ENFORCED FUNERALS

The fraternally enforced funerals
Engraved in the heart of the night
Where life is but the light feather
For birds to zoom skyways lightly

Wars are lamentation in progress
Where the deadliest hawk deaths
To uplift the mournful campaigns
Like thunder born by whirlwinds

Wars are but raw cowherd drums
Beat steadily and quickly to grave
The potency of word we have lost
To the impotency of ammunition

Pure fraternity is up in the flames
Like sinful hearts in a furious hell
Man’s worth is but a gas chamber
To be dry-cleaned from wet earth

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NIGERIA IS WORKING

Behold, Nigeria is working
Like beauties in the eyes of born-beholders
Smile, Nigeria is working
Like the brightest midnight-born moonlight

Support, Nigeria is working
Like the carefully lubricated milling machines
Laugh, Nigeria is working
Like the sharpest sunrays peeling off shadows

Celebrate, Nigeria is working
Like thunders desecrating the darkest clouds
Embrace, Nigeria is working
Like rainbows enumerating the weeping skies

Advance, Nigeria is working
With basketful domestic products gracing granaries
Indeed, Nigeria is working
With fresh judicatures constitutionally established

Proclaim, Nigeria is working
Peaceful electorates decide at the ballot boxes
Confirmed, Nigeria is working
The armed forces gun-salute democratic values

Hurray, our unity in diversity is working
Like two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen
Hush, the transformation agenda is working
Like the refreshing honey packaged by worker bees

Let keen stars organise warm organs for nights
Let radiant moonlight beat the lightsome drum
Let sharp suns blaze with the penetrating x-rays
Nigeria is working upon the quickening diadem

Let swift eagles zoom through the darkest skies
Let heavy lions weigh upon the thickest forests
Let wild whales widen their ways in wet wailers
Nigeria is working upon generational goldmines

The fishes are very proud of the deepest waters
And the migrant birds cherish their aerial flight
The wild animals are proud of the hidden estate
Sealed patriotism is proudly on a united Nigeria

#####

OUR WORTHY ROYAL FATHERS

I delight in royal thoughtscripts
Written in, with and for wisdom
The scarcest palatial transcripts
From the soundest manuscripts
Composed in the royal Majesties
To captain and pilot huge affairs
Like eagles gliding in the storms
And lions reigning in the forests
Within newer magnifying lenses
To nurse this country’s greenery
All sealed upon bright scriptoria
My ears wait on their live words
To hear, speak and act for truths
From live birth onto death berth

#####

VIRUSES IN THE SOCKETS

I was the shepherd to wailing crickets
Within the drawlingly scripted thicket
I sighted the loopholes for adventures
Dark clouds wept in my worn-out soul
Like live floods jumping into the ocean

For men born into the earthly buckets
Docked in the courts of moral decency
There are deep sockets on their pupils
And within those sockets reside viruses
Feasting on the docket of transparency

#####

SHOW ME A NATION

Show me a nation
with her women-folk
in the shadows

I will show you
the darkest of nights
without moonlighters

Show me another
with her women
in the political agendas

I will pinpoint
the burnished metals
basking in the furnaces.

#####

THE SUN RISES IN THE EAST

I heard the famous nightingales
Singing like the furious gales
I have seen the coming dawn
Descending like a wedding gown

The sunrays rise in the east
Bearing our daily family feast
I heard horses in their stable
Turning around a dining table

The world embraces the day
With the debits it has to pay
Poets see it as their sole right
Their daily memoirs to write

#####

SIBLING JEALOUSY

Mummy is pregnancy positive
Daddy is pregnancy negative
Doctors conducted the tests
I am pregnancy neutral
Like pure eunuchs

Oh! My good God!
I am siblings positive!
Doctors sealed our status
Daddy is pregnancy positive
Mummy is pregnancy negative

Mummy is jealousy negative
Daddy is jealousy positive
Babies confirm the truth
I am purely neutral
In breast breaths

Sibling jealousy!
Let go of my handbill
New toys pose my posers
Daddy is jealousy neutralised
Mummy is purely jealousy negative

#####

MY CHILDHOOD DREAM

I thought it was the culture
To soar high like the vulture
I threw away my water bottle
Like soldiers running to battle

The sky was like a berry-straw
I could use my pencils to draw
The images floating in the stream
Reminded me of my first dream

I sighted happy bread bakers
Baking in the bright moonlight
To feed the hungry tent makers
Building painfully in the starlight

I heard the great light bearers
Under the day’s blazing rays
Mocking the small tale bearers
Grinning like bats in the twilight

The sunrays banished the shadow
That crouched across my meadow
And I sighted the triumphant rainbow
Spraying more colours on my elbow

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ALL POEMS: (C) Adeola Ikuomola
IMAGE: Nicolas Raymond on Freestock.ca