The Poet in the Poem

THE SENSES OF THE SEASONS

  Cold, harsh and hard winter.

  As skins feel and muster,

  The senses repel this monster.

  Water, green and breed spring.

  As tongues taste and sing,

  The senses eat everything.

  Warm, lazy but busy summer.

  As eyes see and shimmer,

  The senses ponder in wonder.

  Windy, dry and dead autumn.

  As ears hear and minds fathom,

  The senses prepare the burial drum.

  JIGGLE BELLS

  Single hell, triple fell;

  Wiggled yet it didn’t jell.

  Oh, what rings that little bell

  That tries and ever fails to tell?

  SIR

  The world is that common mirror

  That our reflection bounces off.

  All these people we all so follow

  Always seem to show us enough.

  When I see my reflections ever,

  I climbed your mountain so rare.

  Then I found honour owns never

  And where you were come I sir.

  TRUE

  That man isn’t God;

  Who flaunts not his might,

  That secret is mere mud;

  To the truth I can bite.

  Silence as a weapon is my right;

  The trophy of loot in man’s fight.

  TIME CONCEPT

  Six seeds of time dropped from its void,

  They arrived as miniatures of old cut-out foil.

  Once here they germinated into its concept;

  Those half dozen hideous monsters we accept.

  They search for the lovely maiden in man.

  In her flowery easy gown she now ran

  Towards the mirror at the end of time,

  Where ends all life-sweet misery’s crime.

  First time they caught up with her in a pool.

  As she bathes they unleashed their fierce tool;

  The devouring mystic swamp behind their teeth

  And swallowed the whole lake’s water in a breath.

  Then they missed her in the air’s grip,

  As she flew in a dream with her sleep.

  Again their devouring teeth slashed all wide,

  And ate the skies winds as she fell off to hide.

  She found the drawn carriage and rode it,

  In hot pursuit they caught up and bit at it.

  The transport means and yield it coughs up,

  And land the horses pulled, they chewed all up.

  Lastly the depth of earth sneeze its protection

  And its molten heat threw out its combustion.

  Though it covered her all up, they still did more;

  Devoured fire’s fury and left her alone for sure.

  She made it to that final aged tunnel of the old

  And had to walk its slow dense forest alone bold.

  Behind her, the quick hunger of time reaches on;

  The future’s uneasy peace mirrored unknown.

  Just as she did make it and melt inside it,

  The milky embrace silvery end didn’t admit;

  The monsters that had made her their bait,

  All six; love, pain, joy, sorrow, need and hate.

  She ends the long journey just as she began,

  As a little helpless babe time held in its hand.

  Time will always be a bountiful bondless chain,

  Releasing yet holding its ever shortening reign.

  WORTHLESS

  What profits this mind,

  To its end it never finds.

  When it says its heart’s pain

  It looses the grip of its chains.

  Am I always on trial,

  My soul alone on its isle?

  I am mindful more than less

  That is the value of the worthless.

  CHEATS

  To a mass we wore those frowns again,

  Webbing lines on our brows with pain.

  These insects spanned and trapped we are,

  Drunken hulks with secular cheats we spar.

  FOOLS OF AFRICA

  Were you named as you sat on a shelf?

  Who named you what you call yourself?

  Are you really what you say you are?

  Or basically you just turned out as you are?

  Every man has only his fingers and toes

  And they are to be thanked for all numbers.

  His logic of senses beyond his own shores

  Made perception a bias heap of blunders.

  When the timing of the African’s existence

  Is entirely based on another race’s perception,

  Then his foolish identity by every instance,

  Likens his time; another European conception.

  WORDS IN WISDOM

  Culture isn’t cumbersome;

  Civilization is more fearsome.

  Love isn’t an obligation,

  Patience is not affection.

  Change is an experience,

  Compromise an acceptance.

  Reality is the dreamer’s foe,

  Fantasies seek to reap not sow.

  Speech is one’s capital set,

  Wisdom is the fixed asset.

