The Poet in the Poem

The poet in the poem

  By Yas Niger

  Copyright 2014 Yas Niger

  ***

  This is a work of fiction and it is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

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  * * *

  Table of content

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 Of the body

  Chapter 2 Of the heart

  Chapter 3 Of the mind

  Chapter 4 Of the soul

  Epilogue

  Alphabetical index

  About the work

  About the author

  Prologue

  The poet mans the helm,

  The cruise his composed poem.

  * * *

  Chapter 1: Of the body

  The flesh’s demand is so goody,

  As sure as it is of the body.

  TODDLER

  Babbler’s spittle drips as crawled,

  Nice rosy cheeks behind sprawled,

  Innocence pure and surely brawled.

  STAIRS

  Climb or fall these stairs

  With my thoughts and fears.

  Cheering amidst cries,

  Roaming these same lairs.

  In agony no one cares

  And victory everyone shares.

  In dark shadows for jeers

  Or painting an admirer tears.

  If I ascend to what’s theirs

  Or descend to suit my peers;

  I can only pluck my hairs,

  No one ever does satisfies.

  Picking what’re life’s wares,

  For my life are my own stairs.

  CLOUDS OF SALT (Hadarin gishiri)

  Skies are drumming,

  The body joins in too.

  Clouds are partying,

  Invited winds are too.

  The body is hurrying,

  All corpses are met.

  Real hot or chilling,

  Salty must be wet.

  Sama na kidi,

  Jiki ya dauka.

  Hadari na biki,

  Ya gaiyache iska.

  Jiki na sauri,

  Kowa na mushe.

  Ko zafi, ko dari,

  Gishiri sai ya jike.

  TEMPTATION

  Misty prospects in the skies

  Yet this sun blurs the eyes,

  While the bright light of day

  Carries the whole mind astray.

  The bride of shame courts

  Yearnings, fantasies and lusts.

  The comforts of home pushes,

  Sin’s cold hands outside urges.

  Can man sneeze or not

  Or blink like it is his sort?

  To run at first sighting

  Or just dare all tempting,

  This he never will elude;

  His ways must all conclude.

  Not all his wishes go to sea.

  For lust, many beaches only will see.

  THE OLD WOMAN’S MAID

  History itself nourished,

  It might’ve thus been humbled.

  In her need she’s again banished

  And her steered nurses, all bundled.

  Seasons are overlapped famished,

  All the shaft and wheat are rumpled.

  Her senile stroll is beautifully enriched

  And for nothing else, her maids are long rustled.

  PIGGIES

  When I go to market, another stays at home.

  If you had roast beef, another had the bone.

  Funny how all cry (we); and still end with none.

  AGAIN

  Tomorrow will come again

  With its morning and night,

  Feignedly new with rain,

  In fervent dark and bright.

  ALONE

  Taste speech my brother,

  Crave for words in reply.

  Yearn to see yet another,

  To see, touch and go by;

  For lonely is every breather.

  BITTER

  Sweet is straight yet unclear,

  Always new with its old fare.

  But bitter doesn’t ever share,

  Though it is sinister but sincere,

  So real and that shade unfair.

  TALE OF TWO PEOPLE

  Up on the plateau they reigned,

  Their own old clans so formed.

  Hidden on the height’s plain,

  Living in plenty’s much rain.

  They welcome guests well,

  As prosperous strangers tell.

  Soon dominance is so evident

  And for the sold they want rent.

  Wherever time is so kept,

  Such a place has it since left.

  Two is never again one unless

  One is expunged and no less.

  Identity established so firm,

  Fights a war not for their farm.

  Bullying their co-farmers’ yield

  With poised spears and a shield.

  MIGHTY FLEA

  And where are you off to

  You little mite, busy so so?

  To gather as you go through

  Or borrowing to hide down low?

  This wind that carry you

  Draws a ring as you sing.

  For one that reigns so true

  You live shorter than you bring.

  Your bite is so you can live

  Like all who prey on fatality.

