The road ahead is a forbidden way
leading to a discotheque for lost boys.
You are trying to say home, but I mistake
it for run, & so I leave.
The road ahead is a forbidden way
leading to a discotheque for lost boys.
You are trying to say home, but I mistake
it for run, & so I leave.
This body is Biafra. I want to be Ojukwu. I want to secede this flesh. Let me break out.
I go into every accident—headfirst.
the cesspit claimed by frogs is an ancestral heirloom.
You wake up, your mouth is too heavy
To say the morning prayer. Your knees
Are too weak to kiss the cold floor.
What is this tingling sensation in my stomach? Your name,
hibiscus in my mouth. Your voice, a star in the night
of my body. This love scintillates the orchid of my core.
The craft of poetry writing is rooted in the pursuit of one’s voice, an elusive element that can be found within oneself, whether it be deep within the vocal cords or buried within the pits of one’s impressions.
Brilliantly written with language rich in figurative expressions and devices and stories hard to forget, ‘The Wig and the Streets’ is a testament to Ayoola’s mastery of good storytelling.
dispossessed, with lush imageries and original and witty metaphors presents us with the chronicles of Eze’s growth as a poet, his intellectual maturation and the heights of his social consciousness.
They merged all the way from my childhood and became the flame in my rocket today. It is only natural that, like murals, their portraits keep surfacing in my works, and yet, they leave me whole, undefiled, true, the writer child they had raised.
Mother, I fear I have lost a whole lot of contacts and relationships as a mango tree loses its leaves. Our street looks smaller now. It is now a strange place even to people like me who once had only its scent inflected in their nostrils.