  Fear is sheer frailty,

  That favours the mighty.

  Sympathy isn’t ever love,

  Nor a destitute from above.

  Peace reigns in its silence,

  Calmness denotes prudence.

  Freedom is an economic catalyst,

  God is certainly the first capitalist.

  Life is a boy,

  A source of joy?

  Existing with vanity,

  Vanquished in vanity.

  Virtue is not a weakness,

  Evil will reveal goodness.

  Liberty should have some limits,

  As Devil gets momentary permits.

  Philosophy is an opinion;

  Reason’s brief dominion.

  HEARTILY

  As age so munches,

  Right hands touches

  Our hearts so better

  And how it’ll matter.

  Heart’s own shutters,

  In muffled clatters,

  Doesn’t open or close

  As they want or choose.

  To an end all beats its drums;

  Summing all songs it hums,

  When time will all freeze

  And heart beats cease.

  TRUSTWORTHY

  Lonely trust is an egg.

  When it does break;

  Like omelette or not,

  Live with it henceforth.

  When trust leaves its shell

  And its faith so easy to tell,

  It is all gone for so ever,

  And it will return never.

  When faith is broken

  That much is chosen;

  Egg as an omelette,

  Embraces a silhouette.

  NEITHER AS EITHER

  Born on a tree up high,

  I became a Monkey’s child.

  Swinging for I don’t fly,

  All else to me are blind.

  Hatched in a beach’s sand,

  Missed as monkeys’ feast.

  Shelled in water as on land,

  Only a true Turtle at least.

  In the pursuance of meals

  The being does its claim.

  Just to only take, it steals

  And lives to answer its name.

  One’s ways mild and subtle

  Sustains another’s in praise.

  Whether Monkey or Turtle,

  Rests on an act of divine grace.

  Beneath sand or on a tree,

  Can easily have been neither.

  For such I have come to be,

  Doesn’t say much for either.

  POETRY

  What tribe will have you dance its folk lore

  Anyhow you wish and still call you right

  Like poetry would do with word
s for sure,

  Misspelling and not punctuating left and right?

  You married the spouse and planted the trees,

  Amassed the wealth and ensured the health,

  Won over the law and gained with the fees;

  Even books don’t give the freedom of a poet.

  THE FUNERAL OF ICE

  The making of he who is

  Has origins in the air he is.

  Made in secret, carried about.

  Revealed openly, in and out.

  Gathered in the skies high,

  To roam as mist up high.

  It bursts the banks it fills

  And cracks downwards to fill.

  The hardening effect of frost;

  Granite and so harsh a host,

  Conquers the whole land

  So that air can’t lend a hand.

  Mightily the season comes

  When the diamond becomes

  Water again and it all ends;

  Melting into a liquid that fends.

  RIGHTFULLY

  Your rights start where mine stops

  Or is that, stops where mine starts?

  When we both make the golden rule tops,

  Then we greatly succeed in our mutual acts.

  We have seen rights cross and overlap

  With such ease and care not deliberate,

  Not like the water traveling to my tap

  Or as simple as the thought words I ate.

  This air you bought across a counter

  Comes to me all free, if not as pure.

  Your noise carries across an encounter.

  My displeasure for it, I seek to cure.

  What efforts I put in to ensure that

  Where you messed up mine doesn’t sit

  Can just end your right where it start

  And start mine off without a care for it.

  TAMING AS THE CONSCIENCE

  With this thought comes the word

  That a taught mind does afford.

  From the heart’s thrust for action,

  The spirit reveals its intension.

  Creeping up guts and spines

  Of the anguished, as he pines.

  The real is seen not as before,

  For requests never ever bore.

  One thoughtless act or yet

  Another rehearsed and so wet,

  Could afterwards be active

  And securely hold any captive.

  Days go by written with them,

  Hours pass mindless also then.

  As minutes and their seconds

  Of their pain’s mocking bonds.

  COMMON MONEY

  Like it isn’t the mouth but words,

  Such is its worth not all it lords.