  How true it is, in all who live,

  That death is but a formality.

  PHILANTHROPY

  Every moment we ably blink,

  Yet it’s some big deal to wink.

  PRESENTLY OLD

  The bud’s blossom is past glossy,

  Time passing has folded its shiver.

  Age wither and dry up the rosy

  In certain preparation for shivah.

  The past left without all of its,

  As the present live any place else.

  And now, always alone like this;

  How then can the old ever bless?

  Dryness of thirst spoke its waste

  As all bare feet thorns had hurt.

  Peacefully alone, wait for fate

  With memories in a bodily hut.

  When time has consumed its old

  As water passes under the bridge;

  This route for all, floods any hold

  And water must pass under the bridge.

  MY FRIEND

  Again and again it’s replayed,

  Assistance not even repaid.

  Acquaintance that made an Us,

  Not maintained with new status.

  But I heard your smile

  Come across another mile.

  I saw your heart and felt

  Your mind like mine, melt.

  I’m in harmony with you

  And I perceive this as true.

  You’re my friend come pain,

  Or still over and over again.

  LET IT RAIN

  Clear as skies have ever been,

  Then stirred a slight breeze.

  Gently woke a dusty scene,

  Helpless pedestrians sneeze.

  A clouds’ parade is called;

  Smoky pawns first appear.

  From the horizon they strolled

  With a breeze winded in despair.

  Officers’ darker mien show,

  As an angry thicken sky spread.

  The world’s mood goes slow,

  For a brief moment, in dread.

  Suddenly the t
empo is upped,

  Like an adrenaline spiked heart.

  The living world all robbed

  Of all its plans as droplets pat.

  The tar-less streets go empty,

  As commerce pauses in pain.

  Hawkers shelter all so hasty

  As the clouds cry, let it rain.

  IT RAINED

  Sleep is death everyday

  And dreams, the after life.

  Morning wakes Lazarus

  Into a very moist terminus.

  The birds call out stops,

  Jetting in over roof tops.

  The sun arrives from the east,

  In its twelve hourly haste.

  Wingless termites each pair,

  From glassy littered floors appear.

  Lizards leave damp cracks

  Amidst frogs’ conducted croaks.

  Each awakes as another

  To catch the day younger.

  The wet early mood hurried;

  For surely last night it rained.

  DATE

  Silly days made our teens,

  Sorting out our teething genes.

  Over those moons, new till old

  Our hormones shiver their cold.

  Tasting all those many dishes;

  Many we met with their witches,

  Others we borrowed and mended,

  But lots we created and trended.

  The sting of disappointments sore,

  Betrayal and pain and much more.

  Ageing fear is sour but caught;

  Yet still we trove amidst death.

  To all morrows we cherished

  That date we shared perished,

  And thank it so for that spice

  It puts into this new date so nice.

  MASSES

  Where the eagles dare

  The vulture does fear.

  We’re weaklings there,

  Patience stole our lair.

  Anthills grew where

  A colony learns to bear.

  That beach is so near

  When a lost ship cheer.

  PREDATOR

  Wisdom is the Owl’s,

  Opened eyed it saw

  Cooking sun bowels

  Blurs its sight more.

  Little shows the moon,

  Like stars in the dark.

  To hunt it glides as soon

  As dusk shows its back.

  The prey that hides

  From shine of day

  See less of the rides

  And the Owl’s hurray.

  ZOO KEEPERS

  The chimps’re gaily as will ever

  As the fauna king will rule never.

  Penned in a checkered metal home,

  Their chatter and roar a collective hum.

  Huge trumpeters cupped for show

  As archaic aquatic lizard’s flow.

  Their mud puddles not more free

  Than the walled rivers to be or see.

  Eagle soars only in its mind

  And serpents share their kind.

  All the skies they see and saw

  Lost like their choices as before.

  BREASTS OF DOOM

  O’ home,

  I fear I am gone.

  If I do return,

  Rename me the sun.

