A pat on the back
That all is well with our policies
It pains me
Like a virgin bride
That was cautioned
On her wedding night
That the pain must come before
The pleasure, and the pain lingers
Ah! It pains me so
The inter mitten fuel scarcity
Was it not really a diversion
That comes after every unrealistic decision
Like a lost of a loaded tanker ship, or
A looming strike by the labor union?
Ah! The fidgeting
In the darkness
Is over bearing
The grungy hospitals and
Dirty Motor parks,
It so, so pains me so!
73. THE AGORA
I seemed to be
Bursting
With ideas
74. PHASING OUT
Do not ridicule me
With traditional titles
Nor debase me with
Ministerial appointments
Phasing me out like the sun
Phases out the day
75. CIVIL AND THEIR SERVANTS
Early in the morning
Throughout the world
Little cherubic faces can be seen
As they hurry to school
Some of them will become dropouts
Their brains will fail to grasp
The philosophy of compliance
And shall eventually be called "civil"
And the rest that work their fingers to the bone
To make it to the top, shall make it proudly
And will henceforth be referred to as
Civil Servants
76. RIVER OF SAND
I planned to dip dive
And swim
I scheme to swim high and fish
On my mark, ready, go!
I dived headlong
Into a river
Of sand
BOOK 3: ON PLACES
77. THE WANDERER IN ME
Sometimes I close my eyes
And travel through Time
I go to all those places
I read about in books
I Climb mountains
High and steep
And thread upon pathways
Worn out by the feet of men
Long dead and gone
I bask by the ocean
So blue and deep
Behind me a
Wooden house
Visited by time deserted by man
Until it became ashy and dry
So whenever I feel gloom
I just close my eyes
And become a wanderer
That travels through time
78. HIGH ON THE HILLS
Sitting crossed legged
High on the hill
Where I am
The king and the queen
Of my world
I had sensed the movement
Of the world
As I sat perched on a rock
Surrounded by water on all sides
I watched in awe as the world rushed by
Beneath my feet
And felt myself
Rushing along with it
I lent my sense to the river
And watched it go by
And when I reluctantly took back my sense
I was sitting still
Clutching unto my dreams
In an unfriendly world
I came down from the hills
To a world of make belief
79. NORTHERN STARS
The engineers?
There! You'll find them
Begging “Allah ba ku mu samu!”*
At the motor parks
Northern Stars
Oh! You mean the
Medical doctors?
See, over there
Sleeping under the tree, from
A hangover, it was fun at the party yester night
The leaders you mean
Of tomorrow,
Oh well, sorry, they have since died
Convicted of armed robbery
Bones since dried out, at thirty – two
There was nothing
In school anyway,
Not a single seat
And the teachers have things to sale,
Not teach
Ha! The Girls
Why would they worry about a degree
When there are more exciting things to do
The attachments are better these days
Northern Stars
*The words used for begging by the poor in Northern Nigeria
80. SOKOTO
The green desert
Of the savannah
The oasis of undiluted knowledge
In the parch spread of ignorance
The mother of the celebrated poetess
And undisputed scholars Sokoto!
The Custodian and witness
To the enigmatic Shehu
The restorer of divine Islam
To the seekers of the Light
The land of the Fula and the Habe
Of the givers and the takers
Sokoto the great
An ancient city always in its youth
81. LOST IN CHICAGO
In a polished society
Where the sky scrapers
First scraped the sky
A kind of a re-make
Of the Biblical tower of Babel
A society where
Life is organized
On a touch of a button and
Moves in an ant-like file
Each person to himself and all to the society
Here to an African
Is a completely different world
Compared, the developed and
The backward, the clean and the dirty
Africa, and the rest of the world.
