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Best Poems Written by Pride Yanu

Below are the all-time best Pride Yanu poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

The Colour of Sin

THE COLOUR OF SIN
On a dusky holiday evening,
When the bustle and hustle of city life is left behind,
Salty water flows in-between his fingers
Dangling from a yatch rocking the waves,
Somewhere in the Mediterranean.
The ripples answer the giggle of a little pearl
Jumping on the laps of a twitchy daddy
Lost in thoughts and reflections.
Trying to draw a line,
Between the lies that save men
From the jeopardies of the unspoken truth,
And the truths that destroy the legacy of great men.
Counting how often he stood on that line
And wondering why once 
He did cross, admitting to a truth
That caused him his family. 
A sea bird flusters the mirage of her beauty;
Twisting her lips behind the fast disappearing sun,
Into a smile that would bear semblance
To the crescent of a would-be moon.
Placing her cute dimples upon her forehead,
And leaving her face dancing in undulation.
The white of her eyes matches the hue of the heavens
Into which he stares deep and sees goodness,
In a white unblemished around the black of her iris 
Sharp in contrast to the ones that stared back
In the morning mirror on his wall.
Excitedly she points at the wandering sky
Falling off at the oval edge of the world.
Pulling his beard and asking
Why he doesn’t live with mummy.
There he stands again,
Legs astride of that line,
The truth of his infidelity urges him 
But he lies and his eyes get brushed a new shade.
That which would not be washed away
By a river of tears from years of remorse.
The indelible colour of sin
Paints the eyes of the sinner
With shades of red 
That thickens with every new iniquity.

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

The Soldier

THE SOLDIER

From a tender age I knew will be nuclear:
While my peers sang to the dilemma of Kelly and Nelly,
I slept with Chris de burgh dreaming of no border lines.
The lady in red was my finest
And fetal hesitation was not my thing.
Then, I was 13 with a Mandela line,
Drawn through my head near a star.
The first lady wasn’t in red,
But saw red when I burst her. 
Then, they called me the sergeant.
I popped five more before I dropped my teens.
Upgrading to two Mandela lines and stars on either side of my head.
Jenny, ivy, Lilly, Cindy, Julie, Emily and all the others,
In a confederation of the broken hearted,
In a unanimous vote of no confidence,
Declared me a persona non grata.
“But he was a handsome devil, that one” they cried
And he never missed a shot.

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

Fermentation

Fermentation

Rumpled like a ceiling mirror 
Staring at an unmade bed,
Like burned tyres of a revolution,
Like a beach without sand,
A wood pecker without a beak,
Like a baby born with a cord around his neck.
Marks of birth etched all over me, 

I feel the sugar oozing,
I taste the sour,
Having turned.

We didn’t wake up to find the lights out:
Screws slowly undone with every fight,
I hate you and forgive you then hope.
But it wasn’t wine brewing. 

The kisses that flew out the window,
Every morning as you returned with a whiff of her.
My love sinking six feet every night,
As I clutched at lonely pillows, 
While you sank into her,
Behind conference room doors 
In meetings that never were.

I feel fermented
And it taste like hate from 1939,

Brewed in my soul through a love glycolysis.
My veins filled with ethanol and alcohol,
Inebriated with pain and I drink,

From this glass of sorrow, 
In memory of your past. 
Celebrating your death,
The last time you tasted of her sugar
While I drenched in this lactic acid.

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

Scene of Adultery

SCENE OF ADULTERY

At the far edge of a town,
Where all roads lose their tracks,
There is a tavern that camps all birds.

The ones that fly away from their cages.
Singing songs of freedom,
Flapping their wings to the prospect of imminent pleasure.

One after the other they go meandering, 
Skirting from idle eyes that sit at every corner,
And swift tongues that tell of tales unseen.

See them scurrying away.
Rushing like sheep to the house of slaughter,
Where in a trice, they douse in the sins of the flesh.

Wondering why they took that long walk down the aisle;
Embarking on a journey of such unforeseeable perils,
Wishing they never said I do.

At last, when the charm of desire has waned off,
And the call of duty appeals to their limbo consciences,
They comb their nests, leaving behind no trace of evidence.

Along murky corridors, they cast unseeing eyes,
And return acknowledging nods to passing comrades.
Each bond to the other in silence, by shame.

One before the other, they sneak out,
Filled with a mix of pleasure and guilt.
Often vowing never again to return.

To this scene of adultery.

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

Bottle Dance

BOTTLE DANCE

Across my land, abysses gnaw at automobiles,
From the foot of the mountain, 
To the shores of the oil fountain.
Certificated youths drinking piss to mellow their brains,
Clutching at wheels, dodging bumps into fog lights.
“Stupid, ing dog” curse survivors of amputation “you bastard” 
“Who cares, you swine” retorts I the offender 
just before crashing into the next one.
In my shack, counting my yields and sighing, 
evading the burning eyes of hungry breeds.

