Poetry

EC/ECHO/Anouk Delafortrie photo

 

By

Ibrahim Ayobami Balogun

 

 

 

They Have Succeeded

 

 

They have succeeded,

1960 to this time,

they transform poverty

and make lives miserable,

squandering many hopes of tomorrow

in stinky kitchens, rotten cabinets

with no definite ideology.

They make delicious meals

cooked in the pot of confusion,

served in the plates of corruption

and make us stagger in the gutters

like the mad man in his own paradise

eating grasses of tribalism

and dead logic of religious fanaticism.

 

They have succeeded

in rumbling the educational system

with mysterious stories of unpaid salaries

and untold tales of ill bigotry

falling the intelligence of students

in the pit of endless criticisms

and dig their graves in their own ideologies.

 

They have succeeded in giving us names

making prostitution and gambling our aim,

terrorism and insurgency our game,

hatred and detest our noble names.

They make sacred pulpits on buried bodies

with endless thoughts of jilting the innocents

with no sacrifices for a better tomorrow.

If today is when we have to succeed

to bring trophies of hope for Nigeria,

then, we say;

‘We would not end Today

Until this tunnel begets a light.’

 

 

 

 

Foresight

 

 

I see tears fall, washing us away

To beseech lullaby from the kings.

I see children crying, soldiers dying

And mothers yet to be saved from drowning,

Tears flowing like erosion

Making turbulent knocks on the windows

Asking; who’s next to die, who’s next to cry?

Who’s next to the exit door of life?

 

I see deep anger eating away at father,

He works like an elephant, and feeds as an ant.

I see children starving, mothers watching,

There’s nothing else she could do.

I see sorrow in what the future holds;

The future is bleak, yet I see it,

No escape from the looming war

Of poverty, and deprivation

Cursed at birth, caused by man

 

It all walked from the sun to the dawn

Bleeding hurt to the core of the dusk,

Puffing smokes from ancients’ snuff

As walls were climbed to seek escape route.

No shackles to break but to doom

And all fears lost to anger, birds to giants

And diseases become glorious feasts

Of war, of dying and of living in penury

While the earth begins to stop turning.

 

I see hope nibbling away father’s anger

And a twinkle of joy in the future.

I see the constant struggle

Between the urge to help and the urge to ignore in man,

I see benevolence gradually waking.

I see a smile on the starved lips,

The future is bleak, yet I see it

A light of joy, and happiness.

 

I see cries drying on our lips,

I see mothers rejoicing, children singing,

I see the heavy storm depressing her wind.

I see the proud kings serving their servants,

Pushing the thorny sun to moving

And paving ways for heart’s wishes to pass.

I see us in light, singing joy to the world

In love, in peace, in harmony shall we restore

The bleak future walking lonely to the sun.

 

 

By Ibrahim Ayobami Balogun and Tinuade Quadri

 

 

 

 

 

We Are Lost

 

 

We’re falling off the pitch

Telling lately tales of dirge

Of the fouls committed by the rods

In a mistreated folly, beatified by law

In hurt, under sins in our undercovers

Where we lose all that we’ve got

From our hut to the boy that turned Lot.

 

In a black swath expanse

With blistering feet,

We run and scramble

And wandered to uncharted lands

Our fathers forbade us

From treading.

 

No home, no hope to surrender

In our land, we run beyonder

Leaving unpacked mysteries of our fathers

To dip a hole in the hearts of many daughters

And birth a race of no mean fathers.

 

We flounder in this lonesome land

And wonder where all these take us to.

And like limbless trunk on a windy sea,

We allow the tides tide us

To wherever they please,

Not minding if they set us aground.

 

Tears are replacing our dreams

Making us walk and fall like the drunk brother

Who lost his needle in the sea

While no wave could wave him any better

Except to those tidal waves of bitterness

Where he eats hard lines on the ground

On the ground where lifeful ghosts are born,

In a town where we all reside.

 

A mockingbird sang notes

That drew maps back to our fathers’ land

But we stand numb and dumb in akimbo

Just because we can’t decipher

How these notes make music of freedom.

 

 

By Ibrahim Ayobami Balogun and Bamigbola Silas

 

 

 

 

 

Ibrahim Ayobami Balogun

Ibrahim A. Balogun, popularly known as Evergreen, is a student of Sociology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He hailed from a very humble background in the town of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is a poet, a writer and a public speaker. 

 

Tinuade Quadri

Tinuade Quadri is a student of law in the University of Ibadan. She loves good books, and when not reading one, she daydreams of a better world.

 

Bamigbola Silas

Bamigbola Silas is a computer engineering student who loves to read and write. He’s the author of Lost Boys (a collection of poems). He believes in the power of words and how they can build worlds for men to find their abodes in. He lives and write in ogbomoso, Oyo state, Nigeria.