ODE
TO A GOAT
Oh! Goat
You like us, are a living being
You and we were put on earth to inhabit
Somehow we became superior
And subjected you to our mercy
You are proclaimed most foolish mortal
But despite that, we find you a flavour
Foolish as you are, we ingest
And digest you to nourishing protein,
Yet, think not a fool we eat.
Fine Goat!
Nobody is your friend
Yet you bring affluence to man
Hence he clangs metal gongs
And resounds his voice
As his tireless feet trudge
The four cardinal directions
Alerting neighours of your theft
Many a time, you are hacked
To appease molten gods on our behalf
These gods accept you,
Even though you are foolish!
Forgive us Goat!
Even as your tonic flows
To assuage our miseries
Your hide we fragment to morocco
All your milk we drained
Is it because you are foolish
That we chase you away from crops
And let you feed only on valueless grasses?
When you make a meaningless disturbing bleat,
What do you mean?
No wonder you are shooed!
But when dusk approaches
And you do not come to the pen
We become frantic and search
The whole earth until you are found
Foolish as you are, we keep you with us
Even though we know only fools keep fools,
We do not mind.
IMMORTALIZATION
They sang and let loose melodies of joy
Renditions
of doxologies took the day
A long time ago, in Zungeru.
A joyous day in the area of the Niger
The penultimate month of 1904
A babe breathed the cosmic dust.
The eve of his birth arrived a comet
Sages and seers became parrots
Predicting and prophesying greatness
Like a shepherd boy, he attended
The schools of the colonial shepherds
Where he internalised their wisdom
In his growth, they scared him like leopards
But he parried not his Aluta.
One day, he opened the eyes of his soul brothers
To see the treachery of the alien shepherds
His wisdom in poli-science made him Solomon
He taught the brothers the use of pen power.
They stabbed the regime of the encroachers
Their pens became mightier than swords
The alien poli-thieves ran away
And thence came the dawn.
The brothers changed their song.
Self-governance became national demo
Eyes and fingers sailed towards him.
All hailed him and pledged followership
He became first soul president for the brothers
But before he could put his foot down,
Things took a dramatic twist
The elite brothers beside him
Set the stage for the first national melodrama
Tribalism, nepotism, regionalism were actors
He could unite them no longer
Anarchy and bloodshed was the new demo
A crocodile in khaki grabed reigns
And that was the beginning of his devalue.
He came down from hero
They brought him low to zero
Without utterance he stepped down
The elder state man; a speechless watchdog.
He watched as khaki men interchanged regimes
He was relegated to only history
Until the penta month of 1996
His immortalization intensified.
One khaki leader wrote his name in gold
An ivory tower was given his name
One airport was christened after him
A Teaching Hospital followed suite
Streets and squares carried his nomenclature
Effigies of him sprang up in major cities
But of what use is immortalization
If it is done after a hero’s demise?
ANUS BREEZE
The breeze came suddenly
Everyone was caught off guard
Fingers clutched noses
Palms practically became fans and gas masks
And only my friend was Negroid
On board the inter- Euro air bus.
“Who has bombarded us?” a voice rang out
“Whose bowels leaked out this toxic fart”
Another reiterated
… No answer came forth,
Only the foul aroma replied.
Suddenly he was being browsed
By all eyes’ in the Steel Bird.
Alas! But he is innocent
Who will believe the incognito perpetrator
Sat among the chalk-like saints?
SALUTE TO THE LAKE
Ancient stagnant deluge
Old as the world
Never flowing, ever overflowing
Translucent above, murky beneath
To welcome a frogman is tabooed
Not even the lakeside dwellers.
Who fetch your well daily.
No stranger prowls your waterside
Every indigent son knows the risk
Ancient magnificent marine
You’ re the protector
The ‘Agbala’
The poetic justice,
That metes judgement
Dangerous,
Diabolic,
Destructively devastating.
If you become provoked,
Heads, must roll!
