NAIJA BLOG

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 we 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.

 What does a broken soul look like It is the thousand-year stare from empty dead eyes, vacant and numb  Triggers playing on a loop of tortured memories It is the tiredness of the rested And the rest of the tired... Weary from thoughts that line up like executioners  each shooting to kill It is the weariness and the tearless cry That rips through you and you talk to yourself Because no one wishes to hear It is the quiet despair that sits with you wearily at  noon You welcome sleep from the turmoil Alas sleep itself is full of torment so you wake unrested...and tired  The days are bleak...the future tortuous...the past tormentous and the present enveloped in an unending blanket of pain You call to heaven...the silence is darker than hope...

 I tried to create happiness but sadness came and enveloped me in its clammy embrace it stayed with me faithfully as I moved away and stayed with me like the shadow of death I saw happiness flee away I chased and chased but its feet  were so flit I tried to cage happiness by building a fortress of warmth and laughter  but sadness came and filled our home with grief sadness embraces me in the quiet of the noon and I weep and weep as I grieve and grieve pain that has nestled down in the  small of my chest and mourn and cry at the bleakness all around me 

 I thank you for showing me The side of unending pain that  Cut through the seven layers of the soul  The pain that goes on and on And leaves no tears I thank you for killing me with searing words And burying me in my despair That made me wait for the next tear I thank you for the lost years of the lost voice Of the broken hope that I groped for myself And found the image of you molded into the depth of my soul  I thank you for the betrayal ,the market square humiliation that left my soul bare and naked amid sneers and jeers I learnt from you to wall away To walk away  Even when you came back broken by life You found the shell you planted Soulless and hardened by you And I laughed at your fall Without mirth or anguish I thank you for the  lesson of life I am Still learning To be cruel to you and laugh as you crawl in throes of pain I learnt from you all lessons you taught  I learnt to use all the lessons you have