Reflection
Such thoughts
maul through
this mind
of mine
as cloistered as a nun
one ––
by ––
one ––
by ––
falling down as dominoes
kicked over in the dark
Ideas, theories, questions,
critiques
dam up like logs my upper pool
draining old instruction
onto the surrounding ground
to wait in scattered queues
for re-entry
A poem for Youth Day — June 16th.
Stirrings in June
There, hung black and white
on that photo wall,
In the frosty air of museum halls,
Young Hector
is carried away from harm.
Like his sister, Antoinette,
I run
not from
Youth Day police rounds
with the hissing stench
of tear gas
reaching close behind,
but to
a horizon of revolt
where conformity
can be as harmful
as oppression education
taught from the blackboard.
I want to scream against establishment
as loud as those children on Soweto streets.
But, if not with my voice,
then with
my pen
sketching riots, barricades and protests
in the form of defiant prose.
Hoping, like that Generation of ‘76,
that a brighter dawn will rise
upon this midnight society of mine.
Flowers of Chibok
There, you had resided in a space
that shielded you from the chaos outside.
As you walked the halls of that mental garden
the desk was your soil,
the book and pen your well-spring.
Caring hands cultivated your being,
grew you in maturity and knowledge
from seeds, to saplings to young flowers,
our flowers,
meant one day to pollinate the continent
with your wisdom.
But now we look in anguish
at your garden burned to ashes.
We decry how religious insanity
snatched you from your roots,
now holds your tired, withered
stem in its clutches.
From Chibok to Lagos,
New York to London,
we search for you and demand your release.
Like farmers with stolen crops we hunt for your thieves,
while setting aside a homecoming patch
where the desk, the book and the pen
can help you grow again.
#BringBackOurGirls
I will be on leave all next week so this will be my last post until Christmas. The poem I leave you with is one I read at my school’s cultural evening (talent show for American readers) and one I promised myself to share on this blog as soon as I finished high school:
Parting words to Passing youth
Farewell I say
to the end of days
to blissful innocence
and rebellious adolescence.
For we are butterflies
and our soft cocoon
has opened us to the world.
Where the wind will pull us,
birds will try and consume us
and until we mature,
a resting place will forever elude us.
I still recall with some sad irony
how the school and the home
reigned like monarchs,
and reminisce with passive longing
how parties seemed to never cease,
love brought shots of joy and pain
and long weekends were like paradise.
How like fools we tested and experimented
with that loosening domestic lead
like amateur scientists with Uranium
and how we who knew so little
thought we knew so much.
Those were the days when the future
was but a line on the horizon
and family, career and degree
was on a bucket list for a later time.
For we lived for today.
We were bold.
We were alive.
We were – young.
And only the law,
parental lectures
and careful doses of reality
kept us mortal,
kept us sane.
From across that threshold to adulthood
were I came of age,
I stare back, perhaps wondering,
if that concluded stage
will let me be in its six act play once more.
But it has ended.
The ovation, the applause, the last hurrah
has happened
and the curtains have closed.
All I can do is turn around,
spread my wings,
and fly.
With sweet memories of yesterday,
hanging by my side.
Always in November
November should be the child’s month,
as much as June or July.
—
In those fraternal twin summer months
the joy of summer vacation
has often worn off to be replaced
in late July by high temperature
boredom and monotony.
—
In November, Fall’s blood and gold child,
the mind and body are trained as one
in the classroom, Football field
and soccer pitch.
—
These equal involvements, sport and school,
are features near December; always in November.
There, too, is the seasonal sensation I’ll personally
claim to be the same as diving into the community
swimming pool or blue and ochre ocean:
squealingly bombarding a poor leaf pile.
—
In the company of brotherly buddies
we would leap in, dust hang-ons
from our smokey wool jackets,
reform the pile and leap in again.
Here is an attempt at prose poetry:
The Millennial trial
One late spring day a debate raged: ‘‘Is this a stolen generation?’’
The lecturer, a baby-boomer expat, both warned and proclaimed,
‘‘Technology and Mass Society has corrupted, abducted your minds;
bred an ignorant, child-like hopelessness, an entitled will of nothingness –
this ignorance will only breed your decline and eventual destruction…’’
But I failed to listen. Within the headphones of my Samsung smart phone,
rappers, pop stars and indie rockers attacked existential questions,
social sins and life’s subtle meanings In loud-voiced lyrical diatribes.
Commentary of the observer
What left is there to say?
When profit has more value than life
When religion is a machine gun that mows down the dove
When young girls sell their virgin bodies
When information is shackled to those in authority
the media a fly in the web of the state
When mature becomes a commercial commodity
When children fight mature battles
and education becomes careful indoctrination —
What rationale’s worth explaining
that one changing action
a thousand times can’t say?