  Amassed and roots evil in its mood,

  Prosperity as penury sees evil in its good.

  The dance of this naked wind will exert.

  Its feel and thrill, invincible not exact.

  In an eternal plunge for fingers to hold,

  Elusive water is leashed forever as told.

  All satisfaction is a moon lit scene

  That passes on as soon as it is seen.

  Like weeds in bloom nurtured in dew,

  Money is too common to be any new.

  WHISTLING PINES

  Where is the world I want to see?

  I fear it will be gone before I do.

  Like a half open umbrella seizes

  A gust of changed wind and blow.

  My fight to exist as best as I can

  Crawls along earth’s tarred lawns.

  And toiled harvests lost to man;

  Banked daisies, squared up pawns.

  The need to be an icon dreamt,

  Creeps up my own gut; so alive.

  The last enemy to destroy is death,

  Our Cavalries ride same horses in life.

  Pointing only skywards all this time,

  Evergreen leafless people whistle one line.

  On this tree, weathered to man its spine,

  The whistler is always actually the pine.

  LIFE’S FIRES

  Fire is that living thing

  That manages some win.

  It lets go of its past being

  And spreads till it is thin.

  It breathes to win and lose,

  Not a single thing changing.

  In an all meaningless pose,

  It finds its very own meaning.

  It eats its feeding path,

  The war grounds it won.

  And the misery life fought,

  These can’t be ever worn.

  It hates and gets on lives,

  Some day it just all ends.

  In every home it thrives,

  Grass again covers its battle-fields.

  BIAS SELFLESSNESS

  Corruption shouldn’t give undue advantage

  Only when bureaucracy hinders advancement.

  A nation’s constituent as one sole package

  Needs its traditional personnel assessment.

  Arrogance is in the Rich’s vices and virtues.

  The Earners’ and Payers’ contest truly rests,

  Not on dividend, but on recognized dues;

  Paid by all the leadership’s own interests.

  Religion is not as democratic as dynamic,

  Thus government stirs to any ministration.

  Civil cooperation and compromise laid thick,

  Practically vindicate cooperative administration.

  Unity is too circumstantial for a policy,

  Tradition orients a people’s sentiment.

  Ethnic norms always cage the polity;

  In constant bias corporate management.

  LEARNING

  Walked the streets of time,

  Shine, lime and slime all mine.

  Feasted on the sound and hype,

  Swallowed their mess or its like.

  Life is any game of choices

  With only too many forces.

  The world is its playground

  For its grown-ups with sound.

  As laziness enjoys much rest

  Deprivation teaches the best.

  Humble are all the best needy,

  Craving the means of the greedy.

  Seeing our race with time,

  And how poorly we rhyme.

  Watching our feeble shine,

  Learning all the miserable time.

  MIND

  That farm only I can harvest

  Of the yield I sowed as best.

  EYELIDS OF BETRAYAL

  Cooing as the pleasant Dove

  Pairing the fairest in love,

  Airing their bond skies above.

  Tasty meals will gather a hunt.

  What dies before dishes are burnt?

  Nobody is killed, to put it blunt.

  Blinking away our sorrow,

  Straying wide from the narrow;

  Innocence we see is shallow.

  From what is pride really safe?

  Or faith, trust, love yet late?

  Kith, kin, sex, race or mate?

  The faith a fist, given as must

  And pain it opens and thrust;

  Winks in its act of lethal trust.

  LITERATE

  I aspire to be a name

  Certainly not a face.

  I pray that my fame

  Brings me real grace.

  To all alive I owe;

  Those dead I may too.

  For the unborn I’ve a hoe,

  It is for me that I sow.

  BIRD TALK

  Flew your thoughts with a breeze,

  With a sharp whistle and ease.

  In the simple flight you all live,

  Winds are harsh and rain a thief.

  The woven nest tops your trees,

  Eggs your chicks and roofs peace.

  Living is one brief lonely courtship

  That wings songs it just must keep.

