For Jos

Save a teardrop for a day like this
When the remnant of you is scattered across street floors and market places

Save it for the harsh harvest at spring
Save if for dews at sunset & those many conveniences your flatter your days with while they are gone

Save the tears for yourselves but not for the many wrestled from your grips at noon

The Dawn beckons but we are stuck at the twilight of the night
Dark clouds eclipse sunrise and torrents of evil drenching our humanity.

This is for you, whose silences question our resolve to carry on
Whose shadows trail our daily exchanges
Who waits in the recesses of shallow graves for just a moment of truth
“why did I have to die?”

****
Again, there was a bombing in the troubled northern region of Nigeria. Again, we condemn the act and perpetrators but resign to fate.
Today, I am at a motorpark with all plans and hopes for the next few hours but nothing guarantees my safety. I sense it would be a loss if I were cut short this moment but that’s what the fallen represents… Lost chances, opportunities to do good and be done good to. Pity.

…to add a little is creativity!

For You –and the throttling of your giggles.

I don’t want the rest time

I want a measure of time

Spent with you as mine

And, all of me as thine

I want a sprinkle of raindrops

A dab for my teardrops

A slice of the moon

A day stilled at noon

And a flash of sunrise

Served as my sole prize

For the love of Pomo, Dodo & The Risk of Burning a house…

Recently, I felt sorta sick or ‘strong’ in Christian parlance. While I haven’t taken-up a bed space in a clinic the symptoms were evident in my body functioning. Like many of you—or, unlike you. When I feel sick I indulge myself in little pleasures of life. The pleasures of life are only felt by the tongue…[I wonder why the craze for material possessions]. Noodles and Pomo, Fried Plantain [Dodo] and sauce, Okpa and cold garri, Banga and Eba, Ofe Onugbu and Fufu and the king of all meals, Ekuru. My stock of Pomo finished mid-week but my crave became heighten by the weekend. I visited the local market and got me some but that is where my agony began….  The Pomo got burnt after I was carried away by Twelve Years a Slave movie.

Burnt Cooker

My Dogs Feasting on my pomo

Last night I slept on a stomach filled with countless cubes of ChocoMilo and my dogs had a nice desert for the night. That put an end to my craving for noodles and pomo. One would have thought there were sympathetic spirits to my cause the next day but respite seems far away… Dodo was the next on my mind and Jango, the gateman, was kind enough to get me some plantain. Alas! the groundnut oil was adulterated with some % of water…so, the frying pan spewed out its content once it became hot. What a mess the kitchen is, I tried on red-oil [shebi oil na oil], I just must eat Dodo this afternoon… but before you could say Jack Robinson…I ate the unfried plantain like that and I am just on my way to my parents house to have a decent meal befitting the sick.

The pot is on fire!

alchemist in the house

If you are out there reading this, please for the love of pomo and dodo and at a high risk of burning my apartment get me a wife.

Someone who can be conscious enough to remember what’s on fire while the family watches premiership matches, whose skills of frying dodo is second to none and who talks only when spoken to…