Frankly Dedoyin

A Pill Please: A Poetic Charge A pill for the pain. The ache I feel deep in my poor heart. My eye has seen...my ears full. Of these obscenities. These infirmities of scenes from the horrendous news reports of the madmen residing in the palaces. They are not aliens, UFOs or phantoms. They laugh when tickled, bleed when hurt and for heaven’s sake they die. I don’t refer to the Avalanche or the landslide, the   sinkholes, earthquakes or the tsunami. Yet I refer to the human disasters I have to face day-by-day. Of the terrorism, senseless violence, greedy policies, tribal wars, religious crisis, outright theft, lip service and institutionalized crime. Night after night in my dreams they appear before me. Masked men garbed in assorted expensive attires, as they bleed their tribesmen of the fruits of their blood and sweat dispossessing the citizens. They transform demagogues… they make us tear ourselves apart over the most tenuous issues while the most little important things are

Funny I never reckon myself  as the ….’the Poet’ Until life made me…’the poet’ And poetry, the lamp to my eviscerated soul My staff, my strength in the lean seasons The bridge to my eternity A paradise surreal To speak poetry Eat poetry Cry poetry of how life thrust me the most imaginable unfairness of when my first and only love left me and preached of my inadequacies and I lost my twin brother and I was so powerless to save him I was laid off and gross downcast and the thought of death I had to fight Wasted because of my congenital disadvantages Poor from the crown of my hair to the sole of my feet  ‘cause I wasn’t ‘smart’ like kinsmen And I lost my farms to the flash floods Bruised because I was feeble in my limb Becoming the epitome paradox of life Of the more you look, the less you see and poetry The ash I eat because my heart bleeds From life’s unrelenting tribulations (John 16: 33) Yet I become cheerful, Resolute and consoled at the core of my being Un

The immaculate perfection of the white of their eye casting a mute upon their evil intentions The softness of their countenance The veil of what an un-slightly horror hidden in hellish depths Trodding in the familiar paths of our everyday lives The most primal instincts of human need Sweeping robes of the most sanctimonious of many world religions the colourful kaleidoscope of our cultural doctrine All forms of the scaffolding of our beliefs Escher's artistic impression Protean demons in angelic apparels Hiding in the woods - under such appellations as betrothal, slavery and any form of sexual debasement against the human spirit Clinging to the foliage of societal insanity springing forth like weeds in today's world So I dare say Gone are the days when the baby saints gallivant in the wild, In the unscathed niche of a fearless co-existence in fated heavenly eternity, The ancient lores tell it loudly, The weeds have outgrown the fore

Soft winds whipping unmercifully every matter in its path, transcribing the disarming sounds of children in the enclaves with the static motionlessness of my puddled world wandering spicy aroma of bush meat swarming from a remote place in my imagination these are the emblems of the sweet convention I inhabit the scattered pixels of colourful but wishful tomorrow like the ones my folks sung to me; of a land where every element stood sovereignly as the fingers of the palm frond under the one-eyed watchman in the sky yet all I feel is raw odium hot tears that scald my face these dark days salty insanity of the senselessness of my predicament the conjectural madness of the irony of the world I was born and the maniacal defect of my DNA of some genetic code for bad luck and a fate embroidered for the ill-winds from sun rise to the end of its circuit my heart is constantly punctured with the blade-like edges of cussed words but I - it is the physical

After filling out the necessary paper works, the photographer drew me in with the cold stare of his lense and rained a hail full of white light over my physical frame. Every corner, every square metre of my body was captured in the mugshot. He had read me the article of the fundamental human right even though I knew it by heart. The piercing manner in which his eye cut through my soul haunted me. I reeled over like a tumbling boulder downhill to a dimly lit room, where I was only allowed to move within the constraint of a witness box. I had been stripped bare of my provisions as at the time of my mirandizement. Until today I had lived as I would. Rode in expensive sport cars. Strung along with the leaders of thoughts and ancient wisdom. Featured in the glossy pages of high ranking global reports for Net worth. Done the time, paid the price like I was expected to. Expectations!!! After a brief breathtaking moment, a wigless trial judge appeared. He winked repeatedly behind the

Then I opened my eye It felt like waking from a terrible dream And there you were; an unmistakable presence Standing still with that dead crooked grin It was at least six feet from the foot of my bamboo bed Yet it felt heavy The tightness As in a grip around my neck Choking till I was breathless and blue all over Confused. Your presence A familiar scent Six feet away yet it seems sufficiently close To suck all the air from around me till every molecule vanishes I closed my eye again now Then you vanished from the darkness encompassing Like in the figment of my imagination The vestige of terrible yesterdays and poignant memories Then once again a cool gust of air romanticized my eye And I felt my lungs breath again Filled with the life gases extinguished just seconds ago I inspire Alive again as the heat of your presence trailed off And your un-presence was the tombstone rolled away For my breathing space to grow And my aspirations

I had traveled several heavens until i was forced into this dank part of the earth where the sun never shines. I was born in the presence of the celestial spirits of the sky. Bathed by the river bank while the older women labour over my mother in the middle of the cloudless night. I remember, now like then, it was dark, very dark, scary dark i started crying. The jetty was dead quiet except for the crackling of weak fire and frogs croaking for their lovers. This place I was told was so named for the abomination it is - THE LAND OF THE WITCHES. I heard there were 36 of them in their coven. They represented the 36 clans in the village, which also was an Island as it was surrounded by more water than hard earth. For any visitor, one might see an almost disintegrated wooden sign post perched at a corner on the mouth of the riverine lands of my people. It says in an ominously whimsical handwriting - BEWARE! THE WICKEDNESS OF THE LAND. We are haunted by the blood of our ancestors