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Best Poems Written by Jaafar Sadig El Waad

Below are the all-time best Jaafar Sadig El Waad poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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My Mom

TO MY MOM DADA ZOUWAIRATOU M YAUKI
THE TRUEST HAUSA-FULANI

The iron core of the whole family
She stands with the long rooster
First crow which tears up, praying, and
Goes on laboring till the owl grave hoots
Herald the veiling darkness and darkness
Is life, and might. 
But also death and weakness.
The hoots made me feel so small when 
A child, and think of mother to soothe me,
For I had fears, and my people's fears were
Forced upon me too. 
Sorcerers!
Magic!
Backwardness!
Moronity!
Death!
The twain Angels 
Of life after Death!
Dream of stars, my eyes fully open 
To start
Away from my tiny world full of fairy tales
With the spider as the hero as running 
From the ghosts
Oh, Allah! Lost before standing on my feet!
I like my mom and she likes me too.
She prays Allah to grant me success
And I ask Him to forgive her, for
She’s always been my surest support
Of course she hadn’t been to school
But was a school herself. Proud 
Greedy reader, my friend, be sure that
She’s as divine as your MOST perfect mother.

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A Fulani Girl's Complaint

A FULANI GIRL’S COMPLAINT


I carried water. I did all the house cores. I drove and bred the cattle one and alone, singing songs, running and climbing mountains. I milked, sold milk and bought you silk. I ground the corn and cooked your meals. I woke up on the peak of the seasons and carried duties; I did all these to be given to a wild hard-looking stranger like a cowry! 

I spent my whole youth among trees and beasts in eloquent silence away from siblings, aloof! I learned and loved God through things that spoke to me, indented, with neither paper nor pen.  I wore a strange hat and a stiff piece of cloth that fell on my knees revealing my bony legs; I had strings knotted around my waists and wrists and neck to be betrothed to a wild hard-looking stranger who swept me as if I were a cow for sale, reaped my inward garment and damned my virtue! His words are swords; his horn is a worm that eats in me, wholly! 

Oh, Aunt! You fastened my tongue and sold me like Dauda’s slave who would quit me by day leaving me starved, empty bottles and pockets in Gbaya’s tins. Aunt, don’t care the whips, the solitude, the empty stomach, the hands that hurt like electrical cords, but, my aunt, his words are worse than swords and I miss  my olden days, the twilight, the humanly beasts I forsook for the beastly human, mother’s looks that hook the heart, oh, I miss my old self!

Galim (Tignère), April 22, 2012

 Jaafar Sadig El Waad

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No

No
I had a desire to be a martyr to my word
To quench my desire for justice with the
Peak of my poor pen 
To quash intolerance, racism, tribalism, tyranny
And quell my cowardice and my people’s
Stigma and egoism
I had a desire to be a martyr to my word
To break up with my people’s demoralizing jokes
That are ignorance and human rights’
Violation
I had a desire to oppose the patriarchal society 
Of thousands of egoisms
With its uprooted self-absorbed traditional emirates
Hedged around with blindly and worldly pseudo-scholars 
Who help to spread heinous racial prejudices
On the indigenous people 
No to nepotism, tribalism, ethnocentrism, and tyranny
No to all the diktates of the outlaw 
Who call themselves emirs in the republic!

Jaafar S El Waad
2014

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The Blood of Martyrs

The Blood of Martyrs

 “He stood aloof the Negro youth
What of his future?”
Peter Abrahams

When the guns thunder
In Cameroon or Côte-d’Ivoire
In Mali or Burkina Faso
Limitless martyrs
Disappear!

Beads of blood still pearling
Running from the martyrs’ hot bodies
I vainly ask to know: 
Why are the ill-stricken dictators so greedy
And their peoples so eloquently silent?
Gabon- Togo-Cameroon- Tunisia- Egypt-
Zimbabwe-Burkina Faso

What is going on?
What of our time? What of man?
Nothing but words.
Words of those who see with
Somebody’s eye 
Or
Those who have gained
Nothing of their heritage
If not Samory’s puzzle.

Meanwhile
The spring keeps growing
Swallowing creeds to bear greeds
In spite of Ebola and the wars
In spite of Aids killing thousands of people 
In spite of the minority who with the help 
Of the majority eat from the fruit 
Of the majority’s vote
In spite of growing desert….

N’Gaoundéré, 16th February 2010

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I Am Africa

I am Africa

I.
Distant 
And lonely 
I am
The barren land
Of untoward change,
The empty womb, 
The amputated hands,
I am 
The Maker of new worlds
I am 
Africa.