Blood must
spill!
Auto crash is inevitable
Your T-junction a bloody mesh.
Ancient mighty aqua
You have no tributary
No canal flows to,
None, flows fro.
You habour the sacred water lion
That comes out to sunbath on the tar
On bright sunny days
Greetings O’ great lizard!
You fascinate commuters and me.
Each time you nap in the sun.
Deaf to hooting horns,
Oblivious of traffic rules,
Your snoozing must not be disturbed.
U-turn, the only veritable escape.
Ancient Water of Ages,
From where did you spring?
Your myth:
A stranger in search of ‘Umu-Owelle’
His thirst and request for a cupper
The scratch of beard,
His replacement
… your placement
And you became forever.
Ancient ‘Mmiri-Agulu’
I laud your persistence
Even in the face of modernity
Kudos to your dogged custodian
Great Eziagulu, l salute you
Mighty Lizard of Ages,
I salute you too
Your roots are our heritage
May it never cease to grow.
ODE TO DORIS
Born without a silver spoon
In the abode of a stormy home
Suffered under maternal entreats
The quest for education, a solace.
Left home to school,
A teacher’s college.
With insufficient funds,
And temptations from Methuselahs
Wondering what to do,
Where to go,
And how to go.
No consolation from home
Mum and dad at logger heads,
Then at daggers drawn.
The spiritual attacks,
The coven cauldron conference.
And the remote sensored visa.
Confusion ached the head
Worse than a migraine
The turn to the Saviour
An analgesic came in Away-Away
The magnificent magic hubby
Who used Cupid’s bow.
To Brooklyn, to settle.
The breadwinner’s burden a sarong.
Incredible the load,
Unwavering the pressure,
The stress consistently constant,
But the bull was taken by the horns.
Amidst domestic hazards and travails,
The siblings here had education
A trio graduate, your effort
From boys to men, you made us
And sweated so we may be refreshed
Didn’t you give us the best
From among the best things on earth?
We are schooled, we have worn the academics
We can’t ask for anything greater
Haven’t you done it all?
Greatest of all the great amazons,
You are.
NEW AGE MARTYRS
“Mu kashe su!”
“Let’s kill them, the infidels!”
Grrrrrrrrrrr!
The snarling ‘Almagiris’
Chased after the infidels.
In ragged kaftans and ‘Jalabias’,
Their claws bearing:
Daggers, Spears, Suya-knives, bows and arrows
No stranger was spared,
Not even the disabled or children,
Not even the forming foetus in mother’s womb
The fanatics spilled fire,
Not fire for fire, but fire for fun.
In legions they stormed streets,
Underdogs and street beggars in the rank.
Mai gaadi, Mai suya, Mai ruwa, Mai kashi
And all the ‘Mais’,
Attacked and slaughtered their employers and patrons
Bellowing: “Kai kahiri! Fadi! Mutu!”
The following morning,
In the centre of Sabon Gerri,
Lay fragments and bits
Of mutilated bodies.
Bodies of New Age Martyrs
Burnt and beheaded,
That the ‘word’ may live.
MIDNIGHT TRAVAIL
In the depth of the night,
In the darkest recess of darkness,
Stillness hung in the atmosphere.
Bats and owls dread singing,
Suddenly, from yonder eves, came a scream.
A woman was screaming for help.
Can nobody hear her?
That screaming woman,
Disturbing the mood of the time.
Who could she be?
What could she want?
Her screaming invited me.
At the abode of the screamer,
I groped for an entrance.
But there was no door!
The scream came again
From the reverse of the hut
No wonder, I was at the rear!
Circumventing,
I reached the ajar door
A flame from a bush lamp
Danced around the filthy room
I entered, but almost immediately ran out
The once pregnant nut lay on the floor unbreathing,
Her umbilical cord twisted around a stillborn
Who put this mad woman in family way?
“A culprit is at large!”
Yet, the society watches with glued lips.
