I think I heard the sound of a halting fleet
I think the breeze has blown around my wrinkled brow
The aura of my child
Go look above the hanging hills
Search the valleys and comb the wood
Is there any glance of my child coming?
Aha... There he comes
When the hawk cried before the dawn
And the swallows whistled long into dusk
I knew my child will come
Its been a year since you left
I've prayed daily that life bring you back in peace
See my walls have risen
The harvest bumper
And my barns are full
I have kept a moon for you
Welcome home!
I heard you cross the Niger
To the banks of Benue
I heard you dared the storms
And brave the flames
You basked in the heat of Makurdi’s sun
And danced in the rain of Wurukum
The kembes of Wannune can't stop you
You've even learnt how to survive the daggers of herdsmen
There is nothing that can stop you now
Welcome home my child
Come and sit before this hearth
Where your aching feet is warm
Share with me the kola nut of life
It will make you understand wisdom in this world
Some things will never change
Like the strips on the zebra skin
Some tears will never dry
Like those rivers running into the sea
Some people never dies
Like the golden names on the history slates
Some prayers are never answered
Like those of the royal roses grassing the desert plans
Life has limit within its stretches
It won't always tilt the good way
Love life's unfolding with thanks
And accept people for who they are
The past is gone
Tomorrow is always unknown
So live now
Live today
Life may turn its cruel sides
Fence of confidence sometimes fall
Empires crash when dreams seems twisted
Those times you want to scream
You want to spit out all your sadness
Weeping is allowed at times
After all, tears is that part of us
That steadies the sail of our souls in the storm
Yet tears don't heal every wound
They only glitter the shores of pains
Life is cruel to some and fair to none
It seldom gives reasons to smile
When the going gets tough
And it seems hardest to smile
Always remember this
Storms by nature don't last
So do every pain and worry
Hold your peace my child
That darkness too will pass
You don't know where this life will take you
Maybe far from this rotten mat
To those ivory lands behind mighty mountains
Beyond the vast and boarderless sea
Wherever you are
However far you may go from here
Never forget the wisdom of your root
Those who run blindly after the world
Run quickly out of the world
Don't drink from the cup of ambition to the dreg
Don't haunt too much for power and beauty
There is neither peace nor end to that road
Some will underestimate you
Avoid them
Some will exaggerate you
Ignore them
If the blood be red and the hands be clean
There will be no mountains on your path
That will be too high to climb
Rise my child
From the feet of my fathers
Travel into your destiny
Chose your fate and captain your soul
With love in your heart
Wisdom in your head
And honesty on your hands
You may wonder where this life's wandering is taking you
But always remember
Good things will come to you too
Never forget your humble origin
The child of who you are
© Olatuja Oloyede
Of all things I know so tempting
Love is the greatest
A treasure so confused
A gift so misleading
A haven pregnant with hell
It beckons and burns
Yet we call it blessing
Of all feelings so unknown
Love is the darkest
It fills the soul with excitement this moment
It's gone like a free bird the next
With fountains of bitter tears behind
Yet we fancy it sweet
Is love not that feeling only a god can feel
Those who drink this liquor from the cup of angels
Are usually drunk, then mad and finally lost
This is that whirlwind of experience
That changes the life of the youth
And the course of humanity forever
It's a wavering truth
It's the subtle lie
It is everything you think
It is nothing to me
© Olatuja Oloyede
I can hear the beckoning calls of the river waves....
I'm coming to embrace your silence.... Tell your emissaries not to herald my presence with rumblings....I am me.... My grudge is against the naked moon.... Nothing.... Noting..NOTHING...