I am 
The broken voice
Of the tall woman who undid
The family knot
Set my caged birds free
And set traps to owls and falcons
I am 
The step to freedom
I am Africa.

I am 
Gorée 
Dahomey
Porto-Novo
Bimbia
And the boat
That sailed to the New Land.

I am
The aftermath of revolutions,
Theories and tempests.

I am
The dark forest no longer at ease
The things fall apart
Hopes and impediments
Leurres et lueurs.

I am not
The other world of the Heart
Of darkness nor the wrath in
Return to my native land
I am 
Neither Aids nor Ebola.
What then am I?
Or what else am I?
                                                              Douala, January 1st, 2014

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My Dolls

To My daughters Loubabatoul Koubra, Halima Saadiya and Maryam Jamilah

A knock on the door
Shouts from the inside
All the three running 
To swoon over my knees
Laughing my lovely
Daughters
The gate to paradise
The gift from 
The Messenger,
My lifelong model.

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My Wrath, My Wrath For Justice

My wrath, O Allah, I do so swear, is not the aftermath of my bad temper
It’s my long shout of forsaken patriotism
It’s my suffering for the cradle of our fathers
It’s a breath to revivify my slumbering 
       Countrymen 
Who are dying of fears for the sake of peace
 Uplifted with peace to be forever ruled by the prince

My wrath is not a desire to take revenge against the Man and his lazy tribe
It’s the unanswered cries of the hiding in the deep forest
It’s the massacre of my brothers before the 1984 slaughtering
It’s the sighs of the lake Wum, the constant rise, cholera
The drought plundering all the crops and the livestock

My wrath is not a contempt of the order and the widely idealized peace
It’s an attempt to restore justice and uproot the prince’s 
        trustees
It’s an attempt to live by our motto to build peace 
        in working and loving
It’s an attempt to give birth to Fonlons so as “to share 
       in moulding what should be” 
And not fatally be eaten like prawns, O Shady Eone!  

My wrath is patriotism, justice for all, the reversal of the tribe by the Republic
The really emergent republic

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An Improvised Haiku

AN IMPROVISED HAIKU

(To Maimounatou Abdou) 

Garouas Sun has risen now
Let it light and delight
Let me Princess of Beauties bow
For Garouas soft sun is at sight 

 Dla, November 14, 2014

Jaafar Sadig El Waad

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The Portrait of My Hero

Shawaï!
Born struggling for bread and butter on the way to the barren land
Where Adama’s warriors settled like saviors with Fulani to spread the Nation
And implant Fulani’s mingled tradition burying indigenous cultures with the edge of 
Their swords and the spade of convincing myths, with detriment to the creed.
Born to bear the burdens of his family, his name and awe-inspiring personality.
Of middle height, not light, a grave face oft-changing, tranquil in prayers 
And meditation but on meeting all and sundry walking slowly, but lively
He neither cared about the foes howling like bees each striving to strike hard
Nor was he involved in the poor scratching of the stars to foretell the Unknown.
Keen on reading the Book he inspired fears and demanded reverence
Hardworking he chose to be a shepherd, a laborer, a teacher, a retired believer  
	Grinding his beads too, and working on the farm, and opposing 
Injustice whenever need be, keeping the family tie and mending the nations 
	Patches refusing abuses of power and declining the rich men tendency to
Rule the laws, he stood firmly against the excesses and in working he passed
	Away.

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Of Terrors and Men

(TO THE VICTIMS OF WAR IN MY NATIVE
 CAMEROON AND IN NORTHERN NIGERIA)

Giants 
Have filled 
The FAR North
Sweeping
Bloodbathing 
With sophisticated 
Heavy weapons
Connected on a 
Barren land
Communicating
As from satellites,
Techniques and
Outfits of
The expedition
They got THERE
Thundering, 
Murdering, 
Raping, and 
Reaping
The scarce 
Bank notes kept aside 
To launch our economy
here.
The giants are   
Putting up stubborn
Resistance ready
To dismantle, 
Horrify, and 
Offer pretexts
For erecting another 
Benghazi or Mali, 
Somalia or 
The Sudans:
Growing poverty
Exile
On the desert
Migrations
Corruption
Legislations
Segregations
Falling soldiers
Suspecting the 
Innocents
Blackmailing
The weak.
Where are our 
White hope of 
The Opposition
And all the experts
On geopolitics?
Tell us whose war
Is it?