hand
The wise old men keep saying they can hear,
The moans, cries and sighs of ancestors in tears;
They weep for the land we have polluted,
They mourn for the heritage we have looted
Corruption, embezzlement, bombings all around,
Kidnappings, killings, stealing all abound;
We have desecrated the land, it needs cleansing,
The purge will transform the song they sing
To purge this land is but our duty
And to restore its dignity and beauty;
Then our rested fathers will be silent in their graves,
And good times surely will be our attending raves.
ONELE ESTHER KEHINDE
A Letter to Mama
O Mama! Have you not seen that
He finds it hard to chew and swallow?
He said he loves me but his words sound
Like the message from an old, weak talking drum.
He said he will take care of me
That again, I do not believe
As he had not kept the same promise to
Mama Ife, Mama Ore and Mama Segun, his wives.
They are only sweet words for the wooing ear,
So sweet sometimes that one can forget the reality.
I turned him down and I’ll do it again.
Baba Ife may have so much to offer us as Papa always said,
But the truth is still before us.
We see Mama Ife, Mama Ore and Mama Segun,
We see Ife, Tola, Taiwo and Kehinde,
We see Ore, Fayemi, Ibukun and Solademi,
And we see Adesegun, Adebisi, Adebimpe and Adegbite.
So much promises and hopes for them, but the reality tell us enough.
If I go to him, how many more will he not have?
Now, he does not chew well nor can he swallow his balls of fufu.
O Mama! Let me be. Let me be
For I am still young, strong, intelligent and beautiful.
A better life awaits me.
Please, do not let me go to Baba Ife
For he will only be like the bad food that sits in the belly of a great hunter,
That makes him sick and useless, all day long.
O Mama! Let me be, for my soul longs for no one else but Ominira.
I dream of his return day and night.
His firm and gentle caress, his soothing and loving embrace, I desire so much.
His tender kisses and warm strokes I yield to.
He is my sunshine, my strength, my courage and my hope.
Indeed, he is ewà.
In him alone, true beauty is found.
Please tell Papa, my soul longs for no one else but him.
And I go to no one else but him, Ominira, my beauty and my tomorrow.
ADAM, Ezinwanyi E.
OUR FATHERLAND
On the first day of October some fifty years ago
A declaration was made
The announcement of freedom
For the most populous nation in Africa
Older children tell us what they felt that day
They talk about the hope and the aspirations
The expectation of a brighter future.
The strangers left, the children took over
And the fortunes dived!
Our father founded his land
In the core of the mangrove
In the heart of the rain forest
With all resources in place
Half of which most first words do not have
Just for his children to live fulfilled lives.
Travelers all over the world
In case you come across our father
Tell him that the children of the other wife
Have taken over the fortunes ment for all his wards
Tell him how his children graduate from universities
Without jobs to secure three square meals.
Tell our father to come back
And properly introduce us one to another
So that we can know
If these people are truly our siblings
Or if they are also strangers
That we may tell them also to leave
Like their white counterparts
And stop serving our land the way they do.
This is a dead end!
For we do not have the right
To choose who serves our fatherland
We only have the right to vote
Which may or may not count
They rubbish the ballot and opt for the barrels
With the guns and the gauntlets
They gain power for themselves
And serve us their own way.
The way they serve make us lose the meaning of service
The ‘ servants’ live in poshed rooms
And sleep on beds of cedar
The ‘masters’ sleep in the cold outside like paupers
The ‘servants’ ride in luxurious cars unhindered
The ‘masters’ queue to buy fuel
In the scourging sun for their rickety cars
We know a time will come as it did in Syria, Egypt and Libya
When we define who actually are qualified to lead
Our dear fatherland.
ADENIYI JOSHUA OLUTUNDE
The day is such
The day is such when the cry is heard
the day is such when mothers waited
the day is such when a mother waited
the cry of a baby full of blood
such is the entrance into this world
such is the day of destiny
crawling towards making a stand
standing towards making a walk
walking towards making an expression
day by day, months by months
as the years move unstoppable
such is the growth
knowing left from right, right from left
then full of strength or weakness
such is the day the baby ends to live
the day is such when death calls.
Obafemi Olulaja Abayomi
SONG OF A RENEGADE
I depart with my precious stones
Of your love-tears,
Eternal fruits of reluctant farewell,
Wrapped carefully in my pouch of dreams.
I must spread them under strange skies
And make them grow, inspired by strange stars,
Make them grow taller than my inherited numbness,
Taller than the greedy weeds in your garden.
Forgive me
For I must stand at a distance
And hug you in nostalgia.
You must become to me
Encapsulated only in scents and smells,
Sounds and sighs
Attendant of an occasional native wind
You may hear whispers of a drain
And not realize it isn’t just about you.
I am the drained!
Not gold-thirst chases me
But a thirst to be.
It’s not your wrinkled face
But a wrinkle-coloured me.
I must be lily-livered this once
To be a breathing – living – sane me.
Do not call me by my name,
And leave no ancestral songs in my chest
For a season,
Only for a season.
When a golden sun dawns,
I and mine shall rewind our steps
And stare at the stars once again
From under your palm fronds.
FEMI EROMOSELE
I NEED A VOICE
Right the wrongs;
But as you write to right the wrongs,
They keep wronging the right.
Like ruptured texture of multi-layered denture,
Like crooked legs of a tilted frame,
Our wound and woes have confused roots.
Bloated bellies belch on
Amidst sulking stomachs in marketplaces.
they boast …
‘while you toil in the burning smiles of sun,
in running showers of the sky,
we rape our commonwealth s..e..r..i..a..l..l..y…
irate grey pens shoot at us,
they even poke pauperised haggards
to raze down our rocky roofs.
but hundreds of hoes and countless cutlasses
cannot level our hills of booties,
firm our heels remain.’
STILL…
Before horrendous hydra-headed monsters,
Before rapacious rapists with scarlet underpants,
Scanty ferocious voices S..T..I..L..L.. S..T..A..N..D,
Roaring the truth to dastard hard hearts
Like rabid lions in castration circles,
Staring in daylight at legs of nine-toed monsters,
Jabbing sword-words at prodigal lobes.
THEY SAY…
“Knuckled forces of our vociferous voices
Can slaughter slumber from people’s arms
and
Crush cancerous lips that milk us dry.”
Oh!
Four winged winds; scaffolds of our world;
Dark waters of our world;
Sweats of scavengers with meager meals;
Sonorous-wailing voices of my rabbis;
Touch my cords with honey-hands
So I can sing for hewers of wood to dance;
Touch my tongue with venomous spits of vipers
So I can bite gallivanting gluttons…
Akin Tella
MASKS
Who can ever fathom that there is anything fleshy about the within of a coconut,
Not to talk of the exuberant whiteness in that brown dusty yam,
Can you fathom the bitter sweet taste of the bitter leaf?
Or even the thorny part of the rose,
These are facts that confront us more often than not
When we look and judge things with eyes so close
On this side of eternity where things do not appear in their true forms
It is highly recommended we walk circumspectly
If without thought, we recklessly survey a package,
We will definitely go down with the wreckage.
Who are we? Who is a man? What is our true definition?
Face value, speech, and etiquette may just be part of the deception.
What we exist as can only find expression as an imperfect clone
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
The shock may not be able to be expressed if people unmasked
So many questions that are better left unasked.
Why would we rather hurl missives of verbal insult?
Not to talk of physical assault,
On those who have dared the consequence to face the light,
And consequently shaming the night,
Unveiling the mask and showing their true colour.
These people should be celebrated with accolades and glamour.
