Tuesday, 27 June 2017

Biafra of the mind


                                              Biafra of the mind is a wound like no other,
                                              A wound that from the beginning slumbered
                                              Unbeknownst, undisturbed, a pain referred
                                              For a time when it burns white- hot.

                                             It is children, us, born of our mothers
                                             And mothers not our own,
                                            Who were content to spawn an insidious suspicion 
                                            And nurture an all- consuming fear.

                                            We are after all a reminder of the reality of
                                            Happiness unattained, a beautiful horizon unreached.
                                            We are the poorer cousins of hope and promise,

                                            Beggars on the street hiding a crushing resentment. 

Sunday, 5 February 2017

Freedom fighter


Through boom and bust,
Remain steadfast as a rock.
Through heat, haze and dust
And uncertainty’s mock,
Remain unwavering, undeterred,
For we travel the twilight zone
Of a throng confused and ill-prepared,
But Sitting pretty on power’s throne.
 Hold their views uncomfortable sway
The bit between their teeth, a stranglehold.
Our ideas are their ready prey,
The manner of hope’s suffering, a sad manifold.
Stand strong and shine those eyes already keen,
Prevail you must, what choice have we got?
Pray, do full justice to where you’ve been

And deliver lasting victory, sweet and hard-fought.

Thursday, 19 January 2017

Ours is an unwieldy country

Ours is an unwieldy country.
Huge is our land mass, disparate are our peoples.
We are a multitude of vociferous tongues,
That wail a cacophony of philosophies
From the false safety of our gaggle of alliances.
We defend our corners with jealous zest,
Even as we search in the dark
For the light at the end of a dark tunnel of our hewing.
We metamorphose as life insists we must, and yet
We fail to bow to the demand of evolution.
Evolution comes at a price we are reluctant to pay,
For inherent in it is a demand
 That our beliefs must distil into a conviction
That redeems our mistrust and frees us from paranoia.
Hear Hear brother! Conviction calls us from the depths
Of mother country of troubled birth.
Hear Hear sister! Conviction demands we sing
A mellifluous song of hope to our children,

A song that exhorts to service and cheers to unity.

Monday, 2 January 2017

Asoebi

Asoebi is a dream, birthed into a world
Of ankara, lace and guinea.
 It is rich fabrics of sage green and royal purple,
And torsos sculpted for occasion,
Enveloped in spangled baby pink,
 Burgundy and burnt gold.
Asoebi are ideas that find wondrous expression
In diadems of fila and the crowning glory of gele.
It is that which achieves concretisation
In the thoughts and hushed conversations
 Of excited sisterhoods and neurotic mothers.
Asoebi is an explosion of celestial blue and dazzling azure
Brought into being by eager pockets
With furrowed brows.
It is the submission to iro and buba,
Tailored to the glory of curves
Elevated on Louboutins and the like.
Asoebi is the unflinching herald of uniform, family
And life’s close friendships…
It is the promise that rose red will again be embellished
With beautiful neck pieces, waxy smiles

And pouts haughty, as well as demure.

Sunday, 23 October 2016

A prayer

Photo culled from tripleeforum.blogspot.com

I pray to be borne aloft by tomorrow’s wings
And guided away from today’s malevolent selfishness,
From sights perceived only for the now, with eagle eyes
From arms that would comfort just my own,
And breasts that would feed only my children.

I pray deviation from a path leading predictably to nowhere,
Replete with gorges that swallow a multitude of dreams
And a fostered sun that scorches the soul black,
Wringing it of love’s soothing moisture,
Whilst wrenching from it kindness’s milk.

I pray the resurrection of wondrous ideas long dead,
The rekindling of noble thoughts wantonly extinguished,
That they may yet again thrive incarnated
In Vessels that will sing the songs of giving,
And dance the dance of receiving.  

Saturday, 22 October 2016

The other room

I like me the feel of the other room
Of our birth, triumphs and wantonness.
A boundless space some say, of roiling va-va-voom.
A soulless place others say, of trenchancy and brutishness.
In its wallow, I am enveloped in purpose of an intense clarity.
In its embrace, an opacity and perdition
Of frightening parity.
I am surrendered to the wind of its uncertain seduction
As it charts its course of avarice and artifice.
I feel swept towards redemption from excess and unwholesome predilection,
That honey trap for casual sexism and corruption’s suffice.
In its throes I pray not for catastrophic loss of self and reason,
The other room of our centre’s miserable lack.
But rather me, love’s perpetually cheery season
which rains on us all, leaving its indelible mark.


Thursday, 25 August 2016

Our truth



Would that we reached our truth quickly
On commencing our journey,
When voices like fire raged firm promise
From ramparts fortified by emancipation’s cry.

Would that our truth wove this patchwork of loose seams,
And molded our collective face, a fractured sum of its beauteous parts.
This could have prevented the disease eating at our hearts,
A hail of bullets and a million wasted lives.

Whither our truth when we hide the earth’s gift of bread
From diverted gaze?
From our slum-kissed citadels, we thrust its crumbs into the outstretched hands
Of children with hollowed-out eyes.

 Truth was left at the water’s edge when we struck an unfair bargain
For inheritance and toil.
Alas a resultant sludge of our dark designs
Has decimated life, our eternal mother.

This journey to our truth is arduous in the harsh daylight
Of our indolence.
 A disheveled multitude and I gather at an assembly
To hand-wring and feign blindness.


We are the mirror image of a few of finery, cunning
And the lore of our diverse roots
Shrill prayers and discordant testimonies.
The multitude speaks its anxiety in a medley of tongues as it asks

‘Wayfarer, do you see with our eyes? Do you dream as we dream?’
I answer, ‘With mine and the eyes of a thousand of you I see naught,
As our eyes are shut. And for the past thousand nights I have dreamed naught,

But a contorted truth, the same as our journey’.