Lost to the Alpenglow

  A pat on the back

  That all is well with our policies

  It pains me

  Like a virgin bride

  That was cautioned

  On her wedding night

  That the pain must come before

  The pleasure, and the pain lingers

  Ah! It pains me so

  The inter mitten fuel scarcity

  Was it not really a diversion

  That comes after every unrealistic decision

  Like a lost of a loaded tanker ship, or

  A looming strike by the labor union?

  Ah! The fidgeting

  In the darkness

  Is over bearing

  The grungy hospitals and

  Dirty Motor parks,

  It so, so pains me so!

 

  73. THE AGORA

  I seemed to be

  Bursting

  With ideas

  74. PHASING OUT

  Do not ridicule me

  With traditional titles

  Nor debase me with

  Ministerial appointments

  Phasing me out like the sun

  Phases out the day

  75. CIVIL AND THEIR SERVANTS

  Early in the morning

  Throughout the world

  Little cherubic faces can be seen

  As they hurry to school

  Some of them will become dropouts

  Their brains will fail to grasp

  The philosophy of compliance

  And shall eventually be called "civil"

  And the rest that work their fingers to the bone

  To make it to the top, shall make it proudly

  And will henceforth be referred to as

  Civil Servants

  76. RIVER OF SAND

  I planned to dip dive

  And swim

  I scheme to swim high and fish

  On my mark, ready, go!

  I dived headlong

  Into a river

  Of sand

  BOOK 3: ON PLACES

  77. THE WANDERER IN ME

  Sometimes I close my eyes

  And travel through Time

  I go to all those places

  I read about in books

  I Climb mountains

  High and steep

  And thread upon pathways

  Worn out by the feet of men

  Long dead and gone

  I bask by the ocean

  So blue and deep

  Behind me a

  Wooden house

  Visited by time deserted by man

  Until it became ashy and dry

  So whenever I feel gloom

  I just close my eyes

  And become a wanderer

  That travels through time

  78. HIGH ON THE HILLS

  Sitting crossed legged

  High on the hill

  Where I am

  The king and the queen

  Of my world

  I had sensed the movement

  Of the world

  As I sat perched on a rock

  Surrounded by water on all sides

  I watched in awe as the world rushed by

  Beneath my feet

  And felt myself

  Rushing along with it

  I lent my sense to the river

  And watched it go by

  And when I reluctantly took back my sense

  I was sitting still

  Clutching unto my dreams

  In an unfriendly world

  I came down from the hills

  To a world of make belief

  79. NORTHERN STARS

  The engineers?

  There! You'll find them

  Begging “Allah ba ku mu samu!”*

  At the motor parks

  Northern Stars

  Oh! You mean the

  Medical doctors?

  See, over there

  Sleeping under the tree, from

  A hangover, it was fun at the party yester night

  The leaders you mean

  Of tomorrow,

  Oh well, sorry, they have since died

  Convicted of armed robbery

  Bones since dried out, at thirty – two

  There was nothing

  In school anyway,

  Not a single seat

  And the teachers have things to sale,

  Not teach

  Ha! The Girls

  Why would they worry about a degree

  When there are more exciting things to do

  The attachments are better these days

  Northern Stars

  *The words used for begging by the poor in Northern Nigeria

  80. SOKOTO

  The green desert

  Of the savannah

  The oasis of undiluted knowledge

  In the parch spread of ignorance

  The mother of the celebrated poetess

  And undisputed scholars Sokoto!

  The Custodian and witness

  To the enigmatic Shehu

  The restorer of divine Islam

  To the seekers of the Light

  The land of the Fula and the Habe

  Of the givers and the takers

  Sokoto the great

  An ancient city always in its youth

  81. LOST IN CHICAGO

  In a polished society

  Where the sky scrapers

  First scraped the sky

  A kind of a re-make

  Of the Biblical tower of Babel

  A society where

  Life is organized

  On a touch of a button and

  Moves in an ant-like file

  Each person to himself and all to the society

  Here to an African

  Is a completely different world

  Compared, the developed and

  The backward, the clean and the dirty

  Africa, and the rest of the world.

