Read Time:2 Minute, 14 Second
Let There Be Light
when dark skies ramble their pleas
for light,
the heaviness in their hearts condense
into torrents of tears,
pent up emotions cascading down
their fluffy cheeks as
their knees sink to the marshed cliffs
in the cracks of gusty winds
that breeze their pleas for rainbow,
they bow and pray that rain goes,
—that rain goes
and sun strides to the sky,
blessing them with a smile,
keeping them in a scintillating stillness
that echoes warmth through their veins.
Remnants of a Dying Compatriot
in my mother tongue,
the only difference between living and transiting
to the great beyond lies just in a tonal variation.
ilu ku – the state dies
iku kù – the state remains
and after the bloodbath that swept the
streets clean with blood and deny bodies
the access to their heads and breaths,
my fatherland mounts the podium and says,
eni ku ti ku, eni kù ti kù
he who died died, he who remains remains
and this makes me realise that i have been in
nothing but a one-sided relationship with my
fatherland all these while.
baba ku – baba dies
baba kù – baba remains
my fatherland lost its cocooned homeliness
the day raging, ravaging bullets stray into our
empty bellies tearing through the black
mourning clothes that blend into our grimed skin.
omo ku – the child dies
omo kù – the child remains
if i decide to hoist high the flag of my fatherland
but end up losing my breath, a half-mast flag would
rise from my stagnant pool of blood and grieve in my
stead, and my fatherland's parting words would be:
eni ku ti ku, eni kù ti ku
he who dies dies, he who remains remains.
Untitled Letter to the Leaders of My Homeland
their overwhelming friendship still never prompts the
sun to tell its secret to the sunflower.
instead, the sun smiles radiantly & the sunflower
responds with a blossoming smile.
the sun never spiels to the sunflower that he,
who blooms the sunflower's petals,
also burns her seed in the soil.
he hides it all behind the smile.
perhaps, you're a tutee of the sun.
he taught you to hide beauty in smiles as well as
daggers. so when you mount that podium to roll out
the plethora of lies that juts out your tummy,
you smile radiantly. you breath no word of the
havocs you've wreathed upon us.
but you're are our messiah
—or so you pride yourself to be
—so we respond with a blossoming
Muheez Olawale is a Nigerian writer whose restless pen dives into inky oceans of eloquence. He won the CEF Poetry Competition and, in 2023, secured second place in poetry at the NIMC Identity Day Competition. His works have been published or are forthcoming in The Muse, Arts Lounge, Writers Space Africa, African Writer Magazine, Copihue Poetry, and elsewhere.