  O’ my nest,

  Born to be the best,

  Even when I die of thirst,

  My last drop you will have first.

  O’ this world,

  Spare me a word.

  Call me anything,

  At least say something.

  O’ uncertainty,

  You cloud my sanity;

  My consciousness you cover,

  So do please roll over.

  O’ hunger,

  A cause for bother.

  Those you’ve punished,

  Deceived and banished.

  O’ misery,

  You’re a mystery

  That hushes the brave

  And starve the grave.

  O’ life,

  Where is your sight?

  Drop the knife

  And use some light.

  O’ kindness,

  Born of happiness;

  May your reward be no other

  Than your blessed mother.

  O’ loneliness,

  So many about,

  Yet in your meanness

  You cast me out.

  O’ death,

  Why express your might

  On good fate

  And make its wards the late?

  O’ fate

  Watch my tears.

  Please make me the late

  Or show me someone who really cares.

  O’ people,

  How can you be so simple

  Yet so mean,

  As if it is no sin?

  O’ future,

  Come in whatever nature,

  Just promise me;

  In my place my child you’ll see.

  O’ child,

  For whom I roam,

  Is it youth that is blind

  Or I chest breasts of doom?

  MOST LOST

  Who says we are most alone

  When we are with the most?

  And all alone with its none;

  Enjoying life at its own worst?

  Attempting to be on our own

  We had often found its cost;

  Sought glories for the stone

  And won prizes we had all lost.

  TEARS

  Boiling pots let off steam,

  Pressured heat sweats a beam.

  Merrily down a peopled stream,

  Tears must decimate life’s film.

  SO?

  Let us play a game of trading places,

  Pausing triggers of mud slinging tongues.

  Viewing with glasses that mirror chances,

  We’ll find all toes fit the shoes it belongs.

  BREEDS

  The mind eats, then it sleeps.

  Where it sits, there it breeds.

  Then it would end and cease,

  Leave in hope for some peace.

  Still this life ever only breeds,

  If what it learns today it heeds.

  SWINE

  Who makes the most noise

  And is as dirty in his poise?

  Who soils his needs as toys

  And spoils all his ego hoist?

  MATE (Kishiya)

  So she said to I,

  “To all women as I,

  My mate is better than I,

  What did she do to him and I?

  Or had I failed him as I,

  To make him withdraw from I?

  How else do you interpret to I,

  It’s envy or it’s all male to I?”

  Haka ta che,

  “Wa ni da duk mache,

  Kishiya ta ta fi ni.

  Ko ya ta yi da shi, da ni?

  Ko de na kasa,

  Har ya sa ya fasa?

  Ko ya zaka fasara,

  Kishi ne, ko duniya na maza?”

  MUSICAL NATURE

  The beats of sounds speaks out

  To be heard outside thought.

  Taught mind holds out its arms

  Which melodies caress and disarms.

  Balance placed all around is

  Fondly rolled out like this.

  With august carpets welcomed

  To change moods succumbed.

  Beauty revealed in rhythm

  That alone fills the chasm,

  Teach that nature is a song

  Sang in the world it belong.

  Listening to living all about,

  Natural in whisper or shout.

  Speaking like a language

  For all alive, of every age.

  This one common dialect

  That nature would select,

  To talk to all its wards

  Over whom it does lords.

  Into the rhymes of beats

  Even the soul also eats.


  For the monastery of man

  Isn’t too lonely to jam.

  Drummed beats within ribs

  Carry breath beyond its cribs.

  Heard inside ears’ own confine

  Till sound buries its own coffin.

  This atmospheric gaol of man

  He has only, all he does plan.

  In its whirl spin of mystery,

  It entertains man’s misery.

  Trunk sounds nosy trumpets

  Like fluty birds in high nests.

  Peckers tap wooden gongs

  As leggy harps chirp songs.

  The hiss lull of breezy air

  And crescendo a storm blare;

  Conducts brown, green and blue

  Into a harmony hardly new.