Such is the price of civilization
When man has to batter his environment
In exchange of a supercilious one
And get lost in the scraping matrix
I am sure even Dante will be lost
82. DENTAL CLINIC
I watched in dismay
How they got rid of
Peoples’ smiles
Pilling them up
In a waste basket
83. THE CARNAGE ON THE PLATEAU
The Devil walked up and down,
Thinking deeply, reflecting,
On where best to land,
And so he studied the list,
Of possible places and decided at last
In his pestiferous way, to land on the Plateau
He looked around, along with a band of his fallen angels,
At the cheerful faces of the people,
Walking around with their cherished ambitions
And decided to select among them,
Who best to anoint with his deadly fingers,
He decided at last, to anoint the people living on the Plateau
He orchestrated the chaos, and perpetrated it
At its crescendo, men, women and children,
Where all running up and down,
In a frenzied situation, and peace was then
A strange word, in the ears and minds
Of the people living on the Plateau
People kept scrambling, hiding,
Prisoners they turned themselves, in their houses,
Eyes dazed with horror, some crouched in bushes, and in ditches,
Neck outstretched, they looked and corked
Their ears, only to scramble at the cry of ''they are coming!''
Pouncing on the people living on the plateau
And when all was over, after six days from,
That fateful Friday that has no weekend,
The seventh of September it was, a sunny day,
"Perfect" said the devil, in his scurrilous way "Well, almost perfect,"
He observed, as he studied the anguished faces,
And counted the heap up bones of the people living on Plateau
As far as he is concerned,
It was an odyssey. But it was in fact
A carnage. For he did turned his back,
Along with his fallen angels, and retired to the hills,
Nay, to the dormant volcanoes, happy with himself,
With this wrapped up anguish, death and despair,
He brought as his 'Godly Seasons' Gift to the people living on the Plateau.
Men walked around, and women too,
Picking the broken pieces of their
Once happy, prosperous and peaceful
Heritage. With scowling faces, they now
Looked at the once cheerful faces of their neighbours and friends
The people living on the Plateau.
"Happy survival'' is now the greetings
That replaced the "hello" and ''good morning''
That was only yesterday, the salutations
That graced the lips of the joyous people,
The fun loving, friendly and ever busy people,
The good people living on the Plateau.
It was indeed a sad September
And October, November and December
But who will bring back that lost Amethyst
Called Peace that was snatched away so suddenly
From the people living on the Plateau?
84. GARDEN CITY
Garden City
Where are your gardens?
Are they now invisible
Or have you buried them
Beneath Armored Tanks and
Knee length boots?
Big cars
Narrow roads
Beautiful City
Sirens sound now
Stifling the sound of
Laughter and the little steps
Of the water borne
Masquerades
Raindrops of gas soot and
Well water of oil
Garbage of anxiety
In fish baskets
The Garden City
85. DUBUQUE
Some say there is madness in arts
A kind of twisted disposition
A derailing away from
Human norm
But I don’t know
I look around and I see beauty
I felt warmth in its winter
And smell flowers in spring
Dubuque is an art that made sense
*Dedicated to the VanMilligan Family, Dubuque City
BOOK 4: CHANGING TIDES
86. WHEN WHERE AND HOW
Sometimes when you think of death
You feel like saying
What the heck!
Knowing well that
One day, you would have to take
That bow
But then
The pleasure of life
Is in not knowing
When that day would be
You just look at a calendar
And know it’s in one of those
Days written therein
But then
How is not even an issue
Some die in their sleep
Just close their eyes and stroll away
Some of course struggle
Not to go, by all means -- Doctors, prayers, yoga
But then it could happened
Anywhere
On land, air or sea, or
Anywhere in between land, air, sea, or time
In its mother's womb
But then
It’s the not knowing
The when where or how
That kept us going
Fabricating
Means with which to stay
Just a little longer
But then
Some even ask why
Or even why God, why!?
Why should they or
Their loved ones
Have to die
Shrugs
But then
Nobody ever asks
Why do I have life
Or why do I have a front
And a back
You can see our concentration
On the front, the back?
No!
