Trembling.

on a bamboo bed fitted to tend to ill men

lies Tamunu worn out by a sickness

that has kept him

within an inch of life for moons

helpless with eyes shut

and turned to search

deep within

he ferrets out hidden sins

in one attempt

for absolution before the priest

who had him urged to so do

for sins when absolved from

often restore health



”how vile

a single soul

these despicable

acts to have discharged?”

the earth murmured trembling

with turbulent rage

for penance

for more penance

or not

on him who for healing alone

had sought absolution

Home, truly, is where the heart is.

Circa  2014.

Here, the dad escaped from civil service after a meritorious work with the state. I recall with intense and shocking familiarity the events of this day. I had raced down to insert myself (also) in this organized rectangle. A family portrait.

I had raced down from school. I had raced down home. Home, where the WiFi connects automatically. Where hearts are wired and connected together as though a single heart - beating  in unison, in synchronous Lub-dubs. The home does that to you. What exactly is it about home?

What or where is home?

Is home a place or a space, a feeling or a memory? Is home a family, that active state of being in the world, of engaging and relating with other things that are in their own active states, of friendship?
Or is home, truly, as some would have it said, where the heart is?

May the force be with us.

                may the force be with us

                               not in surges
                      that peter out quickly.
                maybe one that slowly stirs us,
                                      up,
               and eventually into the sublime

                       or a continuous flow
               that will suffice our burning

              yes,  may the force dwell with us.

The first award.

Here is my entry for The Writer 2014 on the platform of The Naked Convos and First bank nig plc.. Sadly, I didn't get picked as a finalist. It's too amateurish of me, atink. lol Well, the theme is centered around HUMILITY.

Do have a look people, see you at the other side.

                                                                                The First Award.

     Just about the sun setting into the womb of the West, Tamunu ambled out of the thick forest that bordered Awa village. In it, he had wandered since day break, rummaging for animals. He bore a terrible look . He seemed  ridded of the last dose of energy in him. A bad day for a hunt, evidenced by the content of his satchel (two meager squirrels) and the toil with which they were fetched. He weaved his way into the narrow footpath leading to the village stream.

The breeze of air around the stream was all he needed. Life has thrown him a few curves, recently. He needed to evaluate his life, the best he could afford himself. Hot on the heels of his thought for evaluation was another, a recollection of his first ever award.

Until a fortnight ago, no one knew Tamunu. Or perhaps, being known was never his thing. He bears a reserved outlook to life, such rarity. Well, as the fortune of his ancestors would have him become, he was summoned before the village head. It was that time of the year for the annual Awa festival and his fellow kinsmen had deemed him fit for one of the awards of the day.

‘’ The most humble‘’, it was tagged.

What for, why me?

Those are the questions someone of his ilk is wonted to ask. He did ask them, really. He wished for answers, he got none. He baulked at the award, his efforts were all in futility.

In the nick of time, the festival brimmed to its full. Tamunu was celebrated, well decorated too, more than he could bear. More than he could harbour, the joy of being laurelled gripped him.. The award tugged him into an ecstatic state till he vocally flaunted it in the face of villagers –

‘’My humility is greater than yours, can you beat that?’’

He went on and on asking. Alas, Tamunu got an answer to his question this time. The village head ordered that he be stripped of the award, forthwith. It was his first award and it had only lasted few minutes.

Our king's land-dom.

who dares it,
defying all odds
scheme the plot, talkless
sum it up in action
an invasion on our king's land-dom?

a haven of fighters, of brave warriors
 axe and sword-wielding,
to the last of us

we were that invincible
or so were made to believe
until that year, year of our undoing,
when we had a near-total wreckage
 of all that exhumes life on our land

 it all started, when the fear 

- of losing to serious illness, our king,
(the sovereign one, only
with whom our hard-fought wars were conquered) -   

  with its deadly grip, stretched deep,
into the core of our sanities,
whipping up terror,
about our would-be fate
- aftermaths of our
king's imminent demise -

the terror, 

in its daredevilry, a mere war, confined to our innards, within,
     reaped its harvest from among our men, interred them on our land
even earlier
than was our ill king by whom
they were made only gore-inflicting warriors.

Solemn assembly.

when our revered vicar
as was his duty

mounted the pulpit place
full,
on his priestly regalia

-the one that regularly lures me into the clerical profession-

it was or a different mounting

that Sunday

we knew no less, as it was later confirmed
with streams of hot perspirations 

running swiftly on his face

they seemed to have evolved
from a boiling, within

at the lingering,
unspeakable and defaming scandals that have hitherto 

rocked the church

in a dwindling state -an effete in its efficacy 

mouthed before they were voiced, 

the words were glutted out

at us, from him,
our revered vicar  

hard-hitting, clonal versions too,

of the verses
the lector had read earlier

meeting hearts, piercing same at will

this air of eeriness
- solemn assembly -

greeted and beat us, demandingly even.

we were chuffed by it, in our differing ways

ooosssheeeeey(s) were chorused

 audeshi(s) muffled too

then, was our vicar glad
he had made all hearts to talk

            *oooosheeey and *audeshi are Nigerian colloquial words for thumb up and dusted in that order.

We'll kill despair, AGAIN.

Enlist! Gift despair a chase,

Say enlist, we must kill despair, again

For once, and by the eternal,

despair had died, not by a

 stroke

of serendipity, we saw to that

-That moment, of many, when we tossed

selves, 

unthinking, 

into the aperture

between a bull's horns,

 when we decidedly routed thoughts

along patchy paths to satiate 

our quests

we had done no thing but morphed

our despair into a hope, 

our only hope-

And the morphing, we took to be the kill

that, 

left despair just past half-dead.

Old, 

weak despair 

self-revivified, caught up

with, and sauntered coolly into us, 

into our

newly optimistic minds

We got despair anew, because we had hoped

Do we cease to hope? 

perhaps, we all should

cease to hope TILL hopelessness

So we'll kill despair, AGAIN, 

and forever.