MONGUDU

The elephant dies and melts

Melts off in the bowels of Mongudu

The buffalo dies and melts

Melts off in the bowels of Mongudu

Mongudu the melting pot!

The melting pot of ancient days

Neither the thickness of the elephant’s skin

Nor the filthiness of the pig’s

Is a threat to Mongudu

Once on heat

Mongudu boils them all

Tell all the Mongudus

That the decadence of a pot

Is the concern of only the pot owner

Tell Mongudu

A water pot is good

Only for as long as it is clean

Water is not water

We may not know their sources

Rain is not river

All may not flow

A well is not a pool

Nor is it a pond

Even at boiling point

Some waters are still contagious

Tell Mongudu

The parable of the squirrel

Let her know

In what delights the mouth

Lies the death of the eater

Tell her

The pot is the eye of the body

May it see no evil.

Mongudu is a ready pot

As rough as the crocodile

As ugly as the Hippo

All melt in Mongudu

Could it be gluttony?

Perhaps it is avarice

Heat is all and one to her

Duration and intensity notwithstanding

Alas! Mongudu boils on

Then comes the day of reckoning

The news goes a beckoning

Mongudu is cold

But no one is bold

Some heat to share

With the melting pot of ancient days

Mongudu the melting pot dies

Alas! No melting pot for Mongudu

Mongudu stinks.

PITY PARTY

Is it not funny?

Doesn’t it sound odd?

That the living should mourn the dead

And take pity on them

For a good life cut short?

When our heroes lay down their weapons

And take a bow from worries

Reflections on happy past

Celebration of their legacy

Are true memorials they deserve

Tears or sorrowing is a disservice

When a well spent life

Is yielded back to the lender

Mourning is ingratitude

When a tortuous man in life

Is kindly relieved of his life

Why should the living mourn the dead?

When the dead are thankful of eternal rest

Let the living brood over their worries

FISAYO CELEBRATES YOUTH

As you celebrate today

Pay attention to my words

And make use of my instructions

On your journey in the next seven years

Teenage years are bridges

Bridges between childhood and adulthood

Teenage years are fun-filled

Funs are sometimes intoxicating

You can do and be all you want

But God must be in all

Teenage years are full of choices

You choose your friends

You choose your dress

You form your dreams

And shun some voices

But God must be in all

Every step on the teenage ladder

Is a cornerstone for your future

Be mindful my dear daughter

Each stone to put in measure

Youth is a wonderful time

Youth comes but once in a lifetime

Congratulations as the “Teenage Club” admits you today!

HEARTLESSNESS

Why say am heartless

When you it was

Who stole my heart

But refuse to give yours

Giving, the two edged blessing!

What difference it would have made

If only I had yours

To feel and to care

The pleasure would have been yours

Our days would have been made

The irony of selfishness!

It is doubly painful

Where the double heartiness

Is not doubly gainful

Even in excessive caution

Could be a loss of portion

Let go and let me

One broken heart

Two suffocating hearts

The former seem the better

Let go and spare me

Had I yours as you have mine

The pleasure would have been thine

If you say am heartless

You are right, doubtless

Away you stole my heart

With yours you refused to part

GENESIS

In the beginning…

What is the beginning ?

Nothing new under the earth

How can it be ?

Because the beginning is in the end

In the end ?

The beginning is in the end

End of what ?

That is the question

The answer to which is ?

The end of the contrary

Help me out !

The meaning of genesis is found

At the tail of end

Your meaning ?

The end has a beginning

A beginning has an end

And so ?

As the birth is the end of conception

So it is the beginning of life

As death ends a life span

It begins the journey into eternity

Genesis is only meaningful

Where there is an end

LIFE DEFINED

What shall it profit a man

If he gives what he can not keep

To have what he could not get?

Life for wealth

Wealth for life

Both shall come to an end

Of what use is life devoid of wealth?

Of what gain is wealth without life?

No robbery in barter!