But then
87. THIS HOUSE
This world
This house of misery
How many you have snatched
Smiles from their lips and
Joy from their hearts
This world
This house of misery
How many have you seduced
With your alluring webs of
Deception and false hopes
This world
This house of misery
How many have you destroyed
Throwing them down from the peak
Of their achievements and glory
This world
This house of misery
You welcome a babe with a smile
While it, knowing your schemes
Announces its arrival with a cry
This world
This house of misery
You never age, always young
You cannot deceive me
For I know you!
88. WHEN IT'S YOUR TURN TO DIE
When it's your turn to die
Don't think that you are alone
When it's your turn to die
So it's the turn of a million more
The road to heaven is a busy highway
With souls of men, animals and jinn
Ever in transit day and night
As each second is the turn of a million more
Use each minute of your life therefore
To smile, pray and give a cheering word
To a weary soul distressed by the fact
That it is its turn, and the turn of a million more
It is the same all over the world
People are born and they live their lives
In abundance or restriction, sung and unsung
89. THE FACES ON THE STREETS
Sometimes I wonder
At the faces I see each day
On the streets, wondered
What was on the minds of the men and women
Who cannot write their thoughts
On blank pages as I do
Perhaps, my written thoughts would be
Stumbled upon by men to come
Hundreds or thousands of years ahead
But how would they know that
Such people have lived when I lived
Laughed, cried, and think when I did
Who would have known
That the men and women in Caesar’s crowd
Were real people with real
Life experiences and real stories
When the earth has all but swallowed them
And their stories
Their triumphs and anguish
Their dreams
Sometimes I wonder
At the heap up of
Graves I pass by, many times
Of the children, men and women
Lying quietly – or not
Inside them and wondered
That these people have all once
Walked the plains of the earth
As real people like you and me
On those days I wished that
I could talk with the dead
I would have asked them their lives stories
Would have asked them places they had visited,
Friends they had kept or discarded
Of the kind of world they had lived in
But who would know all these now that
They are buried deep in the ground
Gone forever with their triumphs and failed dreams
&nbs
p; Their lives a sealed document
In an ethereal archive
Even I wonder
At myself
Who have just boasted that
I’ve penned down a line or two
Out of the breathe of my life
To the next world, would ever be known
What, with all the volumes of biographies
Of the people of the world
I really wonder
90. MY UNKNOWN FRIEND
Death is happiness
Shrouded in a garment of sadness
My friend, my unknown friend
I pray that we meet soon, in happiness
In the palace Of the Most Merciful,
In the house of friends
Life is full of ups and downs
Gloom and happiness
Though you have only seen the grey part of it
I hope its shining in the other world
You left for in a hurry, without saying goodbye
A second can make a difference
Death is a mystery. Life is full of ups and downs
But there is always a shiny day after a rainy one
Though you have only seen the rainy part of it, with
Only a speck of lightening therein
My friend, my unknown friend,
Whom I met in a world, out of my many worlds
If you are real and not a dream
I pray that we meet again, with joy, in the
Palace of the Most Merciful, in the house of friends
A second separated us, but I will always find
Happiness in the picture we took, a picture in my
Mind, that I will never see, for it was taken in a world
Out of my other worlds. So long my friend.
91. THE BEST OPTION
How about dying
Then I don’t have to worry
About quitting my job
Or about getting a new one, this
Replete with the confusion
That comes with the two premises
I also don’t have to worry
About the next man, or
The one before,
About ingrate children
And the stubborn ones, nor
The much loved, and the
Lazy ones and the unfocused
I really don’t have to worry
About the change of environment
Of not being able to
Adjust
To its strangeness, the darkness and the heat
Nor to the negative effect it is having
On my writing – and reading
Nor to the coerced migration
And the blackmail that brings
Happiness to the sadists
Death will bring succor
To my palpitating heart
Unclaimed, unexplored, unused
It will certainly save me
From worrying over
My seesawing bank account, and
The burden thrust upon me
By the world that does not care
And a tradition that made a mother
To see only the good in her male children
While the hardworking females passed by
Unnoticed