LOST IN TRANSLATION

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When night came,
I saw dream and reality
Walk hand-in-hand
In spit-shined boots and
Workmen’s clothes.


Now I troll the
Grainy portions of
Midnight,
In search of reason that
Can put me to sleep.

A DIRGE FOR THE LIVING

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Indifference is the
Burial ground of
The living,
With eulogies
And tributes already
Proofread by the dead.

A FOOL’S FOLLY

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At the courts of pride
Lie many skulls,
None the wiser
None the more foolish.


When one has a wealth
In pride and a pittance
In wisdom,
The end is never in doubt.

BLIND UNCONSCIOUSNESS

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The night brings
Blindness,
That which arrests
Our consciousness.


Sometimes ephemeral
Sometimes eternal
But freedom and dignity have
Never thrived in darkness.


Take them not lightly
Freedom
Dignity
Another sits blind and
Unconscious this very moment,
Dreaming of those two.

OUR RUNAWAY CONSCIENCE

Picture courtesy www.bbc.co.uk



Have you ever walked
On a knife’s edge?
Not literally,
Actually.


It was for a day
Then a week
A month went by
It’s been months now
We’re headed for a year.


Guess your camel’s back
Is fashioned out of
Tempered steel,
Mine sits broken,
Beyond repair and recognition.


Their bodies smeared with clay
Others fully clothed
Some naked no more than sunlight
At birth
Took to the streets waving tree branches
Looking very troubled and displeased.


A march for peace in pieces,
Seven died,
Among them an expectant mother,
Mowed down in a hail of
Bullets,
Their clothes of nakedness
Tree branches and clay attires
Must have resembled Kalashnikovs
And suicide vests in the Ivorian daylight.


Final straw or so I thought,
Little did I know you had countless
Barns choking at the eaves on straw.
You gather round tables in expensive
Suits exchanging pleasantries with
A host of tete-a-tetes on the side.


Casualties pile up high like levees
Being readied for another Katrina,
Refugee status suddenly a new Ivorian craze,
La Cote d’Ivoire,
A festering gangrenous stain on
A world’s runaway conscience.


If only you could boast barrels
Of oil instead of your sacks of
Pungent cocoa seeds,
We’d have boots on the ground
And no-fly-zones declared in less a
Twinkling of an eye,
We’d be falling over ourselves
Just to bring you calm lest a hair
On your head come to harm.


Oh!
How spectacular,
Spectacularly spectacular,
A world so unspectacularly
Spectacular,
La Cote d’Ivoire,
Your peace deemed an unworthy
Investment by a world struggling
To find its lost conscience.

C’EST LA VIE

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Finally managed
Say goodbye,
I put you on a broomstick
Headed for the sunset of yesterday,
You clad in picture frames
Scents of Bvlgari and Issey Miyake
In your wake.


You’re a distant memory now,
Like sand in my shoes
I just poured you out
Footprints trailing
The very spot where
I’ve left you behind.


Bags in hand,
Echoes of my footsteps
Caressing the sand,
Head bowed
Brows furrowed,
Guess the sun of
Tomorrow will tell,
C’est la vie.

THE RABBIT IN THE HAT

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Should there ever come a time
When the harmattan brings rain,
Don’t ask me why,
I don’t make the rules,
Guess once in a while,
Straight lines must lose their way.


Sometimes when
One walks on pavements,
They end up with muddy shoes,
How improbable,
If only cobblestones could speak,
We’d have answers as to why and how.


Orange trees do spring
Forth lemons sometimes,
Ask the farmer on the day of
The wayward harvest,
You’ll find truth in the glum
Face he wears to match his overalls.


Darkness sometimes
Brings smiles in the
Absence of daylight,
Just ask the man in the moon,
Why else will he turn up only
At pitch dark?


So on that day
Should you wake to
Find just a hat without
A suit to go,
Afford yourself a smile
Take a peek inside that hat
And pull a rabbit,
Never a surety,
But sometimes rabbits do
Wait for us in the grainy hats we draw.

BIRDS AND SCHOOL CHILDREN

Picture courtesy www.coleshillparishchurch.org.uk


Like birds,
They wear uniforms too.


Twitching
Fidgeting,
They make a terrible noise
Just like the birds.