*
One more dark night
And it will be over
Only one foggy hour
And it will be forgotten
Sitting alone behind my closed door
A bottle of poison beckon from the rack
As I remember how we were as lovers
You are now married to the rich thief
I know we are done and you are gone
I still loved all the happy moments we shared
It was the best of my simple life
I'm mad at you and at myself
Because I can't stop loving you
My heart has stumbled on the subject of suicide
Pondered in its darkness briefly
But as I near that ecstasy of death
I crave for life once again
I must stay and fight for my place in destiny
Only cowards run to hide behind shallow graves
My heavy heart will never stop asking
If this is how people just walk away
© Olatuja Oloyede
We're hurting
We're mourning
This won't stop soon
Bleeding without healing
Weeping without stopping
Once a beloved one is taken
The heart remains forever broken
© Olatuja Oloyede
SUNDAY AWODI REST IN PEACE
In the quietness of the hour
When the birds of dawn slumbered
In the stillness of the night
When the world was in darkness
Death came again
Unnoticed, unwelcome and unknown
With his ancient axe of cruelty
Ready to vanquish and conquer
Everywhere he goes
He lives a message of sorrow behind
All that accompanies him never returns
Sometimes a young tender child
Another time a bright blossoming youth
This time, my dear friend is your victim
He was a dreamer boy
He is too needed to be gone
O death! When will you see the evil you've done
The hot tears your injustice has done
The broken hearts of the bereaved will never mend
Even if they get used to this tragedy
They will never forget nor forgive how you shattered them
A brilliant soul is gone
Forever from this cruel world
REST IN PEACE
That may be the last I will say to you
But not the last I will say of you
© Olatuja Oloyede
LOVE OR MADNESS
For her he made a raiment of gold
But walks the street on fading rags
He built her a mansion of diamond
But pillows his head on ghetto's stench
He gave her an orchard of wine
But hungers around a dirty brook
All his life he slaves for her
But turns his back on others who really cares
I've heard and seen these things
May be it is love
May be it is madness
I cannot even tell
© Olatuja Oloyede
*(if you know, tell me)*
Pride! lust!!! jealousy!!!
Tears! pains!! chains!!!
Evil! darkness!! death!!!
Silence! hell!! heaven!!!
War is coming!
Tell the lion king
That rules the forest jungled in fears
That war is coming!
Tell the giant eagle
The god of other birds
That reigns supreme above the storms
That war is coming!
Brothers sharpen your spears
Mothers prepare your tears
Don't be caught unawares
War is coming!
Soon blood will splatter the hills
Darkness will cover the sea
Silence will sink the world
War is coming!
Get ready to fight
Those who run will die
The beasts in us will haunt us down
Until we’ve paid for all our vanities
War is coming!
© Olatuja Oloyede
HER FIRST DAY AS A GHOST (AKUDAAYA)
As the day grew brighter beyond the horizon
The hut boiled with shrieks from broken men
Papa sat on a low stool
Head bowed in deep sorrow
Mama sat on the ground crying
She stood in the centre
Why are they calling her name in whispers?
“Anjorin do not leave us
She thought this weird and stupid
How can she be gone
When she stood right in front of them
How can they all be blinded with tears
Pretending not to see her
She touched mama
Wanting to say cry no more
But her hands floated through her
With ease of something swinging in the wind
She drew back with her brow furrowed
A shock ran through her
Then she saw her body laid on a mat
Motionless and lifeless
Is she dead?
A strong wind flooded the room
Pulling her out through the walls and then the roof
She wanted to hold on in that room a while
But the force acting upon her is greater
Helplessly she drifted towards the spirit realm
What she didn't know yet is that
She's too young to enter through the gates of the dead
So she will lurk the woods and wander the shores at noons
Until the time is right for her to truly die
She had believed ghosts to be a myth and nothing more
But now she has not only seen it
She had become one forever
© Olatuja Oloyede
Akudaya is a spirit that roams the world because they died a cruel and untimely death according to the Yorubas. This poem draws on that inspiration
He sat on a fallen trunk among his fellow inmates
Not minding the termites that burrowed beneath his short
Nor the sun that drummed on his naked skull
Tattered and dirty
His mind was far away
Wandering through the ruins of his past
The ignorance of his childhood
The struggles of his growing years
How on that sad day
He stood in the cubicle
In front of a defiled jury
He remembered the sympathetic silence
That engulfed the room when the judge pronounced
“life imprisonment with hard labour”
He knows, the judge knows
And everybody knows
That he didn't kill the girl
The son of the rich man did
He knows and everybody knows
That for twenty years
He had suffered for another man's sin
But who is a poor defeated fellow
In the presence of the Highs and Mighties
He wiped the tears in his eyes
With the back of his wrinkled hands
Took his hoe and got back to work
He knows and everybody knows
That this is injustice
And it is sad that no one is talking about it
© Olatuja Oloyede
Because the Baby was a Girl
She stopped frequenting the stream of her youth
On market days
Her space was vacant among women
At noon, she took cover from hot sun
