NAIJA BLOG

 The scent  of rain is the scent of water and sand The thunder rumbles gently at a distance  Satiated and content A quiet breeze blows, tickling my black plum tree and it sways back in amorous delight The conflux of time and chance brings me here,  A product of 400 generations of lust or love Listening to my seeds squabble over video games and make-up Outside rain and wind beckon the changing season

 A  wonderful people, a wonderful breed tall and strong like the tall iroko tree Igbos, the choice slaves, like the Mandinka tribe a testment of perfection of mind and matter  Igbos the excellent, who have fought and won as slaves and masters fought and won as servants and rulers you have been blessed by the goddess of fortunes but tainted by the demon of tragedy  Your blood is found in Virginia, named Igbo Land Your blood breaks the barrier of  generations Paul Robeson, T.D Jakes, Tyler the Creator, Blair Underwood, Jidenna testify of your greatness 

 Where are those people I left in the past have they become memories, existing only in the realm of thought, abstract figures  full of life, blood and guile living The house in Ikeja, the policemen who guarded it the tilers in Lagos The widow in Port Harcourt The waitresses  in Ghana The taxi man who took me to the park the bike men in Seme the policemen in Togo The border guards in Abijan the driver in Ireland the shopman in Dubai the kind shop guy in Malaysia our paths crossed once in eternity, I remain a hallucination,  you remain etched in my thoughts  immortalised by my words 

 There was a little girl who stayed hidden behind the Pegout tyres Hidden behind our judgmental stares we whispered and muttered  our eyes round in awe  and sought to see the apparition  that was a pregnant girl Oh little girl, how bitter were the tears you shed  beneath the unhappy rooms in a home full of shame and recriminations  how you tried to hide your being  from our prying judgemental eyes Oh little sad girl, I hope Fortune gave you the comfort denied you once

Short, stocky Kebbi You who trawl the car wash stands and endeared  yourself to us Kebbi, you saw me through so many troubling times, the parker of my car.   Your family  always on your mind Kebbi you who journyed the roads to my house and who was subject  to my moodswings.   I was always going through a lot Kebbi to hear you died horrendously tied like a hog and smashed Like a roach. Oh Kebbi, I forgot you too soon Forgive me 

 Only few know the depth of power a writer holds through the writer's words, names are revived Lives long gone and forgotten are resurrected  Oh Zora, you tell me of your Howard crush, who sat through your illness of the upper-class lady who married a geologist of the defeat of your father and the shrew who was your stepmother  Shaw, you show me a world of Nicholas and Rainas Dante, you teach me about Di Rimmi, Vigne and Monte Feltro Wiwa, you talk to me about the Magistrate, arbitar of injustice Oh Writer, you telepathic one  who speak to our thoughts and create our visons who immortalizes men and myth  and are divinely blessed to sustain immortality 

 I mHostile eyesust walk tommorow to the place of judgment and my execution words that I phrase have been judged before I speak Eyes that are hostile await my presence I must lay my case to eyes that have judged and tongues that have wagged and have proven me guilty before I speak I must wak these steps to prove my life to live and not not take the death blows handed in my stride

 Memories are painful thoughts are circular words of the past become premonition of the future and what  feared I became two terrors stand guarding the doors of my dreams ensuring its futility, and my  heart broken, and discarded by the ones whose eyes were soft no tears, no need hunched over in pain, eyes closed into clasped hands no way out. Oh God, I am without the guile that makes the evil survive I hoped in you to repay me the years of my faith Silent God with its heavy laws,  what are laws without justice for my broken soul?

 Broken and beaten Fears have become life that swallow and destroy till there are no thoughts but fear and its spawn which keep me in its eternal grasp I cry to heaven for some respite and try to find the reason for this plight but I have atoned for the sins in my youth my hands are t pure oh what it would be to live and see and not slink and think and hope and slink  a loop of transmuting and dying not seeing life as it passes but hoping that life stops and heals before its next punch