I AM THE LAST MAN STANDING

At the last stop
On the outskirts of Sodom
Waiting for my decision
Like a late bus, to arrive

Everyone else left long ago
Clambered aboard the 1:45
They all left me, she too
The cankerworm I married

They seek the fortunes
Buried within the famed tunnels
Of king Solomon’s mines
So I continue our journey, alone

I think my mind is made up
To break free from the herd instincts that tug
Before the Negro fingers of night
Catch up with me

Already I feel the strangling
Breath of their closeness, in this place
Where 21 inch reflections of the lake
Of fire crowd the night sky in ghastly motif

Where foxes spoil vines and souls
Fire flaming on their tails
Bearing ashen tales
From the first Sodom

Where camouflaged sidewinders
Offer a no-win choice
Between forbidden fruit in endless variety
And generous doses of scalding fangs

I hurry to leave, catch up
With an itinerant star, the one we knit
From discarded wrapping paper and nativity tales
One cold December night long ago

It beckons
To the narrow path that winds
Through needless eyes, emerges
In the Light, the Kingdom
Within us

 —————————–

TEMPTATION

Voices trail me
Like a schizophrenic
Even into the comfort of dreams
Sowing surreal solomon’s songs soaked
With sensual sensations
To entice me, Hapless Elephant onto
The Royal mat that conceals graves
They call me for a ride
All expenses paid, on spacious buttocks
To Hades, where red hot red carpet receptions
Await.
You put juju for mouth I spit, sniffing
Their perfumed breaths as if I know
What juju smells like. They laugh
At my innocence, naivety
Who’s talking about mouth when down
Below we can give you heaven
They say, ploughing my fertile desires
With their eyes. I know
Where all this leads to
Many have prologued uncompleted pages
Of their lives with ‘a se ori mi o pe’
How many chapters have I written
That I will be thinking of concluding
I have to fade, but just before then
I must see the faces that torment
So I can tell the world to run
But while I yet look I forget
What they look like
They roll off my mind like wornout adhesive tape
Even their voices sound like movie effects
Go away fly away
Join your mates in Italy, anywhere
Where bus stops brim with souls
Waiting for free rides at the speed
Of lust.

  —————————–

GOOD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN, BAD GIRLS GO EVERYWHERE

Friday nights
Are when we relive
Fairy tales
From an innocent age
We don’t need no charming
Princes, goblins and golliwogs eligible
So long as the broomsticks we’ll ride
To town are charming enough
We float to kokodome n cotton in convoys
Don’t have to be home by twelve
Seize our only chance to getaway
From the small boys who bore us
All week long with baby talk n
Crumb lined pockets
We flip the pages past
Lecture notes n dry weekdays
Poverty rations from home n restraint
To Friday nights where stories happen
In full color n we live
Happily ever after
Till next Friday night

  —————————–

 MOTHERLY LOVE

we three queens
of orient are
clothed in loin
but our hearts
are naked
as our feet
browned by the sun
wading
through brown paint
someone spilt
on the sky
n our huts
in search
of our children,dissolved
as brown sugar
we will sieve them
bowl by bowl
till each bowl holds
pure child
gurgling
ma mi ma mi.

  —————————–

AIDS

Every trip to the neighbourhood
Barber is a death for me n
Every visit to the clinic
I watch syringes dangle
Above my head etching circles
Of death telling me I may be looking
At my clean blood for the last time
Why wasn’t I born
In the eighteenth century
When plagues wiped people
Out in the twinkling of an eye
This God-forsaken one kills
In slow motion, laughing
At heaps of tablets you swallow
From shrunk fingers
Stamps your soul with an expiry
Date faint enough for you
Not to decipher, then you both
Watch you waste

My list of taboos is growing
No hugs n kisses, no
Handshakes n sharing seats
With strangers, no falling
In love except I see your
Blood test, no going to parties
Without my own cutlery
No haircuts I prefer afro n
For once I think Jehovah’s Witnesses
May just be right.

 —————————–

Poems (c) Tolulope Ogunlesi