ktravula – a travelogue!

Like Mubarak, Like Gbagbo, Like Mugabe

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.

(c) Kola Tubosun

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

Like Mubarak, Like Gbagbo, Like Mugabe was published on January 30th, 2011, with the tags , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 10 comments on this article so far.

Stoning the Devil

written originally for Iraq, and Mecca, and Amina Lawal about to be stoned: March 2003. Now also for Kano, and Afghanistan, and Mali…

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 (2005)

(c) Kola Tubosun.

Stoning the Devil was published on January 12th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Art category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Two Poems

Rifling through a sheaf of e-papers bearing lines almost already forgotten, I came across these I wrote a few years ago. They were published on Concelebratory Shoehorn Review Journal in June 2007. Happy Thanksgiving everyone in the US

__________________________________

IF THESE WERE WRITTEN IN TIMES PAST

They would smell of rum, maybe wine
Of a pristine dance on brown keys that tapped,
Rasped in echoes across father’s dusty lounge.

They would reek of innocence, shy lines
Of the toddler whose eyes lay only in the silence,
laden trivia of books, and old record sleeves.

They might show relics of a hopeful child lie
Within a bulwark of rage in the silence of night,
Quiet when adults slept with ears apart, dead to the world.

They would try to hide the author’s disgust
for past bustles, home noise and day jobs,
Useless rants that mainly deter than fuel a budding muse.

But it wasn’t written then, and so the past remains
Bilked in bits of old rum in even older flasks, and pains.

MACEDONIA

Lagos again, December

Speak you must, muse, in taps, raps –
Drum, tat-a, rolls of a furious key.
The tongue to rile a fog of blabbing naps.

As with a lost wing, flap on white winds –
Serrated dots of letters, dice dials of thought
Move the night with mares of omen rinds.

Why do you forget yourself so? Soul-
Journer of a sea of words and flaming fate?
It is I who call. Grant the bearing role.

Speak you must, muse, in raps, taps –
Drum, tat-a, rolls on a furious key.
From this fringe of meagre dream of wraps.

(c) 2007. All rights reserved

Two Poems was published on November 24th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Art category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Looking Forward

To October 1st, 2010

Clapping on the green hill with one withering hand, a loner
dances in the dust with trumpets blarring around his head.
A cake on the side, and black drying welts half a century old
around his back, he swirls with the new colours of the wind.

It’s dawning around a river of sweat, and a cool breeze blows.
The earth is wet with shining slivers of light, and tongues,
and mixed memories of glee, and a past of bilious giggles,
and smiles, and fond thoughts of what might have been.

But the bright day returns, as slowly as it must, within beats
of a thousand heart drums on a global stage. An orchestra
of sounds that must heal or yet renew the promises of dawn.
An old baton into new hands of hope within hope. A gamble.

For here is another gathering of tribes and a dance to promises.

(c) 2010 ktravula.com

Looking Forward was published on September 30th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Art, Opinion category. There are currently 6 comments on this article so far.

Be Like the Road*

Be like the road itself, a long slithering tar in the sun.
Burn the midnight ointment in the wick end of questings.
Climb and soothe, blaze the earth into caverns of seething sights,
And fade with night like a receding haze at the founts of reason.
Be like the road. Bend on carcasses of mangled resistances.
Shoot through the valleys of dearth, and patiently find.
Glide in the fresh breath of daybreak on rock hills and caves,
And dance with dusk amidst forests pregnant with missive gems.
Dare along the courses of delights across a far unending street.
Be like the road itself, eternally trudging like light restless feet.
..
(c)KTravula.com| July 2010
* Title taken from Wole Soyinka’s play The Road.

Be Like the Road* was published on July 31st, 2010, with the tags , , under the Art, Fun category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.