NAIJA BLOG

  I was sold a dream of riches,  of streets paved with gold,  of the immigrants dreams My streets became too small for me,  My friends steeping stones for this quest to this el-Dorado So I stole, lied, cheated scrimped and saved , to be insta-ready and tik-tok cool Japa was my dream The whispers came in bits and pieces Of  the dysfunctional relationships of the  Japarians who killed their spouses Affected by the alienation of affection, subjugated patriarchy, Of the  men who could not speak  and  women who had grown wings I had known  of the toilet cleaners and mortuary attendants, urban legends, not my portion My path would be different, or so I thought But I saw then the cold eyes beneath the cold smiles The  repressed anger from my distant kin The zombied streets full of the living dead The streets paved with work , taxes and debt The more I aged, the less I saw, the more I worked My friends who I left behind had grown up in the hole And thrived,  their eyes full of  ease with life,

  This is the season to mourn, As the leaves fall among the dusty streets  And children’s noses are filled with snot and At night their tiny chests wrack with cough This is the time to cry, the days so sad and short The nights so sad and short And memories that have not been buried resurrect to torment The pain-filled souls This is the time to stare  The two-thousand-yard stare into the abyss called the future Bleak and filled with horrors And pray to the ever-silent God  Who mocks? Cries? Or delights at our plight  

  You were my light and I grasped you Afraid of the darkness that you would bring You were the joy that would herald the sadness that Would outlast the happiness My pleasure and pain The pleasure of the times fade dread and angst replaces  This dream, forsaken I was already ready for the pain to come Pain destined to make my heart its home The signs never lie, instinct or fear? I can never tell. But I know it weighs heavy on my soul, And the tears remain unshed and the thoughts stab in me in moments of quiet And my hands are anxious and touch the buttons that bring me happiness Alas, my happiness is still a myth, still is, and will be  Pain makes me its own so I eat with sorrow  My own. I must love my fate 

 Babanginda's shop at Wuse Market  is the shrine to the mischievous goddess of beauty There all women gather in supplication to receive the amulets of the goddess  and stay subjugated at her feet.... there they come, the youth in shallow  confidence, the aging in desperate defiance and old in despair. They cry together to Bababgida the chief priest on his throne and demand he produces the amulets  which  will bestow them beauty, youth, confidence and self-esteem they all want a taste of  beauty, the beauty that will make them perpetually admired the beauty that will protect them from the world the beauty that will bestow them power the beauty that will give them love They scream and claw at Babangida in desperation for beauty and Babangida overwhelmed but satisfied smiles and deludes them with bottles of toxic steroids and hydroquinone  that will silence their despair for a week 

I am a poet gifted with the gift of immortality destined to live forever in the minds of men and words in books A conceptualizer of concealed emotions A documenter of paths forsaken and forgotten a visualiser of time Melancholy is my muse that whispers immortality in the midst of my despair and emotions my catharsis for creativity

Days are spent in the digital world of cognitive junk and dissimulation dissonance with reality disassociating from life The poet with no words wanders like rat in a maze of social dysfunction words are lost in a haze of jumbled words without meaning

The texts stopped abruptly No more good mornings and tears and anxiety replace the dopamine rush I cry in silence and my fingers twitch to text "Why"? But instead, I will cry these tears and dry these tears and smile tomorrow because this too shall pass.

  What happens to a dream destroyed? Does it resurrect like a phoenix or vegetate in the minds of those assigned immortality? Does the dream lie heavy on your mind in the dead of the night? Or fill you with envy at the sight of the brave?

