Poetry

By

Kareem Awwal

ACCOUNT OF AN EX-MAN

In my little room, six feet wide and high
The mosquitoes sing of a hungry baby
Ready to devour any milk pump
I couldnt resist it, the rattish angle
Like a dead rat, forming the food of the perfect friend: housefly

The agony of the inmates
Left me a flashback of the freed world
Where you could sleep and go two eyes closed
There I was, till a tap of an inmate
Geared me back to life
Jargons was the language, I understand not

Do I need be here, let us see, trying to think
Faster was my train back back to reality
When the smoke of the ‘golden’ stick
Found a way down my nose
I wouldnt breathe was my my aim,
certainly not possible

No foe, no enemy
Anthem of the inmate
Equal task, no leader jingoism
By these, inmate fights not
Bit by bit, one by one
Everyone bade, to meet outside freeworld

Such was the account of an ex-inmate
Here he stands to preach oneness
Should jingoism we abolish
The better we approach
No foe, no enemy our watch word?
The better we touch

If these we do will best us,
If these the tails want
If these the heads refuse
Let all become an ex-inmate
Let all taste the bitter-honey
The ex-man accounts rings

IN THE FACE OF CORRUPTION

In my streams of thought I bathe
It, I couldn’t leave
Like a hunter glimpsing the tail of a squirrel yet upshot
Until it took me over like a duck
Swimming the cold river in the dusk
My words of tomorrow
Ring my ears today
what will remain of us
When already eaten by elders
Elders of low thinking
And high sweet tastes
Mindlessly making money

Awake. !  Awake !! Awake
Slumbering age
Awake playful minds
Our future stolen
One voice let chant
In our one voice lies power
Criticism let abandon
Tribalism in one sword let kill
Trigger of love let pull
In one tone, the shout of ‘protest’
Let stage

The boat of our nation
In the Bermuda triangle it sails
The glory of ‘giant’ of Africa
Wallows in the mud of fall
Her songs of praise
Fading in the atmosphere of Lost
Like hydrogen sulphide
Maybe, there was once a country
The story the unborn will be fed
Giant of Africa, sinking in the porous of time

Kareem Awwal

Kareem Awwal (ibn mudeer) is a native of Kwara state, a north central state of Nigeria. The passion of writing poems came when he was a secondary school student, his porms featuring in the school press club. He is a debator with many feats to be proud of ,,, currently studying at Osmania University in the city of Hyderabad, India.
His work has been reviewed in blogs mostly NIBSTEARS.BLOGSPOT.COM is his favourite spot. He is currently compiling his anthology and also awaiting publishers.