THE PATRIOTISM OF THIS PEN

This pen is brief and its bleeding is tense Heighten and thick in his heart each blood With heavy force pumping in and out like flood Carry each mess into the yellow river Like a poet says, they still animate They can swallow them up with no potbelly Even chew them as kola with no ache tooth I am proud this pen still has thick veins To hold his ink not to burst but rush frequently On each miter between human and rights Wrong with human; human rights Still peep around the corner; a hide out of human wrong

The patriotism of this is not drunk of words But has wild ink and gush out wild words Like impatient blood from a slaughtered cow; this pen Is as hungry as those knives in abattoir His pride is the sharpness to pierce the heart of men And bring out these organisms of menace That hides in all our man, even the ones under our soil

Copyright © 2010 Doye Deji

PRAYER

LORD, GOD, mercy reside in your place
And the space you rented us here is dieing This earth vicinity carries heavy burden With bent back, craven bones break down half way Blood could not fuel the heart to breathe properly And doubt sway thought to the noise of mysteries

Around here: within our settled space
From the hill top of Arewa to the water home of the deltas Around the space that divides the Olumo and its neighbors Between the Niger River and its Benue relative Where kneel bent equally to reverse a curse Where heart supplicate for grain to grow in gold dust Where eyes are shut not to see sin Our hands rub mind together and plead We want our black race to exceed a white race

We beg you, Lord, God
Open the door that link our apartment to you And roll side to side this cloud like curtains Let mercy find her way to us. Let her Come like a Good Samaritan to wake up hope On this bier of fainted heart, let her Regardless of the spirit and those patches from fire-flies Substitute night with multitude of dawn And cheer us up with an attitude of a moon Generous to kinds of mankind in their numbers

Let our laughter purify dark corridors
As hopeful as the smile of the moon
This burden will fall down to crush under foot Back will stand straight and right Throat will flow wine like stream Belly will deny hunger and bones will grow confident And for the heart, blood will be surplus to finance breath And thought will relate happily with no disgust.

Copyright © 2010 Doye Deji

WHITE GLASSES

In my country, not a mirror as it use to see More than we can see those poxes on our face Can see through the beats in the heart: beautiful or ugly The days that are yet to be born, our longing Craven calabash of a kind: crack and weak But can still dip deep to bring out pure enthusiasm Or can see through it?s whiteness of cassava flesh The heart, the brown skin that preserves sanity On this earth space of our own black paste Not a mirror can see through The blood pump to decide breath Glittering in the eye like sparkling of star To know what kind of precious stone lit to show path Unto the earth a long desire from the sky

Not our medicated glasses with costly lenses To correct what illness dizzy the eyes Can see though the bold letters written on the heart page Hope; desire, ambitions, dreams That queue on the queue of heart paragraph As the queue for the quick communion By faith to blot out fate an accomplice of hate Not of a shade glasses with black eyes To express the fantasy of an arrogant beauty Can see through words growing rapidly, in succession Of one to another; persuading expectations with perseverance

Not even microscope, as proud as it is
Thought of itself as so deep in the eye
To see the heart of a ghost can see through The destiny of nationhood, tiny like organisms Wandering lifeless like a lost wind That could not gain consciousness due to whirling Promoting casualty, advancing crime and Inventing corruptions to partner with fear Not even this can see through the flesh in the heart To sight from far, on the substance of expectation And see widely the biggest words that pour honey on life

White glasses: colourless like water but the hope to eyes Can see through the bottom of the waters Clear, deep and pure these glasses will pierce our heart To find this mustard seed of enthusiasm, and all Perseverance to see the destiny of this land Bright and orange, we can look eye to eye With the sun: no blink, no break, and no weakness But endurance will wait for the moon and stars To pour kisses of light over darkness To support the effort of fire-flies; patriotism Will not stop to wear white glasses, here Heart will not hate to wait Not while we are still wearing these glasses of hope

Copyright © 2010 Doye Deji

Irapada

Irapada, because of you I have thrown my heart Down the multitude of clean waters? If I would With handful of detergent wash awash ?those dirt Of fear, between the sacred courage that has wanted to From the eye of my heart steer into the eye of the sun To pierce in-between the differences of what life had brought for me Perhaps, at the middle of those darkhood corridors Before the magistrate of my heart, and my thought In the dock. You have seated where life charges me For heart-beat: such of a possessed, where I had wanted Those fouls that carried me before the crowd of shame To see you as a counsel for me, I have learn to hear you speak Just as an oracle of redemption, before their God-father I have learned to hear you speak, against fear, in your defensive tongue As incantations learn to defend sacrifices before an oracle, truly You can precede my victory on a war-front Not with the blood of all my struggling that wanted to laugh Neither should these be a funeral-burial for hope, but With what I have heard of your name (the status of your kind) do tells me you intercede.

Like you tied a red girdle
On your white feet-touch garment, round your waist Before you, I kneeled Before the eye of my possess, the bell of an aladura rings Deep, wild to the root-hold Of my possess, beside those rivers that could wash away All short comings Before the altar of courage, with those palm-frond on your hand To beat down most heart-beat That has possessed me, unto you I will love to lay them down At your muddy feet to make them drown Down and deep unto your perishing heart As darkness use to die in the sun Let me at the edge of your eye see them no more Even on the seat Of each thought that has ascended my heart, let them Lost in the red sea of my heart On their chariot and horses, even on their mighty foot Let them stumble and die to their strength

From far, far from the lineage of their birth Long by my fore fathers I heard you could also come in Ofo (in the language of the gods) In the presence of orunmila, the words you possessed Possess me; beating my heart on those spirited words That fell off your circumcised lips, as babalawo Before those speechless testifiers that could neither hear Or speak from their carved mouth, I had wanted you To chew my fear like you do to those kolanuts Before the gods, perhaps you can speak to your bones To swell the heads of the gods, and in their strength Speak wildly against my possess to upgrade my heart

Still on this queue of yours, I will rather wait patiently Than to give up this debt to death, not even In the pit of the grave, my blood will not die to breath Until you as emissary of newness unto my dieing Come with a chalice, filled with the communion of faith And unto my heart, purge me with the kind of your name Irapada, in a censer, squeeze in my fear like those handful of incense Burn them in the shadow of their kinds, before me Let the smoke before the eyes of my heart drive them Out with their possessing spirit, in the kind of your name, Irapada

Copyright © 2010 Doye Deji