GODS OF LAGOS

The gods of Lagos have met
To each, their share of minced meat and crimson Roast, with a bit of char was preferred Otedola's god; the burgus A few, dipped in herb marinade More sacrifice awaits Those still counted, rejoice For they and their shackles are spared, yet

OJUELEGBA

The gods of Ojuelegba shall

Be appeased yearly

Mangled meat and crimson

Left at crossroads will do

Woe betides you, there, under

Where gatekeeper squeeze nostrils

Till the stench leaves at sunset

Make peace always

For picks are random

You may be next!

MY PASSIONS ARE A MARKETPLACE BUT EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD

Yuletide calls for stocktaking, as much as the air is filled with laughter, delicious aroma, buntings and fanfare. So, in-between catching your breathe from a long exhausting year by spending time with family and friends, you can also be caught up with the rigors of re-evaluating life, and charting a course for the new year. Or, not.

It is not unusual to be caught clueless in a new year with a fresh tabula rasa, without a plan of how to create your own stories thereof. I have that experience, and it can leave you running around like a headless chicken, only trying to bide fates to shine good fortune your way. Many course through life with such mantras, seeking serendipity, while some are deliberate about what time and chance they are eager to jump at.

Three years ago, I told myself "I need to travel more in the new year." I said this with so much conviction, that I attracted a lot of travel opportunities to my life, the year after. I am grateful that I can share this experience of being able to be deliberate about a thing or a plan. But you see, I believe we are a sum total of our life's experiences - that makes us whom we are, with a blend of our temperaments, passions and the goodwill of Father Sky, fates or God.

Yet, in the throes of soul-searching and being deliberate for the new year, I am easily left confused because my passions become a rowdy marketplace. My thoughts are amazing. As soon as I began to give second ear to the phrase "Kolo, you're so difficult to understand", the easier it was for me to realize how true this was, for me.

You see, I used to be really intelligent - up until the time I began playing catch up with all the play I thought I didn't have enough of as a child, and the laziness that rules when I am caught at crossroads with so many passions yanking at me for first place. For much of that time, I am left being so critically scared of myself. Of the things I could have done, become or achieved; of the weaknesses and the little failures I let become a better of me; and the shenanigans of life that I have made strange bed fellows with.

In the pursuit of 'happyness', I've come to the realization that tears and fears are hard currencies. But, so are clarity of thought, persistence and aptitude. And as much as I can be my own weatherman, my frailties hold me back still.

I want to pursue happiness, and do this with freedom and all the pleasure that tails along, but not before this cup passes over me - this place where the light doesn't find me, where I'm married to my many passions, and lost on which to pursue headlong as my first love.

Everybody wants to rule the world!

LONESOME DREAMS - BELINDA

You see, the heart works in mysterious ways. It can be a hard nut to crack, then suddenly it is such a sponge cake, that anything can slice through. When hard, everyone wonders why. And when it goes soft, everyone makes you regret why. It sure gets lonesome this matter of the heart, yeah?

I love how the heart inks memories into time. The waft of laughter filling the air, the soft caress of the hands down the body in the heat of passion, or the time stamp that is good music. Good, in the sense that, the lyrics might not be so cool, but the tone is befitting of the moment which is being inked in to memory. Thus, you might be in a cab or bus, relaxing at home  or simply bumping away to it in your car or your stereo, and its memories come flooding over you.

It can be exciting and nostalgic when the memories bring that feel good drag, especially if you're in love, worst off, were in love. Oh, time and time again, I find a crop of people who use music as time stamps to a place, an event, an anniversary, a date, an occurence... something which must bring goosebumps over them. Good for them. But, it's not the same for those who once were in love, and are now heartbroken.

For, the nostalgia that comes with the waft of the same music, sweeps hate, anger and rage. You still love the song, but hate the memories that tail along. You're caught between the song you love so much, and memory you wished was binned already.

It can't get worse than that, as I've come to learn. You hate the memory with the song, then listen to it more, and begin to banish the memories away from the song, until your love for the song is rekindled. But, would you ever see the song in the same light?

