Once a foetus when I began the venture
And sloughed from the cove of the womb
Now closer the monstrous possessions
I built of life on the foundation of a tomb;
Thus, wherein no dust, no flesh beside.
‘Tis a drab and dull existence
Grey and brown, the sky and earth
A clime, an ambience right for the sojourn
But routine tasks, to eat, sleep and work.
Planting and reaping, we wore out
Before the land or the land before us.
Hence we give way or a way is given to us.
‘Tis I crave to be what i have been not;
And to have all that i have had not;
Ambitions and longings all clothed me,
I strove, but time takes precedence
As fate takes her turn upon my scheme
And circadian Sculptor works my figure.
It’s a small world, I heard them say
But at least, lengthy enough to rove
And wide to play china man’s ping-pong.
And true by Smokie’s proposition:
Though the world is overcrowded,
You still found an empty place.
All through this circuitous life, I fare,
Either I am leaving people and things
I come across or they are leaving me;
As time, fate, God, my actions demand.
Nothing I own and nothing own me
Except to pay the price of time
More the span, more the price to pay.
For all Being bequeathed a portion
Of life’s incubi as well as of life’s jollity,
For then are both intermeshes within the mind
To settle with those who accommodate them.
‘Tis the fear of incubus and need of jollity
Our life’s bother for minds concerned with them.
The world, us she owes nothing but
Her we owe all, her possessions encompassed
And she demands forfeiture, her bottom bared
To swallow up all her debtors.
Comforts and pleasures fled the flesh
Which we have nourished and fattened for the soil;
Is manure for grains, fertilizer for greens
To nourish and fatten yet their sons.
She is the mother, wife and daughter of men
Spewed from her womb to swallow them again.
The earth allied not with her neighbours,
Alone the unlimited space wanders on,
Yet to build a nest but to tramp the sphere,
As an outcast in ageless time to wander on.
So with her, I wander through the labyrinth of life.
Unlike them, they that sit like the poles
Abuse the hoboes and dislike the traverser
And build for the muckish flesh foundations
So that they cannot budge from the land;
The wandering earth too has infest
With a fleeting life as the weary wanderer.
They who possess tire out and lose more in keeping.
As a homeowner never have I felt at home
But closer home as squatter and settler.
The crop man crops his way through life,
The dry cleaner cannot subdue the muck;
The well-heeled can’t afford inner balm with yen.
I need no fortune or fame nor power
For they like lime soot gathered in the wind
And meshed with the clay of the flesh
Makes the heart heavy and stick with the globe
Cannot transcend the sphere’s limitations.
I seek not a weighty but soothing heart,
And forgo to hear the distant willow song
And reminiscences of the howling pine.
Once a man of good standing, well ‘heeled.
Goods of sorts and plots like Sahara I got
Heaps and bundles, piles upon mounds
Of all necessities and apparatus,
Strings and outlets of a beehive
The routes and channels of sub-Saharan trades
Sprawled everywhere; I a trade mogul.
I built myself an edifice like a pagoda
Loomed from the sky over sprawling trench huts
Swarmed about as of winnowed chaff.
I have carved a niche and engraved a name
On rottenstone before the windward way.
I knew all I own, but myself, I know not.
Myself, shall I lost at one time
And all my acquirements at another time,
Whichsoever shall be the first to
They both must cease and be gone to scheol!
Alas, I fear for my life and all I own;
Intermittent angst about the world, life,
Of growing old and what becomes of me!
But why, even as through the years I struggled
Earning “moolah” to live life,
Now realize life has not the worth of diamond
For even tramps and wastrels earn it abundantly.
I esteem life so much as fishes their worms
But more estimable for me to traverse through
That it cloys me not, to traverse its travails.
Even as worms serve the belly of the fish,
Think not the fish it serves the belly of another?
Enough of life had I, enough a wastrel
Now shall wander by feet as by heart roam.
The past is fraught with ignorance, yet now,
I am saddled with pain and vexations and
My expectations look to future improbabilities.
Of life, I shall ease myself of her bond neither
Let her cloy to me, but fly my affectations away.
