Guest Blog: Two Poems by Edaoto Agbeniyi

One day

(for Jelili Atiku )
Our voice can never be silenced
We will rejoice and be merry
Our merriment will send doom down his spine
His loins will be laced with anguish and agony
He who despises a poet

When nuance becomes charade
And performance becomes errant
In the lullaby of an archon
The unclad king should tango
Alone in the market place,
Ferrying the wind himself alone to the dreaded lake

Our voice shall never be silenced
We will rejoice and be merry
For we shall tow their walls of spike
Grind their mines of sorrow against the poet
We shall boot their lips of horror and feed them with dust

When sanity returns to our land
We will choose careful the head that moves us
We will be oblivious of the movement of the earth
Then our voice can never be silenced
And our heart shall rejoice and be merry.

Arungun-
(Against all unnecessary tyrannical demolitions)

Now that the dove beget snake
And sheep beget lion
The gazelle tiger
The fish cocks
The falcon chickens
The fox cockerels

Have I not seen enough?
Now that there are no miracles
And magic seems normal
Now that we walk upside down
And clap for filth
Mothers rape children
Priest mate flocks
When are we beckoning on Oya
The divinity of whirlwinds and tornadoes
To rapidly journey from Ira
When will Irele fare from Eerin?
We are threading on the winepress
We soak our garri with Gamalin
Celebrate the stings of scorpions and bites of  the Boa

Now that our song is to the deaf
And our drawings for the blind
Now that our race to the time machine
Is given to the cripple
Have we not done enough?
We are threading on the winepress
Preparing our bath water with
some blood of Ebola infected drops
Do we not damage our lungs with what’s more than cancer?
Celebrating the movement of journey Armageddon?
We are threading on the winepress

Now mothers fan fathers as they rape their daughters
We pay tithes of mints
and children beg for food
Boko is light, the Haram that hammers us is soft
‘Cos we take delight in spoiling the past
The future hunts us with Jackals in trail.

 

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Edaoto Agbeniyi, besides being a poet and activist, also performs with the Afrogenius band at the monthly live music concert at Freedom park called Rocking With Edaoto (R.O.W.E). The next edition is slated for April 1 2016.