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Ajayi Olubunmi Kolade

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"Untitled"
On the phone
Gamete-to-genesis
The lost minds
The confused
The living death
Days after death
Here-ward
Westwind

"UNTITLED"

I am AJAYI KOLADE,
Born with the jaws of my core-fathers
And the feet of my fore-fathers.

My teeth are black,
                       Black as my teat.
And my nose is high,
                       High as our hills.
My accent is bold,
                       Bold as our bones.
But my blood is red,
                       Red as in all realms.
I eat all my meals,
                     In the pot from our clay,
                     And our clay is black.
I live in our soil,
                    The soil of our toil.
And my bed is from our mats,
                                    The mats from our marsh.

My name is African,
My skin is African,
And so will my seeds .

ON THE PHONE

‘Hello!’ I yelled, animated.
It was my tenth try.
I heard the view, and imagined.
Door closed. Counterpane–a sanctuary. Panes shut.
The room, once heavy,
Now light–perhaps–of me.
Our picture–the first– and first in that anthology….
‘Do you remember….’I began,
The breath, as it came, healed
And rose like sea waves.
‘…the night we ate in the light of the moon,
And what we ate?
Cakes!
Cakes you taught me to bake,
They were poor cakes
And my tongue admits this
But you were too blind,
Blind to despise it, ’cause fondness
Was your discrimination.
And to you they were the best,
The best you ever ate.
And now, now oh heart,
Why are these, these I baked under
Guidance of glorious hands
The worst you’ve ever seen?’
Our pressures climbed, psychosomatic.
Hers, transmitted. A wave of reminiscence.
The light turned blue, reversed.
‘Again….’I came, caught she was
The bed and its props, now alive.
‘…in your twenty-second,
The flowers I brought–red they were
And you counted them, you cherished them,
And that noon you called, with a eurekan mood
“I’ve found the white spot in these flowers.”
Now oh fave, in your fourth
Why ask “what colour are these?”’
Obduracy broken. Mortified. Barometric silence.
Frictioned fissure. I knew she’s now up.
I heard her beats. Thoughts I felt, too soft for ears.
‘I was your dream when your eyes were closed,
And your world when opened.
We sat on leaves and talked of trees
We sat by river and talked of its bank,
And creatures in her womb.
We closed our eyes and wrote our wishes
We wrote all the same–
You were mine and I was yours.
We walked in the rain
And strolled in the sun
We spoke of the singing birds
And crooned at their lead.
You said of my voice–as awful as it is–
“It’s the best bass I’ve ever heard.”
I sang you poems and
You wrote me songs
In clamshells, we drank soda with peppered leaves.
We watched the moon, the full blown moon
And made accounts,
You’ve seen a sedulous man and
I had seen a nursing mother
And had said it was you
The cloud we looked and had
Disagreed ’twas fortuitous.
When I was in bed, you were out of yours
And your presence was my drugs…’
Network, waning. Characteristic. Noise,
As it came, above my voice. Pale
Strange and crackling. Their blunder, I paid.
“Wait, I’m……”as it came, denied I was–its span.
Worsened, waning still.
‘Shan’t we rather speak of this, off this?’

GAMETE-TO-GENESIS

Halved. In years, for years
And through years, in halves
I was halved.

One, dual, many and millions.
Still ’twas whole and
Now reduced. Sartoli pruned.
And time tames to train
In the tail of epididymis.
At after times, began–at the protest
Of nerves and hormones–
The preening other half, unlike–
Before the wake–
Death was its finale.

Before the wake was its wait,
In clothes and coats it grew.
Reduction unequal, and its
Partings were for death
Attained fully at the meet,
Since alone it must be met.
I envy your prudence, women.

A cavern of two holed boughs.
Fingers tetanic. That wafted
The other half to the ampulla–
Breadth of my halves meet;
Site of my first breath.
In millions, it came,
Prepared for its course. The other, alone.
An expedition of masters to a paramour.
This heart is for one!

They coursed the limb, to the cavern
Excited, they stayed, honeymooned.
And stranded, by a strand.
It takes two, through time, to become one.

They met in pleasure,
Through pain I came;
And pain I met.
Hence I cried and exclaimed
‘In you is Heaven,
Why live in Hell?’