  Dream Killers You who have killed dreams with your words or remarks or the sticking to forms with disregard to the beauty of ideas you who could not see life from the vision of a poet or the depth of a painter or live with the rhythm of the singer

Listlessness settles upon me like a stubborn fly, only the Quest will settle its wanton touch, Conformity, comfortability and rest wring my neck like a strangler, my mind is restless and listless and will not be content to wander about with the mudane and the ordinary

How do I treat you I have spent years building a fortress against you but you still destroy me Oh Weak heart you have been destroyed again by words and insinuations and lies how will you rebuild yourself in the midst of all this pain

My heart beats for you like the drummer beats his bata drum this hunger has awakened the ghosts of the dead Why do I await your word with bated breath and drink into your words like sojourners in the Agadez Is it your eyes,or your silence loud with desire

  Chaos Its the death and destruction its the gender wars and transitions its the hunger and zombies taking hits on filthy pavements its the needless war in Ukraine and mumbling Biden its the psyops, the twitter rants its the intensity of emotions that fade after the next trend

  Dopamine On my brain as I awake and we speak I get a rush of joy and love. You are my dopamine I daydream about you in dusk and long for you at dawn you are my opium, my serotonin, my dopamine when will you be mine ?

  Ordinary I could not follow the path of the mundane deluded in nothingness who found substance in eros My calling was the call of Virgil and Dante and Eliot destined to be immortalised by the crafting of our words the synergy of words and emotion the solidification of moments and immortalisation of thoughts I couldn't be ordinary but reality molded me and conformed me till I became of counterfeit of originality and a misfit of conformity outplaced the restlessness the boredom the anguish of dying in the nothingness of the conformed

  Your eyes like whispers of hope  in the midst of my troubled soul so I drank from it  and wrote my story with the dreams that lay hidden beneath.  Oh how those would save me, would save me and so I waited for your little games and your little words like water for Nigerians in the Agadez in the delusion of hope,  you made the pain that sought me from every side calm and i waited in love with a mirage from the past  but realised you too had become hardened from vices you embraced  and I shirked you had the become the pain I had

  Words cannot tell the anguish of murdered innocents caught up in decades of hate and peace war and rest they pay for sins they cannot fathom burned alive by the deranged Isis is resurrected from the grave beheaders of those of faith path trailed with blood and gore

You who awaken the lion and catch a Tiger by the tail why do you seek the joys of rest alien to you U who have branded every man a foe and peace chaos why do you seek the tears of those you will sting Hamas has murdered sleep and must wander like Cain

  Take me to the past, where my dreams would rise and I would hope the hope of dreamers of the sandy plains and these hopes would ignite the dreams i dreamt Take me from this future that lays siege with dread, the dread at dusk that lurks behind tired yes the dread that stalks or lays supine like a serpent and waits and waits the dread that wearies you and makes you sigh in anguish and makes you stoop and makes you cry, or sad or turn to drink the dread that has become you

 If you only knew what Five Hundred meant to me you would weep at the thin, lost girl who arrived at your door every Saturday noon in Bulukuntu, to cook and clean and watch you play yor scrabble with your frinds If only yu could see what five hundred would buy in the future in the end of your life, broken and old without hope and the little lost girl who remembered your kindness when no one else was kind you who gave me succour when no one else did who endured me when no else would I saw in your eyes you were tired sometimes but you gave and gave and I an never forget. Uncle I wont forget the 500 naira you gave every Saturday in Bulukuntu The years have plied up,  like dust in the dusty Maiduguri street memories come and go, and people die pain is always there, numbed by sleep  abut don't forget that flicker and kindness you showed to the girl who would bever forget the  five hundred naira note

 They gathered like vultures at the smell of blood each ready to bite and kill kill and gauge the dying corpse they gathered like ghouls waiting to rip and shred the bones of the corpse  rip and steal and kill vicious and merciless they waited, panting,  breathe bated urged on by the matriarch of chaos but this soul would not die the corpse would crawl, and walk, blood ripped, in sweat and tears chewed upon and clawed upon her strength as the strength of ten warriors and she rose stronger and harder she rose and they flew and scampered and turned to doves  with pleas of peace but the warrior would never trust the dove's beak  which could turn to the carrion nib at the first sign of blood

