The Nation Newspaper

Tag: SNAPSONG

  • SNAPSONG  209

    SNAPSONG  209

    Big  Battering Blast  (2)   

    It all happened in the famous part

    Of a famous city; proud, gentle zone

    Of the top cream tempered by law and learning;

    Mapped out and built once upon a very long time

    When place-builders doubled as people-builders

    And Statesmen were wise and just and clean

    Architects of multiple mandates who knew

    How to turn a house into a home            

    That was once upon a time

    When leaders THOUGHT before they acted

    And “life more abundant” was more

    Than an empty slogan

    Now, the Grand Old Dream

    Read Also: Sanwo-Olu to flag off N750 million ‘trader money’ for 15,000 beneficiaries on February 14

    Has withered into a deadly nightmare

    The Law is dead, the wrong is right

    A mountain of military-type dynamite

    Has become a furniture item

    In a topclass residential haven

    A  corrupt “carry-go” security system imperils

    Our being even in our safest enclaves

    A big battering blast has shaken us to our very roots

    Behold venerable old men and women crawling

    Out of their rubbled  homes, their heads double-grey

    From the ashes of their burning bower

    Dream homes thoughtfully built

    By Master-Builders of old

    Have become houses of horror

    In the era of prodigal politicking.

    Niyi-OsundareDownload

  • SNAPSONG 208

    SNAPSONG 208

    Big Battering Blast (1)

    The year was young
    Our woes were old
    The day went unfazed
    By the harmattan haze

    Then came the wails of a lampless night
    When supper lost its way to penniless homes
    And the night masticated the moon
    Like a hapless morsel

    The minaret was mum
    The bell tower stayed forlorn
    In its tongueless height
    The wind wound a whisper

    Round the restless lips of absent horns
    Pigeons coed ceaselessly in their little holes……
    And suddenly, so suddenly,
    A blast, a big, battering blast

    And the evening’s uneasy quiet
    Was shattered into a thousand bewildering shreds
    The ground shook beneath our feet
    Solid mansions crumbled like cardboard boxes

    Flipped luxury cars littered the streets
    Like piles of scrap yard junk
    The road is a running tale
    Of broken glass and mangled metal

  • SNAPSONG   205  

    SNAPSONG   205  

    No ‘message songs’, please

    (Lest you lose the ‘cross-over appeal’)

    They kicked The Minstrels out of the studio/market

    Because all they had were “message songs”;

    Message sad sweet and so relentlessly soulful

    But which told the kind of Truth

    The masters were loath to hear

    Too black in sound and sense

    And far too blunt for those coached to sing

    And dance and leave their brains at home

    No damned slave songs, no sorrow strains

    No Strange Fruit blues

    No finger-pointing ooohs and aaahs

    Read Also: Joy as Kano gov reunites parents with their stolen children

    Just happy Negro beats, black and gratefully simple

    Tired of Memory’s millstone

    Our necks shrink beneath our heads

    There are just so many deeds of our glorious past

    That all good people must just forget

    Forgive, then forget

    The Good Book is sound and strict on that

    The enslaved and the enslaver alike

    Must practice the good old art of Dis-remembrance

    No ‘message song’, please

    No blame game and its politics of penance

    We want you to sing, not to sigh

    Your cross over fate resides in absolute complance

    SNAPSONGDownload

  • SNAPSONG 70

    I have a stubborn faith

    In the possibility of goodness

    Flowers which outlast the thorn

    On branches bent, but never broken

     

    I squat on the trembling

    Lips of the desert dweller

    Who has a causeless fear behind his shadow

    Waiting, waiting for the rain

     

    The oasis is a debt

    Which the desert owes the rain

    That green pause in the sandy

    Discourse between the dunes

     

    And the clouds

    Which fore-went the rains

    In the torrid imagination

    Of seasons too many for the numbering moon

     

    A pagan obduracy over-

    Rides the feeble theology

    Of arrogant myths parading

    The world like the sole, invariant truth

     

    Hurray to those tireless spirits

    Who see the sky beyond the clouds

    The well of goodness

    Never runs completely dry

  • SNAPSONG

    (Questions  1)

    Do you know what it means

    To wake up on the empty

    Side of the bed, your stomach

    A jungle of howling wolves

     

    Do you know what it means

    When two coins never jingle

    In your pocket, and in-laws’ jibes

    Dig you deeper in a shameful grave

     

    Do you know what it means

    To have no roof above your head

    Condemned to pound the pavement

    Of cruel, demanding streets

     

    Do you know what it means

    To exist but not to live

    To smile without your lips

    To walk on borrowed legs

     

    Do you know how it feels

    To be forever trapped in the prison

    Of your skin, done to dust

    By the privileged, dissecting gaze

     

    Have you ever felt

    Like getting the ground

    To simply open its mouth

    And swallow your luckless body?

