OKUNKA

 

OKUNKA, THE WOMEN KNOW YOU!

YOU COMPOSED THE DIRGE WHEN ASIEDUA THE ONLY DAUGHTER OF

ONYANKOP~N THE CREATOR DIED.

SKILLFUL ARCHER OF WORD AND SONG,

OKUNKA, 

THE WOMEN KNOW YOU.

 

OKUNKA, THE WOMEN LOVE YOU!

YOUR NAME REMAINS PROVERBIAL

BECAUSE OKUKUSEKU AND ASOMASI FEAR YOU

THE ONLY BARD OF WHOM THE AUDIENCE SING;

CUNNING TRAPPER OF THE WINDS.

 

IF I MEET YOU IN BROAD SUNLIGHT,

 I SHALL DEMAND A FROTHY GOURD OF GOODWILL

SERVED IN THE SHADES OF THE FRANKADUA.

I SHALL DARE YOU TO MEET ME ON A BREEZY DAY, 

AND I SHALL RETALIATE.

 

OKUNKA, THE WOMEN TRUST YOU

YOUR HAREM IS BRIMMING WITH VIRGINS AND WIDOWS HELD IN TRUST

TILL THEY ARE CLAIMED.

 

OKUNKA,

CHOP A DRINK AND 

LET ME FINISH THIS APPELLATION.

PENANCE

 

I SHALL DO PENANCE FOR THE FIRST SIN YOU COMMIT

THEN WAIT TO SEE WHAT THE OTHERS BRING ALONG.

 

I SHALL DO PENANCE FOR THE FIRST SIN I COMMIT

SO I LEND YOU THE PLEASURE TO PLAY GOD,

THE JUDGE AT WHOSE MERCY WE ALL ARE.

 

I SHALL DO PENANCE FOR THE FIRST SIN WE COMMIT

SO THAT OUR COMMUNAL DEBT OF DEATH IS PAID

AND LEAVE GOD TO BE JUDGE,

THE MERCIFUL ONE HE IS.

I have fallen KRIKITIM!

 

I have fallen,

 

KRIKITIM!

 

From my place at your knees

       In the dream

Too good to be over

The same one in which we met at the red junctions and strolled

Down the nape of the Wanzam

 

You were gracious when you finally bit him

That he began to dance before remembering his song

 

His dance was as contorted

As the song you taught him and

Soon the whole village was audience

 

I have fallen,

 

KRIKITIM!

 

To my place at your knees,

  In this life

Too hard to be short

This same one in which I dream

To be King

Of your marinated thoughts

 

If I write the Odyssey,

If I wrote my Odyssey,

You would be Calypso

 

Your voice would keep Olympus demented

And our hero would be home sooner

 

You would sing for me and

You would have a willing King and prisoner

 

For there are days when a man

Would give many things

To read the riddles in a deity’s eyes.

 

 

 

I have fallen,

 

 

KRIKITIM!

 

In this silhouette of your hair

When you let it down to confuse anger

 

The same ones

That stem from the depths of your mind,

That ink pot with which

You splatter the world with love

 

You are that kind deed

I would gladly do to humanity every day,

That stutter I would have,

Always,

To remind me that I have fallen

 

KRIKITIM!

Right before you

To the breaking of my vow

To stand firmly behind you

 

My Poetic Love

 

Maybe I should cease telling all my dreams

And this one might end well

 

The Shrine and the Mosque

They stand on two junctions,
 each other with a jawbone to sneer the other,
 at the tip of the descent into the distant valley of radiant selves.

Light and smoke blow over stained waters to set the gush free
Of bile and fire trapped in the corners of her mind.

Let me be wafted to Paradisé,
Like sweet-incensed song in the heart of a newly-wed 
devotee

Leave me be with wings like childish dreams 
with lofty destinations like Canaan and Mecca 

Lend me a secret path to Dahomey to see the Khaba,
to pray to Fatimah.

15/01/2018  11:42 (From Casablanca to London)

COLOURED WINGS

I am guilty of your lips, 

                             Abr)nomaa,  

                        Caller of innocent songs.

You owe me a tail feather, 

                            Abr)mma, 

                        Red-tailed beauty

Bringer of the dawn of sacrifice.

THE AFRICAN TESTIMONY

I have heard that name enough to last me four lifetimes. It was on every wall, wet and dry; on every lip, young and old; in every joke, sound and lewd; they would even love to hear his name in church. When I would sit at the back of the old ‘trotro’, held at the seams by rivets, he was the centre of every gossip; when I wanted to hear some rejuvenating ‘adadamu’ from my transistor radio for a change, his name would be in every news headline. All of a sudden, he was the world’s most famous human being, and his name sold faster than ‘Kofi Brokeman’ or the hitherto unequaled ‘Graphic and Times’. Before you could say ‘Jack’, and add whatever, his name would have been spelt out in full: Barack Hussein Obama. Maybe, just maybe, some children might have been named after him: Osama Bin Obama, Saddam Hussein Obama. Obama here, Obama there, Obama this, Obama that, Obama Says. ‘Maaba?’ Obama! ‘Namo ji lε?’ Obama! ‘Mini yaa nö?’ Obama! ‘Mini nε?’ Obama! I have been silent on this phenomenon that rocked the whole world, but finally I break my hymen of silence.

The Invited States of America (ISA) had to go to the polls. The old 'Bush' was on fire and almost reduced to ash. We had to officially retire the old order, to give room for the transfusion of fresh blood into the veins of our multiculturalal body; a new lid to be placed on top of our intercultural melting pot. Beside this exercise, everything else was second rate.

Above the tug of two political ideologies, parties and personalities, I saw two worlds and two generations, striving for dominance. After all those years of struggle, Father Africa, as part of his Image Reconstruction and Enhancement Programme (IREP), managed to confidently present one of his sons as a prospective to our common throne. Africa versus the rest; this promised to be a venture worth our historical while.

Today, we know the outcome, and there could be no better time to be who we are, proud sons and daughters of Father and Mother Africa. We rule the world at last, but my joy would even be sweeter, if those kinsmen sent away in 1914 and down the years, whose blood and tears and sweat fertilized the egg of struggle which has hatched our glory and made our voice heard, could witness this moment: Nat Turner, Du Bois, Luther King Jnr, Nkrumah, and Garvey. 

'Indeed, a child is nothing, it is only the glory of his forebears that the world sees and tolerates in him'...(Wole Soyinka...Kongi's Harvest)

 Now it is clear that something good can come out of Africa; that we have always been a bright continent in hiding, for this appointed time.

I wonder if the best still comes from the West. A river forgets is source soon dries up. Our gold and timber, cocoa and labour, made their glories possible. United States of America, still from Africa, ‘Obaa ma’ spiritual illumination, economic redemption, and political direction – that is the African testimony and miracle, Obama!

FIRE FOG

Kente is a metal forged in the riddles of the loom
Sold at the market of nine moons
Basic to the piano
Played on the eye.

I would not pay a bard to sing this riddle, lest he miss a line

Of the weaver’s cold dreams

Harvested from the starless sky of his roof

The bird of dreams perches and raises this song:

“Pass it here and stick it there

Kro-kro-kro w’ate?” (kro-kro-kro, have you heard?)

Then the helms water breaks

And cock calls his boast

Kokrokoo! Kokrokoo!

The master weaver starts to dance
And loses himself in the dazing steps
“Kro-kro-kro and again pass it here, stick it here and over again”
Till the songbird stops, and the dancer is dropped from the realms of dreams.

Kente is a metal that graces the victor’s shield

Whose story is yet to be ended from the beginning

The blood of the weaver

An African statement.