 The Waiting Game is the dying game  a game of mahjong and chess with the grave we wait for life and love we wait for the right things to come but they never do, so we wait some more we wait in bile in cubicles we hate  with people, we do not rate we wait for sun and snow for spring and rain  for that break for that kiss waiting and du\ying is the game of life

 Dead eyes, the thousand years stare look at you from you from those who once had a soul that had died from the barrage of evil and injustice and could not bear to live like others live, and now become living dead awaiting signs of life unaware dead things never re-live again soulless eyes from the ones nurtured in greed, cunning and self wanton self supersedes all, everything, everyone is an object used and discarded in wanton fulfilment of self these are the young ones bred to run this dead country, bred to ruin this dead country Dead leaders locked in the endless quest of debauchery diseased and weakened by wealth and its ills, they claw onto power dead brains, dead thoughts, dead acts, walking corpses masters of the  beating the tribal drums, masters of divisions and hate, slaves to self In this dead country nothing works,  the mortuary attendant of Maitama General Hospital is a lord, who decides what corpse stays and which does not In this dead country, the demons waltz freely, th

I drink at the pond of Despair Poe drank in the water salty tears the horror of the morning unrelieved by the succor of sleep renewed by the horror of the morning despair that clutched you by the edge of your throat despair never-ending ...ending is disassociation to be relived by the horror of reality despair and reality intertwined like two Siamese twins in an eternal loop the despair of a mother with an eternally sick child the despair of loss and life and life and loss the despair of failing dreams gilded cages  the despair of a withered life, of the perpetually forsaken  perpetually ill-treated the despair of the Silent God. Fate and Faith to accept the pain of life is to live in pain and the sole recourse to a life of tears

Oh silent God oh cruel God Oh silent sky wide and empty as life     My tears have been wasted My heart mourns waiting for your voice But the knowledge of your absence doesn't lessen this despair  I cry the tears of the fated doomed The twisted child  The pariah The outcast  The sodomised boy on death row  We know the tears we cry in the middle of our sleep The hope that rises with the sun The despair that sets with the sun Oh silent God, unjust in all your ways Who delights in the blood of  children and basks in the bellow of tyrants Life is our prison of despair  Through your silence, you have said I cried too much, I hoped to much, I loved too much, I believed too much, Oh silent God oh cruel God I find your voice in the evil I see I hope your voice sets me free from you

 I lost you years ago Amid the tears of my youth  And the worry of my youth I search for you amidst unfriendly eyes And decaying hearts Where will you be found Oh tortured one who longed for a dream And was gifted horrors of despair  When did you flee? Was it at ten, wandering unmothered Looking for solace in friends Was it in the eyes of lovers  With their lust  mistaken for shelter  Oh you would not be found  because I cannot bear to face the places you have been Beaten hidden left distraught and destroyed But like the doomed I fight to find you, you shattered thing In the layers of painful days that stretch like the Agadez In the middle of half-slept nights riddled with horror and pain Oh you poor shattered thing Oh heaven gracious heaven Full of  promises  Finally of silence You hang in judgement over my pain Used to your absence full of your wrath I look up to you wretched despair  I find traces of you in places of pain I find signs of you in the Mamuna hunters song I find some of

  You stare at the fallen in unspeakable grief, and recall the first steps, the tiny hug, the baby smell all the little details a mother knows beneath the terebinth tree oh Rizpah, the pleasure of all eyes the delight of Saul in his prime what have you become? fighting birds of prey and jackals as they stalk the decaying  flesh of your flesh... Amoni was the quiet one,  Mephibosheth the witty one, who laughed even in sadness Here they lay eyes agape in unspeakable horror, hung like thieves Saul would gather them in the small of his arms, and they, beauties to behold would giggle in delight Rizpah, your existence is that of demented reality and excruciating dreams in the middle of insanity The Jackals have come again, aiming to savour the carcasses of your decaying sons,  I stand weakened by hunger and sorrow, and shoo them away again. God of Israel,  take this pain away 

