Poet-Today ~ Atoyebi Oluwafemi Akin ~ The Arts-Muse Fair

Pic: Aminu S Muhammad


...A Dance at Naira-Night...

All I see are the miscalculated feet
In processional mourning of the eerie beats from a native drum

The hands of the elders are masterpieces
Full of the rhythmic sounds that play at the tomb
Of the village youths.

II
Let it not be put under the tongues of the cowards
The elders of our age had traded the cult of decency for a youthful lust.

Beyond this gloom of loss,
I will announce the reign of reasoning
to halt the culture of hypocrisy

Beyond this tirade of anguish,
I will declare the revolution of thought
Towards a regeneration of clannish love

Beyond this era of dirge,
May these gods miss their path to alter the fate of our promising 'morrow.


A Watch Upon the Night's Stars

And when the virtuous grin
transmuted to a sham
is greeted with a loud ecstasy
By my puerile clans,
I took a chance,
towards the dawn of our nights,
to stride
along the confluence point at Niger.

Though I had no cause
to steal a gaze on the imprint
of the celestial bodies on the flirtatious surface of the water body
but my sight proved upon me
an insightful drive
than the straying feet
for I was encountered with
a memory so large;

Of the wounded voices
of the downtrodden
hushed by streams of wickedness flowing from the spring of Niger;

I saw,
the groaning on the face of Benue
Covered with the mask of smile,
Carved by the heavy hand of terror;

I gained a knowledge

Of how our grains of hope
Is washed down
Into the body of ocean
By the erosion powered
By the reign of thunders
Through the help of our smoke...

*****

Atoyebi Oluwafemi Akin
Atoyebi7@yahoo.com; 07033748882
Center for Performing Arts and Film studies in Education Osogbo



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