The true hero is he that admits that he is human,
Who naturally is exposed to faults and falls,
However, in this age of ours, admitting to an error,
Is tantamount to facing a ban
For which you can be visited with terror.
When will the time come, when will it come?
When the order of the day will be openness to all and not some
When you will show your nakedness to your brother
And be quite sure you will not hear it from another.
When will that time come, will it ever come?
When all men will be unmasked and transparent,
Without motives thwarted and bent.
We long to see the coconut without the hard bark;
We want to see the yam’s whiteness from afar,
We do not want to confuse the taste of the bitter leaf with another
Then, the best way to judge the book will be by the cover!
Tayo Oso
POEM 1
PATRICIAN AT A PLEBEIAN PLAY
Haunting feelings clutch as I stare
“Innocent ones in guilty fray
Clad they are in pietic ray”
Stay they plead I must not dare.
“Upwards” home I trot
Smiley taunts yield the thought
Vengeful thoughts yield the rot-
Mean means, means am no mensch.
Haughty smile, spread on my brow
Twas I was called, thither I went
Scion of a peacock to grace: fluent
Play of withered rose incase in a love show
A scene to say, be-settles me
A concerted “play” to spite m’lord
Hatched from wit-full orb bore
By dire-stricken men.
Regaled by fear, a proselyte is born
To bid adieu the gnaw of guilt
Which like termites had built
Patiently o’er my heart a corn.
At last atonement winged here:
Penal penance meets penchant pension
pending pendant of pendeting dominance
To which the hangman’s noose stands out.
To paradise I come, sad to die
Glad to be so bound to whence
A “patrician” play awaits me. . . .
POEM 2
CALABAR
(For “sleek”)
Thrifting Sea of endless plumage and undulating climes
Caught in sandy beach of ancient splendour
Your being thrill me
Your breezeful-mirth regal me
Your beauty fascinates me
Lone as I sit to savour your sweetness:
Sweetness of an ancient city
Caught up in ascedal steps to
Modernity.
Calabar, my calabar
Nostalgia cloak me as I bid adieu
Solorn onyx bride of jadeful groom.
OGAR CHRISTOPHER OGAR
UNCONQUERABLE QUEST
Like a lump
I wish I could spit it out of my throat
But it’s an indelible ink
So bold, that I couldn’t get off my cloth
Like an unforgiving ghost
Sharing the same boundary with my soul
I’m a man of quest
Searching for a mind of my own
Like the sun
With rays which I wish to follow
But an unbreakable jinx
Narrow path that lead to where no one knows
Like a miragic shadow
I’m always close, no matter how fast or slow
It’s an unconquerable task
Finding the path of tomorrow
Like an unfathomable sum
I’m trying hard to get its proximity
But has unending links
Tragic surprises that follow previous felicities
Like an intriguing obscurity
My ingenuity can’t cope with its dexterity
It’s an utmost jest
Tracing the course of destiny.
AdejareFadhiluAjolayo
| “To you, O earth, I am calling |
True wisdom has built its house
The fear of me, means understanding
Do not become wise in your own eyes
Many are friend of rich ones
Fellowman of little means is a villain
Hatred for the lowly ones
True companion is a loving vein
Vain is your quest as you try to catch wind
The greatest vanity, everything is vanity
None can save because you all sinned
I am love and unity
Life in this world can be hard
Life in this world can bring tears and pain
I will help you to stand
And your life is not in vain
Love me with heart , mind and soul
Though temptations confront you each day
Sinful you are, you need self- control
And I lead you not astray
Be happy ! am making all wars to cease
Peace you all must bear
I am for peace
Everyone,show peaceful care
EPISTLE TO EARTH II
Love must come from in your hearts
True com-pan-ions, you should ever be
Real fellow feeling its imparts
Ever loyal should you be
Rejoice , young man in your youth
When calamity has not befall you
The light is also sweet
And it is good to you
Has one found a good wife?
He has found good thing
Rejoice with your youthful wife
Before you will have no delight in it
O earth! Listen to me
Read these faithful poems, to your children
Obey my laws and me
Write these; in the heart of your great and grand children
All that I have seen, under the sun
During the time man dominated man
To his own injury, with none
To show justice to man
Delight in doing good to all
Never become wise in your eyes
The wisdom of man causes him to fall
Has no power over his spirit
The conclusion of the matter is: Fear me, your God
And keep my commandment.
Everyone ,show peaceful care
FIRE IN MY BLOOD
Entourage Of that dumb roaring shadow
Entrapping green waters Streaming in the abdomen of virgin fields
Wrapping heavy umbra around The dancing waist of mid-morns gasping For silvery descendants
I live to entomb In the plangent shackles of prickly silence
So a weeping silo mothering bouquets of balms
The sobbing banks of that pregnant horizon pluck
SLEEPING FIRES
Along rungs Trenchant of sleeping fires Melted our bank Into a hollow of dimming noon
Where homely seeds Are devoured by devout dews Deserted by claws of cutting maternal descent Eavesdropping on the ebullient dances of eclipse
Elder elms we see Encircle enclaves with the swagger Of an enchantress My raddled me and its ilk, I howl repulses these holocausts
DAVID ISHAYA OSU
“O! rare Ganiyu”
Shall the Eagle fly without reason?
Shall Oyesola dance in the market
And drums of history silence awake?
The drummer and his drum may silence appeal,
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
In days of innocence I heard the Eagle’s song
Amidst a lawful and lawless race.
The Eagle’s song, an hamattan
A pill to the upright
A thorn to evil men
What a challenge to JAH?
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
The Eagle soared in a hot sun
In the day, what a trouble?
In the night – among fear and despair
The TEMPEST rage among the tempests
Walls around the Eagle cracked and fell
Yet, the Eagle flew high with a song of freedom
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
When the Eagle danced, the Ravens head a talk
Fowls and ducks, all in panic sat down
A meeting of conspiracy was held
In the Eagle’s territory
A dice of warning flew in the air
A sword of unlawful judgement
In horizon danging
The Eagle stood and watched the play of Giants
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
When the Eagle soar high,
The globe heard and saw Him
The seeds of Yahweh praised Him
The fragments of Lucifer berated Him
And some on the valley of indecision stood
Asking where do we go from here?
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
Then, in a doubtful state I looked
With fear and uncertainty
With hope and hopelessness
With bewilderment ant dejection
With Niger in a turbulent world
I asked,
Could there be Eaglets again?
JEREMIAH CLEMENT OJAMEDA
The Sun Has Gone Dark
At the first crow of the cock, I awoke with a start;
Hearing the early goat’s bleat, made me run and dart;
I bent over my soft bed and stepped out;
The startling thing I saw made me cry and shout
Where the early morning sun once had stood,
It was all dark like a wolf’s food;
My heart gave a bitter moan and a shrill cry;
I wished I could pry open the sky
It is neither folktale nor story;
It was a truth unacceptable as a sight so gory;
That the sky upon our land has gone dark;
It has brought us to a standstill and made us park
Our leaders have darkened the bright moon,
An impending doom seems very soon,
They have lost the welcome ovation,
Thrown deep gloom upon the great nation
Now to us comes the clear clarion call;
To redeem our land from this seeming fall,
Take back the glory and restore the sun’s brightness,
And at last make this sky regain its whiteness
ONELE PETER CHUKWUDI
TELL THEM
In our threshold,
there are many broken walls
and many promises for the aggrieved-
there are fences that hide the graves
of sons of men, and the many songs
we must learn not to remember
draw us nearer to the smoking cannon.
I know there are walls
that teach hearts the meaning of silence
when tears become one with flood.
We know how batons feel
at the backs of the hungered, how men
are reduced to pillars of ashes
by the god’s other sons.
In the land,
it is in silence
one hears the silence of the despised.
