ktravula – a travelogue!

Halfway to Sixty

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.

Halfway to Sixty was published on September 21st, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Literature, Poetry, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

September 11, 2001 – a poem

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.

September 11, 2001 – a poem was published on September 11th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

Be Like the Road

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

Be Like the Road was published on June 8th, 2011, with the tags , , , , , under the Art, Fun category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

America Tonight (visuals)

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

America Tonight (visuals) was published on May 13th, 2011, with the tags , , , , , , under the Art, Opinion, Travelling category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Blues: Of Love and Losses

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

Blues: Of Love and Losses was published on March 18th, 2011, with the tags , , , , under the Soliloquy, Uncategorized category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.