I shall burden no more the future;
Why? It’s yet an abstraction. I contrive no agenda,
Except now, I do and walk my work.
I ease myself off all worries
And drift where I may such as liberal
As wind and unheeding to the obstruction
Whereof the fate of the wind lies.
With the same velocity on toward the hurdle
And whether it shall scale through or not
It is of no concern to the wind.
In this wise, once I burdened the future.
Of what will be is the mundane-minded query
Always to guard against the future
Is as to the cloud preventing away from sight.
Thus I scrimp and stake all that I earn
As savings for futurity yet behind the cloud
Haba…again and again lost it all in a duel
With forces of circumstance ascribe not to!
Love is an elusive finch that flutters
And made me both foolish and wise.
The elixirs of love are the very banes,
Anxiety, longing, heartbreak…name me!
So lovesick for love I lost compos mentis.
It is all a delusion I bargain with my heart
I pursue her no more, let her seek for me
If she loves and I shall test her genuineness
With life-span patience while I wander still
Till I return we shall unite yonder the horizon.
The mind alone the power of love can feel
And her essence can tell in absence of her.
Let it be so, I shall not be enamoured
While she craves for my presence
My wistful heart is not for her I see
I do without her and keep the beat on
I sold her my heart even in the absence
And now she is gone to have a soma.
Farewell, dear to blow air to the wind.
Why tug scudding cloud and cling a shadow?
I will let go of all I love and heave the burden
Not on my shoulder but the ease of my heart.
From the piles of corporeal stocks abscond,
I tire of them because they content me not
From years searching for gold and Myadestes afield…
But from within the recess of my heart, I find
An amber gilded gem concealed in the depth.
I never was a good mixer having to know first myself
For men someday shall walk the solitary path
While also to sing the soloist song;
Friends are strangers for they shall depart
And strangers are friends for they shall arrive.
I will guard not against rules, but my conscience
And never shall exult in the esteem of men
For we all are brothers and sisters and friends,
Offspring of the muck whose bosom we embrace.
I live my life like a passing wind
Gently surfing through all the matters of life
Engendered and crafted by the hands of humans;
I view all things and weigh their values.
They, as of a running stream on beds of rocks
The waters never lie still or become absorbed
So that water and rock cannot conjoin
So is my life with the materials of the earth.
Are mine to find acquaintance….
When the heavens mourn, plants flourish,
When heaven is at its brightest moment
The plants of the earth shrivel in misery?
Yet they complement a cultivatable life.
I shall adapt to the intrigue and go my way.
I am brimmed full of her…life, life, life…!
Her great bowel is fraught with stale noise,
And she breaks wind into the atmosphere!
I am disgusted and will wander off
Wherever I shall have the balm of silence.
Silence is the overall answer to the
Nagging conundrums of the world.
I have had enough of the din and roar, now
I seek wisdom in the quietude of nature.
In a million of roar and hullabaloo of life
I find not a lesson to take to heart
But in a single word from silence
I have acquired a million lessons!
I will live in the prudence of silence and
Quiet my name, my pride, my ambitions.
Lo, the silence of God and the silence
Of nature makes me uncomfortable
To see my vain humanity and cravings
But in that shall i seek safety and solace!
Much has been the noise about love and
Peace yet to find. I shall deny myself goods
And seek peace from the alcove of my heart!
What is more to life, to eat, to breathe,
To be honoured or to acquire goods?
I tire of this humdrum existence.
It is one mind from bad to good,
It is one spirit from Jainism to Islam,
It is one flesh from poverty to wealth,
Only the result from the aura tells.
Hear, both tears and laughter have
Complement my health.
A man in a cell is being restrained by law
And same a man on the open street is being
Restrained by custom and constitution.
A man who knew was once not in existence
And cry to have come forth from the womb
Why weep again who is to be gone to oblivion?
Before I tramp the cause of my course,
A family indeed we were, I and Kole
But I am short of years from the other.
Only by words, we keep the memory of
A deceased mother like morning dew
Sought for by the gloaming. We knew
Only a father whose right-hand does
The masculine labour and his left hand
Undertook the feminine chore
And grew us up as tendril to maturity.
