For St. Peter's Perusal

 

For St. Peter's Perusal

(On the passing on of Czech Republic's benefactor Vaclav Havel and Korean dictator Kim Jong-il on 17th & 18th Dec. 2011, respectively)

Hell is hot, you must've heard, have you not!

Yes, barbarians there! That tunnel unto the oven!

Do-gooders here, you've done well - unto heaven!

For the choir, the calm and all you have sought.

Move please, The St. Peter is done with you.

 

Next batch, back to back, your papers please

Whose have we here for St. Peter's Perusal?

Kim Jong-il and Vaclav Havel!

Did they beget woe or did they preach peace?

Were their deeds well or were they ill?

Did they heal or did they kill?

Kim Jong-il, shall  you pass or shall you fail?

Vaclav Havel, shall we sicken or shall we marvel

When your papers here begin to tell?

 

Let's see, then who this Vaclav be:

A thespian? Aha! for vanity or for posterity?

From a theatrical production, came a Violet Revolution,

Under pressure non-violent, voila! The oppressors went!

Did he enlighten or did he deceive?

And president too - what truly did he achieve!

 

And who is this Jong-il, for real?

Is he like father or is he the real deal?

A Chairman? Aha! for vanity or for posterity?

Was his politburo polite or was it a bully?

On to the capitalist's face, did he do fit

For a man in his place, when he did spit?

Did ruler truly profit his subject,

or himself to the subject's neglect?

 

Very well!

Heaven does need a realist and an artist

As earth needs an explosion before long!

Aha! For you Vaclav, it is with heaven's theatre!

As for Kim-the dictator! Kneel thee here!

You did mean well, your papers so tell

But reigned too long, did you Kim Jong.

So, five Hail Marys and be done!

Just don't take too long!

The Literary-political junction: A Nigerian Black-Spot

 THE LITERARY-POLITICAL JUNCTION: A NIGERIAN BLACK-SPOT

There's a road in Nigeria

Narrow and twisty in this hilly area.

- the greedy man's road to riches,

The mad man's road to true madness,

The vain man's road to fame,

 yours too if  you've a wicked dream to chase,

Or a penchant for recklessness.

 

Yet every once in a while a man comes singing

Along a good path from the plains with plans

For the road.

But the junction is a jarring mess.

The man loses his music, soils his dress

Breaks his heart, disappoints his bones

Cracks his skull and denounces his own.

The nameless road twists his mind

Empties his soul into the wind.

Or sometimes a Ken Saro Wiwa's -

A thunderous rhythm that cracked the sky

And the sky wept;

On that sore spot where he last lay -

A mangled man, an icon born,

Stands an invisible signpost…BLACK SPOT

Here, Africa kills its sons.

 

Sometimes too, a Christopher Okigbo firing off

Poetry and bullets, valor and metaphor,

Freedom or death, from Biafra to heaven

That August of sixty seven.

 

But Achebe, aha! Lives still on a diet of proverbs.

In his diagnosis - "the Tumour in Nigeria"

Where fits the writer: The lab or the theatre? 

 

The scalpel on the table

Is not for the writer's hand;

the pen too needs a pair - as clean as able.

for when it gets dark in this land

The 'art of surgery' becomes a deadly metaphor 

A scene gory; like nothing you're ready for- 

The cutting, the slicing- all with danger fraught-

And, God! The practitioners, such a reckless lot.

 

Then only your pen can save us-

When heavens take leave of watch

And the skies are overcast with chaos

Political treachery and many evils such,

And the map besmirched in lunatic scrawl,

And we are lost in cyclic anarchy,

Then, the pen will point the route,

Back to the genesis, before snake and sin-

At the gates of Aden, pen will become a key

And behold, Aden delivered to us by a pen!

 

And once again, the poetry of praise, the critic of folly,

The constitution of future shall by pen be born-

By pen shall you bathe our past with clarity

Lest we forget! 

If you must walk unto the junction, Oduwole

Know this: an easy walk it shan't be

 

For whom the bullet races

 "Verily know thee-

That yours comes yet,

a date with a bullet:

On an unlikely evening,

an unsuspicious morning;

When impatience snaps like lightening"

The dog and the master

 The dog and the master

Today morning is the news

Of he who always had tread

With great clout these avenues

But now lies quite dead-

Gods of the night

 Gods of the night

Minutes thin towards the 0.00 hour

And sleep overwhelms,

flames are blown off wicks, the town snuggles for slumber.

A giant cloak of night descends to guard till dawn

Saints and robbers roost together.

