You will still be here

I am standing here
Like I always do
Staring across your watery leagues
Wondering where this wind comes from
Now salving my dry skin
Now raising my rumpled cape
And now driving this tumult.

I close my ears here
Like I always do
And still the coursing blood
To a crawl and to a trickle.
I listen to your growls and slaps
To your roars and your whispers
And wonder what to answer.

I stretch out my hands here
Like I always do
My spirit wanders out across the leagues
Above the clouds and in between
We wrestle between the rocks and crevices
Drenched with the salinity of your sweat.

I build my castles here
Like I always do
Knowing they are built on sand
Knowing they will not stay
Beyond our courtship dance.
I build them still with turrets and battlements,
Armoured cars and diamond scepters
I build them still with sweat and blood.

I make my dreams here
Like I always do
I choose my cast from these travelers
Matching oblivious to your gaping maws
Matching your drumbeats and their heart beats
Scenes and acts woven from the debris
In your wake.

I will go away
Like I always do
And leave you to your beat
And to your rage and to your fury
I will leave at moonlight
But you will still be here
Like you have always been.


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What more do you want of us?

What more do you ask of us
Deity of the depths
Beyond the cola with six lobes
And the palm nuts of the two headed tree?

We have brought the chameleon and his powder
The cricket and his drums
What more do you ask of us
To salve this your hunger foaming all night

The goats were fat and fresh
The yams long and fat
We have danced around the fire
And yelled into your wind
What more do you ask of us?

This your anger that throws fits all day
Has eaten the cock and still boils
Has eaten the palms and still boils
Has eaten the earth and still boils
What more do you ask of us?

You have taken your priest
As you have his father and his father before him
Now you must accept supper from strangers
Supplications from cast-offs
Sacrifice on broken pots

What more do you ask of us,
But boulders and rubles from afar
Soil borrowed from our enemies
Craft learned from the spirits
To meet your anger.

Our roots are in this soil
We will not make our nests in the air
Our roots are in this soil
We will not breed beneath your waves
What more do you ask of us?

Deity of the depths
Meet us half way, that is our prayer
Still your anger, that is our request
Return our soil, that is our demand
What more do you want of us?

Do not expect sacrifice from our king
Nor supplication from his court
Deity of the depths
The palace is on stilts, as you can see
Their boats stand at the ready

What more do you ask of us?

---------—---------
***the sea is eating our coast
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Now that I am dead ( in memory of all the Boko haram victims )

Now that your bullet
Has torn the last piece of your heart
And splashed my surprised neighborliness
For all to wonder at

Now that the hunger of your hate
Has eaten my heart
Fresh and bloody as you splayed it
For all to cringe at

Now that your manhood
Sticks out of my back
Engorged with the blood of a thousand wounds
For all to sigh at

Now that your crazed eyes
Has seen the tears of the fetus
Dragged forth in the violence of your thrust
For all to cry at

Now that the peace you crave
Envelopes the embers of dead homestead
Buried amidst your rampage
For all to condemn

Now that your bile
Has blackened your tongue
Wrestling with my lips limp with venom
For all to stare at

Now that death rides with you
Your blindfold sparing you
The stark nudity of our mothers horror
For all to jeer at

Now that I am dead
To the shock of your attack
We will spread the taste of death
For all to share.


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The Elephant has no shepherd

There is a thorn blanket
Woven between the thicket
A red carpet of lost toes
Trod day by day
To the waterhole

There is poison berry
Inviting from the green ceilings
A juicy treat from the anunebe
Drunk day by day
With lunch

There is the fake mating call
Inviting across the plains
The heady pheromone on every leaf
Inflaming with each breath
Carried across the trap

There is the smooth path
Across the quicksand lawn
The inviting relief for aching feet
Sucking the herd soothingly
Beyond relief

There is the distant booms
Of massacre and fire
Massing cinder on cinder
Promising inheritance
Of torched grass lands

There is the cacophony
Of baboons telling the stork
Of quela flock telling the locust
Each voice raised in assurance
Of the path down the long lost lake

There is the growl
Of massed hunger hidden
Murderous eyes shinning in the bushes
Waiting to claim the first scalp
And the last meal

There is the glade beyond the hills
Away from the spears of many cuts
There is the calm beyond the rainbow
But the elephant has no shepherd.

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When it's your turn

When it's your turn
The wind will not stop
The slow and furious traverse
Across land and sea and time

The air will not become foul
Or dark and cloudy
It will not cry for your breath
Or miss your smile

The sun will not forget
To climb out of her easterly bed
Her rays will neither curve nor lose its teeth
Biting through the gap of your absence

The dreams will still
Conjure the illusion of importance
Now that you have become but a thread
Of this dream that forever sleeps

The earth will still turn her spindle
Dancing only in small steps
Around the immortality of her journey
Forever slipping through this silence
That you now share

The butterflies will still seek the flowers
Nectar will still feed the bees
And the bees will still sting to death
The keeper and the stray dog

Memories will still be written
With chalk on smooth rocks
Buffeted in eternity by these
Waves of tears

Don't worry,
When it's your turn
The day will still break.


