Category: Niyi Osundare

(And this for New Orleans)

To fancy New Orleans

Without its jazz

Say, to fancy Nawlins

Without its jazz

Is like dreaming Las Vegas

Without its razzmatazz

 

How would the Crescent City be

Without its Red Beans ‘N Rice

Asking, how would the Crescent City be

Without its Red Beans ‘N Rice?

Soak me up in Cajun flavour

I love my praline, no matter the price

 

Went down to Treme

To greet Tyrone

Say, went down to Treme

To greet Tyrone

He may also know

Where to grab a loan

 

Come Mardi Gras

And I burst into a gorgeous costume

Yes, come Mardi Gras

And I burst into a gorgeous costume

Oh the magic of swaying masks and drums

And friendly winds, and heavenly perfume

 

Bourbon Street bubbles

With its Saints ‘n Sinners

Oh, how Bourbon Street bubbles

With its Saints and Sinners

The road rocks in style

With the dalliance of diverse diners

(Questions 2)

Do you know what it means

To be and not to be

To dwell the liquid shadows

Of a dark, unreachable dream

 

Do you know what it means

To sow and not to reap

To run and never to rest

To sleep and not to sleep

 

Do you know how it feels

To be used, ab-used

Then tossed aside

Like an old, repugnant rag

 

Do you know what it means

To live beyond your clothes

Your wardrobe a pageant of threads

Long estranged from their jaded loom

 

Do you know how it feels

To watch while others eat

And sway to the hoggish blast

Of their vain, oblivious belches

 

Just how does it feel

To be a towncrier in a land without ears

How can you hawk your rainbow

In a town of absent eyes?

(for Armistice Day, November 11)

Let Peace break out

Like a fresh, irrepressible/unvarnished song

 

Above crimson thunders

Beyond the cancerous clatter of armoured cravings

 

Let Peace break out

So the rainbow may reclaim its sky

 

So the earthworm can lay silver tracks

Across the path of dawn

 

Let Peace break out

So missing lips can find their kiss

 

So the dove can hear

And tell the hawk

 

• • •

The bully’s bullet

The sniper’s snout

 

Strafing squadrons

Gunboats on bloody waters

 

Frittered hopes

Throttled laughters

 

Orphaned noons

Widowed sunsets

 

Is it for these

The olive forsook its branch?

 

• • •

Let flowers spring from the gun’s ferocious mouth

Let Reason rise now and take control.

 

+November 11, 1918, at 11 am (“eleventh hour of the eleventh”), which marked the formal end of the First World War.

This Sunday

Will miss my face at the Eucharist Feast

 

For my sins are many:

On Monday

I shook hands with a Jew

 

On Tuesday

I flew in a plane captained by a gay pilot

 

On Wednesday

I traded greetings with my pagan neighbour

 

On Thursday

I sat next to a Communist on the morning train

 

On Friday

The word “Liberal” stumbled out of my sinful mouth

 

On Saturday

I hugged a Negro

 

My sins are many

My transgressions beyond forgiveness.

 

RIDDLE

Black is black

White is white

 

But Wisdom lives somewhere

In the Colour-Between

You took away our dog

And left us the leash

This rope and leather

Can neither bite nor bark

 

You stoleour thunder

And handed usyoursigh

The god which roars in your sky

Is tenant of a distant temple

 

The stone you proffer

For the diamond of our dreams

Is made of dust and soapysand

Time will unravel the treachery of your trade

 

We sent you an earthworm

Of the free and friendly breed

You returned our favour

With a sad and seething viper

 

Your own kind of exchange

Is another name forrobbery

Take back your night

That we may get back our sun

 

You took away our dog

And left us the leash

A long, abraded rope

With a sad story at its empty end

 

Don’t let the day

Slip out of your hands

Like some eel

In an ill-remembered ocean

 

Migrant waters wash their feet

In the scaly generosity

Of sneaky moments

Several shoals from the school of sharks

 

The hour sneezes

And the minutes embrace the cold

The dial carries an unpunctual plague

At its reluctant tip

 

The clock knows not what to do

With its figured face

A millennial stupor lies in wait

For the cycle of ticking moments

 

Defying all tense,

Untouched by every aspect,

The mountain endures the fever,

Head cradled in timeless mists

 

Do not allow the day

To slip out of your hands

Grab a moment:

Stretch it into a million miles

 

 

DIALOGUE WITH THE SUN

 

I met the Sun

On its way home one afternoon

Its speed steady, its aspect unfazed

 

“Why hurry so”, I asked

“I’ve just spread out my clothes to dry,

And my Palmist needs your light

To find the fortune in my hand”

 

The old Skyfarer smiled and shook its head

As it glided slowly on its westward journey.

We have been big for far too long

Time to be small and mad and mean

The world found us way up the sky

We long for a place in a heartless hole

A heart too big

Becomes a fatal problem

A handshake too eager

Will sprain the elbow

 

We baked our bread

In our home-made oven

With our own sweet wheat

    And our generous sweat

 

Now besieged by a horde of spongers

From hungry regions and wretched realms

With long, long knives and devilish forks

Our bread in peril, our fate at stake

 

Yes, this bread we hoard

Its wheat was grown by slaves

The fortune we so loudly extol

Was extorted from weaker regions

 

But that is a tale for the doting pastor

And those bleeding hearts

Called the Conscience Gang

The era of Kindness has come and gone.