Home

Confetti.
Colored sheets of paper.
Tarpaulin
Left over blocks
Half burnt wood
Gnarled iron rods
Sand
Mud and pebbles
Old cans
Old tires and a rim
A car door
Three stereo cases
Three tree trunks
One bucket
Another bucket below the leaking roof
A beaten bucket
One and half tubers of yam
Half boiled water in a steel helmet
Memories of meals on empty stomach
Sweating shirts
Rough boots by the door
Wall clock, right time and broken face
Second hand ticks away
History recorded every second
Naked boy playing in the mud
Naked woman stretched out
Broken voices
Broken songs
Beats from broken bottles
Chorus.
Swallows, kites
Solitary nightingale by the rubbish heap
Lonely pup sleeping at my feet.
Home.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Will you hear me now?

I have calloused my knees
On earth, rocks and Persian rugs
I have calloused my forehead
On walls, frescoes and marble

I have sang alleluiah
The birds echo the chorus
I have counted beads
From decade to decade

I have grown beards
And dreadlocks longer than my waist
I have chalked my eyes
And rouged my cheeks

I have stood on mountains
And beside the oceans
I have walked around the Iroko
And painted the caves

I have sacrificed the young
And decapitated the beautiful
I have split blood
And splattered entrails

I have banished thought
And woven legends
I have hanged heretics
And burned their books

I have sought the whirlwind
And the locust
I have smashed homes
And uprooted street lights

I have sought Ogun's wand
And set fire to Amadioha's shrine
I have allied with the desert
And laid waste the rivers in the land

I have laid across the track
And borne your footsteps
I have sat with the dogs
And eaten your scraps

I have stopped the sun
And stayed the night
I have seized the rain
And whipped the wind

I have wailed in the night
And cried in the day
I have called your name
And counted the curses

I have kidnapped your children
And held your ancestors for ransom
I have blocked the roads
And blown up your pipelines

I have empaneled committees
And formed factions
I have held conferences
And rewritten constitutions


Will you hear me now?



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Will you hear me now?

I have calloused my knees
On earth, rocks and Persian rugs
I have calloused my forehead
On walls, frescoes and marble

I have sang alleluiah
The birds echo the chorus
I have counted beads
From decade to decade

I have grown beards
And dreadlocks longer than my waist
I have chalked my eyes
And rouged my cheeks

I have stood on mountains
And beside the oceans
I have walked around the Iroko
And painted the caves

I have sacrificed the young
And decapitated the beautiful
I have split blood
And splattered entrails

I have banished thought
And woven legends
I have hanged heretics
And burned their books

I have sought the whirlwind
And the locust
I have smashed homes
And uprooted street lights

I have sought Ogun's wand
And set fire to Amadioha's shrine
I have allied with the desert
And laid waste the rivers in the land

I have laid across the track
And borne your footsteps
I have sat with the dogs
And eaten your scraps

I have stopped the sun
And stayed the night
I have seized the rain
And whipped the wind

I have wailed in the night
And cried in the day
I have called your name
And counted the curses

I have kidnapped your children
And held your ancestors for ransom
I have blocked the roads
And blown up your pipelines

I have empaneled committees
And formed factions
I have held conferences
And rewritten constitutions


Will you hear me now?



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The lion eats the deer, the deer eats the lion

The lion eats the dear
And grows fat
The lion eats the goat
And grows strong
His roar fills the savannah
His savage claws mark his territory

The lions claw splits on a thorn
The thorn spills a little blood
The thorn makes a little wound
The lion limps along
The fly lays an egg in the wound
A small egg between the claws
Warm in the flesh now rotting bit by bit

The egg becomes a maggot
The wound rots the claw
The roar stills the night
The roar expels his pain
The lion goes to ground.
The vultures take their piece
The jackals take their piece
The hyenas take their piece
The earth takes her piece
The grass grows from the earth
The grass grows lush from the leftover blood
The grass blooms from the leftover flesh

The goat eats the grass
The deer eats the grass
The grass from the earth
The earth from the blood
The blood from the wound
The wound made by the thorn
The wound in the claw of the lion.

The lion ate the deer
The deer ate the lion.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

My robes are black

My robes are black , you see
To hide the danger of my lips, full and rouged.
You will not see my heaving bosom or lust at my full nipples.

Your gaze will stay with my eyes only.
You will not see that I smirk at the bulge below your waist.

My robes are black, you see
From head to toe and round again.
You cannot guess which side the assegai hangs.

My Victoria secrets remain secret from your searing gaze.
You don't know if there is an asp beneath my bosom.

My robe is black, you see.
I am marked and owned like the engraved iPod in my Gucci bag.
You won't know where this mark is tattooed on my hips.

Perhaps it's a bomb that rounds my butt so well.
You don't know if I will explode in blood, tears or passion.

The passion seeps through the pores like an alien virus.
You are not sure whether it will consume you.

My robes are black, you see.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Who owns this land?

