African writers – Page 4

Inside Our Love

Cake present, I received

I dipped first, hand full

Velvet taste, wine feeling

Plunge, a message full of liquid

Separation, a meal full

eaten to the point

her eyes completing the act

asking for continuation

Sing my language

letters and stars twisting

Following every interval with morning dew

All set, back and forth

The long trip we start

the end, many routes

——-

We give our all to the one

Every angle, shadows never lurking

We share the good and bad

the rights, the after kiss

Warm from the brimstone

On and off

We continue our ride,

engage the initial gear

Of love and fever

When the temperature rises

We sing high

and jump in motion

never stalling

full on collision

Nobody else we can share

Only

ourselves to the full

It is There

Write what you know

All that you learnt

You drop

Extra weight, unneeded

Now you are here

The lines don’t drag

I see lineage

In tongue, skin, dance

Leaves, water

Oral songs

passed through generations

Clear history

One never pondering

One accepting

Stretch out your hands

and keep going

Fathers of the Beautyful Ones

Easy to find the bad in people

Harder to point a good spot in the dirt

The land rummaged with vile and hurt

Misunderstanding turning into battle wounds

Mistakes forgotten

Forgiveness never asked

Hoping for acceptance

Souls all caught in a web

Spiral, when we dance

In a bottle, Gulliver’s romance

Sun color, fake blinding

Tell me more

These walls do speak

Of my history

Of Badagry

Right from the ledge

into wooden moving houses

See!

the cleaner spots

I refused

Easier to continue

Hence, I’ll stop

In the tradition of forever

I seek and keep on

Black skin under the catacombs

Souls buried within encrusted diamonds

On foreign fingers and border necks

To further and protect?

Maybe! Until the day comes

when the beautiful ones are finally born

quick question

Why does the dark seem sweet?

The lullaby and the tales

Desiring

I keep going back

The feel

The rub

Blue lamps

Eyes twisting

Wishes granted

Vices blended

Never hint of bitterness

Only when the light comes

Do I retract within

Don’t Tell Me

Time flies through these moments

Never tell me what year it is

This bliss, sweet

rings so true

In Case You Forgot

The makings of a supreme

Equals extreme conditioning

Empowered and confident

Black boy

Like a tug of war

Your face, snatched

Your pain, drank

Your death, sang

Your glow, rinsed

Extreme resilience, I must say

Micro waved out from the gutters

Envisioned

Predicted,

like the messiah

You are the clock

that keeps all ticking

You are the currency

that pulsates the market

From the turn of the southern belt

To the western lagoon of Lasgidi

You are the sun

From you, life exists

Dead by the Pen

Fed to the wolves

skin ripped apart

Innards all spread out

Glistening with snow

A Bouquet of rosa

painted on winter bones

Spleen filtering warmth

Far out from moist broadleafs

Here, present

Silence followed by

Yellow stone decay

Days left for dead

Yet

Another red ink

left on white sheets

Random: at our core. We grow up understanding this basic principle of life. For example, the idea of power; Our tribe-culture understands the diversity of what the word brings but we don’t dwell on that bad knowledge in past tense form, we grow up seeing, speaking, dancing, feeling, eating with the two sides of power at equal lengths. The infiltration and desimation of our culture has broken that stability so much we stand fully with the yin, the controlled. The yang; uncontrollable side we have blindly left, that’s why I believe we are stuck in this revolving control system never accounting for the balance that will come. I think for our balance to scale back to the middle, we lots must face real time repercussions of dwelling in the yin for this long.