Should wealth be the gain of a lifetime

Life may as well be the cost of wealth

Life isn’t too much cost for wealth

To have a wretched long life

Or a short-lived affluent life?

It all depends on why we live!

Worth dying for, worth living for

Why shouldn’t man live as he wants

If his wants are noble ?

Why shouldn’t man quit living

If his journey is uneventful?

With this life divine

Where the race is not to the swift

Nor the battle to the strong

What is the place of man

In his plight in life?

DADDY

If only i had known

The third blow would be the last

I would have asked my questions

And probably love you more

Perhaps I should have known !

You were never so down

But I kept to your word

A hundred years you said

Who would have known ?

You never said goodbye

I only said so long

Till a day or two

I long so much for them

The praise songs from your lips

The laughter I so much loved

The caring you for her

My much beloved daughter

If only I had known

In the bits of farewell

In your prolonged illness

In your incessant prayers

The old resurgent faces

You would have had my all

Since myself I always have

And my seeds with me

Even when you are gone

But I never knew!

Oh! I never knew

The reason you loved me much

And things you’d have me do

To please your parting soul

I would you were here

Your quiet time to share

Interceding for your homestead

That is so much burdened

By the devourers you always knew

Sleep not daddy

A word or two will do

AS THOUGH

Four years ago you left

As though you never cared

As though you never loved

As though it weren’t you

It must have been mighty

That tore your caring arm

And curbed your will to be

To see your Great-Grands

Supposing such weren’t true

That sent you visiting offspring

In all the crannies of the world

And sent your manly eyes a –tearful

On the endless expectation of one

Your departure wouldn’t have mattered

What be thy disposition thence

Since journeys you can not make

And hosting you dare not do

The next three score years

It must have been lonely

Oh! Daddy I wish I knew

What has since become

Of your mirthful self

The one I used to love

Probably gone in loneliness

Or so ever broadened

By the heavenly host

Or even renewed

In the new seeds that grow

In the fresh dreams we share

Our dreams!

Four years ago!

As though it were yesterday

As though it were a dream

As though you were a journeying

Sleep on Daddy

Till all are brought together

At the white throne

Of the all mighty Mighty

TIME CHANGES

Where is permanence

In this transient world ?

We have come to leave

And so are our affairs

Time, the architect of change

Like a river, carries souls apart

Like the proverbial twenty kids

That can not play for twenty years

Dreams are lost in time

Think of the stolen hours of pleasure

That gives birth to intimacy

Or the slippery fish from there begotten

Should the quest for variety win

The seldom fashion indulgence

Is often the father of vogue

Differences creep in untold

As the dusk fizzles into dawn

So the chanced sumptuous meals

Gradually courts the taste

Chanced is then swallowed up in favourites

Alienating twins that sucked same breasts

Greatest is the crime of indifference

Where differences are in contention

Differences unlike the truth

Know not the route of constancy

In metamorphosis or soldiering wade

BANKY THE BANKER

Join me to pamper

Pamper the dove I cherish

In her I bank my treasure

Bank your gold

Bank your silver

A heart is all I have to bank

Bank it my Dove

Where it is safest

Not in the way of “FORUMS”

Where distress can ravage it

Nor in the manners of “JEZEBELS”

Easily lured away by vanity

Bank it as if it were yours

For yours indeed it is

Bank it my sweet dove

Join me to pamper it

My deposit is fixed

Bank it and use at will

Turn it over, let it yield

The interest therefrom is my interest

When you have banked that

There is more to bank

Bank the sweet memories we’ll share

Bank the dreams we pamper

Bank the hope we nurture

Bank E ( Bank it )

It is our treasure

Do not pamper my errors

Nor bank my frailties

From this world acquired

In same to be relinquished

Short-comings when realized

Short-goings become

Short-goings are short-gone

Want to join me to pamper ?

Come let us pamper !

Pamper my only banker

Join me to pamper her

For she’s all I have

SEASON OF THIRST

How could the fall of a pin

Have raised this much dust?

Why should the leaves

In such shameful disguise

Boldly embrace a powdery look?