  As sound speaks and entertain,

  Nature so musically maintain

  The oneness of all it breeds;

  Sanely soothing all it feeds.

  The metaphor portrays the act

  That cannot dispute the fact;

  That the fruit of this only life

  Metamorphose with all alive.

  MOUNTAIN

  My mood goes up and down a mountain,

  Too inspired by the challenge to refrain.

  Wary of the danger that’s being embraced,

  So cautious of the consequence, if disgraced.

  Confused at the reason why anyone must,

  Scared of the height beckoning my lust.

  Struggling up the first ledge as I edge up,

  Proud to have made it up my own little top.

  Further up more battles, the way is yet more.

  Betrayed by falling rocks I yearn for before;

  Holding on to dear life, yet another average.

  Dejected by unfriendly weather and also age.

  Angry to slip off the steep, rubbed in bruises.

  Disappointed to lose the gained just pushes;

  Gasping up yet another route should matter,

  In time it comes to never prove any better.

  Surprised by the like company all about,

  Reason enough for such to pine on without

  The appreciation my efforts and gains deserve.

  Tired yet gladden by that view, a pleasure.

  Knowing I cannot stay forever there on top.

  When and not if I return grounded from up;

  Normal should I be again, only different

  With experience and lessons time can’t dent.

  If I return pushed from its highest cliff’s edge

  Or in honour received at finished time’s verge,

  I’ll wrestle my older age’s embers of last mood;

  Helplessly watch it win all my trophies and food.

  DAMNING

  When the heard child laughs

  Because he or she is yet to learn

  That the human’s hate bathes

  Itself with a very muddy hand.

  When the grown up man

  Looks another in the face

  With the sympathy he can,

  Yet his steps he retrace.

  When the means so abound

  And situations led are bred,

  So that no bread is found

  Or all the many needy fed.

  When the minds of people

  Work in a pattern so futile

  To their every tiny single

  Breath and existing smile.

  When the scale is tilt

  In favour of the weight

  Of the gold and its guilt

  Not honour at its height.

  When the support falters,

  For man chooses to urinate

  In his salads and waters

  On the earth he can’t imitate.

  When all that exists

  Speaks for the destination,

  Then man opens all the exits

  And runs out in damnation.

  RACES

  They get set, ready and go.

  To where? God only will know.

  Revolting round earthly tracks

  Which knows not their tasks.

  Their quests are not visible

  Or even humanly sensible.

  Competing with complexions,

  Hairs, noses and eyes in nations.

  What wins these long races

  That recognizes their faces,

  Will not justify the future;

  For races aren’t their nature.

  AFRICA

  Darkest people ever found,

  A huge pistol points wrong.

  If here man got his sound;

  Earth, Africa is your song.

  THE SLEEPER

  Why’ll this air carry a plane

  And not carry me alone too,

  Or indeed a speech in its vein

  Across nothing instantly true.

  Why will a big city of a ship

  Sail oceans leagues in depth

  And I sink in a pool as I sleep,

  Like many tiny pebbles too wept.

  I see no answer in practice

  Or reason in their pattern.

  Where a dream does surface,

  There my sleep shows concern.

  ASABA

  Her entire short life is dirge like,

  In her daily rounds so silly alike.

  Abnormally brained, genes had made;

  A persistent dirty joke, harmlessly made.

  Asaba is the neighbourhood’s fool,

  Nurturing our moods into a little fool.

  The gloom that is her poor mind

  Caresses our passions, so we mind.

  In a puddle she plays herself by.

  Scaring kids as she staggers by.

  Gracious mums use this apt fear.

  Life cannot be all good and fair.

  WOUNDS OF THE WORLD

  Visible cuts we saw,

  Deep set and so raw.

  It had the pretty torn

  And the beholder run.

  Worn with its pride

  As any true bride.

  A scar from a war

  Is like a lion’s roar.

  Not on Everest’s peak

  Must anyone do seek,

  For even on all hills

  Are these worlds ills.

  The baby that cries,

  Steals away and tries;

  To be his own parent,

  Where he is only sent.

