Poetry

Excerpts from NAKED AMONG THESE HILLS

PAGE 28  LOOSE EYES

I tell these eyes to sleep-
Sleep, little ones, sleep
That your lips may close
Your hands be still

But it was your snigger that roused me
That earth’s snigger underneath my feet
And Kongi’s acidic joke:
If the land lets you sleep, sleep

Cicero’s banging at my soul’s door
Giwa’s grimace and Wiwa’s fury-
Osundare’s going and coming and the many exile
It was your migration, Garba, Oguibe, Adesokan…

And the fact of these hills
Where moths walk amidst seas of reptiles
And the calm backwater with the solitary gold fish
The far-seeing mountaintop and the greenery hereunder
The hinges of my eyes are loose
The harmattan has stripped me
Flung open the doors of my being-
I feel you- I feel you in my marrow.

 

Page 154 THE MUSIC WO-MAN

In the pallid corridor
Where they throw their doors ajar
To the throbbing beats of the xylophone
The quandary of the illusory harmonica
Bellowing in the deep
Puerile, enervated
Collision of metals
Shadows, slink
A repository of lurid shades
Superabundant fumes
Escaping the crowded cells of souls
Rush out now in gustatory appeal
And as these doors
Widen, voluptuous in glee
The songlit site prays
That we will, as nature
Remain wooly, fecund.

 

PAGE 156 TO THE 24 ARTISTS AND THE WORKFORCE

Soon, I will have
The caked remains of frenzy birthdays
The loudness of cigarette stumps
Where the white and red, blood lights fill tulips
As the raw muse throws each creator in varied fits-

And I am missing you already
As I miss home in each block in the diary
In the never-ending flights of the forte
Soaring cloud, unruly suborn

The harmattan, taking an inventory
Of pains, boils, sores and the chatty noon
The meek bird by the window
Filing away our charm, ineluctable skills, revelries

Smokes from smoldering embers
Fans sculptured to whiz dull woods to flame
Boiling broth on the heated tripod
Irresolute at the intrusion of the soot

Ah! I am missing you all already
Bearing in each pulsation
The candid thoughts that we will hold out the steam
And breathe love in each little heart

For never has anything been more robust
Than a little love in a little heart
Holding on to life even in coma
In all the prisons of the world.