A Libretto for Fela

Everything Scatter
Let China fall into pieces
With the golden sun as witness
And Midas’s glimpse fall on
The smithereens as it turn gold
Like Fela’s vinyl.

Waka Waka
Highlife is eating smoke,
Wafting in the wisdom of wisps, riffs
Weaned on the glory of lips and hips

I hear the childish babble of Afrobeat
At the prenuptial ceremony of music
A pitiful horn section set in the torture
Of voicing sterile love songs

Like Janet and John for British kids
I wakawaka wakawaka waka-
Waka wakawaka, waka I tire.

Underground System
A new Adam renamed Upper Volta
In the capacity of camouflage,
And then there was fatigue and ECOWAS
A bullet drilled R.I.P
And Fela screamed,
“They don kill Sankara o!
Ye-Ye!!”

Zombie
Fela christened a new breed of
Mutated idiots who feed, eat
And seek national cakes
Dug from underground and water.

Their underground system of seek
And find was the enthusiasm
Of a martyred soldier who
Listens for suicidal instructions.
Fall out!

Let’s Start
Polygamy is expensive shit,
Women are strains of viruses,
They defy the tender of money

Bodies and skin, diving
Into orifices at intermittent
Stations. Bend-Bend sleep
Is nightmare, night smeared
With nether body fluids,
Post-orgasmic spliff and
The vicious cycle repeats
Itself with the raise of a voice
“Bora o!”

Ikoyi Blindness
Ikoyi Blindness is Alagbon
Close is Johnny Just come,
Alice in the wonderland,
Alade in the hinterland,
The circling of cul-de-sac
Is not only a job description
For Zombies.

If you miss road,
You no go rich.

Trouble Sleep
Trouble slipped in Form
Four. Canes replaced canines
In a different kind of love bite,
The ballad of masses,
The throb of hustle in a
Mournful dirge of horns,
Hustle is code for bread
Bread is the key to life,
And since God thrust both apart,
Mankind in apposing both ends
Shall see, “Palaver”

Shuffering and Shmiling
Life’s absurdity and People’s
Opium. Hope is the new heroin,
Smoke it with a rizzler of belief,
Lisp some glossolalia to push it
Down. New addiction gaining
Popularity like wild fire.
It’s a phenomenon called
“Suffer suffer for world”.

Lady
I won’t tell
You about lady.

Look and Laugh
Looking and laughing is a
Makeshift panacea for
Unemployment,
Marital Fracas, Misery,
Poverty, Power Outage,
PDP, name it.
Ha Ha Ha Ha

Unknown Soldier
Perhaps gravity was the Unknown Soldier
Who fell Funmilayo as a cheap stunt
At the Kalakuta show. And if mummies are
Irreplaceable. Twenty-seven wives
Can stand in as substitute.
Fallen plans are government bridges
Truncated at the edge where belief
Anastomoses with mandate. Citizenry
Is what suffers when Despots seize power
And turns the society on its back
For carnal advantage.
Na from backee o!
Na from back.

First appeared in Clinical Blues (WriteHouse, Ibadan 2014)