  That spouse out back;

  Behind one Holy Ark,

  Leaves the same vow

  Yet remains, some how.

  They; as many, are

  So near and not far.

  Wounds made bold

  In this very world.

  MRS QUEEN, MISS KING

  “How do I tell how you feel,

  Sitting on this height’s will?

  Personal love trapped within,

  Expectations curbing peace in.”

  “I can easily say your state,

  As only a child truly taste.

  For love within is personal,

  Our judges are then eternal.”

  THE WORLD IN A LITTLE ROOM

  What you have seen before now

  Is nothing like you will yet know.

  Mountains higher than the clouds

  Or galaxies from fictional worlds

  Will flash before you in fast floods.

  The breath of a lung transits

  Or to anti-bodies a virus submits.

  The skeleton of a lonely fetus,

  As that of a Mammoth is shown us

  And not a scene is ever a loss.

  The Red sea had betrayed

  The depth’s Egyptians embraced.

  White Mountains of ice only

  In the south pole melts slowly

  As you watch it all so warmly.

  Roof of this world up high

  Marbles the earth down here.

  Clusters of fish eggs hatches,

  Soldier ant worker matches,

  As its eyelids bl
inks its lashes.

  The wedding of a Queen’s maid

  Or a Roman shield in a pyramid.

  A shark outwit a dozen sailors,

  Unlike Caesar in his senate of traitors

  Centuries ago showed their failures.

  A terrorist and freedom fighter

  Are both made a fire and its lighter.

  A domesticated wolf devours a man,

  For a just reason it is shown it can.

  You enjoy the deserts’ heat under a fan.

  Bloody vessels in vain roam a sea,

  A ghost discusses and drinks tea.

  The passengers of an old plane crash

  Board the same plane again and smash.

  The wealth you see leaves you no cash.

  Every conceivable game is played

  By men, animals and plants displayed.

  The thickest clouds parade the sky

  On pillars Himalayans peak up high

  Or over raging ocean waters they fly.

  Dancing birds dressed up to mate,

  Two collapsing towers dust their fate.

  The deepest valleys in the ocean waters

  Reveal their secrets nature only alters

  And nothing else in the world matters.

  The uproar of a stampede crowds on,

  Boiling heat erupting within the sun.

  Sudden death stills a pumping heart,

  A sprints heat repeated again from start

  And the tracks appear your viewing mat.

  Ash, gas and molten are experienced

  As a volcano erupts its bowels so tensed.

  Frogs hopping on water incredibly,

  Like a pebble tossed so skillfully.

  Sand storms windowed so luxuriously.

  Satan’s countless personifications,

  Lords of every era that raped nations.

  Dancers of every race, sort and style,

  Every single bubble in a mug of ale.

  You see the characters in every tale.

  The sparingly dressed wives in a harem,

  Cardinal and son talk as you hear them.

  A good view beneath a standing Scot’s kilt,

  All the happenings in a billionaire’s treat.

  Everything within sight, with every tilt.

  Bullets leaving a closed steel chamber,

  A pierced lung as all its air wonder.

  Endless flocks of Pelicans go south,

  Yellow cloud of Monarchs flicker north,

  Their beauty fills every mind with thought.

  Angels shielding a saint on a mission,

  A nerve’s twitching response to a decision.

  Ant like pedestrians on a city street,

  That unsympathetic, selfish and proud fleet

  Leaving tastes bitter, salty, sour and sweet.

  Man’s endless quest for unknown perfections

  Blurs minds with omissions and commissions.

  The constructed aids in their achieved means

  Entertain, educate and inform all the beings,

  Yet in all its glory, humanity’s future it weans.

  THE HEN’S ODD CHICK

  The grass blades shake off droplets

  As she led on her mild yellow train.

  Her own adorable dozen little pets

  Squealing within their own tiny rain,

  Before the morning dew finally melts

  And all the worms go deep down again.

