NAIJA BLOG

 An Ode to the Dying Rose 🌹 The saddest thing is a dying rose.  its beautiful petals  disintegrate with  every careful touch.  The pleasure of its fragrance lingers on, like an escatic thought buried among the catacombs of dreams.  Beautiful rose, once a thing of delight now a sorrowful sight.  This is my ode to  the dying rose with falling petals ebbing away. 

 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 s...

  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...

 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 

 You were picked, ripe and ready for harvest virle and strong blood clean You were a tool, useful for your part useless for  everything else you would die so they could live the distinguished and the rich But you would strike like a snake you little being who didnt deserve to live you would destroy a man  who had lived in privildged discordance before you had been birthed you little one would destoy one who had many  things but couldnt  have life who bought the houses so that people would die in dirty hospitals, drinking dirty water whose familiy was picturesqe on the glossy tabloids which children in Cambridge, Eton and Harvard Who wanted from you what he could never give Little barrow pusher, little phone seller, with a future as dark as a moonless sky who grew up on the streets drinking water from a plastic wrap eating food from typhoid plates dreaming of a life that could not promised David, you would have sold your kidney so they could live David you  ...

  In the midst of my sorrows I cried to God to add to me blessing I felt I deserved but God was busy crying  for the dead Sammy Teucsh Blond, green eyed adorable boy  who took his life at ten  God was wailing for the dead babies that are slaughtered in Zamfara and Gusau and the dead that will be killed in the killing fields of Oturkpo God was staring tenderly the child with Down syndrome destined to live of a life of turmoil and grief of the child with no hands and no feet rolling on the beach God was busy comforting the sad and too busy to answer my need for more  

 One a sunny morning was the day you died alone on the street while the crowd gawked and snapped to their delight we took you to save you in the back seat of the car i wondered why no one saved you  they snapped and gawked as you lay fallen on the street there you were forty-something neatly dressed, with black tights a bagco bag rolled up you were going to shop and the crowd gawkedand snapped so we drove to save you Maitama General would not save you No bed they said, while you lay dying in the car the good samaritan told me how his mother had died and he saw her, a vain woman, strewn on the floor the young doctor was in tears so young and so new, life would teach you that life was cheap the police commended us for saving you nameless one the morgue keeper was another god who denied entry to body of the dead your family came in tears tried to pay for my help On the day you died, i wore green and  drove you to rest. Rest in Peace, Nameless one  

 There I was, sick son in hand,  visiting the hospital the faces there were all bowed as if hiding I played with the little child and the cross-eyed baby and talked to the mother about ways to remedy the sight I saw the prancing man, who didn't care and tall giant with beautiful eyes there sat quietly a buxom lady on the wooden seats it was  our turn then I knew from the card that was carried by the couple in front  a card as long as an examination sheet the couple, a mustached man and his wife entwined in eternity and in drugs then I knew  the hidden faces the guarded eyes the wandering stares that looked as I walked and talked nonchalantly the prancing man I knew 

 God loves his poets and artists and he speaks to them through whispers at the dead of the night through sudden bursts of epiphany Through a lingering thought that will not die through the lingering dream that will not fly away God loves his poets and artists because like him, they create replicate life, replicate dreams God loves his poets and artists through them, dreams are born through them, lives are lived Through them, eternity is found God loves his poets and artists that is why we must cherish this gift

 I see it in your eyes you will be the death of me you the hand that begs of me, will be the hand that kills me your eyes, the rove and wonder for more despising the little I give you, wanting the more I have. Restless wandering thief the heart of a murderer you steal as I give angry that I have your skills I need your presence I dont. You of the hand that begs, the hand that steals 

 I will not win this battle for it is the battle of tongues against deeds the battle of envy against intentions the battle of the naive against the master of trickery I cannot play this game so I must grapple with  poisonous words  strewn against the dark corridors lies that execute without judgment spread by those well-versed in the game the game convoluted deception seeped in charismatic tones and devilish  smiles,  played by the maestro of deception the jury meets in the darkness of offices and cafeterias to plot and destroy as I strive ....to live, to fight, to win this futile battle

 One day, many rainy seasons ago I beheld a sight that depicted the harmony  of nature and man, now forgotten  amidst the quest for success and horrors of defeat between life's angst and life's rest I saw a Fula boy lying on the white sand banks of a peaceful lake across the lake, some cows stood munching some fresh green grass while  the Fula boy played his flute a harmonious sound that flirted in the wind  sedating the cows who munched contentedly comforting my soul with  its healing sounds

  I see the death in the eyes of the children The thousand yards stare in the women In the empty markets And defeated shopkeepers I see the lost look in the eyes in the gaunt  Trekkers with threadbare shirts And battered soles And dying souls This is a defeated place Voices are lost in the multitude of sounds Cries boomerang like the rabble of weak and old Empty echoes We receive the boot of the clones For cries And bullets for our concerns The democracy of the armed,  Demarcated between dark-tinted land cruisers and ammoed goons Who speed past the dying nation We lay our necks for the armed fulas like goats  And Our ailments treated by quacks We die unsung by the minute This is our fate in this dying nation

 Through this journey I have learnt to look at the eyes  to know the story to look beneath the tale to find  the meaning to make every child smile because they never forget kindness or sorrow to leave something for someone  no matter how small