It is in the land
one sees the rot of the earth
and their foolishness thereof.
Shola Balogun
LETTER TO MY MOTHER (WHIRLWIND MOMENTS)
Spinning dooms,
Weaving tears
Into bowls of memories
Spinning dooms,
Clustering fingers of foggy dreams,
Chasing glories to unseen exile
Hanging pebbles,
Watching the cloudy hands of loss
Cones of anguish wheeled in tunes,
Songs of season spawn sober stories
Into the itching ears of mourning marketers
We have watched the yolks flowed
Into the angry blades of spears
And the fading candles breaking
Tears in our blind eyes
Torrent comments on our fallen years
And we still gather like clog of wood
To watch this unseen parable in the
Eyes of wailing earth
FALLING YEARS (NIGERIA AT 51)
Looming sky borrows our eyes,
Those falling years of bereaved memories
Cobwebs wed our weird eyes,
Fabrics of mourning sow on our linens,
Those deluges of pains hiding in those years.
Mat of mirage marred our moon,
Songs of sorrow, yielding fruitlessness
To our thirsty mouths
Those years of endless night when
Parachutes of shames spread on our faces.
When dusty gown wore our cradle
Muse lends our fading smiles.
Our hopes have been slit to dance in
Those falling years of wandering legs…..
WHO DO I TELL?
You use me for your course
I run errands for your purse
Even at the abuse of my thought
I mute as I turn from your wrath
You call me and I come
You wink and I storm
I carry and I weary
In dreary and in sundry
. . .
Then you come to tell me am stuffing you
You now know I no better some tissue
Now you know this one better me
And that one “goodder” than me
. . .
Poor me!
Who do I tell. . .
How I do smell. . .
For what I doesn’t pelt . . .?
Who do I tell?
Yemi Philip
Flower In The Sun
{for Master Rumi}
Eyes above cobwebs, I find space beyond reason
One foot flat while the other traces the curling notes
Of a gwogie, irregular like leaves of breeze blown palms;
Care-fetters forgotten, my torso turns through a slow full arc
The One is sun, circles of energy, an endless garden where
Sphere music sustains my every whirl as a flower-top
Spinning on a force field. Illumined by It, my eyes find
Beneath myriad ways a common trail running.
I dance in my white sheet and all the Prophets come
To watch me blossoming in the garden, purifying my will;
Seven djinns come to test me, demanding the kalimat shahada
I do not stop, I reply; there is, one God, there is. Just One God.
Richard Ali
A Dark Ghazal
Infernal pointsman destroying space-time
Shattering science in a million frissons of glass
This is the end of the fury – the mad scribbling
The chill of waiting to pen perfect roses
Whirlwinds rage on, but I am innocent of dust
My imperfect lines throb as if they still live
The market yet pulses with life
I tell you
Fortitude and solitude are one
The same with wine and women and art
Cold mistresses teasing flames in temples
Parched with thinking, longing
And forgetting
So
Life shatters into a million frissons
And I step out into the light
Killing the man in the mirror.
Richard Ali
YOU REALLY ARE MAD!
Are you not?
Round the clock you work
Nothing to show for it
From 8am-6pm you teach
Don mad, don fatigued
The brain’s delicate cord
Holding your reason togethere
Will soon snap you into stroke.
Motley mascaras you wear
Unfashionable masquerade
You really are mad.
Orange-size foofoo you buy
But on countless chunky pieces of meat you lustily feast
As if there is no tomorrow
Wasting the day’s wages
Your liposuction days are numbered
When your kolomental will vamoose.
That thin-legged thing you follow
Around sheepishly as if hypnotized
The mother of your children is at home
Sweating it out to make your home
And you are bent on frustrating her
One day is for the owner
Infamy is hanging on your head
Like the Damocles’ sword!
Your students you tell
‘A’ is for God; ‘B’ is for you
‘C’ is for them maybe…
Elephantine shame on you
Because you really are mad
Transferor of aggression
Mother aggressor,
How did you fare you in school?
You agree to sleep
With that foul-mouthed
Pot-bellied, k-legged,
Thick-lipped bloated pig
You have reduced yourself to a letter
For ‘A’ or ‘B’ grade,
Your destiny you mortgage.
Political peculator
Pen robber, figures editor
Sugar-mouthed Squealer
Prancing Sycophant
Because you have no conscience
Ride on to your infernal doom!
You pack people like sardine
No horn, no rear light, no wiper
Yet you charge appallingly
You really are mad!
OLUSAANU, James Boaner
The god inevitable
Widen heaven open
Sky drop his stars
Tears from the cloud
Torrent into an ocean
Mountains cracked, seas dried
Cries amongst the air
Blesseth be thy day
Thy sun bore her
Out of the soil
Thine has been made
Thy womb; a nation
More as the sand
By the river bank
Priestess hewn from stone
Hair of thy head;
Weeds in the tropical
Skin tanned to deep mahogany
Sons of the earth
Shelter in her womb
Bristol of thine breast
Mine day square meal
Upon thine spine
Lay thy ultimate bed
Me, crawl with tears
From babyhood to adulthood
Thy love continueth
Awake O awake
Bring forth your tender heart
O priestess
From the hill top of hope
Mountain of despair
With thine I lay my eyes
Mine eyes of faith
Though faith in fate
Thou standeth by me
Mcmike wrights
LABYRINTH OF ILLUSORY SUCCESS
(With tears and pains …)
Through the maze we traverse
On a journey to nowhere safe our destination.
The weather lacerate through our skin.
In too deep, it cuts like the surgeon’s knife.
And at a point, same weather scorched fiercely;
Burning through us like the blacksmith’s fire.
The fire in us unquenchable by the rain;
We traverse through the desert of pain.
Undeterred by the tears on our women’s faces;
Forging ahead despite wailings from our children.
Wailing echoing like the ‘Timbrel of Miriam’,
On the zigzag path to success we tread with hope.
Like a rabbit warren, the network of success
Sometimes so difficult to link. Yet this opulence
We seek with blood dripping from our body.
At a point gushing out like ‘Ikogosi Waterfalls’
Body so cold with fever; blood so warm with cold.
I saw blood! Blood of the innocent red as scarlet.
At a point, we couldn’t move our feet, but
When we think of our destination, we smile.
Standing to face the uphill task like it’s no stress
At all. We walk. Walking or dragging, we couldn’t tell.
On this labyrinth of success we traversed undeterred.
Like Elliot in his ‘The Journey of the Magi’, we too
On this journey, saw death; and there was a birth.
A birth of a new life in us, full of hope & desire.
We walk tall at the sight of fulfilment. If the
Success that had been our plight we can’t have
Nothing then is worth having, not women or drinks.
At the gate of success, with regrets we stand,
For it appears our journey has come to futility.
Shrieks of our women and children echoing in our ears,
We’ve brought them to vanity, for the journey was futile.
With tears and pains we voyaged for vainglory.
The illusory success disappeared like a wraith.
Clement Adebayo Oloyede
MIRAGE OF GLORY
Like a wraith it appeared and disappeared in a splash.
A spectre of glory unleashed, withdrawn like a bash
Of fistful force unrestrained and let loosed like trash.
An image of illusionary grandeur with apparition,
It came into sight and vanished like a phantasm.
Phantasmagorically, in sequence it appeared to disappear.
We waited and slumbered, so weak and weary a condition.
We waited in great anticipation of a moment long gone.
Gone like the good old day; we felt undone.
The Holy Book speaks of the latter glory
Being greater than the former. Struggle of gory
With all the blood wasted calling for vengeance.
With so much force we seek for peace in trance.