Nothing moves the heart as do feelings,
The impression creates a moving mountain.
But with one mind accept I all that be
And live a life devoid of melodrama.
Behind laughter abide the trail of tears
And in my tears was laughter’s bare face.
Work, leisure, sickness, health, joy, sadness
Nothing so transporting or so flummoxing
As to heave my heart off the balance of life.
Like an ass, it does not sigh over its burdens
And the camel does not complain of thirst
Through the drought of the desert.
By Fate’s design, we lost Kole who had
Found natural escapism from life in death
Whereof the dead cannot forgo to return.
I left with a father I pampered and cared for
Always after his heels and by his lounge
And all lips hailed the good son of a father.
Time takes precedence to test all values
And fate takes no cognizance of kinship.
Every cord has been broken by birth.
Day by day is the wake of another day
And again it would go back to slumber.
Harmattan made the land to be bard,
It would smile while the sun is out but
Only to become moody with drops.
Playing, gaming, travelling, interaction,
Have excused the drabness of existence.
Below the earth is the hue of brown
And above the sky is the hue of grey.
I have left my father and home into
The city to make a fortune and a name
For they all have queried a son cannot
Always be a honeybunch to a father
But must seek to be a sovereign man.
Now I traverse through the fleeting land
All my goods and affiliates lay aside.
Being an heir, I am no heir to fleeting goods.
Why throw away the bad grains
And then store up the chaff?
I will walk through the sands of time until
I halt in my course to become sand.
A father I commit to the hands of nature
And goodwill of kinsmen and friends.
I chart a course from streets down the woods
And vanished then in her shadow.
I scaled the valley through wild growths
Aided by climbers up the hill to find
Rare manners of vegetation where
The beauty of nature manifest itself
As though by a wand overnight they spring
To spice the glory of morning ambience.
I never have jealous humans like this.
I watched closely as they sprout in dew
And before the wind of the evenfall
They lay to rest quietly as they came
As if there is no need to tarry in life
With all of her allurement and affinity.
I was back to the streets a poor hobo
Once at the head of a bounteous table
To roam and live on nature and alms
And denied of all things men have clung to.
The years carved my figure from aesthetic
To obscurity while I gain inner strength.
Here is the vanity of all human cravings,
Now I find tranquillity from all bother
To find contentment comes from the depth
Of the heart. It is the poor knows not
The inner wrangling, swellings, fears
Worries and expectations of the rich,
Thus they languish at their lot, for no sake.
Yet I am neither rich nor poor;
Riches and poverty are a thing of the mind
For the content with what life can afford.
Even now, the whirlwind of time
Have swept memories of common faces.
In the dearth of all necessities, I cast care aside,
Resigned of all lofty thoughts. My heart
Adrift as of balloon in the limitless sky
And sailing like sampan in the pacific,
A wanderer I traverse the course of life.
Years were dead and revived with
The cyclic motion of heavenly body but not
The fate of humans. I embed a mimetic trait
Of heavenly body to return where I cradle
And as if coincidence has a mindset, there
Was the news father has just lain to rest.
But I just begin my course and why say
Farewell to the dead as though I shall not
Traverse the path they go, just after.
And at the threshold, furrowed foreheads,
Sahara hairs and dimmed eyes stared at
The awful sight as sad sonorous voices
Greeted the estranged figure back home.
But then I relish the silence the dead enjoy
While yet I subsist through this fleeting
Circadian ambience. I hold so dear a dust
Being the substance of all forms and has
A depth value than gold; for I seek not
A home for the flesh but the spirit.
And now I know not why they weep.
The women sprawled on the red earth
And chimed dirge. The men choked
With drooled heads like fern gently tossed
Sideways by a gentle wind.
Tears charged with tears compound tears
To drown serenity and reflection of vain life.
I mourn for the unusual, not over your death.
Behind those mournful physiognomies are
Sheer mockery of the tranquil salve of sleep.
Who shall tell this death does not hurt
The dead but a panacea to life’s disquiet.