  So Birdie, play your own flute br />
  Like nature does to only you.

  Life leaves me in my ugly soot

  And I just can not be like you.

  These repertoires are just you

  As I continue to thrive on my loot.

  Amazed why ironically unlike you

  To my endowed peers I am a mute.

  TIT FOR TAT

  Do see the point we all ignore;

  The fact that all is two-wayed.

  Taking and giving is such a bore,

  Like inhaling and exhaling not said.

  Then in our so righteous stance

  We dare to judge and again grudge?

  Abusing again every other chance

  To tit for tat our own scale and gauge.

  LIFE LINE

  The world is littered

  With lands so peopled.

  Their very own eyes

  Speak for their cries.

  Worded action moan;

  Saying truths not alone.

  All their wishes dare

  And ever remain here.

  Their honesty not said

  In every spot God made

  Brings the same spring

  And same old bell ring.

  Blocking thee, am I?

  Push me hence as do I.

  Circled millipede people,

  Life lines us up simple.

  SILENT MIND

  Silent mind for the beast is empty,

  Never found in the midst of plenty.

  Never mind the coo of lame mighty,

  Silent mind, a foe abreast all misty.

  BRAIN

  My training ground

  Is just beyond my brow.

  There it is found

  Where I plant to grow.

  WORDS

  O moody this moon,

  Shows feelings soon.

  Grown off wild oaths,

  Filled with only doubts.

  Words we will forget,

  Said with hopes wet.

  Their off springs return

  Dry in memories’ sun.

  Lost in mazes true,

  Laid like brains do.

  Words say its much,

  Twisted to do such.

  SKY

  Soul of this globe,

  Never will it elope.

  It’s thought its own,

  Roaming in its fun.

  Pale or dark as ever,

  Woolly chilly shiver.

  Diamonded precious

  So actively conscious.

  Wrapped loose cloth,

  Securing the whole lot.

  Plenty does here rest

  As willed by our best.

  ANGRY

  Yearning not out loud,

  Judgment does complain.

  The verdict is yet proud,

  Its picture coloured in pain.

  Wisdom suddenly goes up,

  Patience flew its balloon.

  Decision flirts with hope,

  But it’s still so much alone.

  Restrain the wild stallion,

  With a branding hand about.

  Hurts enough to melt iron;

  As penned up heat cries out.

  Tomorrow returns somehow,

  Mindful of its joyous winning.

  And consequences whistle now,

  So it all sits to wait for morning.

  LOATHSOME

  As you strut and malign,

  Mean malediction you align.

  All the beauty of the bile

  You manage to make vile.

  BLIND SIGHT

  Willed to mind those seen,

  His checkered tale has been.

  Sworn to swell only his own,

  Cursed man’s ego as borne.

  What he sees is in the look

  As much as the view it took.

  From beneath, night twinkles

  Like tiny fire-flies in singles.

  When above, man and plants

  Appear the mere weed or Ants.

  Within these eyes’ perspectives

  Are dark truths held captives.

  BBC (British Branded Civility)

  By the waves of the BBC, which sits us down,

  There we wait, where we’re reminded of our world.

  So let their words pierce our hearts,

  And our meditations mould all our words,

  To be respectable in common fairness to all deeds.

  WHAT DO YOU TELL A SON?

  ‘Looks aren’t everything,

  But certainly something.

  For they do speak first

  And last too in their haste.’

  ‘Expect anything in life,

  In its all human strife.

  That very fair sort

  Are often so very not.’

  ‘Not one good deed is free

  Or unpunished evil to see,

  Nor something for nothing;

  Someone pays something.’

  ‘Noble is not always sensible

  Or every sacrifice reasonable.

  Be careful, for what you wished,

  Other choices are also missed.’

  CRESCENDO

  Earth has been all angry again,

  Man did upset hers again;

  Like he does again and again.

  His efforts in controlling has been

  Fixed as to betray his weakness seen;

  She’s polite, not rash as harsh in between.

