NAIJA BLOG

 You have the names you have the names that make you turn  your noses at this lower mortals The ones without names Your names are steeped in blood and theft. Names on Boleavards, names on history books  that tell of blood and gore of starving babies, and killing men You have the names that are cursed  by the prayers of the wretched the ailing child the dying mum,  the desperate man the emannciated albino from the Biafran files as you lay roasting, you cursed seeds float like chaff without substance with drugged subtance  unable to find rest from their famous names 

I saw them as I sat in a bus She sat in front of me, While he stood outside Whispering sweet nothingness  They were immersed in their world Of love smile and laughter  The two lovers She was  a blue hijab And has a round full face that looked kind   I saw her hand was full of rashes and I wondered if she was sick Her lover did not seem to mind, her lesioned hand as he waited for the bus to be full and when it was, he turned to wave, then I saw the shrunken hand which had been hidden from sight  I wonder to this day what befell  The imperfect couple and their perfect love  

  I remember how I stood tall in your presence You told me them, I was the fairest, and showed my beauty in my bloom Then I laughed at you and wished for you, ignoring your whisper to enjoy the moment, Now I come before you, beaten by age, And by nature, there is no defiance in this search, it is assurance I seek and a quest for the remnant of my fleeing youth Mirror, Mirror, my daily remainder of mortality 

 Outside, angelic voices  sing in harmony, calling for "Jesus to Come unto Thee"" Melodious and peaceful. juxapostioning the reality around. Beauty in chaos Without. a fan hums and cold June breeze laden with Kanuri incense and oud wafts by, followed by sounds of a carpenter tinkering, sparrows complaining  Within Freud, his hysterical patients, and stories of their troubed minds , lie like an unending maze across my screen This is Sunday at Home 

  And they all perished and Became memories of the past Halima, the lover of whitemen, I passed you as a child of eight,  on the street with one of your lovers, one of your victims. He stood, balding and sandy-haired and bespectacled, arms akimbo, listening as you denied your status on the street, wanting to believe the lies you swore were the truth, knowing in despair, that the truth was dark and brooding  and fatal. Those days, the deaths were swift, and horrific, The faces that stared back were emaciated, and desperate, The death had robbed them all dignity of dying and the dignity of living It wasted them in the wards, eyes that couldn’t hide Minds that could not fathom the depth of their sorrows, Memories painful, dreams cut short. They died to our horror and in their trauma and in our trauma, modern day pariahs, twenty-first century outcasts, we were all victims of the horror that swept furiously. It was a complete death, of the soul and mind, we the liv

  Baba Iyashi Patron saint of the hungry school girls What force of nature made you to be kind to a girl so forsaken? the little, lost, scrawny and forsaken girl who was perpetually hungry Baba Iyashi,  the Damaturu cobbler, silent and kind who sat mustached amidst the kitchen halls what made you care, in a world where evil is the currency Baba Iyashi, between my bouts of peace and despair, I dream of repaying you and  driving through the streets of Damaturu and walking through those school halls that conquered me to thank you and reward you for those years In my mind, I believe I will meet you there, cobbler with your white thread between your lips focused intently on your chore and show you my gratitude     

 We lay nestled between your mountanious mounds the June morning is dreamy, foggy and rainy lulling us to satied safety and manufactured peace From my gilded cage I peek and see signs of life,  below me fly a formation of herons, above them  fly a group of blackbirds, chirping  at the rain I hear the violent sound of the generator cuddled to a hum by the sound proof-glass I see below me a clean tarmac and a well cut lawn the painstaking submissions of the hordes of the invisble, who tiptoe around us like ghosts, catering to our needs for order,  masters of  hiding the chaos. Across my indentured castle I see the high-rise buildings that look snootily below, at the seamless passage of life, life passes, cars pass,  each with tales   sorrows, fears, victories, lies,  tears,  transiting to life, transiting to death, Abuja, the land of more, the land of less,  A valley of contradictions of hopes and despair,  of life and death, of excesses and of want This is June in Abuja 

 Today is a day of creating To look at the clouds above and wonder where the birds hide their young amidst the falling rain, to worry about lost friends  and daydream about forgotten memories.  To ponder about repairing broken things,  To wonder about mortality Today is a day to live and not a day to exist. .. Ehi. June, 6,2024. Written while existing

 One day, many years ago when my face was unlined and mind unburdened I met a man who had married above him and his lovely wife who was in love with him but i knew love was not enough to secure him from the sniggers of his friends  who laughed with him and at him I knew he was dying  to get away from our knowing eyes and  out of our gossipy smiles His head was bowed and eyes lay  low like an eunuched slave,  defeated by the judgement of strangers and  by the judgement of himself and burdened by  love  he was a declawed  and detoothed feline