 Oh you pale skinned, thin lipped one With the covetous eyes Century after century you stride  Across nations leaving trails of blood and gore  The Congolese paid for your visit with the fractured arms of men, women and children, Africans visited your abode like cattle, sold of and branded  You took off one mask and wore another  Self proclaimed superior  who survived from the teat of Africa and the backs of her children You led and segregated  Stole the lands and looked down  your noses as Africa broke and grew, grew and died, died and knew, knew and now fight, You steely eyed thieves, dripping with lies,  Providing the guns and bullets to brothers who fight and die for you the ghoul to steal their carcasses. Your visit is the visit of the dead

how many words have been shouted, how many voices have been spoken how many have whispered and disappeared into the nothingness of existence, like the sounds of the living and long gone, we exist in temporariness forgotten existing only in captured memories, how many have cried and have slept engulfed in bitterness that mean nothing we are like shadows who ebb into the light and darkeness

 How could I loathe what sustains me and how could what sustains me, destroy me every thought at a time, every minute of the day the labour is not hard very easy it is the wanderers, who have made the vortex their God and destroy all whom fall upon their covetous eyes the vortex of hell is full of slanderers, the lazy, and backbiters the opportunists, the bitter and evil. The gossip and envious, all who cannot bear to see the pure... you have to die to live in this vortex of nothingness 

 You pushed her away when her hands were tiny and wanted to cup your face, when her eyes sought answers and love within your eyes. you pushed her away when she needed the hugs that would shield her from the fearsome world and  laughing peers  she sought your hands to hold her and tell her all was well, you were never found you told her her younger ones were prettier and better, so she became anxious and sought solace in peers and moved rootlessly, like a nomadic fulani during the rainy season.  She never knew your hugs, just your beatings she never saw you smile, just your mockery she sought for mothers in strangers and fathers in lovers but they all failed she fought to live and won and now you want to hug her and she recoils  now you want to talk and she shuts herself from you now you want the woman after killing the girl She will always be the little lost girl, all alone, trying to find her way in the scary world

In these depths of despair amidst the sadness of the soul I reach into my bank of pain and shudder at the calamity and the sadness these sorrow never cease they evolve into mutant despair worse than its original, less than its post-mutated version I can't help myself no one can. With no hope I disappear into a world of noise that fill me up and lets me live in the silence of my thoughts My bank of pain is full

 The revealer, arbiter, leveler of time you fall heavily, softly, slowly, you fall on us all we are all allotted portions of your rare gifts,  careful portions, spaces that seem to spawn and seem so small we crawl and walk, some do not and fade we walk and talk , but that portion is denied to orders we talk and comprehend, while others fly into the abyss of the void we know, grow and blossom, beautiful and strong, we think and worry  we worry and accept the fates, some broken, some fiery, some weary and jaded we see the signs of the passing days, on our faces, on our hair, in the eyes of children, who start the same circle, we wait and rest, our weary bones, tired legs and long for days of the past. our deaths are the comeuppance of living, we spent out time 

 I immortalize you , using this divine gift to solidify your names Ada, my voice was lost in the wilderness of despair, when I welcomed you, you were defiant, a fighter,  who fought to stay, fought to be heard, your defiance made me strong and pushed me from my despair quick to anger, quick to love Ada, I am lost in you, your spirit, and your eyes,  you fight for your place, brave and unafraid I am not afraid of your survival in a world of treachery, you were born of this world, to twist it and turn it, till it bent for you. Your path may be hard, but you are harder, you lead the pack, you will make them cry, you will be the head of the gang, fierce, determined, and strong,  you know already how the world works, you cry at will and fight for peace. Ada, my warrior princess, daughter of wealth, may wealth find you, in body and soul Chinedu My firstborn child, Born in the bliss of false hope,  you taught me that love was unconditional,  your eyes smile, your voice soft,  my intellectual,

