GOODBYE TO WHOM I WAS

I can see what the darkness does
Say goodbye to who I was
For now, a heartless being roams
His heart eaten by a beast
A beast without a soul or girth
That one which went to and fro
With a broad smile in deceit
And said "he's a fool for love".

A BROAD SMILE IN DECEIT

I can see what the darkness does
Say goodbye to who I was
For now, a heartless being roams
His heart eaten by a beast
A beast without a soul or girth
That one which went to and fro
With a broad smile in deceit
And said "he's a fool for love".

THROUGH MY EYES

All my eggs are cast in one
The other baskets have shells
Rotten eggs don't sink in a basin

My heart flows like clear water
The honesty now reeks as lies
Its burst cistern will tumble with rage

"Do as I say, I'll do as I will
Bottle up my rampage, it's not for sale
See the world only through my eyes."

My eyes have turned to shells
The yolk tumbles from rage
And I'm blind, for your eyes are shut

Oh, Dear Baro

Oh, dear Baro 

Petty gamble o'er the matter 

Emptying of thy belly 

Gives them fame, sheared 

Mosquitoes awoken of staccatos

Mosquitoes in swarms, fishes in droves

Let's Live Together

Oh, Nigeria. Yours' a feared history -
Pandora's box - bleak, cold, dour...
Sour grapes' past; fruits of a new story.

JOS

Dear Jos, of three scars whipped...
I heard, tore into your back again.
My darling, who'll save thee?

IBADAN

Ibadan
The rust-red lake
Rivers snake around its banks
Scrap, debris, produce all hauled
With the pains of men
Ibadan
Where the sage erupts
He runs every year
And Akala fished in aplomb here
Then drowned at velvet's shores
And belched
From the choke of his blood

ABUJA (3)

I'm in love with Abuja;

Her love strikes me with lightning bolt;

She kills me with wont!

MY MALENESS

I look upon my maleness,
that little prick -
disenchanted from simple definition.
I detest the tale,
nor admire
its lack of depth -
The maleness
I dream of,
dominates.
Velvet valor aplenty,
loneliness cowed by fear -
The maleness of a man,
not of a boy.
One which ripens as the moon wane.

ABUJA (1)

Abuja's wet; 

But I'm sweating. 

While she just lay there, I plough.

A NOTE FROM JANET

Precisely on my table

She left for me a note

Written in decipherable codes

Of which I thought was a fable

The note had got a ‘Dear Kenneth’

Of which I thought to write was hard

But she concluded and said I was bad

All the night we were at the banquet

She accused me of being a fool

To think she never saw us

As we groaned and cursed

On the balcony at moon’s full

That was how it ended

A story I’ve got left

Of how am now bereft

With a love that can’t be mended.

BIDA

Bida the Fulani tent,
Dendo’s first test at cun -
Jewel in the trough

Fulani’s torch billows forth...
The Etsu of heaven.
Puppet from the west

Market place of Wuzhizhi
Land of fertile long grain rice
Of Ndaduma’s blessings at Manko

Ndadungurugi with fishes
At hide and seek, housed sparkles of
Luggard, Zik and Royal Niger to same fate

Your cousin, Gwandu
Of purple trinkets
Seeks to overthrow, birthright

Your in-law, the Minna
Shelters cun, reincarnate
The warrior of starred crests

Bida of three play houses
Where blood and sand is god
That glorified puppet’s stool

EDEGBO

Edegbo was memory

Myth with whisper's wings

Cupid's prodigal child

I bargained for your heart

And you dally-ed a rock

Then threw cheese at me

After my arms built a tomb

And you slept in its womb

We profited from the sale of your soul

Before you decided to leave me hung

And cried for the comet and its show

I told you his tinder is but ashes

But you dimmed your light

And your silence cried for my arms

The tomb made only for you-

My maleness, that old prick

After we made gains

Of your heart's droppings

Fertilizer that grows my yearn

DON'T LOVE ME SWEET

Don't love me sweet

My heart's deep and wide

You can never fill it

Don't love me sweet

My heart's given up

To maternal love, surreal

 ­

Don't love me sweet

My heart's too broken

Your love can't mend it

Don't love me sweet

My heart's not for one

Yours' a loosing fight

Don't love me sweet

My heart's dead

Immortality reigns here

Don't love me sweet

My heart's given up to hell

You love but a bestial

Don't love me sweet

My heart's too selective

You don't fit the profile

Don't love me sweet

My heart's in need of reality

You, but a dream

LORD OF ALL FEARS

Feet don’t fail me now

My demons becloud again

Wont for more than we bargained

Poke me dream, will you?

Dally your barrage of goodies –

Me of fairies treat

For my placebo smolders

Surety and party, locked at Doom

Like the flogged of bush-babies to penury

Fairy or djin, hunt me the lantern

Gold and silver to my feet

Love and power – the heart’s fill afterwards

Word Eaters

Be kind with words, mildly eat

Not with oil of the furnace's fury

For then, the tongue shall burn sore

Neither from cold's slumber, dab

It's sludge would give you away

But in thought and gentle caress

Eat them, well cooked

THE SECRET ADMIRER

Indulged by beauty
Polished in the courts of the gods
Guile unmatched, so terrific
Heads unduely turn, adulations abound
But the secret admirer looks on
In the hope that fates swing you his way
As he in long-suffering, yearns for you
And lurks in shells, admiring your beauty
Tarry no more, in returning his love
For dear, as the old moon wanes
So his love lingers

Character

These past months, there has been a huge test for me, most especially as it concerns my personality and character. A redefinition of character was most paramount for me, in a period where in class the reigning thing was forgery of field data for dissertation purposes, while in my professional niche, a string of failures littered my world. There was a great drop in self-belief, and emotions were thumping high on the meter.

People around me just seemed to be getting things right at the time, while I was on the better side of Goliath. But I weathered the time. However, not without support from people I hold very dearly. No one even knew about my predicaments at home, so papa and mama had nothing to do with this. But I had quasi-professional help. I had a lot of character building and redefinition, and today I can proudly say, that am better off.

My spirit stands strong on a rock that outplaces Gibraltar's, and my personality has been repositioned, to beat every failure that looms. Ly Thi Bich Nga and Adeniyi Adeyemi have been very instrumental in this, and so is the Campus Life team, of the Nation Newspapers, most especially Ms. Ngozi Nwozor. Ufoma Egbamuno and Daniel Tanko, good friends have been on the flanks, holding up my hands in times of emotional wars.

AN ODE TO POETRY

Man's language in pleasure
The most perfect of speeches
Brings nearer the truth –
Truth seen with passion

Truth united with pleasure
Calls imagination to the help of reason

Caused by intense realization,
Life explores its amazement
The spontaneous overflow of
Powerful feelings – emotions;
Emotions put in measure

Its ingenuity translated
In to language busy about imitation
Life really, is poetry.

INITIATION

I sit half awake, half amok
Carried away by the chants
Of empty scary black masks
Droning chants of nineteenth century druids
Seasonal migrants to our lands
Coming with the birds to breed
Souls and life taken with them.
On the day gboya* and I made four
Exchanges of souls, oaths cursed
Dust mixed with the ceremonial broth
Cooking at the square, now four days
Humans used to skin drums
Bones made in to khalils^
remnants end up as bodily markings
Away to a place strange
Where dementors are harmless
And back through an interswitch
here am ushered in to manhood.

* - masquerade in Nupe (A Nigerian dialect)
^ - A Jewish flute