FREE TO SAIL

 

Free to sail

When the storm of youth

Brewed inside me,

When the whirlwind of emotion

Entrapped us in folly-

The next scandal

 The next scandal

Am a Fan in a cage

Spinning in rage

fast, furious, frantic

I blast a stream of draught

In whose path sit signatories

Born In The Dung

 

Born In The Dung

So I stretch my legs

As I did those days-

As I sat upon the path

Among the spattered dung of last night

Watching for the little giants -

Little beetles that roll balls -

Mother

Mother

When the hawker trades her spiel

For the party manifesto

She is not my mother

She is no hawker

She becomes opposition activist

A poet

Ethnic violence in East Africa: GENERAL ADVISORY

 

 

Ethnic violence in East Africa:

GENERAL ADVISORY

I.               possible scenarios

Before gossip resumes its rounds

a nation shall begin to crumble.

Much heat

Not enough breath

Pain,

gangrene,

death,

honest cheat

 honest cheat

 

So, I can't take you home

But we can walk someway

Like water and dirt-

To catch a seasonal cold

 

To catch a seasonal cold 

Once every season I shed this shell

This hard, cold, old skin

Tired and worn by long loops of dry hell

I moult and dare to bare again my self.

Every once I fall, I fall well

Fall right flat for a woman

Butterflies before an acceptance speech

 Butterflies before an acceptance speech

If madness strikes me

Seizes my senses right on the dais

Shakes me out of my habitual lies;

If I spoke the truth just once

dropped this calculated elegance

Straight Tool and Miss Last Nail

 Straight Tool and Miss Last Nail

 

Was once a tool

Real sleek steel,

fine for new nails, or fixing a few rails

or just about anything the crew wills-

a fresh prince for the price of fish-

free!

Death, thou art loosed!

 Death, thou art loosed!

My head is full

Of sounds of a shovel

Of sands shoved

Of rocks moved

Of ground punched

To sink a necessary grave-

Unnecessarily too often

Too close to the last

In too dry a ceremony.

 

The people I’ve buried

Graves I have filled

In song-less haste

In war’s pointless waste

Death is born.

 

I grope in the past

And my past is lonely and vast

Furnished with misery

Well washed with tears and worry

Ventilated by gusts of terror –

my past is packed to the ceiling with

memory upon memory

loss upon loss

too often in this war-

Stacked atop each as if

they were trophies.

 

My past is a place

famished then abandoned

By friends and the sun and the wind.

 

My past is this place I can’t leave

This home I return to

This prison that shadows me

No matter the borders I cross,

This windowless trap

This smothering grip,

This past so vast

Acres and acres of evil in my mind

Poisoning where I walk

What I think, who I meet-

poisoning.

 

My past is a memory

the smell of blood of kin

stinging pain of singed skin

the sound of a flaring flame

of a flame crack

the harrowing fall of my life.

 With my hands I remember

burying

people I had encountered

bodies I had entered

The hearts I had warmed

In the season of love bloomed,

Lips I’d tasted; the bonds now tested

By death broken, I buried.

 

I remember

That I have lost to soulless sands

To silent earth

To rocks that clatter,

then roll and settle

to graves that cover

my friends whose fatal

End is an endless bother

 that I couldn’t shrug at all -

this memory so lonely and vast

Is a grave that covers me

For since then, I've been dead

Though I walk-

Thought I walk.

Rickety Riot

 

Rickety Riot

The theatres come to town

at corners and turnings and straights

pavement and kerbside and where else

you’d care to look-

is a dead show

of bones- rackety rickety riot

in streets

A Hunter’s dilemma

 All these dear darlings of

Fat rounded sides

Skins of golden shades

Basking in the splendour

Of the western sun,

crowd his vision.

Heaven and earth

I need to find love, to catch it and hoard,

To check-mate it like a king on a chessboard;

I need to fly blind like an arrow,

To free-fall for someone, like...oh,

Like the sun needs to rise tomorrow

 

I need to run crazy, look straight stupid.

Yet in that abandon find favour in cupid.

And I want, oh so much, to be found

Like a falling leaf needs the ground.

 

I want too to succeed, to lift my head above

Like the boldest bull in the herd;

In my time I want to have conquered

Popular opinion, fame and political love;

I crave to pause where I leave my mark

And like Ozymandias say, “Look on my work!”

 

I hope that in the cycle of time I have risen

From wherever my soul's been a denizen,

Through gleaming gold, dirty iron, forsaken earth;

That the past is punishment and this, my final birth.

I wish in time to run free- a spirit

Unbound in form and loving it,

I want to be with the best spirits I can find-

The high, the gentle, the forever kind.

 

But then stronger grows my hunger for money

I cheat and play low tricks on you daily, honey,

I kiss you with my lips and my hands pick your pocket;

I swindle and sell friendship for a one-way ticket!

 

Oh but I want it all- fame and fortune, peace and quiet,

To escape without a scrape and be the hero yet!

And like a camel's love for pasture here and heaven there

This relentless wanting wears my soul bare!

Devine company

 Devine company

Homeward I walk in the night

On a path by fire flies lit,

underbrush licks my ankles,

castor seeds feel my under-feet

Time of the Baby Oryx

 

Time of the Baby Oryx

 In a spot in the wild

Among grass and cactus.

between two rivers flowing away –

each embroiled in its own course