 Her eyes are the dark pools of forever they are paradise and beauty and make you sink and lose yourself in their promise you are  helpless, you want to be you could pull yourself from the depth of their wealth and wonder if you would find the gold buried at the end of the promise, you the eternal adventurer  were born to seek, born to find eternity in everything  they give you life and are incomparable to the anxious eyes that meet you trustingly, longingly when you return eyes that know without knowing, eyes that cry without crying, eyes that know the time is coming to be hopeless, eyes that find her answers in  the innocence of her seed,  eyes that have died waiting for you to revive them you despise those eyes, dry and weary,  the hand that rubs the forehead in despair,  you break and break the feeble soul enamored with your words,  deadly words, poisonous words  yet they find some antidote in the poison, sighing in relief because it was them all along. weary eyes grow wearier know

will the street flow with blood today in response to the annual Shite's March, to add to mounds of dead, that feed theground , planted in deatth we become dehumanized by death we  will all die one day we say, as we watch the horrors with tired eyelids, institutionalised  our leaders sit on the blood-drenched gilded throne guarded by murderers and afraid of their crimes of their eyes of the children that wander aimlessly on the streets, the throne protects them from their crimes of greed, death of theft,  they rule corpulent, plotting and  scheming  to save themselves from death and pain death and pain will come to them not swiftly  but surely , fresh piles are dug for the pregnant woman ripped to death, her fetus taken the young child butchered the farmer killed they die, we watch suspended in feat, lobotomized in terror while the enforcers of the bloodbath come to us in white dripping slurry speeches tinged with discord and division and tell we must hate to survive the hands of th

 Our Robespierre, Our Machiavelli  your power-lust soul reeks,  like the mass-dug graves  likes hands freshly drenched in pedicide genocide and homicide,  the trail of blood leaves an invisible stain  on your immaculate white babarigas unseen by all, seen by all oh tiny tyrant, whom Fate has seemingly nurtured for such a time as this,  what will be your end, you despicable one? will you die a pauper like Machiavelli,  become a crippled invalid like the loathsome Sergent Rogers, who was dreaded by all at a time now beaten by life, a shell of his fearsome self,  or will your tiny neck, out of which sprung millions of untruths grace the guillotine, like Robespierre, the  public accuser,  amidst the ecstatic joy of the murderous mob? Or will fate look the other way and reward your bloodthirsty avarice-filled years filled with gilded rot? Only time will tell

 The Circle gets smaller, The days grow shorter Once again one is gone, Gone away forever  leaving in wake the surprise and the memory forever etched in the  recess of our minds Death always takes us away unprepared. Dad, Chibuzor, Adah,Attah, Vicki, Ekwuolobia,Benjamin, Clemment, Samson The ones we cannot forget, Kebbi, Ieulogize you, hardworking Kebbi, murdered and butchered what did you think about in the throes of death,  you died struggling, you died hustling, you still haunt the car parks of Miatama,  There are the ones we feel deserve it and say a prayer for forgiveness for we mourn them not, as their actions continue o hurt us long after they have gone. Our nights get shorter, our days grow wearier Death stalks us all.

You live unhindered and uninhibited, determined to take a sip of every poisoned chalice? determined to experience every debased passion, desires unlimited turn into debauchery, its a slippery slope to death by self, death by uninhibition,  your eyes are glazed with opiates, body s destroyed by encounters, soul is haunted by unsatisfied desires,  a glutton for endless passion, unending desires. you are on the highway to death, going 200 per hour, and cannot stop.