  Such is the price of civilization

  When man has to batter his environment

  In exchange of a supercilious one

  And get lost in the scraping matrix

  I am sure even Dante will be lost

  82. DENTAL CLINIC

  I watched in dismay

  How they got rid of

  Peoples’ smiles

  Pilling them up

  In a waste basket

  83. THE CARNAGE ON THE PLATEAU

  The Devil walked up and down,

  Thinking deeply, reflecting,

  On where best to land,

  And so he studied the list,

  Of possible places and decided at last

  In his pestiferous way, to land on the Plateau

  He looked around, along with a band of his fallen angels,

  At the cheerful faces of the people,

  Walking around with their cherished ambitions

  And decided to select among them,

  Who best to anoint with his deadly fingers,

  He decided at last, to anoint the people living on the Plateau

  He orchestrated the chaos, and perpetrated it

  At its crescendo, men, women and children,

  Where all running up and down,

  In a frenzied situation, and peace was then

  A strange word, in the ears and minds

  Of the people living on the Plateau

  People kept scrambling, hiding,

  Prisoners they turned themselves, in their houses,

  Eyes dazed with horror, some crouched in bushes, and in ditches,

  Neck outstretched, they looked and corked

  Their ears, only to scramble at the cry of ''they are coming!''

  Pouncing on the people living on the plateau

  And when all was over, after six days from,

  That fateful Friday that has no weekend,

  The seventh of September it was, a sunny day,

/>   "Perfect" said the devil, in his scurrilous way "Well, almost perfect,"

  He observed, as he studied the anguished faces,

  And counted the heap up bones of the people living on Plateau

  As far as he is concerned,

  It was an odyssey. But it was in fact

  A carnage. For he did turned his back,

  Along with his fallen angels, and retired to the hills,

  Nay, to the dormant volcanoes, happy with himself,

  With this wrapped up anguish, death and despair,

  He brought as his 'Godly Seasons' Gift to the people living on the Plateau.

  Men walked around, and women too,

  Picking the broken pieces of their

  Once happy, prosperous and peaceful

  Heritage. With scowling faces, they now

  Looked at the once cheerful faces of their neighbours and friends

  The people living on the Plateau.

  "Happy survival'' is now the greetings

  That replaced the "hello" and ''good morning''

  That was only yesterday, the salutations

  That graced the lips of the joyous people,

  The fun loving, friendly and ever busy people,

  The good people living on the Plateau.

  It was indeed a sad September

  And October, November and December

  But who will bring back that lost Amethyst

  Called Peace that was snatched away so suddenly

  From the people living on the Plateau?

  84. GARDEN CITY

  Garden City

  Where are your gardens?

  Are they now invisible

  Or have you buried them

  Beneath Armored Tanks and

  Knee length boots?

  Big cars

  Narrow roads

  Beautiful City

  Sirens sound now

  Stifling the sound of

  Laughter and the little steps

  Of the water borne

  Masquerades

  Raindrops of gas soot and

  Well water of oil

  Garbage of anxiety

  In fish baskets

  The Garden City

  85. DUBUQUE

  Some say there is madness in arts

  A kind of twisted disposition

  A derailing away from

  Human norm

  But I don’t know

  I look around and I see beauty

  I felt warmth in its winter

  And smell flowers in spring

  Dubuque is an art that made sense

  *Dedicated to the VanMilligan Family, Dubuque City

 

  BOOK 4: CHANGING TIDES

  86. WHEN WHERE AND HOW

  Sometimes when you think of death

  You feel like saying

  What the heck!

  Knowing well that

  One day, you would have to take

  That bow

  But then

  The pleasure of life

  Is in not knowing

  When that day would be

  You just look at a calendar

  And know it’s in one of those

  Days written therein

  But then

  How is not even an issue

  Some die in their sleep

  Just close their eyes and stroll away

  Some of course struggle

  Not to go, by all means -- Doctors, prayers, yoga

  But then it could happened

  Anywhere

  On land, air or sea, or

  Anywhere in between land, air, sea, or time

  In its mother's womb

  But then

  It’s the not knowing

  The when where or how

  That kept us going

  Fabricating

  Means with which to stay

  Just a little longer

  But then

  Some even ask why

  Or even why God, why!?

  Why should they or

  Their loved ones

  Have to die

  Shrugs

  But then

  Nobody ever asks

  Why do I have life

  Or why do I have a front

  And a back

  You can see our concentration

  On the front, the back?

  No!