All over the place by day
Gone by night,
If only they could fly and
Poop from sky-high,
You’d mistake them for birds,
Quite rightly so too.


There’s only one difference
Just the one,
School children go to school,
Birds, far from that,
They learn on the job,
That’s school enough.

CRY JAPAN

Picture courtesy www.kansas.com


I walk in search
Of a home that
Exists only in memory.


These wastelands
Littered with debris
Tears and glum faces
Are unfamiliar to me.


Clear as day
Yet not even a
Glimmer of light,
All I see is darkness
In broad daylight.


Mornings
Bring midnight.
Moon and stars
In absentia.


Sirens
Smoke
Radiation
So commonplace,
Where is home?
This is not home.

DYING TO FALL

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Atop branches
They hang evergreen,
Though some
Pretty far from green,
Life does spring forth
In different shades of colour.


One after the other
They drop like flies,
The passing of time
Prompts change,
When time’s spent,
They hurry into heaps
And lie still.


Be they up in the air
Or on the ground below,
Always a thing of beauty
Except to the untrained eye,
Nature never makes a mess.

THE FLIGHT OF SHADOWS

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Cold throws
Of daylight peer
Through the clouds
Up above.


The gentle hum
Of the wind tickles
Eaves while
Waking up leaves
On half-asleep trees.


Birds come alive
In song and chirp
As the moon and
Stars melt into the
Shadows of a transparent sky.


Eyes draw breath
With voices lost in
Good mornings
And hellos,
Only on the
Morning after dark.

BLINDSIDE

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Until we wake and
Set eyes on our flock,
Best we always wake
In a fright thinking
Them missing.


The hills are vast
Vegetation abound,
Among the green,
Sticky fingers and
Shifty eyes lie in wait.


In moments when we
Fall asleep,
A lot changes on
Our blindside.

STRANGE FACES IN THE MIRROR

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I tiptoe around the
Mirror trying to avoid
A reflection that
Stands before me.


Memories of a little boy
Dressed in smiles
And dimples,
My haunts.


Growing up is painful,
Make me a little boy
Once more,
These faces I see in the
Mirror are strange to me.

EVERYDAY, UNLIKE ANY OTHER DAY

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A bell tolls
In the distance.


Rubber teases
Asphalt over and over again.


A street-hawker drags her
Feet burdened by her load.


A dog runs past,
Stops,
Takes a peek in a man-hole
Hurries along.


A hammer groans nearby
Nail filings stuck in its teeth.


Tooting horns
More tooting horns.


A motorcycle screams
Past a bewildered goat.


A man walks by
Hunched over by the sack on his back.


A bird sits on a telephone pole
As though listening in on another’s conversation.


Wind stirs up dust
Crying out boredom
Joints aching from inactivity.


Two boys go by
Pushing a truck laden with scrap metal
Sniffing the air like metal detectors.


A lady walks past
Carrying a metallic pan filled with cosmetics
Calling attention with the chimes of a bell.


Brodo ‘wura’!! (bread seller)
Someone calls out,
Apparently seeking company
For her cup of tea.


Wind comes dancing with
A plastic bag,
Poking fun at boredom and
Inactivity .


A fly zips past,
Inches from my ear
Only to meet an accident a few centimetres ahead.


It’s everyday
It happens everyday
Never the exact same
But it does happen everyday.

THE EIGHTEENTH ELEGY

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In the rises and falls
Of morning and night,
I walk this earth
Unable to tell apart
Darkness and light


Voices and heartbeats
Have become nothing
More than unbearable noise.
Faces now embody
Apparitions and shadows
Of day and night.


Neither sure of where home
Is nor where I am,
I dance to songs of lost voices
In the midst of grey sandwiched
Between black and white,
Dead so long
This is me alive.

A NATION IN TURMOIL

Picture courtesy www. mirror.co.uk


Deserted streets
No laundry hangs
On the balconies,
Calls of children playing
In the streets replaced by
An eerie silence dotted
With sporadic gunfire.


Sidewalks paved with fear
Splotches of blood stains
On walls,
Bakeries with partially open
Shutters
Doors opened a crack,
A brave few queue outside
Visibly nervous as though
Bread were an illegal drug.