  She beaks a large borrowing worm

  And they crowd round her as quick,

  Wrestle the struggling stringy form

  From her higher and bigger beak.

  They pieces it all amongst their sum,

  Except again that weird odd chick.

  Scratching off the sandy soil top

  To pick and feed on the grains sort,

  The serious Hen and her low troop;

  All except that chick which does not.

  Strangely though in a marshy mud top

  It walks easily as fed with its beak blunt.

  Then it happens like it does always,

  Her dozen subtracts after and after.

  At the stream where a worm ever plays

  Danger is more and always there to alter.

  The odd chick water takes in its ways;

  Strangely it floats on, to the Hen’s whimper.

  STRONG

  Mine has come to this one thing,

  Appreciated and loved for my sun

  Was, is and will be in everything.

  As able then stays man’s proud son;

  Strength is always but much nothing,

  It lost out as strategy ever again won.

  COMMON

  I try wetin I fit

  With all dem gist.

  I join, cook, wait!

  Water yet, no meat.

  SWEET

  That haste of taste

  All too late to waste.

  FLIES AND LIES

  In so many eggs

  Form these pests,

  With hairy legs

  And little nests.

  Homelessly so

  They come alive.

  Into lives they saw

  Like a heartless knife.

  Hollow dreams,

  Misty realizations.

  Spiteful screams

  Claps consolations.

  Hopes are meals

  Infected in feeding.

  Health it steals

  With insidious seasoning.

  Into lives

  Glide monsters,

  Flee and leaves

  Sorrow in clusters.

  Sightless lie

  Full of might,

  Visible fly

  Trading fright.

  Coming true

  In various ways.

  Ever they’re new

  In buzzing forays.

  Mail your worst,

  Untrue are lies.

  Come the most

  You’re just flies.

  TOMORROW

  And come

  It home.

  That window;

  Our mirror.

  It makes

  As wakes.

  Another date

  For fate.

  Another day.

  Oops, away!

  Lets pray

  And say.

  The morrow

  Will show

  Us about,

  Run, shout;

  Shoulders high,

  “Tomorrow’s here!”

  LAND OF SAND

  Wheels of fortune

  Sing your cheeky tune.

  Life is a man

  Dancing all he can.

  Loose as sand,

  Lord of all the land.

  In all this fuss

  You wonder what he has.

  FRIEND OF FOE

  After taking stock of our relationships

  And how we all manage to practice them,

  With the thorough scan of stewardships

  Serving or waiting on this our system.

  I come to the stunningly true conclusion

  That there is always a thin line between

  A foe or a friend in this summation

  And it is there for all to lose or win.

  It is as thin as is the common thread

  Or as is any selfish or selfless whim

  That guides man’s search for bread

  Or his thoughts, his actions or him.

  LITTLE, LITTLE ANT

  O little, little, tiny ant;

  Do you wonder who I am,

  Standing big moving plant,

  Always about to do you harm.

  FINE TIMES

  Winners so abound,

  Strapped and bounded.

  Elated all around,

  Joyously dumb-founded.

  Those fine times

  Speaks for all kinds.

  Saying as do chimes,

  That time do binds.

  Rare times of winning

/>   Brings forth the hidden.

  Revealing all missing;

  Fingers in the mitten.

  ZEBRA CROSSING

  Long nights had passed by,

  I still stray into the dream.

  My tears had filled my try,

  My beaten milk isn’t cream.

  Donkey’s years pass on along

  And made me an ass all alone.

  Donkey’s oversized head belong

  To the horses my very fate own.

  The will shade appear itself

  And I can not be too careful.

  In crossing to my other half,

  I find I am the Zebra’s fool.

  SLUG

  As we moan in our far watch;

  Nagging our peopled conscience,

  We miss out entirely that the catch

  Is made up of all our overt nonsense.

  A large rich island just drags on,

  Not for the size it must always hug.

  The bulk of it lost the very reason

  Why rich minds will make it a slug.