How did I ever get here?

In the ring stood I, surrounded by Foncha, Endeley, Jua and Ntumazah
Um Nyobe sang the UPC song and they danced. 
They danced the bottle dance.
Sandwiching in the center, on the slaughter slab, my motherland.
Nigeria to the left, La Republique to the right, 
Trampling upon outright independence.
Foncha  danced and Endeley danced and Nyobe sang and Britain watched. 
The tune was clear, the rhythm was jazzed but the lyrics were blur;
Whence had a nation’s independence, 
Been conditioned upon attachment to already independent states?

So how did we ever get here?

A loaf of bread baked in the flames of WWI
And served into the plates of Imperial barons of foreign insanity
Too blind to the tongues of oneness.
Drawing a line far far away in the halls of mirror 
That tore grandmother’s breasts apart.
The story of the Ewes of Togoland 
Was being whispered in her land while she slept.
A line dragged across the highlands of the Adamawa and drained into the Atlantic,
Sullied the virginity and orthography of kamerun.
Grooming a set of dysfunctional twins through years of alien doctrines, 
Only to be reunited in an unholy matrimony called Cameroon or Cameroun.
Testaments of tongues foreign like those on a devil’s Pentecost,
That sowed seeds of immortal division.

So this is how really I got here!

A son deprived of the warmth of a Mother
Drained of her milk,
Tapped and shipped offshore. 
Scorned and oppressed by a brother,
His name slowing fading away from the sands of time.
And now, the land of bottle dancers clamour for a new dance:
For I know how we got here and I too want to dance; 
Federation to the left, secession to the right,
Trampling upon the pseudo 1972 re-unification.
The blood of the brave pipe the tunes 
And rhythms of gunshots meet hallelujah,
Sang in a coffin.

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

Envy Is a Sexy Seductress

ENVY IS A SEXY SEDUCTRESS

On days when the devil's workshop opens 
On the streets of an idle mind,
Envy visits and knocks.
It lingers on your porch,
As you try to call it stranger
And busy yourself 
With thoughts of the good Jesus
Or the days when you shone too.
A vapourized consolation 
That clouds over your hope
And rains in intermittent despair.
Envy brushes aside her long hair.
Softly, it knocks and winks.
So you open and it glides in on heels 
Flaunting irresistible humps 
Like a glossy damsel in a mini skirt.
Caressing the back of your mind,
Whispering in soft tones,
Evil plots of destruction; 
For peers that cruise in Porsches. 
The ones that brandish their wedding rings
And threw bouquets which you always missed.
Bubbling in fine villas
Surrounded by giggling kids,
In new posts and instagrams.
A flagrant display of all you wish
All which you couldn’t have.
So you get all warmed up
And she’s all over you in a trice.

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

Africa's Puberty

AFRICA’S PUBERTY
When puberty sets in,
The wind feels good on
A little leg and thigh,
Some belly button
And budding bottom.
Tattooed dames,
Sexily renamed
From Elizabeth 
And Isabelle,
To Lizzy 
And Bella,
Storm into the world;
Boobs growing as fast as hearts
To be squeezed and broken.
Carrying heads of baskets
Filled with liquid counsel,
Speeding off on the fast lane
On the high way to remorse,
Surely to crash home
On the streets of Accra Ghana
Or the ghettos of old town Bamenda
Like those of downtown Soweto
As teenage mothers
Or as daughters of prophets
With gowns and scarfs 
Over their scars.
Palms raised in supplication
For husbands of any sort
For whom they know
They will never bear kids.

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

Virgins

VIRGINS
Little long after the moon drank the sun;
Far away from home underneath a baobab, 
With my heart in the palms of my hands,
Pumping petrified blood down my great vein,
In a skin that peeled with fear, 
I laid dazed, in a honey maze.

The sweet fragrance of her nectar joggled my senses 
As I searched for my name in between her thighs,
Deep beyond the thicket that bore the truth and the light:

With every touch, 
In a portrait of passion and pleasure, 
She painted my future.
With every thrust, 
She wriggled in glorious accommodation. 
And as her dam burst, 
She breathed fire onto my embers.

At last, in a melee of sensations unknown
With rivers oozing between our thighs in synchrony, 
I found my name, wrapped in the curl of her tongue;
Glorifying beneath the African sky,
A story forever to be engraved on our hearts,
One told by the contours of our steaming bodies;
Years, a dozen and a half from our first cries of 1987.
.

Details | Pride Yanu Poem

Empty Your Heart

Empty your heart of grief;
I too, kissed a witch 
Like a medal of gold
And she stole my soul
Through my lips.
Now I lay lost
Like forgotten dust
Upon her wicked hips
As she dances
Under the moonlight
To the sorrows of a thousand cases
She’s wrapped under her laces.

So empty your heart of grief;
For we are in this
Till the sun
Loses its light.