Airborne over Lilliput
blackhearted honeybees gone nuts
ravish every pretty flower
from here to the London Tower
where mothers forsake their young
terrified of being stung.
Glaring sun blinds me
Lilliput figure hastening
Optimizing invisibility
Disguised by grains of sand
Hitting my eye
Visual assault
All to scuttle sideways
Robes flailing
Vacuum vortex shimmering
Cleopatra screaming
Asp fang flashing
History repeating
So transforms the desert
Page after page
Of the book of mirages
Slow zoom out
Watching the pyramids
Hiding the truth
(Immediately after being found "guilty"
of denying that the earth was stationary
and the sun orbited around it, Galileo
said, "Eppur si muove!" [But it moves!])
It's hard to live in Lilliput, I find.
I have to cross my fingers, play their game.
Their billing, filling, drilling daily grind
sits ill with me. They all trot out the same
tired cliches. Passing a painting, never fail
to comment on the squareness of the frame.
Unprofitable, weary, flat and stale.
You can't earn prizes here. These fools prize earning.
No sweets to eat. It's one long dreary tale
of condemnation, disapproval, spurning.
The Sunday supplements determine taste,
all tearing down, forbidding, banning, burning.
They're sealed in heavy metal, concrete-cased
austerity. They put the "die" in "diet".
What will survive of them is nuclear waste.
Denounce, detract, dismiss it and deny it.
Don't look for clover - look for cloven hooves.
Excoriate it, flay it, vilify it.
They'd love to let life lurch along in grooves,
the gauche, perverse, unruly human mind
trapped tidily in aspic. But it moves.
The deafening beat of a centipede's feet
as he goes strolling down the street
is the jangled fate of a snail who skates
and slowly, silently reverberates.
After the party,
I’ve found myself on a tropical island
Just like how Gulliver was taken to the island, Lilliput.
I haven’t either heard or visited that island.
A fantasy world with
Fathomless valleys, lush green meadows
Transparent water bodies, hanging puffy clouds,
Glowing stars settled on the glossy mountain peaks
Animals roaming with no disparity of wild and domestic
Tramcars, boats and buses are not in use
No constraints of traffic rules and U-turns
Men are carried by white winged birds.
No wars, no leaders, no foes and no prophets
In no time people can call on their friends.
Fruits of all seasons available the way how Dr Faustus enjoyed
Meeting strange men the way how Alice met in the wonderland
It seems like the heaven of freedom.
Perhaps, the fantasy stories hidden in my subconscious mind
Might have led me into this tropical island
I am fascinated by the wonders of the tropical island.
But I want to go back because
I’ve missed the invisible emotional bond twined with my motherland.
Place : 4
Balloon, balloon, so high in the air,
Its destination I know not where,
Its point of departure, that is too
A mystery in the sky of blue.
I too wonder, wonder, why oh why
This bright drifter was allowed to fly
As it left to float in the air so high,
Did a two year old begin to cry?
I must, I must ask the question “who?”
Is the boy or girl whose age is two?
Did her grandma say, “this is for you”,
Giving it not to the sky so blue?
A puzzle, a puzzle, too, is how
This nomad came to where it is now.
Did playful winds blow it over this town,
While silly gravity went upside down?
What about, what about, what about when
Did this wayward orb’s fun journey begin -
Way back in Egypt by a pyramid
When Cleopatra was just a kid?
Maybe, maybe it had cargo, but what?
A note or resident of Lilliput?
Oops, by Gosh, it did just disappear,
And my thoughts did too - with a pop, I fear!
Tiny
villagers
inhabited
Lilliput Island.
Gulliver unaware
found himself tied down
became renown
for being
obese.
written July 4, 2021
Laughing, dancing, having the time of her life,
Faerie Fun went from mushroom house to toadstool cottage,
Spreading joy,
Playing with everyone
In a kind and pleasant way.
There was going to be no sadness
In Faerie Forest today if she could help it.
It is up to me, she said.
I am the catalyst for happiness today.
She ate breakfast with the Nymph family,
And they laughed about silly stuff,
But no people.
She watched Lila Leprechaun’s Lilliput dance,
And she clapped and clapped while
Mama Leprechaun took care of the
Unhappy baby. Baby calm. All is well.
Faerie Fun was soon skipping
Up the walk to the most challenging
House of all.
Change your attitude! She warned herself.
Change your attitude!
Her jaw was clamped tightly shut now, and she
Was already filled with dread.
Pixie Dust! Her internal voice yelled. NOW!
The sparkly particles surrounded her, and settled down all over her, calming her instantly, and
Changing her attitude from not-so-great to wonderful.