  TOO DARK FOR THE SUN

  Shade’s own place in the sun;

  Like the shadow’s that will run,

  Is hidden from its glories glare

  With the truth they all must bear.

  THE WAR THAT WON A BATTLE

  The rocky coast of Macbeth’s fate

  Must be taken up to be like the bait

  That clips the pet Eagle’s keen claws

  Or ties up a feeding Croc’s weak jaws.

  The lesson in any story is found

  And in any form it will astound

  The minute detail of our simple act

  Or corrects excesses in our daily act.

  LEAVE (Bari)

  If you refuse to leave,

  Surely it will still cease.

  Because the night is dark;

  The sun ensures it is back.

  In ka ki ka ji bari,

  Lalle za ka ga bari.

  Domin dare ne sakon;

  Rana ne mai bakon.

  HEADS OR TAILS

  Toss the coin all your life,

  Balance on edges of a knife.

  Whither roam your own course

  If life to you is just a lone farce.

  Are you not lost in thought;

  Like the canine who fought

  His own tail round and round,

  With its very head not sound?

  HANDFUL OF CLAY

  That simple deed you daily handle

  Reveal so much about how you work.

  Just as everybody carries their bundle

  Of life’s joy and sorrow that will mock.

  That piece of action you handle

  Reveal your final piece of work.

  Just like every artist’s own bundle

  Of clay would praise and also mock.

  PROSTITUTES

  Most prostitutes are normal bodies,

  Hard workers doing their oddities;

  Which seem unpopular so visibly,

  So they can continue to feed boldly.

  Circumstances they try to overcome,

  Upturned obstacles making them so,

  Resembling every other fleshed bone

  With less hypocrisy and shyly so sour.

  They are not traders selling a bodily asset,

  They rent out for material gain and power

  Like the more popular, with more respect;

  Unlike political integrity, with less shower.

  BLOSSOM

  The freshness of a blossom

  Will wither, fall and dry.

  All this earth so awesome,

  Ends and will all die.

  OUR HOMES

  It was always dark in all it lack;

  All living again, though to us all,

  Today it still lingers far off back

  In that long night we still do fall.

  These cultures that speak the person

  Say an Abiku again is every one of us.

  For common reason proves a season,

  That only event ended and started us.

  When the cries over sharia had settled,

  We ran and scattered the town’s streets.

  Homeless, dead and alive all kettled;

  Schemed and steamed out of fair streets.

  After all, a rope always starts and ends,

  Then it is just after all rope in between.

  All of man is birth and the dead ends,

  In between is life; man is in between.

  After dusk, all return to their own home.

  The swine’s streets of our homes will then

  Not be as good again to even just roam,

  For the transit pen is now a lion’s den.

  THESE CLICHÉS

  Do they reap what they sow?

  I’ve wondered as long as I come.

  Often enough it has been as before,

  They bury the hive yet have the comb.

  Spare the rod and lose the child,

  Same as many who didn’t at all.

  The least expected child went wild

  While the worst possible stands tall.

  Surely and steady wins the said race,

  But the rash in haste, are long gone to lose.

  The patient keeps the bone or the chase,

  The flesh it devoured only with its nose.

  One step at a time is the long walk,

  It has shown so many their goal.

  That more had lived this same talk,

  They still are now staring at a wall.

  Rome was not built in a single day;

  But it was conceived in just one.

  What just any man really is anyway

  Was a mere thought that was none.

  HOME

  To man, as he ponders;

  Home holds wonders

  That marries his flow

  Or just drags his plow.

  Till his toiling ends,

  Coming home fends.

  But its demands say

  Much is there to play.

  When all is all down

  And all the days done;

  Being home is to say

  The most sure all day.

  LUCK SUCKS

  “Well,” they ever said indifferently,

  “You can’t eat your cake and have it.”

  ‘Bug off!’ I puff out most angrily,

  ‘You happen to do so every minute.’

  “Ah! But it is so, my mate and son,”

  They grin with eyes all a sly glint.

  “We can all have the same bait on,

  Yet I catch and you are still skint.”

