Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Tuesday 14 May 2013

BABANGIDA'S WHITE ELEPHANT


Babangida's white elephant
The mammoth of lords
Before the city gate
After the town's skirt
Where no distinct mark is made
He leashed it there for rest
And it ate up our gmelina
Those tender carbon sinks
Awaiting ripening for the lumber's teeth
He brought it for a circus show
It was fed sackfuls of silver
But that place outside Kontagora
Became one more river to cross
And there it sits away from kindred
Cast away of the circus-full durbar

Monday 13 May 2013

JAWS



Aw, with this weather?
Let the bombs rain
Warmth come forth for
Those without a blanket
Merry where the cisterns leak
They will hug calabashes
And gamble away sanity
Like Zacheus, of Jenta Mangoro
They pay the taxman of spirits
And kill the fake heart within
Those without a heart fall
Within Jaws - the city from chaos
Where anyone with some cash
Gets to thrust at Jaws
Sensitive mandibles between legs
There it burns the most
The rampaging fire in his tap
Seeking to be doused

Monday 6 May 2013

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

Tuesday 23 April 2013

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

Monday 21 May 2012

BIAFRA

I ate Biafra, the zealot
fruit, come, to spirits, when
the umunna tarries the half sun

Biafra, a flying hut
neighbours with a parliament
at Uli's marketplace

Friday 11 May 2012

TO BE YOUR LAST FIRST KISS

After bouts of shredding barks
When in sorrow's shackles tears flow
And in darkness' height depression looms
I want to be your last first kiss

When sad tales flourish untold
How they all came and left
Each with a splinter to the shatter
I want to be your last first kiss

In the days of depression
When the next day is a miracle
And strength to live through lacks
I want to be your last first kiss

Though they blow up my chance
And fear of another breakup overthrows
Making persistence hard to believe
I want to be your last first kiss

Though naivety and sobriety be lost
Countless times a chance afresh
Yet a familiar victim of heartbreaks
I want to be your last first kiss

Friday 27 April 2012

CONFESSIONS

You are the silo of my thoughts
Where the pollens graze
Where the scythes leash in

Famished gardens of my heart
Where hungry pests flirt
Blooming saps besieged
Crave coned petals of your bosom
Fertilizer for the Slytherin's rage

My clouds are heavy
Prepare your fallowed land
Let me sow, I will water
The land skirted in green
Delight and envy at crossroads

Monday 23 April 2012

I'D BE GOD

I’d be god
When Ra kills his rage
I’d be god
Me
Of a barren skin –
Fruitless
I’d be god
No need for homoestasis
The petalled plume to wilt
Ra’s fever cured and gone
When I’m god
Then we shall merry the dark
Before Ra’s demons come again

LORD OF ALL FEARS

Feet don't fail me now
My demons becloud again
Wont for more than they bargained

Poke me dream, will you?
Dally your barrage of goodies -
Me of fairies treat

For my placebo smoulders
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

JAWS

Aw, with this weather?
Let the bombs rain
Warmth come forth for
Those without a blanket
Merry where the cisterns leak
They will hug calabashes
And gamble away sanity
Like Zacheus, of Jenta Mangoro
They pay the taxman of spirits
And kill the fake heart within
Those without a heart fall
Within Jaws the city from chaos
Where anyone with some cash
Gets to thrust at Jaws
Sensitive mandibles between legs
There it burns the most
The rampaging fire in his tap
Seeking to be doused

Thursday 2 April 2009

THE MYTH OF MIDDLE EARTH

The warlords of Mordor in fierce battle cry
Allies with Orcs, Dementors and Sauron
Seek the white gates of Gondor
In a frantic bid to seize middle earth

Time upon time, the ring long lost
The sovereignty of middle earth given up
Gondor gone merry, Mordor in rubbles
A surge from bottom earth very imminent.

Friday 3 October 2008

MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING

Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the hero that here lies dead
In dungeon of their rights
Gives him fame which never dies
Such was the death that died with shame.

Thursday 28 August 2008

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

MOONLIGHT TRANSACTIONS

Tonight would be full moon
Anticipations are high; anxiety lurk in street corners
Foot paths are busied all day
Though farmsteads receive less tend
Guests sojourn from afar; palm trees break early kola
kegs leave as souvenirs, cocks come to roost early
And hearths shall be without fire
Things would move as whirlwinds
And the moon's ugly face stare
Its gaze defiling the night sky
With uproar set agog downstairs
The village square blossoms with exuberance
Only the young and old be marked absent
Even the King swirl but for a moment
And in his entourage, another damsel when he leaves
The moon's burning desire sets loose
His radiant face adulated
Mirror for plenty a damsel
Freed from the mother's fiery watch
Only for the night's dance
Many to be given off after now
Cowries to be counted on their heads
And libations poured for their sake
Not until a tiger spots the game
Commotion borne in another compound
Turmoil brought to roost after sunset
Hatred gone to the porter's place
Strengthened, now carried by the gazelle
Full of zest, cheated to the game
Denied only by a potful of cowries
bribe already set ahead
Deal sealed after nightfall
The coveted object off to slavery
Dignity for the womenfolk soiled
Swept under the raffia mat
Fresh sap of love, sublimed
Elixir for the rampant gazelle
Slaughtered on the alter of lust
Twain pairs of unmatched legs
Nailed to a soiled matrimonial bed
Another death victim deboured

BOY STORY

I met a boy of school age
Who ate up his heart
Bound his mind, and gave it up to hell
What was his dream?
He wanted to be fearless, immortal
Revered amongst Skulls, Black Axes, Mungikis and Sea Dogs
Carried away to terror's lofty high
But got tied to the hangman's stake
Already signed up on death's toll