Tag: SNAPSONG

March-ing  Song

The year’s third month

     Has marched in

Like a punctual pledge

     Its air bristling with February’s fables

The year’s early rains

     Have touched the roadside brow

With a timid lover’s kiss

     The grass’s liquid song

Is brewing on the expectant lawn

     Where, once upon a tale,

The dust’s brown carpet had risen and fallen

     Like an empire unsure of its fright and flight

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Still heavy in the wind

     Is the Expired General’s June 12 fabula

Pious hagiography of a dissembler

     Whose acts undid a nation

His crowd was large, their pledges appalling

     Billions of naira piled upon bigger billions

Tributes traded tall tales with tributes

     In a shameless country, incapable of remembering

 March on, dear New Month

     April’s rains are just around the bend

A nation choked with fabulous filth

     Sighs for breathless atonements  

Randon Snaps

As clearly as the Future
Predicts the Past
So boldly as forthcoming rains count
The teeth of unborn droughts

Like the tendril which foretells
The tribe of the tuber
And the yarn of the yam which
Echoes the narrative of the barn

What seems
Is not always what is
What is is hardly ever a faithful fore-
Print of what is to be

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The lobster which swaggers
Like a dreadful scorpion
Let it take another look
At the fire in its rival’s tail

A thousand stars cannot outshine
The majesty of the moon
No matter how hard the lake may strive
It can never outsize the mighty ocean

Let the fawning tailor
Mind the appetite of the scissors
A cap too large may make a mockery
Of the owner’s head

July never lies

The Mother called July

     Never teaches her children to lie

She fought very hard for the Number Seven

     From our common Earth to the Gate of Heaven

A bowl of water

     From the season’s rains

A cup of clouds

     From the sky’s eyebrow

Thunder’s roaring temper

     The superlative cursive of Lightning

The concert of swaying trees

     Locking leaves above the roofs

Obey the wind

     Obey the wind

The aluminum caps on the heads of ghetto dreams

     Are flailing like reckless sails

Here comes July

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     With its bundle of countless blessings

And fateful blights; its caravan of doubt

     And doldrum of dreams

In my country of postmortem prophets  

     And random planners

The year’s Seventh Month sometimes breeds

     A succession of Seven Plagues

All Hail NEPA

Nigeria’s God of Darkness  (1)

The bond between Darkness and Nigeria

     Only the drastic word can break.

One minute of flimsy flashes

     Then, a thousand hours of lightless groping

Wingless fans mock our misery

     From powerless ceilings

The aircon coughed into silence

     Many unhappy seasons ago

Failing factories feed our hunger

     Our laptops run on the heat

From our feverish groins.

     With the rays of the kindly moon

We pen the nation’s epics

     While libraries and laboratories suffocate

In the lampless anguish of our benighted Academies.

     So wonderfully endowed, we count our blessings

Halfway through the surgical task

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     A medieval darkness engulfs the theatre

The surgeon’s scalpel veers beyond the veins

     Close by, reeking mortuaries with their restless doors 

At our ultramodern airports

     Darkness taxes faster

Than the speed of light: blind landing gambles

     Announce our welcome to our Blackout Country  

*NEPA: National Electric Power Authority; now re-named Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) 

                   (To be continued next Sunday)

A Warm Welcome

Here it comes again

     The long-missed month of June

As it did last year

     And the year before

Holding the year

     By its tender waist

A full fateful half

     That is sometimes fuller than the whole

The cornfields are green

     With their tasseled triumphs

Pumpkins roll and rock

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     In the theatre of the furrows

February’s famished rivers

     Are back with billowing bounty

The mountain’s millennial wrinkles

     Have vanished with the gleeful showers

The rains are back

     But alas, not our fortune

In this grim land and its drought of dreams

     And the long, long distance between

The morsel and the mouth

     The Have-alls laugh with their banker friends

The Have—nots drown in the flood of want

     Yeah, we jazz June* in different ways

•From the poem ‘We Real Cool, by Gwendolyn  Brooks

To Mr. Afolabi, Vendor of Admirable Virtues

Quick-witted

   Long-memoried*

Master of the well-primed retort

   Who knows the hiding place

Of poignant proverbs

    He dialogues in an accent

Which bears the scent

     Of distant places

For he has journeyed

     Through the sand and sound

Of many climes, crossed long rivers

     And answered the summons of distant mountains

Here sits he now in the throbbing centre

     Of Nigeria’s premier university

His ware a running rainbow of tabloid tales

     Screaming dailies, and monthly mags

In active war against the virtual competition

    Of the cyber platform, lean pocket lines

And the long-necked curiosity

     Of the Free Readers’ Association

Day in, day out,

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     Heavy rain or scorching sun

His witty laughter never departs his lips;

     Ever present, his firm, humane comportment

The tabloid’s tangled tales

    The politician’s perfidy,

Mekunnun’s*** impoverished lament

    In print and pattern, bright and bold   

You bring them all

     To our eyes and our ears

With a diligence which doctors indifference

     A kindness which ennobles our world

* Veteran newspaper Vendor at the University of Ibadan

** Signifying on I Is a Long Memoried Woman, Grace Nichols’ remarkable poem

*** Common people; the impoverished.