When the sole can not predict

Where the hard surface lies

And the ankles continuously swim

In the ocean of dust

The shoe can not boast

Of any other colour but brown

Had you the courage and time

To keep the flower beds wet

And the godliness to keep your dress clean

Have you the grace to stop the wind?

Much needed yet much dreaded

Soothing on flesh

Ageing on hair and eyelids

What volume of showers

Will cake this dust

That is evasively jolted to dance

Burying the showers

In the depth of its bowels

Eight inches below dust level?

The land is thirsty!

Thirsty, let it be!

Till it has accounted

Where went the waters

Of the season of floods.

THE BURDEN OF FREEDOM

It’s a free world , isn’t it?

A free world indeed!

Then let him talk that craves freedom

All I preach is bounds.

Freedom corrupts!

Oh, sweet taste of freedom

The taste of freedom the taste of sugar

The taste of sugar the taste of pile

Bounds!

Check the burden of freedom

On that sick head

That talks at will and acts at will

Ask him that’s free to drink

What he finds in the gutters

Or what attracts in folly

My neighbour’s freedom to talk

Earned him a swollen face

The lady that boasts of freedom

Will soon be found a whore

With the freedom to take

The “thieftancy” title becomes extinct

Think of the burden of freedom

Tell me where you stand

DON’T GIVE

GIFTS

Don’t give me

If you wont miss it

Nor dash me

If it costs you nothing

My ingratitude may vex you

Such is the ingrate in me

That insists on motive

If I be for dumping

The thanks to me is due

Be satisfied with the good riddance

SHIT

Don’t give me

If you won’t take it

I lack a cesspit tank

My excuse for instant return

EXCUSE

Don’t give me

If it won’t hold waters

Of it, there are a thousand and one

Where a will is not.

Not Guilty

Not guilty my Lord!

Though I drank of this gourd

That men enforced on me

Not guilty is my plea

For primary activities

Not guilty my plea

For secondary encouragement

Not guilty my plea

For graduated tutorship

And post graduated effrontery

Not guilty!

Not guilty my Lord!

Ask the cocks that crow

If I don’t wake to time

Ask my hard palms

If they ever spared a task

Inquire from the twinkling stars

How long they wait to see me home

Ask my stormy brain

If it ever sleeps

Had I the chance

I could be good

Let his Excellency bear me witness

My guilt, a lack of silver spoon

To dine with the eminent

My guilt is the refusal

To tow their short-cut

HOME ALONE

My faithful companion

Creeps in at the nick of time

To consecrate to himself

My toilsome flesh and soul

And as a compelling sleep

The sailor to the dreamland

Courts me on the intimate journey

Where rest opens door to creation

And as we alight at the creator’s realm

My fangs all buried

In my pouting pen

Oppressing the pleading papers

Loneliness, I hear your silent steps

I can not miss your sweet fragrance

You are my friend of intuition

I can not but heed your call

When I seem in crowd to be

With you in my world of thought

I am all alone

In spite of crowd or hall of fame

Chancing upon let downs

Riding upon want of tasks

The cleansing tonic apply

All broken hearts and idleness refined

How I love your solitary camps

How I crave for hermitage

The whole world for loneliness

Is not a balanced barter

For in loneliness, the world came to be

Who calls you what you are not?

Cast your spell on me at will

Take me to my root

Make a Moses of me

Impart the wilderness grace

Of forty days and nights

Take me beyond the ephemeral

To the busy world of loneliness

The place to be with the Alpha

ANCESTRAL LINEAGE

Then, the father of Now

Later, the grandchild of Then

Now, the grandfather of Never

Later, the only child of the indolent

Whenever it is Now

Never say Later

Because Now was Then

Each blessed hour

Has its sufficient trial

Now is that tomorrow

Today, the father of tomorrow

Now, the great architect

The quiet irreverent moulder

That moulds the dreaded tomorrow

The otherwise pampered builder

That builds the hope-full tomorrow

Now is the tomorrow

That scared your today

And taunted your yesterday

For those unsettled scores

All remnants of yester’s stores

Do not stop me again!

