What Cupid did was to dip
His arrow
In venom
Before shooting at us-
We were an experiment
Of the gods-
Heartless, thoughtless yobs
They are, (the gods)
Ending our love before
It began
Rest in peace my dainty pearl
Our love will cease not even in death
Our breath may cease on earthly spheres
But our love, it is, of celestial birth.
I
Snow in December, falling,
black as charcoal-
An incendiary suffusion to
Warm our hearts
Clouds of crude oil sagging
Sagging overhead threaten
To douse 240 tribes
In the flood of the oil boom.
The gods have possessed
Our children and have made
Them warriors in an unholy war
Being fought in the North
Beside the sun.
Mother, there's a crack in the foundation
stone buried by Lugard in 1914
Without our consent.
II
My child is a hundred-year-old
Teenager that throws tantrums
Whenever I peal the bells
Of democracy.
My mother's tongue (over 240
Of them) has ceased to speak
Ever since the angels from Britan
Taught us the language of God;
English.
River Niger...River Benue...
Baptise us...baptise our land
From the sins of generators.
III
The groundnut pyramids will
Be erected once more
And the rail will bear all trains
Nigeria, our father Adam told us
to till the land-
Cocoa, Oil palm, Sugarcane
And Plantain plantations.
The giant of Africa must learn
The ways of the dwarves
For long ago, they were once
Dwarves.
IV
...and in my vision
I saw a land flowing with
Milk and honey
Whose lands were carpeted
With manna
But the men were too lazy to pick
The manna on land that grew
Like grass
And they were to lazy to drink
The honey that flowed in streams
Of milk.
I see a country, a fairly big country
Somewhere in the tropics
Heavy with child
Mother will surely birth the Messiah
That will teach us how to farm.
Some things are hard
To explain-
Like the concept of Trinity
And how the coconut
Got its water
But our love, our love is simpler
That the simplest of things-
We are simply two creatures
Holding hands in the darkness
Of the sun.
You should know though
That love to me
Is like a game of chess
Where the knights
Hide behind the pawns
And have no princess to save.
Forgive my simplicity.
But do you know that
In chess
The pawns, the least powerful
In the kingdom
Are the bravest ones who
Choose to willfully die
For a queen who they're madly
In love with?
(They're not dying for the king)
I am a pawn, love, I am a pawn.
When does the war begin?
Even if the magician, Time
Slowly deflates your breasts
Like party baloons
And your face wrinkles
Like paper,
I'll love you still...
You who fly without flapping
Your wings; tell me
How do you do it?
How do you fly above
The eagle? Tell me,
Why do you eat the humans
Only to vomit them?
Did your mother not tell you
Not to play with your food?
The birds have banished you,
They say you use sorcery
To fly, they are angry because
The humans do not hunt your type.
I dont blame them. I blame you
I blame you
For playing with your food.
For you would have been made king of the avians
If only you swallowed the humans
If only you swallowed the humans
Without spitting them
(Like Jonah).
The stain on her wedding gown
Is from the blood
Of her unborn twins-
A big rock.
Two little eggs.
Smash!
The stain on her wedding gown
Is from the blood
Of her unborn twins-
Whose skulls were crushed
In their unborn sleep.
Unlock my ribcage,
Unplug my heart.
Lock my ribcage,
Without my heart.
Now touch my ribcage
Can you feel that,
Can you feel my soul
Beating for you...?
I am marked by
The anointing oil-
My head, my hands
My Feet, my chest
Are all smeared
With oil.
Surely the devils
must have smelt
With their noses spiritual
The fragrance of the olive oil.
Surely the devils
Will not touch me,
Or will they?
Will they dare lay a finger on me...
...despite the anointing?
A voice crying out
In the wilderness-
Ululating the divorce
Of Zeus and his wives
(And concubines).
How could the butterfly
Refuse the nectar, or
The housefly, the pyre?
Whose hands have assundered
That which Jehovah
Has sewn together?
Who shall settle our case?
My love, our love; its acerbity
Has numbed my heart.
And I will not kiss the bride;
The bride is not my bride-
She belongs to my past.
The hebetude of the prize
Wale says, put our future
To sleep.
These are the things
I have seen-
A bull running on water
A lizard flying like a bird
A bird crawling like a lizard
A snake swallowing a tree
A tree with forked tongue
A dog that meows
A cat that barks
A hen that eats her young
A cock mating with an eagle
And a parrot that prophesies.
I am blind.
I am lonely eating
The hearts of my predecessors.
I have eaten the ghosts
Of my fathers
And have flushed them
Down the drain-
Who will guide my path aright?
Who will hold my heart at Night?
I see my little white child
Playing jocund in the angry red mud-
That little boy will eat me soon
That little boy will eat my heart
And will sit
On the throne
With his fathers.
Alone.