Today bumped into Ojhey's "Belinda", and it brought nostalgia even though I was a first time listener. From the off, I knew  I would be making memories with the music. No wonder, while I lay in wait for strength to go bathe, my right eye kept tearing, because deep down, I knew "Belinda" was time stamp worthy, but would it be for good?

A PATH THAT WINDS IN TO THE CLOUDS

Oko, labe igi oronbo
A path that winds into the clouds
In loving memory of broken cisterns that squirt.
The very moan of trees
Rises to ninth heaven in praise,
Of the cat that died
Dousing the rampaging fire running in your tap

SUNSHINE

My dreams are pregnant
Weighed upon frail shoulders
Thick as the gathering of storm
Behind which you're the sunshine

LONESOME DREAMS - I'LL FIX YOU

It is not uncommon to meet amazing women for whom your admiration and flirtations ache to run to, for a tango. You know.., those dashing damsels you keep wondering where they've been all that while, you were busy being encumbered with a lady, heavily yoked with emotional baggage. The one you're happy to have left, but have left you hurting so bad because you suddenly woke up to happiness deferred.

So, these damsels... you pick out similarities, and find places where they compliment you, but that's where it stops. Mentally, you are not seeing anything beyond there, so when the damsel begins to poke demands for commitment, you stutter, not because your life doesn't say "I'm ready", but because your emotional resource is spent, you are even guilty of not loving yourself enough.

Sadly, it is you who has lost something you can not replace. A word, a smirk, a smell, an action, a reaction or lack of it, brings you back to a time when you overlooked something because...you were already on overdrive. Like being overdosed on drugs till you run into coma and give up. Then every now and then, you meet people who bring their bitter luggage with them to the table — a flashback, and you flee.

You begin to ask yourself hard questions, like whether you are ever capable of love again, if you are ever going to trust someone else again, even though in truth, it is whether you can trust yourself to be vulnerable with another person again. Often times, it is very complicated for these hearts. As complicated as the governance architecture of Bosnia & Herzegovina.

I'm here, unbundling my favorite Coldplay  songs which are seemingly still laced with demons from times past, timestamps to an event, a quote, a happy or sad moment, the beginning or end of something, or the truth, that i really need fixing!

SABOTEURS WHO CROSSED

Come, let's take a solemn walk
Down the boulevards of purgatory
Men linger, half a century of pain
Those who crossed at no will of theirs

Enemy of the state, saboteur of the rebel
Straffed by dawn, pillaged at dusk
Wells that shone amongst stars
Lost, even in purgatory

Lonesome Dreams - Let Her Go

You know how it's a freaking sunny day in March and you miss the rainy season; or on a wet day in September, you wished the dry season was upon you? Passenger's "Let Her Go" hits me with that feeling all the time. And the flashbacks are nostalgic enough to leave me in tears, barring whether they are for joy or sadness.

I remember them days when my only companions were my laptop and my phone. The laptop which saved me from insanity. She which filled my every moment with work, letting me caress her with ten all the time. She was petite and light, that she could pass for a damsel with a lithe frame. Easy to carry, with a lasting battery. And then the phone which connected me with the all-time love of my life, my momma. There were days when waking up in Monrovia amounted to self-hate. Like, why couldn't I just wake up to the aroma of mummy's akara or puff puff? And indeed like Passenger said, I hated the roads -- whenever I had to up and travel to work through the crevices and arteries of some of West Africa's pristine and uncharted forests, because I missed home.

There were days also, when the rains would not stop falling and I would first bask in the warmth of my bed, sneak out to the varenda with the lads to crack old wily jokes, listen to BBC works service, talk about Liberia and our various futures which were punctuated here and there with near misses and triumphs. Days of orange sunsets by the sea, brought caresses from the sands that washed up recaptives who came to colonize a people, termed barbarians by distant cousins who had tasted the bile and guile of America.