On the cause of this we seek for the appearance
Of what the latter glory will bring with it in its ambience.
With tears we planted with hope of joyful harvest.
With lachrymosity, morose untethered abreast,
We toiled and laboured not for personal gains, but
We exert ourselves for the glory that lies ahead in the west.
Working our fingers to the bone not to outwit, but
We moiled, paddling in mud, just to standout among the best.
We, like Trojan, worked hard, pulling and prodding under;
We, seeking for something to go beyond the yonder;
When weariness beckons, doggedly with sweat in the heat
We find energy in hope that metamorphosed into zeal.
When failure beckons, with hope of success so real
We thought of the glory ahead and fail to fail with a beam.
We lost love in lust, and find lust in love, all in the dream.
If we knew our glory will be lost in trance, we could
Have forever abided in stupor. Dreaming would
Have been better than living. At least the glory would
Have been realisable. But the reverie could
Not outlast the reality. We awoke to the crude,
Unrefined, barbaric coldness of verisimilitude.
Hundreds of brothers and sisters from the hood
Toiled with us for this optical illusion. As we stood
It’s obvious the glory we seek was a mirage yet so true.
Clement Adebayo Oloyede
IF ONLY WE CAN FORGET
If only we can forget
Then there’’ll be no regret
If only we cannot remember
Then we’’ll have a sweet December
If only we can forget special
moments
Heartbreaks won’t bring us
torments
If we can’’t recall the battle
We won’t feel treated like cattle
If everything ends only at sight
Rumours never will cause a fight
If painful memories could vanish
at once
We’’ll all live like daughters and
sons
If a child, adults hadn’t abuse
How best will youths be of use?
Truly we can forgive
But memories stretch as we live
To forget our gone brethren we
try
Yet we wake up at nights and cry
So many things we try to forget
Because pain is what they beget
But really if events can’t be
stored
Life itself would be core bored
If we don’t learn from the loss
How do we become the boss?
Left and right, night and day
The creator made things that way
All we do is wish and hope
But the answer is learning to
cope
And with time as our healer
We’ll conquer the mind-killer.
Okanlawon Kazeem
WE ARE ONE
From the same origin
Progeny of the same progenitor
Birds of the same feathers
One parent procreate us
Life is just a privilege.
Our parent eats the forbidden
When in the garden paradise
Then our teeth- burnt
And our tongue- sour
The reward of disobedience
We are paddling the same boat
When the wind blows
It rummages us on the sea of life
Tossing to and fro like a pendulum
But when our creator calms the storm
Tears of joy cascaded our cheek.
We are one
We carry the same mentality
Corruption in our blood
Hatred our foundation
An ancestral inheritance
Lineage transmission.
But all hope is not lost in that
Until we practice the egalitarianism
Channelling a new course
Reprimanding our flesh
Of making shipwreck of the brotherhood
Until we eradicate racism
Discrimination and age grade
And see ourselves as one
Progeny of the same progenitor
Then, we will enjoy life.
We are one and soil
Either black or white
Purple or brown
Rich or poor
Old and young
Airy or scarring
Privileged or proletariat.
For when death draws its curtain
We have nowhere to run to
Even the best athlete
Becomes deformed
Then we smile like Egyptian mummies
And all turns to soil
So, what is left of the wealthy?
What is left of the proletariat?
Vanity upon vanity.
***********************************************
NATURAL BEAUTY
Beauty is long gone
Long in extinction
Remaining is masquerade beauty
Of rogues, powder and lipstick.
If lies you think I tell
Check every chic’s bag
Their indispensable you’ll see
Either a mirror or disc
Something transparent
To reveal delusion
Showing them masquerade for beauty
Click clacking in the street
Like an expert demented epitome
Painted like artistic work.
If natural beauty you wants to know
Check every chic early in the morning
After the dawn chorus
When all paintings are gone
For they are for a season
They have low life span
Then, the truth you’ll know
The face with eczema
Looking like an influenza chicken
Bald head like vulture’s head
All this you’ll see
While some is eyesore
Some looks natural and charming.
If you want to scrutinize natural beauty
Be there before the rogues and paintings.
Joseph Samuel
JUNIOR CATEGORY
The birth of the morning
When I hear the birds chitty chatter
The Rooster Cock-al-doodle-doo
And the chicken chip chop
Then I know a new day is about to be born
When I see the dark sky clear
Hear the distant sound
Of a moving car/lorry
And the slam sounds of door
I know the new day has arrived
Then I stir from my effortless sleep
I rouse my junior one’s
I kneel down to greet my parents
To the day’s battle start
With who’s brushing her teeth first
Then who’s taking her birth first,
May be because we are all boys,
That is why rivalry is much
Each of us strives to be ahead of others
But when its time to do the dishes
Everyone strives to be behind
I wonder if all kids are like this
Or we are just a different bunch
Off to the car we troop still arguing
Whose return is to do what
At school we manage to stay calm
Hoping for the closing bell to clang quick
That we can be together again
Oh happy reunion after few hours separation
But this emotion never last long
There we go rivarlying
Stop it! Shouted mother
What’s the problem
There starts the proceeding in the lower court
Everybody has right to appeal at the high court
Presided by the Almighty daddy
Though not always around
But he gets his share of the chaos
And he meets our justice fairly
Nine-thirty P.M is the end of the old-day
All tired muscles demand their share of rest
One after the other they go,
To brush their teeth
And take their bath
Finally each starts dozing off
To their beds still grumbling
No sooner have their bodies touched their beds
Than they are off to the dreamland of sleep
They wander off it all through
To dad and mum can at last have their peace
To await the birth of another day.
Olaosebikan Babatunde
Time changes all
Time comes, come, come it comes
Time goes, goes, it will be gone.
When it’s time for music,
Time changes the life style.
When it’s time to dance,
Time changes the steps.
When its time to play,
Time changes the game.
When its time to chat
Time changes the gist.
When its time for crying
Time changes the conditions.
When its time for reading
Time changes the schedule.
When its time for birth,
Time changes to joy.
Time, time, time be it,
Time changes clockwise and anti-clockwise.
Time, time changes,
Time is loving and waits for nobody.
Kayode Odedare
The Heir
Born to the melody of the Bata drum
The King and his Chiefs sat to the rum,
For this day his son was born,
Born with riches, born as a Lord, born to be King
Diamonds were his
As the crown and its beads,
His footsteps he learnt to the drummers’ bass,
But their extravagance was to his displeasure
The people are poor,
Their roofs are thatched,
Their fingers are bruised,
To the heirs displeasure
Let our eyes mourn
As they loot our gold,
For one day will come,
We will inherit the throne.
Aiku Babatope
Someone from somewhere
Time after time I gazed on in the lonesome dusty road
Working out waiting for better half
So much to say…. So much to talk about.
Who will tell how sweet the soup taste?
Who will give words to my beautiful clothing?
Who will seek my sweet script without stains?
I played the pipe
And made the music
But there was none to dance
Who will give harmony to my words
Whose ears will tingle while I sing
Who will speak to me when I need.
In date line with destiny
The day dawned on a dainty damsel
And lit my heart will glow and glee
Someone from somewhere
Now doubles my delight
And divides my distresses.
Peter Daniel
Teacher
There are many professions
Teaching is one of them
A Teacher is a person who
Teaches Doctors, Engineers,
Civil Servants, Lawyer and
Others are made by teacher through lowly place
Are to be divinely elevated
Teacher is indispensable
Whoever ignores Teacher
Would educate his family,
Himself indirectly
Teachers are Counselors, Doctors, Judges,
Accountants and so on.
To be a teacher is good,
Many prophets are teachers.