An imbecile spirit might be lurking the street
Her protruding belly is her burden to bear alone
Alani, her husband
Kept boasting to his drunk friends
“My son is on his way into this world”
One night the sky roared with rain
She laid on a mat
Gasping between life and death
Blood flooded, tears flowed
Anguishing pain pounded her
Then with one fainting sigh
A healthy child was born
No one touched the little thing
Disappointment shone on all expecting faces
When Alani asked what sex it was
"A girl again" came the answer
He hurried out of the room angry and brokenhearted
Exhausted, she pulled her untended baby closer
Both unwashed in maternity blood
Whispered without any strength
"Live my child, live well"
Dropping her baby in silence
She pull back her head towards the mat
And breathed her last
© Olatuja Oloyede
That morning when the shriek cry of mama
Pierced the peace of a weird dawn
Asueke stood by my bed
Shaking my legs with feverish hands
Beckoning me to rise
Her face furrowed in agony
In some meaningless whispers
She mentioned your name and said nothing more
But I knew whatever she has to say
Her silence is nothing good
So I lobbied my way to your hut
A crowd flared with tears gathered at papa's yard
What news had awoken the land
To sit here on their mat of dirge
Some with both hands balanced on opened mouths
Some heads bowed in defeated sorrow
But in the center of your room
You lie on your termite bed without head
Your skin still glowed in its youth
Even though you are dismembered
Your soul is hurried from us
To lurk restlessly yonder
They say they picked you along Buamba's path
The path beyond the stream leading to the groove
Your head was found also in a bag hidden among bamboo clusters
The evil maniacs had placed their cursed hands
Upon your head flourishing with dreams
© Olatuja Oloyede
Find part 3
They will never know
The ruin their wicked hands had done
On the destiny of this world
For every young soul that depart this world
Through the tragic exist into the transcendental glades
A part of the future dies unredeemed forever
Dunga!
The son of Atandi
You are that little bird
That will never learn how to fly
You are that little lion
That will never know how to roar
You are the lightening
That came unnoticed
Without thunders nor storms
You are warrior whose blade of valour was taken
Dunga like Dube, like Fosun,
Like the thousands of millions
Who all died in their prime
Is a victim of the gods of power
Those drunk from the gouge of wealth and plenty
Overflowing with the blood oozing from innocent skulls
Those overfed with the flesh of the oppressed
Who stole ballots to sit behind secured walls of lies
You are a victim and so are we
We did not start this war we are fighting
Dunga
I stand before you grave to remind you
Your father placed a knife in your coffin
And your mother a passel of gun powder
They said before you turn your back on them forever
And reunite with the world where you are bound
Fight everyone who had a hand in your death
Haunt them to make their world a hell
In their castles of peace
Break their bones
In their bars of wine
Burn their barns
Burry their homes in anger
Forever!!!
© Olatuja Oloyede
Find Part 4
Dunga! Dunga! Dunga!
How many times did I call you?
Do not wait
Until your bones become flakes of dust in its grave
Do not wait
Until your voice fades from our heart
Soon across the hills of years
You will be only a mystery living in our hearts
They said you'd sailed the great river
Never to return to the land of your birth
But your prints are still unwashed on the shore
Do not forgive the hungry hands that murdered you
Those cold hands of death that brought your dreams an abrupt end
Yes man is a frail being
But too many good people have died
And here we are in a world
Sinking into a furlong darkness
An eternal darkness of evil
We can't control the descent of death
We dread the hell that is to come
Nothing can redeem us that is within us
When will the dead avenge their death
When will peace be restored to this desperate world
O Dunga!
Do not sleep
© Olatuja Oloyede
I stand here by your grave without tears
Though my heavy heart is a shattered debris
I have no flowers to place over your eternal bed
No will to sing those songs that died when you died
I am here only to remind you
Dunga! Dunga!! Dunga!!!
Son of Atandi
Thrice I call you
Turn awhile from your dance of immortality
Stare at humanity from your cloudy palace
Do not roam the parches of the elusive realm
You don't belong there
Your mother sits by her hearth every morning
Old, broken and childless
Her sagging head bowed in defeat
Atandi, your father longs to be with his father too
For no man has suffered a greater woe
Than a man who knows the grave of his children
So join not in the frenzy dance of the dead
Do not sing in the solemn assembly of the ghost yet
Come back to the tears of your parents
Of your friends and loved ones
Bring justice to the pains of our troubles
Avenge your death
O Dunga!
Son of Atandi
© find part two
A SPHERICAL GLOBE
Transient they say it is
the dealings of life
Its beauty extends throughout the globe,
The stump stands firm to the ground
Stumhpy it is, life’s challenges.
It is rooted deep in the hearts of all
Difficult to up-root
Giant ships cruises atop the flexible waters
What a transcendent act
Life exalt even though some don’t deserve to be
but can we challenge its supremacy?
Since we are all passer-by.
© Olujekun