And so, when Passenger says "...know you love her when you let her go", I giggle at the prospects of returning to Monrovia soon, to bask in the beauty that are her beaches and the shenanigans that glorify her slums, business districts and her living quarters of Congotown, Old Road and the Red Lights of Paynesville. Oh, and of the times when I planned and thought I would fall in love with you all over again on the beach. Because, yeah, I admit it that now and then, I think of when we were together. When for reasons I can't explain now, we had undiluted banter, chatter and laughter. You weren't all bad afterall. And I wasn't a saint either. But to treat me like a stranger surely feels so rough. No?

I thought I loved you so much, because what I thought you were, would not let me breathe. And I was cool with intoxicating me with you.

Ah, I told myself you were right for me, but you screwed me over and I can't even count how many times you did that with whomever you chose for the ritual. But being in love with my idea of you, was such an ache, and I still remember. Now, I am addicted to a certain kind of sadness, one which reeks of how I let myself down, how I could have stopped us both from hurting as much as we did, and how I have built a high hedge.

Like I have always done when love gets sour, I build friendships or acquaintances. But, you cut me off. I really wanted us to make out like it never happened and that we were nothing; because we got to that point where we didn't need each others' love no more. Alas, you were eager to move on and heal that pain, by running to the same things which had brought hurt in the first place. Now, you're just somebody that I used to know.

But, I know that in letting you go, I love you enough. Enough to let you find what brings you happyness. Sail on, I've gotta catch up with Monrovia now!

Lonesome Dreams - June Bugs

Port Blue's "June Bugs" makes for a great flashback trigger. The music itself, and the name are unkind reminders to a sorry past, seemingly waning from a love-lost story, though etched in memory. June was the beginning of the end. But it came lazily with a dummy.

It was the seventh month of my countdowns. And I was ecstatic at how good a boy, I have been in the last six months. No guilt of scandals from my end, except the worries of intermittent bouts of quarrels and fights over what I could never fathom were even the problem.

So, during those calculated fights, I saved money. I wasn't losing outrageous airtime and sms charges because of international call rates. And I wasn't reporting every locational shift like a company leader, who must recco with base, for orders on every tactical maneuver.

Then, I met Ene. She was beautiful. Light skinned, lithe in gait. She had this carriage of a newly wed, who was still basking in the glory her tiara bestowed. But Ene was a troubled young wife, who was already love-lost, broken and neck deep in depression. And her makeup, was a succinct decoy.

The flirt innate in me -- now world famously "irredeemable", jumped and took control from there. In minutes, we were warmly introduced and sharing a table at the reception. My friend Efe kept pinging on whatsapp, how fast I was going, and to slow down. Even though I told him to calm down, "I was in charge", I knew that my demons were in charge as usual.

We talked about everything but our love lives; as it seemed like the dead rat in the room, which no one was eager to touch with a pole. Something was common between Ene and I though. We were both starved of healthy conversations. Our eyes radiated it. And that word "chemistry" which my mother warned about as truly existent, was indeed in the air.

She wasn't spotting a ring on any of the fingers that mattered, so I knew I had all green to be free and open with her, before some brute would slap my ears from nowhere. This was how June begun, and it seemed like it would be an easy month of counting down.

But, isn't it so funny how life sets you up as grass in a fight of two elephants, and leaves you in the end with no one to nurse your sufferings because the egos of those elephants are larger than life? Especially, when you're just the grass, meant not to give undue advantage to either of them elephants which are bent on winning the turf war?

A stupid turf war, where it is apparent that both elephants could just agree on boundaries, and share grazing reserves?

The bugs came in June, and left me toxic until I was clinically diagnosed. Until sunset caused a bleak, cold air to blanket my heart. In June, she had decided on a final solution to the problem that was me. I remember those bugs clearly as ever, and I curse every time, why I didn't harken to the bouts of pain that ruled intermittently in the midst of forced laughter.

Eventually, I lost on both sides - a lover who was bent on eating her cake and having it, and a friend who would not accept that there was something I held more dearly than a platonic friendship. For, they both thought I had a thin line between, which allowed me roam freely. Alas!

Maybe it is totally my fault, and I totally deserve the illness June Bugs brought with them.