Twirling on my desk Roundabout my files A lone, black ant In a scout for crumbs of sugar Paraded itself like a pageant My thumb is raised To thunder below To sniff life out of the Liliputan creature But

The future does not come To you like the balls of doughnuts in a showglass Nor does it come To you like the brilliant colours of the rainbow The future does not come To you like the replay of a football

the culture of the cross spreads out from the tongues of prophets & clergies its ways so tender like wool but they throw bayonet at those who don't raise the flag of their culture— they say they are

when a mother tucks every prayer she had learnt into the body of her crumbling son and God doesn't bat an eyelid till death draws him into its tempest. we turn to the priest, ask him why God clasps silence

I know of woman's privilege: Say a woman walks into a space and there's an outpour of warmth to envelope her body because she's a woman. Also say a woman drops the wrath in her palm on her lover's cheek

I know of a people who wedge an assembly to feast when a child walks out of a womb also do they wedge an assembly to feast when a body walks into a gravestone. their tongues heavy with songs their body

a nation will come again, you will watch them from your television set read about them from a newspaper celebrating what they don't own. how does democracy dance in a country where autocracy stamps its

drag your body into the surface of the mirror every morning lace your body with words alluring to fetter a girl's heart say you're beautiful like marigolds on their bed say you're too adamant to let go

at the tap of catalysm we scoop the voice of a nightingale to sing psalms reaching God's bosoms. call it anything you like, a ritual of a mad man because you feel only the insane sprinkle psalms on a dead

they say we spring from two bodies but why is it a sip of taboo when two fruits coming from the same mother find pleasures on each other's body but, never, when mothers are different? they say hard work

It doesn't rain here; everywhere is sultry— dwelling houses, homes, alleys, footbridges…. everyone is busy busy with languaging grief busy with dressing wounds you're lucky if a man piggybacks you when

this couch is so succulent like these two bodies ready to be converged. bodies, open agape like the red sea— yours & mine. the israelites aren't to thread the bare path but me, walking with my tiny

you make your face a grave to bury the fingerprints of your lover : you smear makeup over a broken face. the world wears ballads on your wrist each time you pass. you smile, a man searches for salvation

there's something about war; its cicatrixes are always mint. how does diplomacy wash a land drenched with blood? do biafrans forget the massacre? do we forget our progenitors who chose death to bondage

A time comes they beat their gongs in grins and generous palms. Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! The rattles spread round the city then, we assemble ourselves with starved bellies. Their manifestos unfurl,

I wake every morning into a circus of worries— what doom will this country birth today? and it's just what it's; my country is a museum for grief. I want to language the litany of joy in every poem my

After Deborah Ajilore Mother said, "shield your cleavages from the claws that sit on men's eyes only the man who completes your ribs owns the sight", "don't let your skirt crawl above your

Everything I love is always on the move, say they don't wait for me like God & like my ex-lover from whom I learned love could also be a metaphor for fire. Dreadlocks spread their lushness on my head—

I make a tongue brimmed with supplications in this poem. Here in this body, legions of privations have overstayed so it's time I whipped them out into the swine with my conflagrating tongue. Let my goodness

We sit behind our television sets watch the players evoke spells with their feet. We cheer them on to our desired goal post as though we own them. We strip off serenity's robes at every faux pass made