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

 

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-

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

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-

Falling for WAR

Falling for WAR

Out of darkness of night, peeps she like a star

As a diamond in the dark, dazzles she among tar
She prances forth in virgin allure
Add a whiff of queenly air to her bewitching flair!
Her every sparkle a kiss, every blink a dis!
A slave-faced master, seductive disaster!
Here she crowns a prince, there she hangs a dunce!

In the wind talks her wild perfume
With her beauty we are charmed into doom!
I've heard she's heaven; she is gold and glory-
And that fate faring any way, whether one live or die,
He dies a king or lives a memory.

And she's in town! Yes, and she is down
For me; to me by a magic-wind blown!
And I am suddenly a fretful wreck-
Will it do to just flirt and neck?
What if I forget to draw the blinds,
And the paparazzi tells all it finds?
Can I date Ms. War yet stay off blogs,
Or tabloids that feed my name to the dogs?

I hear she met Peace, his moral fabric yet without crease
But with a single vampire kiss, she turned Peace amiss!
She bewitched that American neighbour, dried him of humour;
His manner once couth, now gone with the breath of youth.
He runs around naked, in a witch-hunt for the wicked
And in their shameless act,  he perverts without tact -
With PMCs and drones, he never has to lose pawns.
Yet so is he lost, though once honoured most

Too late now I assume, she won't have a change of groom 
With negotiations complete, of options 'am all deplete!
To Kismayu we blast off soon, on a harrowing honeymoon.
So shall I have her (I wonder), in a trench or a bunker?
Or is that all old-fashioned now? I wouldn't know.

Whatever she likes, street combat or aerial strikes,
Is all like romancing a sniper; petting the grim reaper.
But so is love and death; found and lost in a single breath 
Either falls from the skies - before you've said your goodbyes
Or blows you off the ground - in many parts all hell-bound!
So, what be the point to hide - from this killer bride?

Even dirt, with a little glitter

If a rock is hard and black

If a tree is large and soft
Must it be granite at heart?
Baobab inside?
Must you scorn it from far
"Miserable Baobab, thou art ungainly fat"
And condescend upon immovable rock,
"Poor thee, I understand thy stubborn stock."

None is what it seems
Thorns sprout by tenderest apples
And are juiciest melons on desert soils
And who would have thought!
You'll find your tongue strayed
as a waif any day
To look at me and judge
Or shower me in praise,
And the leaning Tower of Pisa
Would laugh still at your skewed opinion;
And for judgment, why, you will be bankrupt!

But I wish you the sight
To see steel in a bean pole
To smell perfume in the communal urinal
For contaminated are we all
Even dirt, with
 a little glitter.
Though we jibe and fuss
How thoroughgoing we are
We are breeds crossed of something bad
And something worse.

To  insult me, then,
crack my oak bark

Stand my eucalyptus scent
The itch of poison-oak sap
And pinch of falling thorns.
Still, borrow a giraffe's neck
For my ego sits high on my uppermost twigs
And deep in my pithy stem

40 minutes in Abbotabad

40 minutes in Abbotabad

Osama Dead as it were
Would be a worthy wait;
Not for that August of ninety-eight -
Of blood and dust on the Nairobi sun;
not for that peaceless day in Dar.
No, dear.
For the 9/11 of 2000-and-one:
The three thousand dead
And a fortress' firmity derided
a soft heart bled
a giant's pride piqued...

The rest of us have been worth naught
because one bearded dad must get caught!

'40 minutes in Abbotabad' is a date screaming
'remember me with all your American remembrance!'
a remembrance that forgets the waste
of two horrible gulf wars-
a history of manufacturing whores-
dipping for Destructive Weapons, dipping
Dipping for solid but drawing liquids- rigging-
drawing out oil and blood- oozing, flowing,dripping!
Four seasons of plunder and a resounding retreat.
Snap Sadam's head and hurray! The rest are beat!
Maybe that's good taste when you are from the west.
Any how, remember!

A remembrance that forgets eleven years:
Of miles of talk without a milestone,
Of blind fury fueling the not-so-smart bombing
Of Bits of bone borne in body bags for American funeral
But no bandages for wounded Afghani lifestyle
Bleeding at home to survive if they will
On scant food and thriving opium…
40 minutes in Abbotabad explains
nothing.

Nothing,
But the ugliness of a beast,
Scaled and calloused, with a callous habit,
Big, disruptive, lost to its absent wit,
Truly big- drunk on its own bigness.
Nothing, but the nightmare of the hooked talon:
a single tilt, and the landscape bleeds!
Afghanistan is the fish you disemboweled in public
Poked, turned, ripped... but never tasted.
It is the ghostly past you will now abandon;
It is your latest slave-whore
While you refocus your insatiable lusts,
While your perverted appetite re-adjusts.

40 minutes in Abbotabad is a great noise-
resounding yet will not hear itself;
A success- that will not celebrate itself,
A tragic parody of Entebbe-
Those 90 minutes of love.
Whom did you save
in Abbotabad?
In the eleven years?
Are they too buried at sea, Perhaps?

Certainly

Certainly

Yes I am sure now
Sooner than you thought;
-than I ought to
That there will be an AK
Laid where I’ll lie.