  • SNAPSONG

    (Once again, the Senate King)

     

    He locked up our Senate House

    And threw the key in the ocean

    A seething silence unsettles the land

    The nation is hostage to his foul design

     

    Power predator with claws awash

    In the nation’s blood

    He tricked his way to the crown

    Which now roasts his greedy head

     

    In rabid lust for the Presidential trophy

    He hops from party to party

    Trampling all that is true and just and clean

    Blame it all on his crooked pedigree

     

    Alas, such high crown

    On the head of a tragic clown

    Possessing more powerlust than noble prowess

    Big eyes but little vision

     

    Behold how he runs across the land

    From one erstwhile ruler to yet another

    A vain, vaporous upstart

    In dire need of moribund endorsement

     

    A legacy of plundered banks

    And beggared fortunes

    And that bloody heist in Kogiland

    With his fingerprint on every gun

     

  • SNAPSONG (Modaru Madrigal 1)

     

    If you make a hyena your king

    You must get ready

    For your inevitable place

    On the royal menu

     

    Those who sowed the wind

    In the ballot box

    Must not complain about

    The whirlwind of the aftermath

     

    A heedless hyena

    Howls in the sunset jungle

    Foaming at both ends of the mouth

    Beyond control, triumphantly wild

     

    He tells white lies in the morning

    He tells black lies at noon

    He tells colourless lies in the evening

    The world turns crimson from his toxic tongue

     

    He tells stronger lies

    To redeem his weaker ones

    His profoundest thoughts

    Put logic in dire distress

     

    Hitler’s proud heir

    Bokassa’s beloved descendant

    This uncanny throwback

    To eras best forgotten

  • SNAPSONG:(Modaru Madrigal 1)

     

    If you make a hyena your king

    You must get ready

    For your inevitable place

    On the royal menu

     

    Those who sowed the wind

    In the ballot box

    Must not complain about

    The whirlwind of the aftermath

     

    A heedless hyena

    Howls in the sunset jungle

    Foaming at both ends of the mouth

    Beyond control, triumphantly wild

     

    He tells white lies in the morning

    He tells black lies at noon

    He tells colourless lies in the evening

    The world turns crimson from his toxic tongue

     

    He tells stronger lies

    To redeem his weaker ones

    His profoundest thoughts

    Put logic in dire distress

     

    Hitler’s proud heir

    Bokassa’s beloved descendant

    This uncanny throwback

    To eras best forgotten

  • SNAPSONG

    To whom do we owe

    The darkness that rules our lives

    Which rulers made sure that NEPA*

    Never got a cure as the nation’s Leper

     

    To whom do we owe

    The drought which rewards our thirst

    Just whose evil genius is behind

    The menace of our ever-dry taps

     

    To whom do we owe

    The ceaseless carnage on our highways

    Whose greed lurks behind the death-traps

    That they call our roads

     

    Whose National Planning policy

    Has entrenched Ignorance in our schools

    Who feeds the children with dollops of deceit

    The Nation with a cache of seedless pods

     

    Who turned our hospitals into horse-spittles

    Our sacred hopes into blatant hoaxes

    Who turned our haven of angels

    Into a den of seething scorpions

     

    Whose perfidy corrupted our laughters

    Into hyena guffaws

    Whose ear is for ever bitter

    From the honey of our sacred songs

     

    National Electric Power Authority, the former (ceaselessly pun-able) name for the corporation in charge of Nigeria’s power generation and supply.

  • SNAPSONG: (Our Dirty Notes)

    Here is the raging question in Hell:

    Tell me, which is dirtier

    The Nigerian nation or its currency

    When last did they have a decent wash?

     

    The 1,000 bill reeks

    Like a government mortuary

    Its 500 brother stinks

    Like a rotten egg

     

    The 100 piece lies limp

    Like a blighted leaf

    Impotent against the inflationary wind

    One-year old, with a centenarian’s wrinkles

     

    The 20-naira note is crumpled

    Like the peanut seller’s paper

    Tortured, tattered, insufferably afflicted

    Hapless, care-forsaken like its Half-Brother 10

     

    Our nation’s bills are

    A coven of swarming germs

    Behold therein the Conqueror called Cholera

    Divinity of Diarrhea, the Triumph of Typhoid

     

    They find sundry homes in sundry places:

    The Kleptocrat’s septic tank,

    The ample-cupped bra, the furtive crotch

    The diplomatic caves of Ghana-Must-Go*

     

    • A large, satanically tough bag used for transporting heavy raw cash, quite often for illicit purposes.