I excuse the mourners to the chamber
Where the dead lay in state embalmed.
A father that has grown grey with time
And now has transcended life’s frivolity.
I take off the times of his worries, sicknesses,
Struggles, mad moments, sleep and expectations;
And I take off the time of the innocence
Of his childhood and the time of
The somberness of old age…life’s not worth it!
But here is what I observe, his face
Neither contorts with pain nor having
The furrows of life and not either with laxity
As of a smile or laughter but with an
Expression of indifference and by his stillness
On a straw bed, I felt a delusion of his personality
And cares about the needs of the period of his life.
With a distance now I see a father dead
Just as I would see a hobo dead on the street;
It’s the same life and the same fate.
But let hearts make hollow beds and
Let tear drop fill them to a rush; if you shall
Pity the dead, what plight is the living?
I go my way and content me with sips of wine
Not with them that down it to the lee.
Eyes followed me about and head waggle
As I alone ruminate by heart and foot
Neither consoling nor weeping for a father
That has at last found ease for himself.
I had nothing to give and no one affords me
Something and I exchanges a glance or nod
For a pitying look or remark about the dead.
I stroll the yard to pick fruits for my stomach;
Life goes on and is moderate and considerate
As long as there are births and likewise deaths.
If humans do not grow old and die, they shall
Kill themselves young fighting for space.
At first, were some mumblings
Flown amiss by the air and then I observe
Heads beginning to cloister and one day,
Away on a psychic excursion, a voice whiffed
“You are the only surviving son of your father
But you have lost your heart and your goods
And you have become a stranger who cannot
Weep for the dead or show concern for them
Who weeps for we cannot have sons as such.”
The last he said was to say to die is evil which
No one should be welcomed as life is concerned.
And I said I know he shall not wish to wake
From his sleep. And then I go my way.
But then it is affirmed I have lost my place
As a worthy son of the soil and what’s more
Shall take responsibility alone for the dead
While they all one after another left the scene.
Fly you winds, out of my way; Hold your peace
Time, that my beard is not tainted…Impossible!
I shall subdue what is inevitable by embrace.
Once, shortly before this sojourn, with gifts
Acquaintances and relatives converged
And being unwitting make me a birthday fanfare
At home and were dismayed by my mood
For they accosted a weeping celebrant
Who has had a year, in addition, they claim.
Every revolving of the earth by harvest time
Is that day I laid to cradle, I sober and weep
For a year more is deducted from my span
And brings me closer to limbo!
A birthday is not an addition of years from
The womb but the subtraction of year to the tomb!
We have no consciousness at the time
We were born and of our time of death too
We have no acquaintance.
At the beginning is my end; everything
Has come to being in other to be extinct.
All expectation is in retrospection
Nothing is old, nothing is new,
Except the mind is captivated and swayed!
Complexity is composed of strings of simplicity,
Except we have taken simple things for granted
Which have become complicated things to us?
A while of time, I was roused by a tumult
Just outside the door of the hut, I lay supine.
A gang of disturbers have all merged
And raised dust in the air into a whirlwind
From a backdrop whispering now it is bruited
That I am responsible for the death of father
And what’s more, sanity has eluded me.
The moon of all her mildness and innocence
Have plagued the jealous sea to a wild row.
I laugh, but the surge has extended its bound
And I will have to fly in a ship from the land!
In this life my brother, there are among, two
Paramount destinations you make. The first,
That which you make to meet your love, family,
Kinsmen or any people affiliated with you
From where the root of your life spring.
The second, that which you make alone,
Without anyone to meet and never returns.
Now I have become a stranger to life
With nothing to cling to, goods and kinship.
I do not owe the world anymore and she
Has nothing to pay me for having to live.
I pay my regard to mankind and traverse
All alone the fleeting course of life
Looking towards lull beyond her allures…!
Come out of your inward complacency man!
Tell me; are you a stranger to the ways of life?
Where everyone strives to find accommodation
And savor, here you discard and traverse?
Ok. As a child would rest with innocence
On the bosom of the nanny so in this wise
I rest my case with time and fate!
