₦airaland Forum

(Weeping Songs 2)

So Easy in Lagos

It is so easy to be wild
And equally tough to be sane
Since darkness trails our in and out
In daily pursuit of bread
Through perfumes of blazing metals
Lost labour and paid inertia

Our street winds through to a Way
And forces us to scuttle across it in darkness
Just then, the scream of destination callers
Puncture our hard-earned peace
Acquired through sweaty sleep
And flashes of power
All in the name of living

Soon enough
A gospel monger begins on ‘Rapture’
Yes! We all agree
Even to ‘his’ melody which enchants the train
And fairly sooths the pains of doubted days
But an offertory tray passed around
Using a farmer’s very words – ‘sow a seed’
And an apostle’s identity
Decked with a sermon on crossless living
Cut our wounds deeper

We get to the garage and part ways
He to a cab and I to a bus
We meet again in a ‘Molue’
In return to folks and our beds
At three hours to midnight
Having spent half the work hours without prize
Inhaling gasses
Seeing and feeling nothing but jerks and rising gasses
Hearing nothing but murmurs without and within
And learning that dreams can be stifled

He tells of a shattered side glass
And I, a dented bumper
A mad rush the reason for both
And a refusal to negotiate
By some two-wheeled engine

Just then!
‘Oga shift or come down’
We are jolted and shoved
To invade spaces, to lose ease
For gains so dirty and wild
‘Do we have the guts to go down?’ I asked
‘It’s so easy to be mad in Lagos’ he says
In a smile clothed in tears.

(Weeping Songs 1)
Inside the Postgratuate Library?

Time and again
I am attracted
To this haven of hallow
Where it seems
Good thinking
And wide research
Are best suited

Time and again
I am trampled upon
And held down
To the point of breathlessness
With tunes from untamed phones
By callers with diverse antics
By conversations in whispering voices
By eyes struggling with doses of morphia
With trawleys thirsty for grease
By them meant to keep the flame
With tables and chairs
whose underbellies are bedecked
with gums of yesteryears

Time and again
I am drained
Of scholarship
Having to sit on this bench
And think of this pitch
As a research room
With its smothering heat
And Abiku filaments.