  ‘Never alive?’ I wonder not so loud.

  ‘Like déjà vu?’ And I’m yet helpful.

  “Where many danced your dance proud,

  You will be jeered and hailed a fistful.”

  ‘Is it me then, and my own luck?

  Need I add fate, destiny’s slut?’

  “We agree to prove only to mock.”

  ‘Then I’ll set bait and eat my lot.’

  LIGHT OF DEATH (Hasken Mutuwa)

  With fools death is celebrated,

  For understanding gains height.

  When death is communicated.

  The moon hides its very light;

  Today it’s clear, tomorrow cremated.

  Da wawa a ke rawan mutuwa,

  Domin haske na chan sama.

  Ranan da dare ya ga mutuwa,

  Wata za bache daga sama.

  Yau da haske, gobe mutuwa.

  MOUTHING PIOUS PLATITUDE

  Two gentlemen of the world met,

  Sitting on a park bench together.

  They shared as their extremes let,

  Yet their unique talents will hinder.

  Pious is the madman, who lives here;

  His abode ignored but litters the world.

  Platitude, a Professor that goes there,

  To seclude from the kind his wo
rld mould.

  Crazy in his rags and papered home,

  Pious welcomes his regular guest’s tale.

  The rotten egg welcoming the bone;

  Like a dog, he shows off his one tail.

  They converse about a news item;

  The learned Prof reads off his News daily.

  Forwarding arguments befitting them,

  Each reasoned man’s folly mainly.

  Teachers sought reason for the sane,

  Making sense of theories as realities.

  While the insane do the very same,

  Realities as theories are certainties.

  In ostentatious escapades of the mad

  Roams religious virtue so uncommon

  And in sanity’s commonness easily had

  Grows the loose morality we do summon.

  Embedded in their platonic briefs

  Is the story of their common child;

  Man’s common sense and beliefs,

  Are like madmen’s, when all are blind.

  SUICIDE

  From where comes all this dew,

  Delighting thoughts with to chew.

  Soothing pressures that boo,

  But sound frightfully so lewd.

  I grabbed the wind horn I blew,

  For I alone do hear it so true.

  A loss I think I’ll cause you,

  The pains might escape a few.

  My swift scheme hardly new,

  Like good cheats daring who.

  Life is the full pot of new stew

  Emotional foot found with its shoe.

  EVEN ODDS

  Truth salts,

  Like tears.

  And paths,

  Reveal fears.

  Night sleeps,

  Light wakes.

  Sheep reaps,

  Ant makes.

  When ripe,

  Eat fruit.

  Every life

  Has soot.

  Yoked, alone;

  They peered.

  Even stone

  Has feared.

  Even odds

  Can even.

  Even odds,

  Odds even.

  THAT OLD PAST

  I miss a lot I never saw,

  Its still aloft yet old as raw.

  I missed much I still can hear,

  All that such still remains here.

  I miss old ways in past years,

  Those old nays and crude yeas.

  I crave for the meal I never ate;

  Yearn so much for a feel I never met.

  I miss soft tapping finger tips,

  Strapped swinging held swaying hips,

  Swishing feet on glittering marbled floors,

  Flowing gowns, paired feet in coupled fours.

  I miss good music guided by tiny sticks,

  Quiet audiences in silent peace that reeks.

  And when they dance, its like a mute hymn,

  Tapping away on hard soles, following a rhythm.

  I miss husky sleepy humming lullabies,

  With honest night stories full of nice lies.

  I miss trained hands on black and white ivory keys,

  And the sweet old past would ever numb all knees.

  BORN TO SIN

  Sin is not just outside, somewhere;

  From where it comes without fear,

  Disintegrating our shelled defenses;

  To break and consume our senses.

  It is inside us, just right within,

  Where it sees through us so thin

  And struggles to appear right out,

  To roam and enjoy its world about.

  Alive so well to breed its yield;

  It pushes and urges us to build

  A worldly home for it and us

  To wait outside, in mutual loss.