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Toby Abiodun Poem
Mother taught me to not kill,
Her holy book forbids it.
Written somewhere in its many pages is
"Killing is the wickedest biblical sin."
My mind holds me prisoner,
A self-judged convict-
For I have murdered men,
Buried them in the catacombs of hatred.
I have read about Faith.
How it opened shut-up doors of the eyes of men.
Tell me I am wrong
for mixing clay and spittle spiced with spite,
That in my eyes have fallen the worthiest of men,
Even the most virtuous women have been undressed.
Father told me "silence is virtue,
Quietude is key."
What I carry- the words I bear
Is a river rushing to empty itself into the ocean.
Tell me I am wrong
For choosing to live expressive.
"The silent man is like one dead with his mouth open,
A lot to say, nothing said."
How sad!
They say our color defines silence,
We are blessed with the curse.
From time immemorial we have carried the course
over with every soul we laid to rest.
With fettered legs from Badagry
we have mourned silently to Cane farms in Brazil,
Bound men in Freetown,
We harbour promises of a free world
when we have not even a free town.
Caretakers of our own lands.
From Egyptian slavery we walk into the captivity of the Promised Land
powerful but powerless
like bottled genies.
Tell me I am wrong for
Refusing to bargain my voice
Or trade my lips for another tongue.
Father told me that War is a word
we must never say,
Our fathers before him buried it deep under lashes,
Sang it away in sugar cane farms.
He said
" Silence is peace, we must carry on the tradition."
The head must lay itself for the tail
Like wine must be downed 'fore the dreg
But freedom is a language, voice is a tongue.
We have waited so long with poise
in the eerie dungeons of quietude for noise
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Copyright © Toby Abiodun | Year Posted 2016
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Toby Abiodun Poem
You seem unclear,
The fogged-up sky of a dewy morning.
You won't be cleared,
A blurred part of my vision,
A cataract regrowing.
A cancer eating up my soul,
A well dug up hole.
I know what it means to be hollow,
You know how far you echo?
How long must you stay there
defiant in the darkness?
Do you not know somewhere
a glimpse of you is needed?
Why do you stay there in the arms of another,
Knowing I die awaiting your presence?
Even trees have bended wills.
Stars shine at night
why have you chosen the eclipse?
How long must I wait watching generations pass,
Fashion changing,
How long must I sit at the bus stop waiting
like you're coming from the extinct?
Why must you sit, careless that I am shrouded in loneliness?
Deserve I no taste of your lips,
No sense of your perfume, sight of your dress,
No hug to to keep for evening colds?
I need you now or better still my rib,
For I am a log floating hollow on this downy sea.
Copyright © Toby Abiodun | Year Posted 2016
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Details |
Toby Abiodun Poem
the wrong girl squeezes herself into space, your space.
with a blind spot face
and a body too stiff for free spirits
she works out a system of lies-
a dwelling for her kind.
there are things you turn your eyes from:
not fights, not violence
but a woman's nakedness in the eyes of manifest destiny.
her lips like due eggs crack from within,
they harbour a song
but, the wrong girl never sings
instead she spits cold water,
and returns her tongue to its coffers-
there's so much the wrong girl covers
the wrong girl is an erection on the body of time,
the plumage of nightfall.
she is a song,
an anthem
ready to fall off the lips of dumb men.
she wears misery like a second skin and never dares to peel it off,
everything that leaves her tongue sounds like a curse.
when the world asks why she wears pessimism like a djellaba
she tells it,
"no woman lives well with death breathing into her ears."
Copyright © Toby Abiodun | Year Posted 2017
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