  But you wonder how long for,

  This sea-saw ride will further go?

  Calmly, then hard ends a crescendo.

  JUST THIS ONCE

  Truthfully none lives all alone,

  But dead as alive all has none.

  AGE

  Living is thwarted,

  Obscured by its folly.

  The mind is hunted,

  Impossible even if jolly.

  When a bird sings,

  It’s because it must.

  What any age brings

  Speaks for you most.

  THE EARTH IS A LIVING THING

  With a mind of its own

  It does as only it wishes.

  With every other where a bone

  As rocks decimate all its niches.

  Heart burns beat in its core,

  Soiled fleshy skin moulds it so.

  Vesseled blood stream to its shore,

  And too hairy vegetation's to know.

  Expressions on its starry face,

  Blue sky or shaded as its mood.

  Hosts organs in its bodily grace

  Like all healthily alive should.

  The fleas and pests living off its bits,

  Bang like or with slow stealth will;

  Like all alive, disintegrate with all its

  And die off and never ever will heal.

  FREEDOM IS NOT FREE

  Faith abounds and is free,

  Freedom is force being absent.

  Force is ever there to see,

  Freedom has force not faith;

  Freedom is faith and not free.

  MORE THAN A CHILD

  Age brings a baggage along

  That drags those to it belong.

  It tells people the time is come,

  Urging them to over come.

  They succumb and rave,

  All tenderly posh behave.

  Pairing and publicly couple,

  Taking oaths they humble.

  Soon the purpose show;

  As time ages all will know,

  Are couples chosen sure,

  Or bred in man’s nature?

  The momentarily comfort is

  Unsecured, lost and so amiss.

  There is more than a child

  In these wedded gone wild.

  SMART FOOLS

  Once we had said it

  And they knew it;

  Our wisdom is stupid.

  Hence we all hold it,

  Like innocence; melt it.

  Our relationships are stupid.

  WORDS WITH
DESTINY

  “Where do we meet?”

  “At time’s own feet.”

  “Where then is time?”

  “With every single chime.”

  “When will all this be?”

  “Someplace set by me.”

  “Do I have any say?”

  “Now, maybe you may.”

  “Then who am I sir?”

  “My lone spouse, you are.”

  “And you, Mister Mystery?”

  “Your one and only destiny.”

  ALMAJIRI

  I live to die,

  To all knots I tie;

  So much I try,

  I will still say bye.

  AEON OF DEW

  Crept in mourning morning

  Crying away thy sorrow.

  Skies’ spittle woke sobbing,

  Burying the last morrow.

  Whispers roam on a wind

  Saying words all heard,

  Soothe the first twilight’s mind

  As early snakes grow a beard.

  Tender heavenly rays announce

  Judge’s back from a night abroad.

  This first creation another ounce

  In a repertoire of realms so broad.

  COMMON STORY

  “In days old and long gone by,

  A young Goat, still with speech,

  Asked humans as he went by

  Their old time wasting pitch.

  “‘Have you seen my wives go by?’

  ‘Wives?’ They jeer and returned.

  Enquiries to, the grown kid comply.

  ‘Wives,’ he so proudly confirmed.

  “‘No laddie,’ their answer did fly.

  ‘We only saw your full mothers

  And your many sisters walk by.’

  ‘But they’re my wives, my brothers.’”

  GOATS

  Singing whispers talk to the Angels,

  The embers of dying souls yet float.

  Smell and eat the matrimony of singles,

  The adulterous flesh of the human Goat.

  Beautiful, sweet, soft words speak to the good,

  Firing up the hapless situation with much wood.

  Enjoying fully ungodly coupling of unwedded hope,

  Grown up, unethical nature of the animalistic dope.

  FATHER

  Baba, mutuwa na da wuya?

  Mun amince duniyar ka da wuya.

  Father, is it hard to die?

  We acknowledge the hassles of your world.

  With life’s wards always roams a lie;

  We all are reproductions of its mould.

  Choking in the presence of its grip,

  The inscrutable crux not familiarized.