Bonds have been broken
Blood has flowed like a river
Uprooting shrubs and Iroko trees
Leveling mounds and homesteads
Bravery has been sacrificed
Broad chests left rotting in the fields
Honour has been violated
Shame stored up to poison every generation
The land has been laid waste
Exile has met the old and slavery has consumed the young
Strangers have wandered from afar
Lots have drawn new boundaries
New songs now recount heroes past
New stories explain the mounds now rebuilt
Broad chests stand out in these fields of blood
Bravery is in vogue again

The vulture welcomes another feast day
Broad chests will claim new boundaries
New battles will be fought in these fields
And blood will flow again
And new stories will tell of ancestors descending from the skies
The weapons will change
And bravery will be redesigned
The vulture will nod her understanding
The mounds will grow over the homesteads
The shrubs will become rhubarb trunks
And the air will yearn for new battles.
The survivors will tell new tales
Of ancestors coming to battle
And deities arriving on dragons spitting fire
The victors will mark new homesteads
And new calendars
And new festivals of fertility and the land goddess
But the rivers will flow again
In anger and in fury
The earth will reclaim her gifts
In quiet guile and in cataclysmic suddenness
The land owns the land
We, the survivors own our stories.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I cannot cry

I cannot cry

Something has happened to me
I cannot cry
Locusts have come from the east
Locusts have come from the west
The day is dark with their wings
And the farm is dead

The bones of the shepherd is left on the rock
His cleft is dead with the sheep in the field
Oji-egbe who lives by the river
Is back from his wandering
He has exchanged his oars for rifles
And now marks his homestead with gunpowder
He answers our greetings with gunfire
We cannot tiptoe to the water

We shall die from the hunger
Or perish in the hail of bullets
We who only wish to greet the sun
And the neighbors bearing gifts
We shall die of hate
Or perish with fear
Fear of the gifts that now bear death
From our neighbor back from his wandering

Shall we now scratch our backs
On the rhubarb bark
Shall we hide a bomb
Gift wrapped in our bosoms
Should we bury Oji-egbe
In the evil forest?
Far from the wailing in our homestead
Far from the ancestral grove, now desolate
He is our brother, so we thought
He is our neighbor, so we thought.

Something has happened to me
I cannot cry
The village square is inlaid with thorns
I cannot dance
The song is set to gun fire
I cannot sing.


( for Kofi and all those that died in the Nairobi Westgate mall terrorist attack )



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Dubai

A city of fingers
Bedecked in jewels coarse and subtle

Fingers sculpted in imaginations set free from the limits of cash

Fingers
Stuck out at the sky
Fingers adorned with a million stars shrouding the sky with their rainbow blinks

Long thin fingers
Wafting through closets and safes and bank accounts
Grasping fingers finagling value out of thin air and powdery dust

Fingers reclaiming life from nature, water and desert
Wresting habitat from sun sea and salt

Fingers of black and gold, finest silk and coarsest calico
Fingers hiding the souls behind a mask
Hiding the prada behind a gown but flaunting the masaretti

A city of fingers
Is false like her nail polish
Temporary like her Brazilian hair
Fingers that beacon pockets and reason
Fingers that flick off roots like cigarette ash.

Dubai.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Chim, maje

You have put shelter above my head
And placed strong beams to hold it
Swallows and doves make their nest in the eaves
There they lay their eggs and compose their tunes
We are safe from the maelstroms raging above
Us and the birds that have lost their wings
And the dogs that have lost their bark

We do not know how far you rolled the rocks
Nor how deep you have sunk their foundations for the beams
We cannot fathom the walls you have built around us
That have repelled the wind and the whirlwind
And has withstood the sword and the cannon

Our flour is not running out
Our oil jar remains full
You have served us bread in the midst of famine
You have given us extra for our enemies
And those whose homestead no one now remembers
You have opened our hands to share
And the remnants overflow our store

We have traversed through the jungles
Jungles of concrete, jungles of flesh, jungles of blood
We have traversed the wilderness
Wildernesses of the hungry lion and his cub
We have swam seven seas and seven rivers
Seven hills and seven mountains
We have met men, we have met demons and
we have met men that are demons
We have roamed far and wide
We have roamed in flesh and in spirit
And you have brought us home

Chim, maje




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I don't want to make money

I want to build a house
That will last for ages and ages
To be wondered at and explored
To be a shelter and a palace
A refuge and a shrine
A house to be yearned for in souls
That have wandered far and wide

I want to cure cancer
And abolish pain and maesectomy
I want to make the fathers see their children
And the children their children
And keep the kindred gods happy in their abode
Their abode bereft of ancestors

I want to spread cheer
And smiles across the wilderness
That now stretch from face to face
I want to share a laugh and a shirt
And add a shoulder to the plough
That adds another bushel to the harvest

I don't want to make money

I want to know
The fabric that keeps the eye
Glued to the head and the heart in the chest
I want to discover the strange songs of the stars
And the conversation of the rocks
Sitting on the roadside

I want to debate
With the sea crashing on this beach
Ignoring the oil and the egg
I want to call the wind howling silently
To witness my incantations for calm

I want to count my treasures
In memories shared of laughter and tears
And just the silence of hearts in rhythm.
I want to erect monuments to knowledge
And mercy and charity laid like a carpet
For searching hearts.

I don't want to make money.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Today is our anniversary

The sun rose today
as it always has
the night has fled before
the arrows of light shooting wake up
into our bleary eyes.

The sky is clear again
as it usually is
the clouds have sailed away
nudged on by the gentle breeze
caressing our damp foreheads .

The house is happy again
as it likes to be
the melancholy of loneliness
drowned in the chatter of new lives .

Our life is complete again
as it should always be
the simple joys we share
are all there is to promise.

Thank you for them.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad