BEFORE NIGHTFALLS

Tomorrow when your bones grow weak
When the hands, lips and eyes shake like earthquake.
The once smooth plain becomes full of demarcations
When speech sounds so audibly far
And eyes squint to behold beauty
When words are too expensive to afford
 And a few let out is like a drainage system
would you smile when you look at your young mirror?
When your hormones were flip flapping
Your feet hurried off to every occasion
When your vocal chords stay active all night
And your memories as sharp as sword
Did you plant viable seeds?
This moment when you dig into every pit
Your tongue ready to taste every liquor
When cotton and nylon could not cover your breast and thighs
And the tablets and phones seem more valuable than you.
This moment when the sun breaths into you
And the evening seems so far away
When the bright sky offers several penalties
This moment when you lift your head
And exhale smoke from your nostrils
When you preach your own gospel
Excusing tongue kisses as no fornication.
This moment when you’re listening and
Saying  to yourself I do no such things.
When you know you as guilty as those that do all
Because you hide the truth from them;THAT IS SUICIDAL
They are your pals
 YET you zip your lips cause you don’t want to be tagged.
Remember in the days of your youth, He says.
At the time when your lips tremble to speak
And your memories are washed away by the tides
Your feeble body at the mercies of those you ignored
At the time when breath is drawn from the body
Your sexual emotions will take an eternal rest.
The spirit will forlornly rise,
Then it would be too late
Darkness will come upon you eternally
The sun still shines, the day is still bright.
Catch it before night falls.

BEYOND THE COLORS

Life is a crystal bowl
With black and white pebbles
The probability of picking one over the other
Is as equal as the size of a square

So on a day I pick a black pebble
I expect you to pour me a cup of sweet words

Hide me amidst the storm
Your shoulders as raincoat
So I do not drench in guilt

I would love it this much
If you would pull me like an office door
Close to your chest
So your heart beat remind me of
How many more chances I have to smile again.

And wouldn't it be as sweet as Christmas
If you will lift me like a crane unto your shoulders
So I would feel like a kite
Far from the reach of pointing fingers

But I wouldn't hate you
Though it will taste as medicine
If you would pull my cheeks
Hard like a tug of war

Admonishing me to look better
When next I have to pick a pebble
I would be grateful
Cause my eyes will develop binoculars
 Seeing beyond the colors to the shores of the pebble

So I would remember the cup of sweet words
Or the bitter medicine from my extended cheeks
And pick the right pebble.
When next I have a crystal bowl

GOOD BYE

Flickering fingers over the piece of bamboo
Men and women gather, blood pumps fear
The ATENTEBEN and its twin ODURUGYA
The bearers of news introduced by sad tunes

Sorrow sweeps the township as the tides of the ocean

Dark linen over the shoulders of men
Their tears knotted in their belly
They only kept shaking their heads
A symbol of their manhood, a conceal of grief
Women as ladybirds threw their hands in the air.
No need to be hard and strong
No need to withhold tears
No need to act up
Their emotions in the direction the wind blows
Like the tides towards the shore
the atenteben in his hands caused a mountain and valley of lament.
The building shakes, its no longer firm
The flute again, dispersing solemn rythm of pain
The rythm reverberates the awareness of a fallen pillar
The tap root of a great tree is dead
Can the tree hold?
Its branches and growing fruits are desolate
A chorus of mourners
Like all other moments, this shall also pass
Void by the absence of your voice
Pain by the loss of our gain
Tears by the memories of your years
Memories of this bond shall linger

BURIED LOVE

Tears cloud my eyes as a mirror of sadness.

Exhaling air through my mouth that could blow up a balloon,

My hair suddenly began to itch psychologically.

A heart race, tears that battled the force of gravity, smiles seem to beckon the tears even more,

As if to say to yourself, ‘calm down, no tears now’

And the heart pleading, ‘she’s hurting!!!’

Each breath was heavier than carrying 10 bags of cement.

The phone reaches out to you.

Take a look at the screen and it seems dead.

I ask myself “where from this water running down to my cheeks as though it was being chased?”

‘It is called tears’ my mind answered.

The global village in my head was silent

A silence that could torment the possessed

At that moment, I couldn’t help counting the number of hair strands on my head

Or counting the grains of sand beneath my feet

I tried measuring the depth of the ocean with my fingers

And being a super woman flying without wings

I took wonky steps to the graveyard of love.

Billions of hearts, ‘Would my heart be buried too?’, I asked myself.

My soul soared up into the skies, I was a star lost in the night.

My physique struggling to take it all in over and over and over again,

It waited patiently like a time bomb.

Then boom! Boom!! Boom!!!!

It exploded into pieces of wail.

Too late to be salvaged

WHO ARE YOU?

Are you sure you know who you are?

You may say you are quick-tempered, better still slow to anger

You may say you are short, tall, lanky

Or you may say you are chubby, maybe you have terrible mood swings,

Some may say they are smart, intelligent, serious minded, hardworking, strong.

Some may say they are neat, sweet, fun, loud, proud.

Who do you know you are?

Look at this

You gathered all that about yourself from your physical aiyons.

How about what is written with God’s own crayon?

You are endowed with protons to make your spirit a positively charged ion.

Remember iron sharpeneth iron, Prov 27:17 so you’ve got to discharge your protons

to show the light in your environs.

TAKE a look at your mirror and what does it tell you when you flip through its pages?

You see your roots from Genesis.

Grab the Rhema now. It says:

You are a royal priesthood, an heir to the throne. 1 Peter 2:9

You are a king that makes Him King of Kings. Isaiah 61:6

You are Awesome; you’ve got the trinity in you. Colossians 2:6

How can you fail when God in You never fails? Heb 13:5

How can you be defeated when God is conqueror? Psalm 21:12

How can you be jobless when God has given you dominion over all things? Gen 1:26

It is in your nature to a conqueror, a governor.

To be a leader and preacher

To be pure and holy

To be great and awesome

To be strong and mighty

You were created because God was creative.

You were purified because He is pure.

You were strong because He is mighty

You can heal because He is a healer.

You have faith because He is faithful

For all we can be is a subset of who He is.

A child of God can’t be insignificant

Jeremiah 1:10

You are given authority to do what?

To uproot, to break down

To destroy and to overthrow and

To build, and to plant.

We have turned God into a delivery agent where all we do is demand

What God wants to give you is not the flashy car, not bundles of cash.

Not children, not promotion and not the job you are searching for and not that grade in school.

Looking at Christians,  material things can't define us.

What He wants to give you is the word of God in your spirit.

It will make you what He talks about.

Then with that word you can call on all these things and they will obey you.

Because you are God’s child.

Call on that job, that amount of money, that promotion at your work place.

Like Christ spoke to the storm, you do to yours.

Look at the lives of Abraham and Abednego.

Nehemiah and Jeremiah

Isaiah and Asa

Ezekiel and Esther

Job and Joshua

Elijah and Elisha

David and Daniel

The word in their hearts then blessings on their lives.

You are God’s masterpiece. Eph 2:10

FIGHTING THE UNSEEN

In the midst of the fears, stranded by an array of confusion and rejection I sat forlornly in deep thoughts. 'How did I get here?'  I asked myself severally but had no answer.  In my invisible world of thorns and shackles , I tried to stand and was pushed back unto the rock , so strong a force it was .Thorn into amazement, I tried to stand, once again a strong force pushed me back to the rock, one that felt hot, hotter and hotter and I could no longer sit. I kept wriggling on the rock.

As I thought of how to get out of this mess, a strong wind blew, a threatening hissing sound followed. At first, it made the rock feel cooler but as the hissing sound raged I became frightened. A blur sight of the sky was all that was before me. So hard and firm I managed to gather the strength then I cried out ‘Where is this, how did I get here’. There was nothing I could remember. Then I saw an enormous apparition, surrounded by a cluster of stars,  moving wavily yet at a standstill. “Follow the very white string at the edge of every flower, beyond these rocks you will have to ignore every image that seems to frighten you, and also don’t pay attention to these voices of discouragement that might ring in your mind. To get to the end of this tunnel, you will have to believe in yourself and follow the principles; a deviation of any will cause you to end up in your never dying land of pain." it said.

Now, I tried to stand up and there was nothing holding me back so I set off through the thorns and rocks. Preposterous as it sounded I just had to believe that this is my new world so I have to live in it the way I must. A recurrence of its last words “a deviation of any will cause you to end up in a never dying land of pain”. So I set off following the white strings that looked like a ligule. As I walked through the forest I could see hanging images of skulls and skeleton’s scattered all around. Getting frightened the voice rang again. Tracing the path of the ligule I became lost and could find no ligule but I had not gotten out of the rocky forest, so I tried looking through the weeds and still couldn’t find a ligule. Anxiety grew older and older, quickly flipping through the dry leaves I founded a flower with the ligule, the stem of the flower was broken so it fell off. A great sigh wasn’t enough to express my relief. On and on I walked on, I grew thirsty and hungry, more horrible sights befell me. I saw the tongue of a human, the eyeball and ear hanging in the air without a head. To some of these images I closed my eyes, wished I could go on eyes closed.

Then I came across a heap of dry leaves, I could feel there was something beneath the dry leaves. I could hear the dry leaves fluttering from beneath. Quickly I began to scatter the dry leaves to unveil what was beneath the heap of dry leaves. My suspicion and curiosity grew as I searched deeper. Suddenly, I touched a soft silky cloth, touching deeply my hand caught hold of a human arm. I heard myself scream out loud that I could feel the whole place stare at me. Hurriedly I ran off in fear. I took to my heels and didn’t care where I was heading. So after I had calmed off my nerves, I then remembered the course for which I was there and the voice rang again. Now so scared I knew I had lost track of the ligule. Cast my eyes around and I found a little girl with her hands wrapped around her legs and her jaws on her knee. She closed her eyes so hard and tears trickle down her cheeks. Slowly walking towards her I felt like a thief because I took my steps like one. I touched her and she jumped up terrified. Please don’t kill me she cried. Seeing her weep touched me deep down into my bones. A soft part of my heart filled with compassion. I drew her closer and both of us in fear drew each other closer. Then the apparition appeared again, we both heard ourselves crying out “sorry we missed the course, I don’t want to be here forever, can’t absorb the torture any more”. In a breaking choky voice the apparition told me I had accomplished my mission but I had to carry on with her for a different task. So tight we held each other. We had to help ourselves, now we knew we were safe together.

 After, the apparition left, from her chest shone a light, looking at the light we found the direction to take, we took the path and we had a lot coming our way, together we fought that which we could not see with our eyes but in our minds. All along we walked with our eyes closed. So deep into the battle with the disgusting double eyed creatures with slippery bodies, jelly-liked liquid dripping from their bodies. With our backs touching each other round and round together we caused them all to drop dead till the last of them fell, now a light shown from afar, and forced our eyes opened. We turned around and saw ourselves in a peaceful land.

In a land where there was sweet honey, saw kids playing around, women laughing and chatting whiles cooking , men busy at work. A perfect place to be. Just then I realised all these were a dream. What a bright sun that shone outside my window as I thought of the dream.

EVER A PERFECT CLAY POT?

A lump of ordinary clay
The wealth of the potter's day
A heap of the amorphous pile on the floor
The best of creativity yet to explore
Could it be ever perfect?

A smile and a giggle.
A pile of clay to be modeled
The piece of aesthetics
The potter's toil laid to all.
Like the best of decor from the goldsmith's ore.

Your worth is not in your wealth.
Addictive of love in the potter's clay
Immersed with passion in the liquid glaze
You were painted with desire undefined by deeds.
You were embellished with jeweleries, priceless.
A crack on the pot does not diminish its worth.
You are beautiful.