THE LOST MINDS

I queued, though behind,
Abnegation made. ‘Take me serious’ I warned,
‘I am here to be there, and so are we all.’
Her mien withered from mystification.
Was my mind not hers?
Air. Sward, sultry season. Sylvan sheltered.
Affray! Incredulity. It was my first franchise.
The air grew genetic, is the Fruit fly’s this fast?
They purloined Our votes–Our voices.
The upshot lacks my pulse–Our pulses.
Our heart lost, the pulse has stopped.
‘Lincoln, you said “….by the people…”
I see “by some people” that lacks Our pulses,
But pursue Our purse’
They purloined Our votes,
Our voices were not seen; hence we’ve not been heard.
A leader’s mind is mites from the people’s.
These are not of Our mites,
Not Our leaders. They lead us though–
Our land wanes!

THE CONFUSED.

In the dark I walk,
in the day I war, through gropes.
And dark seem dear for
shrouding the lane–a distaste to sight.
I coursed the lane, with the

Wheel of the lame. This caused
my legs the feel of the its lay.
My memory of it dementic, and hence
I grope, I grope like a paddler who
was off his course since his last was in drear.

Dark seem dear, and I thought
I was blessed on arriving at the end.
My gluteus assumed the
pride of my legs, and my mind
wrote obscure–since of the two, I was lamer.

To this end I must go.
Since ago I’ve been there, this
time with my legs. My mind
as my lord and not as a lame.
I called to my mind

As a man to his lord; like a swift
with glorious plumage, plump from its plow,
with its melody beckoned its Architect, in a sultry
morning, next to its nest,
‘where lies my next?’

The day had shown what the dark hid.
The dim is now clear
and the clear now dim.
None gropes but him that relies
in the day, on dark’s guide.

Now I war through gropes, like
one with a pen, penning to be poet
for poems do not make poets,
poets make poems. Poets are
the bricks of poems.

Detained I was, in the details of the day.
My details were lost.
Every sight and sign a clue became.
Confused still, with none to call; and
my mind, that wrote obscure, remains my only beam.

Dark! Oh drear dark; the bane of mortal eye.
As transparent as the sea;
by shrouding the course, the end, once revealed,
you have shrouded. For the end you divulged, but
the way you’ve hidden, hence the end!

THE LIVING DEATH

                          I
Thou embraceth men,
For their poor mien,
The sight thou lovest to behold
Hills, stones and brutes thou seizeth not.
I shall dread not thy vehemence; and I
Shall spill laughter and contempt
When at last my cells, to thine whim concedes.

                          II
Thy forename, O Death,
I have heard, is thy death.
And thrice hast I calleth thee
In places where thou art deafest–
Our roads, homes and hospitals.
And the count of my miss–I prayeth not quicker–
Shall my offspring live to pen, for
In count of such shall my pen in want of ink be.

                          III
Thy indiscipline unleashed
For reign of it amongst our lords
And these, in protest, amongst them beasts,
Our abodes, their guns they turn.
Thou hence reigneth, for they sleepeth.

                          IV
I heard thy cry Hippocrates!
From the great archive of thy Grecian grave
Of the handsome womb of Larissa–
In the deepest bed of Medicine’s birth
The ones to send thee wreath, in memorial, adored
With the chrysanthemum of conquered wools–
Men, women and oh, children alike
Their kin lie in murky moods,
And wreathed in sable garbs,
As their hearse they steer to gloom!

Thy Oath, thy amended Oath–
The dread of death,
Its scorn now became.

DAYS AFTER DEATH

Of man is nothing more said
than in few days after his death
life?s not rated, until late.

Say no evil of death, that
squeezes tears unshared,
praises unsung and love denied.
Life sometimes, preserves for misery
but death takes to give.

I shall of its evil speak
of the repercussion of its grip
and the futility of its gift;
the remnant of its greed
and the very essence of its creed.
That though life seems a miser,
I have seen the gift it gives
in the very hands that denies its largess.
Death takes to give and its gift remains with it.
This again shall I say:
Are not many devils angels turned?

HERE-WARD

I listened as I flute in other tongue
(My sweat in other tongue)
And cared about ears of other minds
And minds of other ears
And mutes my muse!
Henceforth,
I shall glide muse-ward
And dare not mute
Here-ward,
The recklessness
From my flute,
You learn to leave
My lines to my class,
I must live in the world That lives in me!

WESTWIND

The wind has brought us westways
And had left our sons wayward
Our daughters are naked
Our mothers are muted
Our fathers have gone westwards.

The wind has brought us waves of their shaking And has left us but in pains for their aching Let us awake our greatness Hidden in our soil and vastness To you that are our voices, put in place stimuli for our waking.

The wind has brought us westwisdom
And had left us with options worldwide
The world has gone e-
Please know that it got ills
That every strength has it weakwing.