Badmus Tunde
My love for you
I am a lonely heart
Begging to be given a chance
Love! Give me a chance
To come into your heart
Come into my life
To make my world
A better place
I love you
Straight from my heart
A long distance appearance is a deceive
Live I am always with you in spirit
No minute passes without me thinking about you
Come rain come sunshine
My word with you remain unchanges
I am fully prepared
For the said journey
If you beam a green light
My prayer to Almighty God
Is to grant us
The courage, the strength, the love
That will sustain us to the end
I have made up my minds
T follow you to the end
You are mine and I am yours
Falajiki Odunayo
You can succeed
If you face your studies
And forget all the pleasures of the world
If you do not take
Your teachers to be fools
You can succeed
If you take your lessons seriously
And learn from your mistakes
If you prove not
To know everything
You can succeed.
If you ask questions in doubt
Make sure they are reasonable
Read accordingly to it
You can succeed.
If you avoid cheating
Stop depending on
Friends and partners at the exam hall
You can succeed
If you read your bible during leisure time
Have your quiet time
Pray everyday for wisdom and
Power to understand well
You can succeed.
Ezeocha David
Lonely
I still hear your voice when you sleep next to me
I still feel your touch in my dream forgive me
My weakness
But I don’t know why without you is
Hard to survive
Cause every time we touch I get this
Feelings
And every time we kiss I swear I just fly
Cant you feel my heart
Beat fast
I want this to last
Need you by my side.
Cause every time we touch
I feel the staling and
Every time we kiss I reach for the sky
Cant you hear my heart
Beat slow
I cant let you go
I want you in my life
Michael T. Jude
Death
The name people hear of and panic,
The name that scares all and sundry.
Thou givest no permission before thou takest life,
Thou do not give signals before arriving.
He that dies is considered to be gone forever.
Thou that doesn’t givest homage to crowns.
Thou is never scared to approach any mortal,
Thou art inevitable for every living being.
Why does thou panic when thou hear the name?
All thy going up and down will one day to come to an end.
Why doesn’t thou relax and wait for it?
Simply because everyone doesn’t want to die?
However, man is created to be given birth to,
And also to die
Why does thou run from the inevitable?
Only a man with clean hands and holy heart
Can boast, saying to death.
“Oh ye death, I am not afraid!
When you are ready, I also am”,
But people want to enjoy life,
While every living being is destined to die,
And return to his or her creator
Why run from the inevitable.
Feyisayo Ogunbusuyi
The Day of Judgment
Men are been oppressed
The future looking depressed
The innocent die like fools
Men used like working tools
They say ‘life is pleasant’
While we live the life of peasants
We are denied the food of our fathers
And left behind with the rotten carcass
I am a fortune teller, I say the future is ugly
People so confused and so worried
Who is the cause?
Our economy is on pause
Corruption spreading like wildfire
Our leaders ruling with evil desires
This is the final judgment
For all the people in government
The call of the trumpet we shall hear
And the leaders shall be gripped with fear
The people will sing song of praise
And the leaders will look for a hiding place
While we rule our kingdom
The leaders shall ask for freedom
But they will not be given
Because our golden treasures were hidden
Seasons will come and go
But they will still be there with their burning toes
They will sing their dirge
But we refuse to help
This is the future I see
For those who are ready to pay the fees
Kazeem Ibrahim
A regular day in school
Clink…clink….clink…….
Who goes there?
What do we hear?
There goes the school bell.
It announces yet,
Another program in the school,
The students scramble.
Hoping the day would meet their anticipation,
With what it will bring.
The classes are dull,
The topics are boring,
Trying to keep awake but they fall,
And end up getting punished,
The periods are wasted,
Not much is accomplished.
The afternoon are not any better,
‘Be quiet’ is what you’d hear,
The kind hall warden changes like the weather
He shouts, ‘be quiet’,
The students shudder,
Some notorious ones try to stir up confusion,
A conflict starts and the warden looks for the origination.
They are caught,
Little of their anticipation
After the lunch comes the prep.
An extra stress is placed on each classes’ rep.
They bear the burden of keeping their class quiet.
The notorious ones start,
And are reported by the teacher’s pet.
Everyone in the whole set.
Despises the teacher’s pet.
Nothing to do,
They stare in dismay ,
Waiting for May,
The most pleasant month.
The month of the children’s day
That is just a regular day.
Oruwariye Michael
Education
There, Where there is endless strive for success,
The endless hopes and aspirations,
For education is the best legacy.
There, where no help was rendered to the poor,
The dim past and the future mingled,
For education is the best legacy.
There, where there is struggle to reach for the top,
Few find a way to the top after much struggle,
For education is the best legacy.
There, where the rich have no desire to assist the poor fellows,
No way is found to the top
For education is the best legacy
There, where no short way is to the top,
I watch to find the people struggle for the top,
For education is the best legacy
There, where the people struggle in an endless search for the top,
I watch the endless strive to be learned,
For education is the best legacy.
There, where some try to search for way but cannot in find it,
All means are tried,
All efforts made,
All dreams dreamed in search for the way after falling many times,
For education is the best legacy.
There, where only feeble can wander back,
Finding all means here and there in search for success and reaching for
Excellence,
For education is the best legacy.
There, where no one knows the right way to success,
Where one doe not want to suffer in wretchedness,
For education is the best legacy.
There, where those who strive to work hard usually get to top
And become great people in future,
Those who are never serious, regret it at a later hour,
For education is the best legacy.
Eunice Abraham
Gaddafi, Gaddafi, Gaddafi!!!!!!!!!
How the mighty have fallen
Tell it in Tripoli
Proclaim it in Mistrata
Let the inhabitants of Benghazi be aware
For 42 years, he had been ruling
From 29 years of age he had been on the throne through bloodless coup
Claiming the Alpha and Omega of Libya
Swifter than eagle
Stronger than lion
Oh ye Libya proclaim freedom
The land flowing with crude oil makes a loud noise of joy
GADDAFI, Oh GADDAFI
The self acclaimed king of Kings in Africa
The Imam of Muslims
The iron-fisted ruler
You who vow to provide house for every Libyans before your own family
You who silenced the opposition with overt killing and incarceration
You also gag the press
You’ve brazenly resist the interference of world powers
Alas you became power drunk
Like a fly that parched in to a beer and continue to drink to stupor and finally
Died inside it
Power corrupt, absolute power corrupt absolutely
Claiming that nobody can unseat you
Vowed to die on the throne
Until you were dislodged by NTC and NATO
Called it a western conspiracy
You are damn right
How the mighty have fallen
The weapons of war have perished
You African leaders in general
And Nigeria in particular
Know that power is transient
And the seat of throne is ephemeral
Whatever you do today is a story tomorrow.
Oladapo Oluwadamilola Blessing
MIRACLE
Everyone loves a miracle
The face of a child
Dawn out of the rubies
Last gap effort
Securing unexpected victory
Stories retold to give hope
Stories that make life worth living.
Finished out of the raft
When all hope seems lost
The break through
The resurrection of dreams
Miracle we all need
To make life worth living
Miracle ! Miracle !! Miracle!!!
Ebiere Anthony
UP DELTA
This is a state, a great state
Flowing with milk and honey
Blessed land of God.
This is a state with good leaders
Leaders with God blessed hearts
Serving people with love.
A state with a good name
At home and abroad
Paradise on earth you are
See Delta and live
Live in the land
Where security is certain
Confess good and receive good
Confess good about Delta
The blessed land of mine
Tare Anthony
LET US PRAY
May God be with the King
For him to rule according to God’s wisdom
For peace to reign in the land.
May God be with the President
Governors and local government chairmen
For people’s loves to be in them
May God be with the husbands
To guide wives and children rightly
For good family to exist
May God be with the students
To listen to their teachers and learn
For them not to become thieves.