  Do we sit out the stages of its trip,

  Like your peaceful love that wasn’t recognized?

  From the weep the baby wails

  To the whip’s lashes life hails,

  These tastes we own and inherit.

  Say oh father, is there better to merit?

  LOST SEA GULL

  Sometimes by itself glides a Gull,

  Alone in the world’s sea of beauty so full.

  It looks sideways but crosses no road,

  Its head dipped by no visible load.

  The sky embraces its loneliness

  As sadness shrouds free happiness.

  This plentiful ocean guards existence,

  Though it exists without such a chance.

  When peace roams on its very own,

  Hope can not be ahead like the sun;

  For it is passed by again and again.

  One isn’t lost for truly one is sane.

  RELIANCE

  A step after another and I walk,

  Letters make the words I talk.

  As easily simple, I rely on these;

  Bringing all of man to his knees.

  THE EGG AND THE CHICKEN

  New and true,

  Join the queue.

  Feathered noise,

  Scared poise.

  Seed and food,

  Never alive nude.

  Glamorous pecker,

  Gainful trekker.

  Stable innocence,

  Ebbing confidence.

  Richer dreams,

  Rehearsed screams.

  Ever its so,

  The esteem low.

  Desiring more,

  The future sure.

  Suddenly it matter,

  What is the starter;

  Egg so stricken

  Or miserable chicken?

  BREAD AND MAN

  To live his sure life, man must always eat;

  But the bread he seeks is so hard to meet,

  So he lies that he grows his very own wheat.

  MUSHROOMS ARE CONCEITED

  The old borrow a lesson more old,

  Taken from the depths of age itself.

  Passed down with memories long told,

  In spoken words or read off a shelf.

  Plants are green or of the green,

  Their roots bring in the nutrients.

  Edible or not, monstrous or serene;

  Fauna’s use of the greenery is strength.

  Proud with blossoms loud in colour,

  Conquering as weeds warring away;

  Mighty giant canopies in sorrow,

  Serving clean air as lively wood they lay.

  It is the nature of all men to be;

  Seek, achieve and demand credit.

  In every act, subtle as it so be;

  To identify glory and apportion merit.

  Then the mushroom sprouts out,

  Wet dew with and like its dawn;

  For that short while it’s all about,

  Like a lowly placed but lethal pawn.

  If humility is an attitude of the mind;

  Humbly conditioned and selfless,

  Then humiliation it doesn’t ever find;

  Nor wallow away in any such sadness.

  Sneaking simple acts of goodness,

  The mushroom delights in subtle ways.

  Beneath the canopies’ high mightiness,

  Or humble in the low lawns it strays.

  As yet its acts could be as noxious;

  Quiet as they harmlessly look or seem,

  A mushroom can harm and kill the conscious,

  Like the humble act could be very mean.

  But in a wanton quest for the simple

  Mushrooms that true nature man persist;

  Just as a ramification of egoism in people;

  Humility is the worst form of conceit.

  LIFE GUIDES PHILOSOPHY

  Philosophy is the guide of life;

  An old American college society,

  Adapted this as motto and rite

  And breathe it into a world so hasty.

  Worms don’t eat only the fruit;

  Nor birds, beasts and feast in me.

  To this, that is the brute cum loot

  That just wishes to enjoy this full tree.

  Which of our options had righted

  And Where is the logic in its pride?

  What result would be highlighted;

  Is When life is philosophy’s guide.

  DRY TEARS

  Blessings come, blessings go.

  What says the most

  Than the weakening soul?

  In the vulture’s lofty world;

  Scavengeous patience,

  Unholingly possible and cold.

  INKATHA

  Soaked in the pride of birth,

  Who is scared of this death?

  Knowledge softens our carriage path,

  Burdened with the spherical earth.

  SMART AND STUPID

  Didn’t someone smart say something stupid

  Or was it someone stupid said something smart?

  But either way it makes good sense in a silly way

  That good writers die young or dry out or go mad.