Tag: Creativity
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Homeland
There was such a time in our homeland
When your wife and babies would visit their places of worship
And you, the house husband, wouldn’t have to worry about their safe return.There was such a time in this land of ours
When speaking your damn cocky mind would only invite derisive snorts
And not stones and odds at the behest of a God.There was once a time in Nigeria
When gifts were not dangerous and being different was sexy
Then we knew nothing of judging and condemning except that which fruits evil.
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state of nature
these are no brooms to clean this thatch
only individual matchsticks
crammed into incendiary packets.
this is not a home of weaverbirds:
each sparrow sleeps in her own nest, safe
behind a sky-high-mud-wall-dung-polished fence.
there can be no canopying canvas
where each carry his umbrella
and splatters mud on the rest.
do not say, they’re troopers of termites or ants,
I find only beetles intent on rolling offshore
their share of the minted, scented dung.
I see no honeybees
just butterflies in pairs
squabbling over the remnant nectar.
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Goats
eyes like polished gemstones: bright emeralds fading blue whenever they catch beamed lights headon, in the weepy darkness - the stuff of nightmares! now as dull amber mirroring the heaven's sparks. wetted goats always shake their mule-headed annoyance and morosely stare at the roiling skies which made the rain their herder a hard task master even under the storm shelter.
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where we go when we sleep
asleep, your hands tremor, should dreams’ portent frighten this much? how do I shield you then from nightmares’ terror? equally vulnerable (if not more) or I’d have warded your dreams give you the illusions of heavens. I imagine genetic memory would be scary spectacle to shock a moue render it rock-mute. your hands tremor you sigh cry out! I imagine external stimuli reflect in dreams: a chilly draft snakes in via the gap beneath the platy door, another through the tapped fracture in the window glass together they curl your toes, they clog your nose, you breathe through their ice (or try to) there is no enchantment for the dreams a child must know, no protection from its share of nightmares; yet, no matter the horror a child would recount it all & afterwards sleeps its bones for nights are long and dawns are ghosts.