Deborah Anthony
A Great Nation
A great nation,
A peaceful land
People are joined together
To make a nation
A nation is just like ant gathered around
Like cubes of sugar
A nation is destroyed by man
A nation is also built by man
Injustice brings conflict
Justice bring peace,
A great nation,
A peaceful land.
Akinbola Eniola
Mystery
I woke up at dawn
To a world full of mystery,
Still in the search for a mirror
So as to know who I really am.
Beneath me is a soul
Talented with the art of music,
But also is there soul
Who can fight for the people
Should I make use of my art
And influence my fellow beings positively
Or should I cross to the other side
And fight for the people to their advantage
Oh! What a mystery!
Oh! What darkness I am in!
But I know thou above
Shall choose the right path for me.
For my country as at now
Has no map for the moment,
Oh! I am lost
Oh! What mystery.
Bolaji-Yusuff Galib
What a world
What a world, what a world
What a world full of crime
What a world full of evil
What a sorrowful world
What a world, what a world
What a world full of fornication
What a world full of criminals
What a sinful world.
What a world, what a world
What a world full of unbelievers
What a world full of atrocities
What a ridiculous world
What a world, what a world
What a world full of different people with different characters
What a world full of war
What shameful world
What a world, what a world
What world full of goodness
What a world full of peace
What a peaceful world
What a world, what a world
What a world full of goodness
What a world full of peace
What a peaceful world.
What a world, what a world
What a world full of believers
What a world full of mercy
What a wonderful world.
But remember,
If you don’t go back to your God,
The world will take you away from the Lord,
So separate from the things of the world.
Kuhe Isaiah
When will it be over?
A voice that sounds in the dark night
Even when there is no hope of light
Reminding me of the green grass
That surround the house of the young lass
But that was when things went on smoothly
When the birds still sang their songs happily
The crown that does not pity it’s subject’s plight
It tramples upon their every right
Never willing to be a servant leader
Not interested in being a loyal reader
Into their pockets, they gather
About the masses, they never bother
It is not wise t say they are heads
It is not foolish to call them sic heads
They do not know the pains of yesterday
They throw the future’s gain away
Men who do not treasure the future
Without respect for the good part of culture
Their children they fail to nurture
They are tyres with a puncture
Their people struggle to cope
Believing in their hopeless hope
With much sorrow and sighing
They shed tears without crying
Their skins manage to cover their bones
A hearing ear is needed to hear their undertones
On them the sun never smiles
It rather runs a thousand miles
Will this suffering last forever?
When will it be over?
Omofaye Victor I.
My mother
Many things I would love to say
To the one who brightens my day,
The one who puts me to sleep
And rescue me from oceans deep.
When I smile she smiles with me.
The world at large she make me see
She always has advice to spare.
Always ready to show love and care
She has shown me so much love,
She’s my angel, send from above.
She makes me feel so unique
Although the world calls me a freak
And no matter where I go
I know I am not alone
Because I am always on her mind
Whether the world is wicker of kind
She has shown me so much love
And I could never wish for another
Because she is the best mother
On this planet and any other.
Oyegunle Kofoworola
LET US PRAY
May God be with the King
For him to rule according to God’s wisdom
For peace to reign in the land.
May God be with the President
Governors and local government chairmen
For people’s loves to be in them
May God be with the husbands
To guide wives and children rightly
For good family to exist
May God be with the students
To listen to their teachers and learn
For them not to become thieves during the examination.
May God be with the sick,
To use the prescribed drugs,
For him not to pass away soon.
Iseghohimen Hannah
A Dirge to my country
Our leaders incessantly fight for power
Killing thousands of people in an hour
Our leaders rule with selfish manner
Looting our resources and making us low earners.
Woe! Nigeria.
The crux of the problem is corruption
The major instrument used in killing the nation
Due to lack of human communication
And unable to withstand the recent temptations
Nigeria, Giant of Africa with a high population
And citizens living in high desperation
Woe! Nigeria
Nigeria, our very own crawling giant
Who turn out enviable merchants
Who rule our nation like the colonial masters
Using their powers to make the economy scattered
Keeping us in hunger and making their stomachs fatter.
Woe! Nigeria.
I see the future pregnant with sorrow
Living day by day without hopes of tomorrow
I fell the pains flow in my bone marrow
Where is the right leader we can all follow?
Woe! Nigeria.
Nigeria, when will our hidden milk flow?
When will our rotten economy glow?
When will true leadership grow?
When will we reap the seed we have sown?
These are questions that need answers to be told.
Woe! Nigeria
Wieba Ebimotimi
My Country
My country, my country
Blessed with natural resources
A country blessed with many tribal and ethnic group
A country rich in culture and heritage
A country endowed with many nutritious dishes
But with all this,
Where is our ones,
Where is our pride,
For long abandoned and traded out to foreigners
We still hop between pricks and tears
We live in poverty not in wealth
A country where the rich oppress the poor
A country without justice
A country where the leaders beg for powers
But misuse them when they get it.
We want an end to the close of carnival
Let all join hands across the blessed land of ours
Nigeria
Interpreted means – Nurture, Integrity, Gratitude, Endurance, Risk, Indifference, Agreement.
Together we are one.
Fakorede Faruk Olalekan
The troubled
Sinking heavenly on the floors of the streets
Staring at the humans to give out something
Praying for others just to feed on something
During the cold, they still have nothing to wear but
Their torn patched cloth
Also during a celebration
Accepting our rejects and remains
And still being abandoned on the streets
Even with their thousand tears
There is no one to listen to their fears
People dying for unsolved reasons
More illiterates still have no money
To attend school
Government waving by with their flashy cars
But don’t stop to ask for their problems
So all what they begin to do is
Watch, pray and hope.
Ologburo Temitayo
The final judgment
Too many times in the past
I tried hard and long
To put away gory memories
and tears of sorrow
For many years rolled by
I toiled and fought
To overlook the giant tears
And marks of pain
In one slowly drifting day
I came to see
These memories can be an enemy
And fate a god…
Whenever the sun rises
The people say ‘dawn’
You appeared in my life
And became my soul
After the storm comes the sun
Or so I like to say
The memory of you are now
Strenght and reason for faith
If indeed I could pay you
I would cease to live
Because to be indebted to you
And trapped in your arm
… is my life.
Adegoke Gbenga
| “To you, O earth, I am calling |
True wisdom has built its house
The fear of me, means understanding
Do not become wise in your own eyes
Many are friend of rich ones
Fellowman of little means is a villain
Hatred for the lowly ones
True companion is a loving vein
Vain is your quest as you try to catch wind
The greatest vanity, everything is vanity
None can save because you all sinned
I am love and unity
Life in this world can be hard
Life in this world can bring tears and pain
I will help you to stand
And your life is not in vain
Love me with heart , mind and soul
Though temptations confront you each day
Sinful you are, you need self- control
And I lead you not astray
Be happy ! am making all wars to cease
Peace you all must bear
I am for peace
Everyone,show peaceful care
EPISTLE TO EARTH II
Love must come from in your hearts
True com-pan-ions, you should ever be
Real fellow feeling its imparts
Ever loyal should you be
Rejoice , young man in your youth
When calamity has not befall you
The light is also sweet
And it is good to you
Has one found a good wife?
He has found good thing
Rejoice with your youthful wife
Before you will have no delight in it
O earth! Listen to me
Read these faithful poems, to your children
Obey my laws and me
Write these; in the heart of your great and grand children
All that I have seen, under the sun
During the time man dominated man
To his own injury, with none
To show justice to man
Delight in doing good to all
Never become wise in your eyes
The wisdom of man causes him to fall
Has no power over his spirit
The conclusion of the matter is: Fear me, your God
And keep my commandment.
