Over the years, my Love for Poem and Novel grew...so, I want to buy this acres of land for storing My Ever green Poems... Let me go hunting for them....
(Notice: This Land Is PRA - Poem Reserved Area... Poet Zone...Keep Off!).

Poem No1.

“Piano and Drums”

by Gabriel Okara


When at break of day at a riverside
I hear the jungle drums telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning
I see the panther ready to pounce
the leopard snarling about to leap
and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I’m
in my mother’s laps a suckling;
at once I’m walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged, fashioned with the naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano
solo speaking of complex ways in
tear-furrowed concerto;
of far away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,
crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth
of its complexities, it ends in the middle
of a phrase at a dagger point.

And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
of jungle drums and the concerto.

Poem No: 2 is short but it telefaxs memories of my home town to me....Shout out to all Ibadan!



"Ibadan"

By JP Clark


Running splash of rust
and gold-flung and scattered
among seven hills like broken
china in the sun.

Poem No 3. This one I read in SSS 1.

"Night Fall in Soweto"

By Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali



Nightfall comes like
a dreaded disease
seeping through the pores
of a healthy body
and ravaging it beyond repair.


A murderer’s hand,
lurking in the shadows,
clasping the dagger,
strikes down the helpless victim.


I am the victim.
I am slaughtered
every night in the streets.
I am cornered by the fear
gnawing at my timid heart;
in my helplessness I languish.


Man has ceased to be man
Man has become beast
Man has become prey.


I am the prey;
I am the quarry to be run down
by the marauding beast
let loose by cruel nightfall
from his cage of death.


Where is my refuge?
Where am I safe?
Not in my matchbox house
Where I barricade myself against nightfall.


I tremble at his crunching footsteps,
I quake at his deafening knock at the door.
“Open up!” he barks like a rabid dog
thirsty for my blood.


Nightfall! Nightfall!
You are my mortal enemy.
But why were you ever created?
Why can’t it be daytime?
Daytime forever more?

Poem No 4.

This My Lecturer said was about the civil war in Nigeria back then and also symbolizes the current state of the Nation.

Casualties

By JP Clark.


The casualties are not only those who are dead.
They are well out of it.
The casualties are not only those who are dead.
Though they await burial by installment.
The casualties are not only those who are lost
Persons or property, hard as it is
To grope for a touch that some
May not know is not there.
The casualties are not only those led away by night.


The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a haven.
No where as absolute as the grave.
The casualties are not only those who started
A fire and now cannot put out. Thousands
Are are burning that have no say in the matter.
The casualties are not only those who are escaping.
The shattered shall become prisoners in
A fortress of falling walls


The casualties are many, and a good member as well
Outside the scenes of ravage and wreck;
They are the emissaries of rift,
So smug in smoke-rooms they haunt abroad,
They do not see the funeral piles
At home eating up the forests.
They are wandering minstrels who, beating on
The drums of the human heart, draw the world
Into a dance with rites it does not know.


The drums overwhelm the guns…
Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges
When not in the niche others left,
We fall.
All casualties of the war.
Because we cannot hear each other speak.
Because eyes have ceased the face from the crowd.
Because whether we know or
Do not the extent of wrongs on all sides,
We are characters now other than before
The war began, the stay-at-home unsettled
By taxes and rumours, the looters for office
And wares, fearful everyday the owners may return.
We are all casualties,
All sagging as are
The cases celebrated for kwashiorkor.
The unforseen camp-follower of not just our war.

Poem No 5.
"The Fence"
By Lenrie Peters
There where the dim past and future mingle their nebulous hopes and aspirations there I lie.


There where truth and untruth struggle in endless and bloody combat, there I lie.

There where time moves forwards and backwards with not one moment’s pause for sighing, there I lie.

There where the body ages relentlessly and only the feeble mind can wander back there I lie in open-souled amazement

There where all the opposites arrive to plague the inner senses, but do not fuse, I hold my head; and then contrive to stop the constant motion. my head goes round and round, but I have not been drinking; I feel the buoyant waves; I stagger

It seems the world has changed her garment. but it is I who have not crossed the fence, So there I lie.

There where the need for good and “the doing good” conflict, there I lie.

Poem No 6 on my Ever-Green List is
"The Pauper"
by Richard Ntiru
Pauper, pauper, craning yours eyes in all directions, in no direction! What brutal force, malignant element dared to forge your piteous fate? Was it worth the effort, the time?

You limply lean on a leafless tree, nursing the jiggers that shrivel your bottom, like a baby newly born to an old woman. What crime, what treason did you commit, that you are thus condemned?

And when you trudge on your Hot pads, gullied like the soles of modern shoes, pads that even jiggers cannot conquer. Does He admire your sense of endurance or turn his head away from your impudent presence?

You sit alone on hairless goatskins, your ribs and bones reflecting the light that beautiful cars reflect on you, squashing lice between your nails and cleaning your nails with dry saliva.

And when He looks at the grimy coating caking off your emaciated skin, at the rust that uproots all your teeth, like a pick on a stony piece of land. Does He pat his paunch at the wonderful sight?

Pauper, pauper crouching in beautiful verandas of beautiful cities and beautiful people. Tourists and I will take you snapshots. And your MP with a shining head and triple chin will mourn your fate in a supplementary question at question time.

Poem No 7 is a poem i read in SSS3


"Africa"


By David Diop.



Africa, my Africa
Africa of proud warriors in ancestralsavannahs

Africa of whom my grandmother sings
On the banks of the distant river
I have never known you
But your blood flows in my veins
Your beautiful black blood that irrigates the fields
The blood of your sweat
The sweat of your work
The work of your slavery

Africa, tell me Africa
Is this you, this back that is bent
This back that breaks
Under the weight of humiliation
This back trembling with red scars
And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun
But a grave voice answers me
Impetuous child that tree, young and strong
That tree over there
Splendidly alone amidst white and faded flowers
That is your Africa springing up anew
Springing up patiently, obstinately
Whose fruit bit by bit acquires
The bitter taste of liberty.

Poem No 8...this one is for those - including who are curious about the future -

"The Panic of Growing Older"

By Lenrie Peters.


at twenty
stilled by hope
of gigantic success
time and exploration


at thirty
a sudden throb of pain
laboratory test
having nothing to show


legs cribbed
in domesticity allow
no sudden leaps
at the moon now.


Copybook bisected
with red ink
and failures–
nothing to show the world.


Three children the world perhaps
the world expects
it of you. No
specialist’s effort there.


But science give hope
of twice three score
and ten. hope
is not a grain of sand
inner satisfaction
dwindles sharp
blades of expectation.
From now on the world has you.

Poem No 9....This Poem was written by a poet whose papa was also a poet...

"Rediscovery"
By Kofi Awoonor

When our tears are dry on the shore And the fishermen carry their nets home And the sea gulls return to Bird Island And the laughter of the children recedes At night There shall still linger here the communion we Forged The feast of oneness which we partook of

There shall still be the eternal gate-men Who will close the cemetery door And send the late mourners away It cannot be music we heard that night That still lingers in the chambers ofmemory It is the new chorus of our forgottencomrades And the halleluyahs of our second selves.