ktravula - a travelogue! » Poem

For Subsideen the Gnome

Kola — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 07:42:07 +0000

Shigidi – a cursed African gnome – lay spread in an acid rain

bedraggled to the teeth, to the last hair on its wiggling tail.

Across from the junction where it lay in the throes of pain

are the broken bones of toothless men, skulls, splintered shale.

Little kids pace around with hands across their nose, disgust -

the ugly bastard once ruled the night like a fierce, rabid skunk.

They kick him around now with the dung around its wooden bust,

and laugh in the rain to mothers’ delight. Old men play drunk.

The year began a dream – country luck hanging on a bilious rock;

a finger in the eye of the poor, struggling village. A buyover man.

A silver spoon flashes here in the light. This time a non-shod shock

rips through an angry country, silence morphing into a flash-pan.

Red eyes cohere and all that remains are burnt remnants of tare

as rain clears out painful drains. Shigidi withers into its nightmare.

Occupation Blues

Kola — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:35:18 +0000

Open window peers into a blue evening through tiny louvre slits,

removed, it seems, from floods around the Nile and the Hudson,

Mississippi, Missouri and Victoria and other throbbing tributaries.

Open veins of revolt, serrated slivers of soul across the landscape

as far as eyes could see: a finger in the pupil of the surly present.

“Occupy this,” morning calls, blue with equal promises of dawn.

With Love from Toto

Kola — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:34:09 +0000

With Love from my Toto*

Did they not chook** me with their cacti

and fill me with bilious waste – those

whose scrota should be jaundiced with

stings from wayward bees?

Did they not claw me with callous talons

and grip my vexing veins – those

whose hands will remain guests

to rheumatoid rust?

Did they not mock my wailings

and cause my teeth to gnash – those

whose nights should witness

harmonies of terrors and bitterness?

Did they not defile my thighs

and maul my breasts – those

whose paths will forever

quake with anguish?

Did they not tear me apart

and watch my navel suffocate – those

who should be bobittised with blunt scalpels?

Some pricks should be snacks for hungry hyenas.

poem by Chris Ogunlowo ***

_____________________

* Nigerian Pidgin for vagina.

* * The equivalent of fuck in Nigerian Pidgin English, usually used to exaggerate coital thrust.

*** Written in response to the recent infamous rape case that went viral in Nigeria last week. Chris is a Nigerian blogger and copywriter.

Halfway to Sixty

Kola — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:54:04 +0000

Seeking time comes often to a rote around edges of reason, my friend,

when tomorrow moves away from reach into the lengths of a near past.

It is not just the distance of time and space, or memory, but what portends

In-between the fast changing chords of our once rhyming flat bombasts.

Look at it here: movements, shapes, forms, people, hope, desires, and lusts,

And pleasing exuberance circling within one spot of deferred dreams.

So we wonder restlessly where all the time went. We trade masks that must

Hold fears within claypots of growth. We howl our tears into the stream.

We don’t own then, it seems, balms that soothe with scents of silent mimesis,

Else we would sway with wine bags in reclined poses, seconds spent to please,

Which held us then when time favoured the pockets of our scant playfulnesses.

We would not wonder where they went, days spent sprawled in the shades of ease.

It could be only relief that mischief remains, and love’s comfort in the end,

To sew a new tapestry, and to daily, patiently mend. It was never ours to rend.

___________________________

Being too lazy to write a new pre-birthday poem, this will have to do it for the last day of my twenties.

Edited, from Dec 2009.

September 11, 2001 – a poem

Kola — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 05:01:35 +0000

Raining debris of a thousand dreams over Manhattan

And tears of pain, a gaping hole in the eye of summer.

The world morphed suddenly into dust and heat

and a flag-draped beginning of a new, frigtening day.

There we were, going our separate ways, waking.

Working, living, arguing – a usual rite of passage,

And there they were, willing acolytes of a sad resolve,

boarding jetliners with armoury of a cultivated god.

Here we are, a decade away, still a bewildered folk.

Just a little step from the true vanity of all our pain.

So we hope, and dream, and watch, accordingly,

and live with the same wondering resolve: any lessons?

The world remains what it is – a weird blubbering ball

hanging in the daunting mystery of its core, warts and all.

Dedicated to the memory of victims, first responders, firemen and all other casualties of the 9/11 attacks and the war therefrom.