 I moan on Monday and groan and prepare to face the mundane, the twisted, and the jealous horrified of the comfort they find in the mundane, the petty squabbles, the time-consuming gossip, and backbiting I die as I sit in the Wednesday vortex of mindless nothingness and wonder as they strive to outdo to do themselves in a baseless competition of the unremembered I wonder  at them will you be immortalized for doting your  i s and crossing your  t s? do you want to be immortalized? could you be Immortalized? I cringe at the petty  squabbles, the back-biting and vicious smear campaign that will be forgotten after retirement,  when you are gone, you are forgotten as if you never existed, the minutes, the office bickering, the per - diem fights are  gone and forgotten after your valedictory  dinner, and you become either a cautionary tale or a nostalgic one. The life of the consciously forgotten 

 Life is a surreal tease,  memories of the past uglified by the realities of the present the rebel uncle, dark and tall who dies emaciated and wasted,  dragging his love towards the horror of the grave, Uncle, I see your face, the cool mangrove of Lagos Street that hosted the intellectuals, artistes, actors of the eighties,  gone forever, encased in my amnesic mind. My handsome Uncle, divine and cool, now elderly and broken  Peter and Betty, handsome and pretty We used to jump and walk you as you left Bolori,  Peter you died twisted, swallowed by the god of Iron,  your intellect, hopes and memories faded into the abyss of nothingness I always remember you. Dad I was so unkind to you, yet I miss you more than anyone I have ever known Life is an illusion, the beauty of today is the horror of tomorrow the hopes of today turn into the regrets of the morrow. 

I wait day after day night after night for the tears to dry for the pain to fade I laugh some days I cry some nights but it still stays, nestled comfortably next to me pain   owns me, it has made me its. I am its slave the tears always fall when I am alone and the flashes come searing by, hot, hurting and painful  I stop and cry and wipe and sigh and wait for this perpetuality  to pass I see people with the same pain who speak empty defiant words  with hard broken eyes I feel their souls are break just like mine they will try themselves to sleep in the quietness of the night they clutch don't their bibles  like their shield  their faces caked in makeup forgotten and forsaken old and sad theirs is the tears that wi;; never heal I wait for the days I can be free from these empty words and empty days when the tears will dey an the pain will fade and I can smile like I smile once agao until that time I clutch my sword and sigh and cry and smile 

Through your magic,  i  travelled  widely, from my room, across the mystical valleys of Haggard's She, stayed in the castle- with  Sleeping Beauty was onboard the bus in Ayi Kweh Armah's Ghana sat with Chase's Ma Barker supplicated with Ntiru's Pauper traversed the realms of Asia with Marco Paulo emphasised with Dicken's Pip.. Libro, my comforter, my truth-teller an anchor in this duplicitous world of double talk lies and betrayals, your embrace is cathartic, it heals teaches and steers me I can laugh at the boys in Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivner can be strong like Henley in his Invictus and ponder from a distance  the darkness of human nature from Conrad's Heart of Darkness

 The narcissist pose duck lips eyes raised to meet the gaze of  the cognitive poison our millennium God that promises fame, fortune, love, acceptance our nouveau saviour that takes away all worries, with  just a swipe Oh, technology God, you have succeeded in ways  millions before you could not  you have created nations of zombies who cannot think and conform vapidly to half-truths consumed our freedoms, our lives, our thoughts have evaporated within the digital junk the algorithms churn and offer us daily we function mechanically but wander through your streets like the  fentanyl addicts in skid row we are zombies, a cumulation of the brain-dead workforce  who live for cheap goods, cheap thrills... we are sunk.

 We live like shadows transit, fleeting, evanescent forgotten in time. would the world know that a versatile writer lived, who was buried in the tombs of valuable paper,  overworked, brain-dead from the monotony of survival who would know that a great painter existed, full of zeal for his passion,  whose passion was stifled, strangled, and killed by viperous words of the stupid, the envious, and the myopic.. who will remember the thinker and philosopher analogous to Plato, Nietzsche, Petterson,  avoided by kith and kin, branded a misfit and blasphemous by society, living dreadfully in a haze of dissociated alcoholic stupor e all exist in nothingness, hollow and void of actual existence we live, we breathe, we dance, we copulate, we go grey, we fight the ghosts of the pasts,  we live with disappointments and sink warmly into the bed and grave that beckons us.