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Fear has become my companion

Fear has become my companion
Reaching out from the depth of my guts
Taking bites of my heart, beat by beat

Fear has become my companion
Wringing out the last pellets of welcome
Reluctantly from gates, fences and bullet proofing

Fear has become my companion
Keeping my stories from the communal fire
Baring laughter from devotees at the shrine

Fear has become my companion
Trudging behind every bank collapse
Behind every saving lost to sharper suits

Fear has become my companion
Staring out from each checkpoint eyes
Eyes that have seen death in napkins

Fear has become my companion
Friends, foes and in between share my fate
Bombs are wrapped in swathing clothes

Fear has become my companion.

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I am poetry

I am poetry


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This life my friend is not poetry

This world my friend is not poetry.
You don't have to tell me
The words have lost their luster
Like scabs on old wounds
Flakes of expensive paint
Hanging on crumbling nations

This is not poetry you say
Not a soaring epic of gods and battles
Or magic, witches and fairies
No monsters no goblins no spirit children no deities
The battle is done and the battlefield
marvels at the stupidity of it all
This epic is silent

This is no poetry
Of course not.
What worlds do you wish into being
What words do you weave now?
The incantations evoke only cold dreams
The ancestors do not hear the repetitions of the divining marbles
Sango o. Amadioha o.
Seek no contrivance of rhythm or candence
The fires that made them split hills are long gone

This is not poetry
But how can it be?
The song has left the singer
Who is to ask why?
The river is dry and the fish are dead
The grass is burnt and the plain is dead
Which song do you seek?
A dirge of the crocodiles beside the dying river
Or The cry of the elephant at the death of another bull

This life my friend is not poetry.

No wail of love lost and forgotten
No Romeo spewing his guts beside a castle bound lass
Romance is bewildered, waking up with new hangovers in strange beds
Love has left their hearts
And now bombs are strapped on doves, wives and children
The embrace is tighter and so are the daggers

This is not poetry
And there is no poetry to spout
No rhythm to wind up passions
Piercing hearts and clouding reason
Sending men to die for nought
Brave men leaving their wives for the cowards to inherit
Brave hearts pulping pity and charity for deities that will promise and fail
Yes, this is no poetry

My friend, this is not poetry.
The poets have lied and died
Their words are stuck halfway from life and from death
Their bones are left for the vultures
The vultures have lost their feathers and the desert is dry
Who will sing the dirge now the tambourine is broke
Whose drums will wake up the spirits
Which incantation shall follow the libation?
Who will return the message to the gods?

This world my friend is not poetry


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And Samuel told the people

And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.
And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you:
He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, jesters and clowns, desperate for his nod and his smile counting their worth by the number of bootsteps on their back .
And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
He will take your grounds , and what is below it, and what is above it, and your homestead and your ancestral land.
You will foul your water, poison your welcomes and murder your brother to gain his glance.
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
He will take your daughters of the full breasts and wide of hips to fill his beds and the beds of his courts and of his jesters.
He will paint them in blood and ash and charcoal and cloak them with rags. And you will admire their decay and celebrate their farts.
And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
Yea and your beaches , and high places and the things you revere will be mortgaged for debts your sons and their sons even to the tenth generation will not pay off.
And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.
And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
And put them to his pleasure and to his robbery. You will pay to be in the queue to wash his asses and clean his sty . Yea, you will fight to sleep with his dogs
He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. (1 Samuel 8:10-17 KJV)
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Who will not die?

Who will not die?


The rich will die
The poor will die
The king will die
The slave will die
The murderer will die
The victim will die
The falcon will die
The hunter will die
The gunsmith will die

Who will not die?

The man will die
The woman will die
The child will die
The young man will die
The old man will die
The fetus will die
The maggot will die
The butterfly will die
The lizard will die
The frog will die

Who will not die?

The saint will die
The sinner will die
The priest will die
The parishioner will die
The judge will die
The prisoner will die
The soldier will die
The assassin will die
The conjurer will die
The sacrificial will die
The sacrificer will die

Who will not die?

The musician will die
The dancer will die
The innocent will die
The guilty will die
The harbinger will die
The crop will die
The forest will die
The ant will die
The elephant will die

Who will not die?

The palace will die
The hovel will die
The village will die
The city will die
The lineage will die
The kingdom will die
The empire will die

Who will not die?

Death will not die
Laughter will not die
Charity will not die
Faith will not die
Pain will not die
Struggle will not die
Liberation will not die

Memories will not die.

Memories of who you were
Memories of who you touched
Memories of smiles brought
Memories of laughter taken
Memories of widows fed
Memories of hope.

Memories will not die.


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Who will not die?

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