Everyone ,show peaceful care
FIRE IN MY BLOOD
Entourage Of that dumb roaring shadow
Entrapping green waters Streaming in the abdomen of virgin fields
Wrapping heavy umbra around The dancing waist of mid-morns gasping For silvery descendants
I live to entomb In the plangent shackles of prickly silence
So a weeping silo mothering bouquets of balms
The sobbing banks of that pregnant horizon pluck
SLEEPING FIRES
Along rungs Trenchant of sleeping fires Melted our bank Into a hollow of dimming noon
Where homely seeds Are devoured by devout dews Deserted by claws of cutting maternal descent Eavesdropping on the ebullient dances of eclipse
Elder elms we see Encircle enclaves with the swagger Of an enchantress My raddled me and its ilk, I howl repulses these holocausts
DAVID ISHAYA OSU
“O! rare Ganiyu”
Shall the Eagle fly without reason?
Shall Oyesola dance in the market
And drums of history silence awake?
The drummer and his drum may silence appeal,
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
In days of innocence I heard the Eagle’s song
Amidst a lawful and lawless race.
The Eagle’s song, an hamattan
A pill to the upright
A thorn to evil men
What a challenge to JAH?
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
The Eagle soared in a hot sun
In the day, what a trouble?
In the night – among fear and despair
The TEMPEST rage among the tempests
Walls around the Eagle cracked and fell
Yet, the Eagle flew high with a song of freedom
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
When the Eagle danced, the Ravens head a talk
Fowls and ducks, all in panic sat down
A meeting of conspiracy was held
In the Eagle’s territory
A dice of warning flew in the air
A sword of unlawful judgement
In horizon danging
The Eagle stood and watched the play of Giants
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
When the Eagle soar high,
The globe heard and saw Him
The seeds of Yahweh praised Him
The fragments of Lucifer berated Him
And some on the valley of indecision stood
Asking where do we go from here?
I, the son of Udugbenvwen will speak.
Then, in a doubtful state I looked
With fear and uncertainty
With hope and hopelessness
With bewilderment ant dejection
With Niger in a turbulent world
I asked,
Could there be Eaglets again?
JEREMIAH CLEMENT OJAMEDA
The Sun Has Gone Dark
At the first crow of the cock, I awoke with a start;
Hearing the early goat’s bleat, made me run and dart;
I bent over my soft bed and stepped out;
The startling thing I saw made me cry and shout
Where the early morning sun once had stood,
It was all dark like a wolf’s food;
My heart gave a bitter moan and a shrill cry;
I wished I could pry open the sky
It is neither folktale nor story;
It was a truth unacceptable as a sight so gory;
That the sky upon our land has gone dark;
It has brought us to a standstill and made us park
Our leaders have darkened the bright moon,
An impending doom seems very soon,
They have lost the welcome ovation,
Thrown deep gloom upon the great nation
Now to us comes the clear clarion call;
To redeem our land from this seeming fall,
Take back the glory and restore the sun’s brightness,
And at last make this sky regain its whiteness
ONELE PETER CHUKWUDI
TELL THEM
In our threshold,
there are many broken walls
and many promises for the aggrieved-
there are fences that hide the graves
of sons of men, and the many songs
we must learn not to remember
draw us nearer to the smoking cannon.
I know there are walls
that teach hearts the meaning of silence
when tears become one with flood.
We know how batons feel
at the backs of the hungered, how men
are reduced to pillars of ashes
by the god’s other sons.
In the land,
it is in silence
one hears the silence of the despised.
It is in the land
one sees the rot of the earth
and their foolishness thereof.
Shola Balogun
LETTER TO MY MOTHER (WHIRLWIND MOMENTS)
Spinning dooms,
Weaving tears
Into bowls of memories
Spinning dooms,
Clustering fingers of foggy dreams,
Chasing glories to unseen exile
Hanging pebbles,
Watching the cloudy hands of loss
Cones of anguish wheeled in tunes,
Songs of season spawn sober stories
Into the itching ears of mourning marketers
We have watched the yolks flowed
Into the angry blades of spears
And the fading candles breaking
Tears in our blind eyes
Torrent comments on our fallen years
And we still gather like clog of wood
To watch this unseen parable in the
Eyes of wailing earth
FALLING YEARS (NIGERIA AT 51)
Looming sky borrows our eyes,
Those falling years of bereaved memories
Cobwebs wed our weird eyes,
Fabrics of mourning sow on our linens,
Those deluges of pains hiding in those years.
Mat of mirage marred our moon,
Songs of sorrow, yielding fruitlessness
To our thirsty mouths
Those years of endless night when
Parachutes of shames spread on our faces.
When dusty gown wore our cradle
Muse lends our fading smiles.
Our hopes have been slit to dance in
Those falling years of wandering legs…..
WHO DO I TELL?
You use me for your course
I run errands for your purse
Even at the abuse of my thought
I mute as I turn from your wrath
You call me and I come
You wink and I storm
I carry and I weary
In dreary and in sundry
. . .
Then you come to tell me am stuffing you
You now know I no better some tissue
Now you know this one better me
And that one “goodder” than me
. . .
Poor me!
Who do I tell. . .
How I do smell. . .
For what I doesn’t pelt . . .?
Who do I tell?
Yemi Philip
Flower In The Sun
{for Master Rumi}
Eyes above cobwebs, I find space beyond reason
One foot flat while the other traces the curling notes
Of a gwogie, irregular like leaves of breeze blown palms;
Care-fetters forgotten, my torso turns through a slow full arc
The One is sun, circles of energy, an endless garden where
Sphere music sustains my every whirl as a flower-top
Spinning on a force field. Illumined by It, my eyes find
Beneath myriad ways a common trail running.
I dance in my white sheet and all the Prophets come
To watch me blossoming in the garden, purifying my will;
Seven djinns come to test me, demanding the kalimat shahada
I do not stop, I reply; there is, one God, there is. Just One God.
Richard Ali
A Dark Ghazal
Infernal pointsman destroying space-time
Shattering science in a million frissons of glass
This is the end of the fury – the mad scribbling
The chill of waiting to pen perfect roses
Whirlwinds rage on, but I am innocent of dust
My imperfect lines throb as if they still live
The market yet pulses with life
I tell you
Fortitude and solitude are one
The same with wine and women and art
Cold mistresses teasing flames in temples
Parched with thinking, longing
And forgetting
So
Life shatters into a million frissons
And I step out into the light
Killing the man in the mirror.
Richard Ali
YOU REALLY ARE MAD!
Are you not?
Round the clock you work
Nothing to show for it
From 8am-6pm you teach
Don mad, don fatigued
The brain’s delicate cord
Holding your reason togethere
Will soon snap you into stroke.
Motley mascaras you wear
Unfashionable masquerade
You really are mad.
Orange-size foofoo you buy
But on countless chunky pieces of meat you lustily feast
As if there is no tomorrow
Wasting the day’s wages
Your liposuction days are numbered
When your kolomental will vamoose.
That thin-legged thing you follow
Around sheepishly as if hypnotized
The mother of your children is at home
Sweating it out to make your home
And you are bent on frustrating her
One day is for the owner
Infamy is hanging on your head
Like the Damocles’ sword!
Your students you tell
‘A’ is for God; ‘B’ is for you
‘C’ is for them maybe…
Elephantine shame on you
Because you really are mad
Transferor of aggression
Mother aggressor,
How did you fare you in school?