Before she left Grump-Eater’s house, he gave her a long, lingering hug. No one gets me like you, he said.
Progress at last.
Sometimes it is simply a matter of us changing our attitude.
taking a flyer
but
why should we bother
to try a
new thing?
History tells and
even with bells on
it yells out a lie
unclean
unclean
have you seen
how unclean?
Sin is the thing we win when we sin
and we lose just the same.
I could have been a Saint
but
I wasn't and I ain't
but I could have been
even when I dream of what you
do not want to know,
I know.
So
no moral
that's for the gullible which
takes you off to Lilliput.
Just get on with what you're doing
mind yer own and wind yer neck in
there's nothing here for you to see
only me
and
I'm fading.
(As Galileo left the session of the Inquisition
at which he had been forced to deny his own
discovery that the earth orbited the sun, and
had to "admit" that the earth was static, he
murmured, "eppur si muove" ("but it moves").
It's hard to live in Lilliput, I find.
I have to cross my fingers, play their game.
Their billing, filling, drilling daily grind
sits ill with me. They all trot out the same
tired cliches. Passing a painting, never fail
to comment on the squareness of the frame.
Unprofitable, weary, flat and stale.
You can't earn prizes here. These fools prize earning.
No sweets to eat. It's one long dreary tale
of condemnation, disapproval, spurning.
The Sunday supplements determine taste,
all tearing down, forbidding, banning, burning.
They're sealed in heavy metal, concrete-cased
austerity. They put the "die" in "diet".
What will survive of them is nuclear waste.
Denounce, detract, dismiss it and deny it.
Don't look for clover - look for cloven hooves.
Excoriate it, flay it, vilify it.
They'd love to let life lurch along in grooves,
the gauche, perverse, unruly human mind
trapped tidily in aspic. But it moves.
I traveled through time
My imagination I took
where adventures abound
in a nook and a storybook
Up the beanstalk I'd climb
And many treasures I'd take
Then away I would run
Before the giant awakes
I'd travel to Lilliput
over the waves of the sea
and ended up ashore
where little people I'd see
Then I'll sleep a long time
and wake up with wrinkles
with a very long beard
Like Rip Van Winkle!
----
Rid me of this damn corn,
the progeny of past laquered
loves, its to, its fro, they lap
like cats at milk, destroying all
Returning then to orange groves
and furnace fire/sing to me the
song of could have been, sweet
orchard’s milk and valleys
The wiry sheen below the
capstan’s turn, to anchor goes
the choking deep; all’s not well,
fifty fathoms down
Now granted pure by nature’s leap,
the sequinned, peppered snow,
from mountain’s irridesent yawning
glow, descends to us in a throw,
of sower’s hand!
Lilliput and Gulliver, side by side,
lead the band, and bring the sheaf
to altar bare: but quick!
Before the earth be dead, and all
its winsome jewels to share
if the span of your attention
was a mighty mountain range
along its length and side to side
would you think it strange
if lines wre drawn upon you
by some men of lilliput
that they might rule along you
from overhead to foot
would you heave with laughter
would you split your sides
would your cheeks run wet with tears
milked from the salty tides
or would you shake them from you
erasing every line
and bid them live along you
in harmony divine
A courier of peace; a coupon of hope
Your cost, though, I have been made alien,
Your fruitfulness I heartily grope.
But the lashed back in servitude asks, “WHEN”?
A befitting vestment on servitude
A plague in the metropolis,
Like the Gulliver in Lilliput.
Amass not, thou in bit she seeks.
Though thou enjoyed none methinks,
‘Cos denied is she, much she denies ye.
But let that which we sought be unclink
An ointment on our contuse, we pr’ythee.
And should denial tend your way,
At wrath, me be spared, I pray.
Nigeria,my country,
I remember you with mixed feelings
A great contraption
A mere geographical expression.
You have never been a nation!
A mere colonial creation
A time bomb awaiting explosion
You were marked for greatness
Epitome of God's kindness
But shying away from your destiny
You mask yourself in mediocrity.
You are a bundle of contradictions!
Steeped deep in corruption
Steeped deep in religion
Feeding your children with frustration.
You are the sleeping giant,
With the limbs of a Lilliput
Moving forward a task
Agonizing and slow.
You are the king
Whose princes and princesses
Like lazarus eat the crumbs
From the table.
Let these contradictions!
Let these frustrations!
Be catalysts to battle corruption to standstill
Thereby adding value to the national till!
Let there arise a leader in your midst!
With vision
With conviction
Ready to drop dead
To make of you a paradise!
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