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

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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

New Publication

Those interested in new Nigerian writing will do well to check out the latest issue of Sentinel Nigeria magazine. It has a poem of mine among several refreshing works of Nigerians of different age and convictions. There are also some two poems from Peter Akinlabi whom I’d interviewed for the particular issue. All comments welcome. Enjoy.

Find it here.

Saraba

A New issue of the Nigerian LitMag Saraba Magazine here for downloading.

Nostalgia – A Not So Old Poem

Do men really feel or just believe? In wandering afterthoughts from your sonic alter-ego,
Love, my belly tickles to a distant bell in childhood paces around our childish lusts.
See me there on the streets of dustland, with heels on the playground of luckless rants.
.
Am I supposed to feel this way again, muse? Your voice spins me to a thousand memories.
I do not stir, nor do the droplets in my eye move beyond their range of steam. No. Muse,
I do not control this softness that drives me across a beaten path towards your taken arms.
.
It is the voice of the night, or else a green-eyed beacon that pushes these fingers to work, and
To stalk: “Traveller, your love has not always been without the crawl of blunt senseless drive.”
It is the delirious dope of distance then, or caprice, or a flighty strong wind of love’s nostalgia.

Famine – An Excerpt

Stolen from the text of today’s presentation titled “Exploring Yoruba Culture Through American Eyes”, about to begin.


The realities of life are not to be evaded. Rather, they are celebrated, even the negative or unpleasant. Appeasement? Magic, perhaps? No matter. Challenges are thus acknowledged and countered, often with humour, (and) certainly with resolve.

Famine

The owner of yam peels his yam in the house. A neighbor knocks on the door. The owner of yam throws his yam in the bedroom. The neighbor says “I just heard the sound kr kr that’s why I came.”

The owner of yam says, “Oh, that was nothing. I was sharpening two knives.”

The neighbor says again, “I still heard something like gbi sound behind your door.”

The owner of yam says, “I merely tried my door with a mallet.”

The neighbor says again, “What about this huge fire burning in your hut?”

The fellow replies, “I’m merely warming water for my bath!”

The neighbor persists, “Why is your skin all white when it is not the harmattan season.”

The fellow is ready with his reply, “I was rolling on the floor when I heard of the death of Agadagbidi.

Then the neighbor says, “peace be with you”

Then the owner of yam starts to shout: “THERE CAN’T BE PEACE UNTIL THE OWNER OF FOOD IS ALLOWED TO EAT HIS OWN FOOD!”

As translated by Ulli Beier and performed by Wole Soyinka