THE CAMPUS
(i)
Thorns Everywhere
Knowledge! Noology!!
The search for enlightenment
The core of minds engaged
Lurking as the thighs of water-maid
Rough like a pyramid of thorns
Laureate filled, yet killing
Men sojourn your threshold endlessly
never getting
worn-out.
A lot achieve a lot.
A lot in agonies disallowed
Unending the struggle
Sweet-bitter the struggle.
Institutions;
Colleges enlightened oppressive camps.
The quest dignified
The cost great but the fleece’s mouth-watering.
In Thee womanhood is shamefully lost
Everybody everywhere,
dogs in the
market square entangled in love
Ours, unholy rats alley
Free for all, the once sacred.
Women in labour, labour in lecturer’s houses.
The usual pads daily seen in lecturer’s waste basket
Jam-locked in lecturer’s offices
Tutees and senior tutors fight
For uneasy squats, over stinking holes.
Students in cults cut one another over lovers night
Ours, is rotten tomatoes extravaganza
A market square blessed with the tears of heaven
When grave- diggers had fertilized the square
with the
blood of the earth.
My children! My children!
Yours, won’t be found in that stale ‘Egusi-soup’
We are of the pure breed.
(ii)
A Plea For Survival
On trials for my race I have known
Tribulations my feet have tasted many
But none, none is like the present
Soaked in ‘Ogbolo-soup’ and forced down
a hill
litered with banana peels.
I’m aggrieved,
I’ve been maimed by ignorant academic overlords
The “Sanctuaries”, house of knowledge
turned
oppressive camp
Why the demonic over-lords my exit sought?
Only the fools put out a fire that will
Douse or ease out the harmatten.
Did I offend thee?
Create a forgiving mind
Please do for a father who seeks to outshine
his son, cursed.
Allow me live my life undisturbed
Better you should have been,
Better you will be.
If God is given a chance.
But if you don’t like a palm kernel that
refused to
be cracked
My God, my Lord you must fight
You must lioness take out of the path before
taking away
the cub
And my God is omnipotent science.
The flesh, the tomatoes of the body might
be made to
rot
Breath might be ceased
But God you must wrestle with, in a ringless ring.
For I am a useful clay
In the ageless potter’s hand.
Elusively Evasive
Doesn’t cock crow ever herald dawn?
Doesn’t the sun ever rises from the East?
And the moon ever governs the night?
My mind is diseased,
She is with a flow of blood.
Unhealable?
There, creeping like a recuperating child
is the lord
of the day.
A warm bright sun smiling amusingly
The moon and stars unmolested
The hawk protects the chicks.
The birds saved, ants bite hunters’ legs
Let the winds blow the trumpets
The birds sing their new songs
The leaves dance their new steps
In honour of our Lord the Messiah.
H’mm…
A dream.
Must it, or must it not?
“Do I sleep or wake?
Sweet dreams
Academic prisons tap-rooted
Freedom, elusive evasive.
CARDS
Were success cards
The mysteries unknoth,
Human beasts flying colours be.
Fate the other road choose
That pain-stakingly, seek men the path
And must.
Industry, men mock
Dreaming dreams
That success, children’s castle be
Success a mirage remains,
Till men reason employ.
Peter out in hopelessness
Success cards success
Alice in wonderland, forever be.
ANGELIC SHE-DEVIL
Love, denounces all men
Foolery made of me in it.
Women.
Women, sweet serpents in love
Loved I once an angelic she-devil
And so, thought she did.
Decades we darkly love
Till fate a date kept with her.
Fate a retributive justice
Stewed her in her juicy juice
A fateful day left me undone
That which makes men men
To dine with the fading flower
In romantic embrace
Lay bare her foolery
Not long God her oath witnessed
That she defecated in her Xmas clothes in the market square
And like lightning and thunder
Came in, a Methusalah
And her taken away, a willing horse
And I a hen, witnessing
A hawk her chick carted away.
Tongue –tied
My hands amputated
My legs wobbling drunkenly
I learnt bitterly that money is love
Time dissolves it seems
Love, denounce all men who ever love
For the fair love not, but money.
