Livin' It Up

It seems quite easy
The tug so tempting
To sheath this iterant suffering
In death!
Let it all come to nothing
Slit a wrist, grab a fence electric
Drown in a stream or something
Just make an entry, an ending;
For they dehumanise
These cycles of lies, the false hopes peddled by the same clique
Of unctuous faces in flowing robes gloating covertly at
The miseries of the roiling masses in many millions
In the marketplaces of this world
Broiling under the naked eye of the scorcher
Their bodies heaving under the yoke heavy
Of hunger and starvation...;
It does seem easy to
Extinguish this husk of a body
Housing an aggravated spirit, to
Sever the tenuous will to survive, stay alive
But carry on we must
As waking up each day to face the same enemy, a mound
The gathered skeletons of thwarted dreams, still
Welling in the mornings of our wracked body, at those tender
Beginnings is hope, weak but obdurate, down but defiant.

Asyndeta

Asyndeta

"On the downside, we have so many unnecessary deaths..." President M. Buhari, 25/12/2018.

I

you could mount the monster, Eiffel-style

wrestle it to the asphalt

crack your cranium!

you know no restraint being

the bairn of your father, the moon of her

dark eyes;

fractured, you are flown into an elfdom

where elves of enchanted songs with

magicked fingers, would for the right price,

patch up puerile puissance;

in the meantime

they continue to river unremarked

the lethal blacktops veining this land

much menaced, the arterial spurts of votaries

commoners haplessly propitiating the

implacable gods of the roads we ply daily.

II

you shall be sheltered

having climbed into their hallowed rank

on bloodied steeples

mindless, of course, of the treacly cherry puddles

you would do a tap dance, really a victory dance

slipping, you would snap your neck!

why should you regret?!

what does it matter when your vulturine

friends, oligarchs in the chamber red, only

have to dig in the popular till

off you go then on medical charter

meanwhile

in the pens in your backyard

mothers expire in childbirth

babies post partum...

Butea

Butea

In the rays of the setting sun
The world wears a garment of
Bright, deoxygenated blood;

By a streamlet's sluggish run
A flame of the forest
And blossoms thereof
Match the scarlet of the sunset
With their own crimson.

I Promise

I Promise

Though the fog be fresh
And the flame be dead
Even though blindness spreads
Its white lethal form
Even though what's left
Of the burning flames of transited patriots
Is soot and ashes
Even though the ubiquitous dusts of wickedness
Drape the soul of the city
Even though the fog conceals
The very outlines of evolved evils
Though the sun burnishes the porters' necks
In the yam market
Even though the full moon detracts not
Robbers from their den
And the very land oozes red
Like the pure essence of the male Isapa
Still I will not be bowed
Though those in the know say
It's hopeless and helpless
I shan't regret being of the land
This land cursed with blessings
Where all is gall-in-honey
And life is eaten like the Awusa nut.