  But then

  87. THIS HOUSE

  This world

  This house of misery

  How many you have snatched

  Smiles from their lips and

  Joy from their hearts

  This world

  This house of misery

  How many have you seduced

  With your alluring webs of

  Deception and false hopes

  This world

  This house of misery

  How many have you destroyed

  Throwing them down from the peak

  Of their achievements and glory

  This world

  This house of misery

  You welcome a babe with a smile

  While it, knowing your schemes

  Announces its arrival with a cry

  This world

  This house of misery

  You never age, always young

  You cannot deceive me

  For I know you!

  88. WHEN IT'S YOUR TURN TO DIE

  When it's your turn to die

  Don't think that you are alone

  When it's your turn to die

  So it's the turn of a million more

  The road to heaven is a busy highway

  With souls of men, animals and jinn

  Ever in transit day and night

  As each second is the turn of a million more

  Use each minute of your life therefore

  To smile, pray and give a cheering word

  To a weary soul distressed by the fact

  That it is its turn, and the turn of a million more

  It is the same all over the world

  People are born and they live their lives

  In abundance or restriction, sung and unsung

  And they die-each day a million more

  89. THE FACES ON THE STREETS

  Sometimes I wonder

  At the faces I see each day

  On the streets, wondered

  What was on the minds of the men and women

  Who cannot write their thoughts

  On blank pages as I do

  Perhaps, my written thoughts would be

  Stumbled upon by men to come

  Hundreds or thousands of years ahead

  But how would they know that

  Such people have lived when I lived

  Laughed, cried, and think when I did

  Who would have known

  That the men and women in Caesar’s crowd

  Were real people with real

  Life experiences and real stories

  When the earth has all but swallowed them

  And their stories

  Their triumphs and anguish

  Their dreams

  Sometimes I wonder

  At the heap up of

  Graves I pass by, many times

  Of the children, men and women

  Lying quietly – or not

  Inside them and wondered

  That these people have all once

  Walked the plains of the earth

  As real people like you and me

  On those days I wished that

  I could talk with the dead

  I would have asked them their lives stories

  Would have asked them places they had visited,

  Friends they had kept or discarded

  Of the kind of world they had lived in

  But who would know all these now that

  They are buried deep in the ground

  Gone forever with their triumphs and failed dreams

&nbs
p; Their lives a sealed document

  In an ethereal archive

  Even I wonder

  At myself

  Who have just boasted that

  I’ve penned down a line or two

  Out of the breathe of my life

  To the next world, would ever be known

  What, with all the volumes of biographies

  Of the people of the world

  I really wonder

  90. MY UNKNOWN FRIEND

  Death is happiness

  Shrouded in a garment of sadness

  My friend, my unknown friend

  I pray that we meet soon, in happiness

  In the palace Of the Most Merciful,

  In the house of friends

  Life is full of ups and downs

  Gloom and happiness

  Though you have only seen the grey part of it

  I hope its shining in the other world

  You left for in a hurry, without saying goodbye

  A second can make a difference

  Death is a mystery. Life is full of ups and downs

  But there is always a shiny day after a rainy one

  Though you have only seen the rainy part of it, with

  Only a speck of lightening therein

  My friend, my unknown friend,

  Whom I met in a world, out of my many worlds

  If you are real and not a dream

  I pray that we meet again, with joy, in the

  Palace of the Most Merciful, in the house of friends

  A second separated us, but I will always find

  Happiness in the picture we took, a picture in my

  Mind, that I will never see, for it was taken in a world

  Out of my other worlds. So long my friend.

  91. THE BEST OPTION

  How about dying

  Then I don’t have to worry

  About quitting my job

  Or about getting a new one, this

  Replete with the confusion

  That comes with the two premises

  I also don’t have to worry

  About the next man, or

  The one before,

  About ingrate children

  And the stubborn ones, nor

  The much loved, and the

  Lazy ones and the unfocused

  I really don’t have to worry

  About the change of environment

  Of not being able to

  Adjust

  To its strangeness, the darkness and the heat

  Nor to the negative effect it is having

  On my writing – and reading

  Nor to the coerced migration

  And the blackmail that brings

  Happiness to the sadists

  Death will bring succor

  To my palpitating heart

  Unclaimed, unexplored, unused

  It will certainly save me

  From worrying over

  My seesawing bank account, and

  The burden thrust upon me

  By the world that does not care

  And a tradition that made a mother

  To see only the good in her male children

  While the hardworking females passed by

  Unnoticed