Be Like the Road

Kola — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:11:42 +0000

Another excerpt from the reading presentation on campus last month. The poem is “Be Like the Road“, along with a short background story already familiar to regular readers of the blog.

Enjoy

America Tonight (visuals)

Kola — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:02:48 +0000

As a guest of the S.P.E.A.C (Students/Professors Exploring All Cultures) club at SIUE last month, I read a couple of (in-progress as well as already published) works to a small but diverse audience in the Willows Room. Here’s me reading America Tonight and sharing a little background story.

The poem itself was first blogged here, and later published here. Enjoy

Blues: Of Love and Losses

Kola — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:02:23 +0000

For Granny (d. January 14), and Aunt Banke Akintunde, PhD (d. March 15)

How does goodbye begin? With love? With a kiss on the lips or a warm hug in public places?
How does goodbye begin? Sour drops of tears in the beer of a familiar place or worse?
Or streams running down the ugly face of a twice-recurring moment without a sound?
How do goodbyes begin? Do they run like a silent brook on a gloomy day, or bubble
like the fresh waterfalls of a once-forgotten hill? Do they fall like raindrops on a desert?
Do they hum like bees after the smell of fragrance, or like light glowing out of a burning wood
Do they burn? Do they pinch like flakes of snow? Do they, like birds, just pick up and fly?

How does goodbye begin? With a whimper? With a wave of hand or a cry in the night?
How does goodbye begin? Babbles and laughters that rise about the dark lonely room
When days and night merge into one, and strangers write the lines of tomorrow’s song?
How do goodbyes begin? Do they wander in the air, elusive to touch and description
like the wounded butterfly across the sight of an elder? Do they soothe or do they excite?
Do they waft across the oceans like a forgotten dream, or like the tired membrane of a drum
Do they tear? Do they itch like the rash? Do they, like birds, just pick up and fly?

There is a painful swelling in the dead of the night on my heart, ripe like a freshly open weal.
It is the goodbye mark of gems, with smears of the now bitter tears, too hard to heal.

(c) Kola Tubosun 2011

Like Mubarak, Like Gbagbo, Like Mugabe

Kola — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 12:50:14 +0000

Tyrants stamp brash feet on winding paths on of wide open lands

and laugh on fart cushions in cabinet meetings of fellow fawning hands.

They mouth verbs at protest noises from the warm comforts of palace bedrooms

on one hand a full plate, and on the other soft triggers of their imported dooms.

Tyrants dance around dials of outside help, counting losses like currency notes,

swapping allies like the last statuettes of their long tortuous days and rotes.

They sing lullabies of aftermaths, of threats and tears, against a glory so long lost

and o, they fear. They dream of dreary wings across the windowpanes of frost.

Tyrants languish on the frail chairs of their vain vacuousness. They stink.

They drawl in the slime of impotence, a dour fire of an eighty year old wrink.

I look through the fog of emptiness, and see dead multiples of power tenths

and all that remains of a gentle tug into bright new days of different strengths.

Tryants live so that they may leave, gracelessly, in a baggage of seasoned trash.

No other way remains but will, bold and strong, and despots’ dicks ash to ash.

PS: Feel free to share with friends and acquaintances who share a distaste and spite for despots.

Stoning the Devil

Kola — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:11:58 +0000

for Jos, for Arizona, for Sudan, for Pakistan, for Cote D’Ivoire, for Tunisia…

A million march of contrite feet
Have trudged on these bright hallowed grounds
While rams of hate graze along in God’s own fields.
Heavy paces in annual contrition
Have trekked like peasant armies on a sea of evil heads,

On thousand squelching grains of stone
As small rocks of war.
Thousand heads have rolled in this dust
In mounds against target gods…

“We are stoning the Devil”
We are always stoning the devil.

Eternal zest with religious strength
Have pelted the Significant with harsh pellets
And a stone will to fiery extinction, yearly,
At varying levels of human will…
“Gbosa!”

Rocks have darted across in wilful spread
on evil personified ahead of the surging crowd.
Hate yet thrives in unnumbered axes
In rains and moulds,on hills and western skies.

So cast the first stone then
When evil remains in hearts across the open earth?
Cast a stone as hate grips like a fiery noose
Around a strained neck of drunken love?

Cast the first stone.

On a crooked way to light
Always lies this crude, black rock.

_________________________

Culled from Headfirst into the Meddle where it first appeared.

(c) Kola Tubosun. Written in May 2003.

ktravula - a travelogue! » Poem

For Subsideen the Gnome

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