Now is the tomorrow

That yesterday, I craved to gain

Welcome tomorrow!

MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER

I hardly know my mother’s daughter

I rarely see her face

Her tiny braids and shaded views

Enshrine her family looks

My head revolves as cone

To recall her family tone

To every blessed event

She has a peculiar accent

Her height is ever undulating

All resting on her sole

I guess she’s half my height

When she’s true to her soul

I dare not describe her

The attending devilish bouts

On her chameleon flesh

Recalls the devil’s master scheme

Who knows my mother’s daughter?

TO THE GENTLE STATESMAN

Before the pilot’s arrival

Open your chest of treasure

In me deposit with pleasure

These grey of yester years

Tucked away in pairs

For the journey it can not boost

Reflect on the hood of man

That I call a beast of burden

Cud forth on husbandry

Declare his wholesome steering

In temperance of wad resides?

Recall the price of sanctity

In the daily profession

Of labour and dignity

Where corruption is sanity

Release the steady current

That stirred your rugged turbine

And kindle the fire in me

You strolled with many a Khaki

Converged with flowing robes

But kept your hand unsoiled

Won’t you rather vomit

That pill for total man

Before you cross the abyss?

Shall the pill be mine

If I see you taken away?

ONCE UPON A ROLL CALL

Once upon a roll call

The famous call in June

The sucking month of June

Of the Big, the Small and the Posh

The Racer and the loader

The good, the bad, the rickety

The beautiful and the ugly

Tokunboh and Kaduncome

Set like a host of ants

In response to the General’s call

To the clash of Titans

Titans of Oyeh and Money

The monthful calls at stations

On daily and nightly basis

The crawly rows of racers

The bedly turns of Commuter buses

And mobby journeys of trekkers

On the oily soil of WAZOBIA

Oh! If blood were fuel

And eyes were bulbs

What a graveyard be WAZOBIA

What a suffocation be its darkness

Oh the Oyeh month of roll call!

Hear my neighbour’s call

THE VILLAGE CATECHIST

One evil have I seen in town

Two have I observed

Rings on men’s ears

That women resist to wear

Loin cloth on beauty pageant

That aborigines have made extinct

The bush is fresh

My horn is green

An original bush born

Free from townish mesh

Am bush but proud of taste

Green horn to dirt and haste

For when I blow my nose

I need not keep the waste

Unlike the town born chief

Who wraps his in kerchief

Something mannerless in town

Talks are fixed for meals

Details talked on spirits

But in serene bushes

Food and chats are variants

Nor is wine for salients

In town is something else

The dangerous execution of health

In the sucking spree of mouth

Exchange of salivary gland

Of germs and smell in bout

Blind profession of lust so bland

There is an evil in everything

Everything that’s done in town

The stiffened smile for modesty

The apology for sneezing

All images of plastic beauty

That’s worn the city gown

All these are grievous evils

The bush is fresh

Forget the horn

The townish torn

Is sufficient forlorn

VISITORS

Visitors come in all shapes and sizes

They come with various schemes and tactics

They come for obvious and obscure reasons

They come to take and to give

When fear comes calling how do you respond?

Does he meet “Do not disturb” on your door?

Do you place a “Welcome mat” at the door?

Do you simply slam the door on his face?

Do not dialogue with fear my dear

Nor prepare a table before him

Do not entertain fear

Simply slam the door on his face

Fear is an insatiable guest

Give him a seat, he will ask for a bed

He will take your rest

And give worry in return

He will take you on a journey

Through the memory lane

Via your inabilities and past failures

He will make a mountain of your mole hill

And deprive you of a good night rest

In the morning, he will demand tears

Tears so much he can’t consume all alone

He will invite friends and make a pity party

Destroy your confidence and leave you least hearty

When fear comes knocking at your door

As he will, more often than not

Brace up and kick him off

Do that which you fear to do