You agree to sleep
With that foul-mouthed
Pot-bellied, k-legged,
Thick-lipped bloated pig
You have reduced yourself to a letter
For ‘A’ or ‘B’ grade,
Your destiny you mortgage.
Political peculator
Pen robber, figures editor
Sugar-mouthed Squealer
Prancing Sycophant
Because you have no conscience
Ride on to your infernal doom!
You pack people like sardine
No horn, no rear light, no wiper
Yet you charge appallingly
You really are mad!
OLUSAANU, James Boaner
The god inevitable
Widen heaven open
Sky drop his stars
Tears from the cloud
Torrent into an ocean
Mountains cracked, seas dried
Cries amongst the air
Blesseth be thy day
Thy sun bore her
Out of the soil
Thine has been made
Thy womb; a nation
More as the sand
By the river bank
Priestess hewn from stone
Hair of thy head;
Weeds in the tropical
Skin tanned to deep mahogany
Sons of the earth
Shelter in her womb
Bristol of thine breast
Mine day square meal
Upon thine spine
Lay thy ultimate bed
Me, crawl with tears
From babyhood to adulthood
Thy love continueth
Awake O awake
Bring forth your tender heart
O priestess
From the hill top of hope
Mountain of despair
With thine I lay my eyes
Mine eyes of faith
Though faith in fate
Thou standeth by me
Mcmike wrights
LABYRINTH OF ILLUSORY SUCCESS
(With tears and pains …)
Through the maze we traverse
On a journey to nowhere safe our destination.
The weather lacerate through our skin.
In too deep, it cuts like the surgeon’s knife.
And at a point, same weather scorched fiercely;
Burning through us like the blacksmith’s fire.
The fire in us unquenchable by the rain;
We traverse through the desert of pain.
Undeterred by the tears on our women’s faces;
Forging ahead despite wailings from our children.
Wailing echoing like the ‘Timbrel of Miriam’,
On the zigzag path to success we tread with hope.
Like a rabbit warren, the network of success
Sometimes so difficult to link. Yet this opulence
We seek with blood dripping from our body.
At a point gushing out like ‘Ikogosi Waterfalls’
Body so cold with fever; blood so warm with cold.
I saw blood! Blood of the innocent red as scarlet.
At a point, we couldn’t move our feet, but
When we think of our destination, we smile.
Standing to face the uphill task like it’s no stress
At all. We walk. Walking or dragging, we couldn’t tell.
On this labyrinth of success we traversed undeterred.
Like Elliot in his ‘The Journey of the Magi’, we too
On this journey, saw death; and there was a birth.
A birth of a new life in us, full of hope & desire.
We walk tall at the sight of fulfilment. If the
Success that had been our plight we can’t have
Nothing then is worth having, not women or drinks.
At the gate of success, with regrets we stand,
For it appears our journey has come to futility.
Shrieks of our women and children echoing in our ears,
We’ve brought them to vanity, for the journey was futile.
With tears and pains we voyaged for vainglory.
The illusory success disappeared like a wraith.
Clement Adebayo Oloyede
MIRAGE OF GLORY
Like a wraith it appeared and disappeared in a splash.
A spectre of glory unleashed, withdrawn like a bash
Of fistful force unrestrained and let loosed like trash.
An image of illusionary grandeur with apparition,
It came into sight and vanished like a phantasm.
Phantasmagorically, in sequence it appeared to disappear.
We waited and slumbered, so weak and weary a condition.
We waited in great anticipation of a moment long gone.
Gone like the good old day; we felt undone.
The Holy Book speaks of the latter glory
Being greater than the former. Struggle of gory
With all the blood wasted calling for vengeance.
With so much force we seek for peace in trance.
On the cause of this we seek for the appearance
Of what the latter glory will bring with it in its ambience.
With tears we planted with hope of joyful harvest.
With lachrymosity, morose untethered abreast,
We toiled and laboured not for personal gains, but
We exert ourselves for the glory that lies ahead in the west.
Working our fingers to the bone not to outwit, but
We moiled, paddling in mud, just to standout among the best.
We, like Trojan, worked hard, pulling and prodding under;
We, seeking for something to go beyond the yonder;
When weariness beckons, doggedly with sweat in the heat
We find energy in hope that metamorphosed into zeal.
When failure beckons, with hope of success so real
We thought of the glory ahead and fail to fail with a beam.
We lost love in lust, and find lust in love, all in the dream.
If we knew our glory will be lost in trance, we could
Have forever abided in stupor. Dreaming would
Have been better than living. At least the glory would
Have been realisable. But the reverie could
Not outlast the reality. We awoke to the crude,
Unrefined, barbaric coldness of verisimilitude.
Hundreds of brothers and sisters from the hood
Toiled with us for this optical illusion. As we stood
It’s obvious the glory we seek was a mirage yet so true.
Clement Adebayo Oloyede
IF ONLY WE CAN FORGET
If only we can forget
Then there’’ll be no regret
If only we cannot remember
Then we’’ll have a sweet December
If only we can forget special
moments
Heartbreaks won’t bring us
torments
If we can’’t recall the battle
We won’t feel treated like cattle
If everything ends only at sight
Rumours never will cause a fight
If painful memories could vanish
at once
We’’ll all live like daughters and
sons
If a child, adults hadn’t abuse
How best will youths be of use?
Truly we can forgive
But memories stretch as we live
To forget our gone brethren we
try
Yet we wake up at nights and cry
So many things we try to forget
Because pain is what they beget
But really if events can’t be
stored
Life itself would be core bored
If we don’t learn from the loss
How do we become the boss?
Left and right, night and day
The creator made things that way
All we do is wish and hope
But the answer is learning to
cope
And with time as our healer
We’ll conquer the mind-killer.
Okanlawon Kazeem
WE ARE ONE
From the same origin
Progeny of the same progenitor
Birds of the same feathers
One parent procreate us
Life is just a privilege.
Our parent eats the forbidden
When in the garden paradise
Then our teeth- burnt
And our tongue- sour
The reward of disobedience
We are paddling the same boat
When the wind blows
It rummages us on the sea of life
Tossing to and fro like a pendulum
But when our creator calms the storm
Tears of joy cascaded our cheek.
We are one
We carry the same mentality
Corruption in our blood
Hatred our foundation
An ancestral inheritance
Lineage transmission.
But all hope is not lost in that
Until we practice the egalitarianism
Channelling a new course
Reprimanding our flesh
Of making shipwreck of the brotherhood
Until we eradicate racism
Discrimination and age grade
And see ourselves as one
Progeny of the same progenitor
Then, we will enjoy life.
We are one and soil
Either black or white
Purple or brown
Rich or poor
Old and young
Airy or scarring
Privileged or proletariat.
For when death draws its curtain
We have nowhere to run to
Even the best athlete
Becomes deformed
Then we smile like Egyptian mummies
And all turns to soil
So, what is left of the wealthy?
What is left of the proletariat?
Vanity upon vanity.
***********************************************
NATURAL BEAUTY
Beauty is long gone
Long in extinction
Remaining is masquerade beauty
Of rogues, powder and lipstick.
If lies you think I tell
Check every chic’s bag
Their indispensable you’ll see
Either a mirror or disc
Something transparent
To reveal delusion
Showing them masquerade for beauty
Click clacking in the street
Like an expert demented epitome
Painted like artistic work.
If natural beauty you wants to know
Check every chic early in the morning
After the dawn chorus
When all paintings are gone
For they are for a season
They have low life span
Then, the truth you’ll know
The face with eczema
Looking like an influenza chicken
Bald head like vulture’s head
All this you’ll see
While some is eyesore
Some looks natural and charming.
If you want to scrutinize natural beauty
Be there before the rogues and paintings.
Joseph Samuel
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