Nowadays, on every bewildered Nigerian’s mind, bemused resignation seeks solidarity with benign hope; even as hope itself wither with the tide, a swirling, rapacious current, sweeping against time. Time is what we don’t have, although you won’t know it by our leader’s whitewashed slogans, with phrases undone by their own past records. Never again? The people wished.  Their minds anguished. Unseasoned misery that these needless rains have brought along have rendered the ground weak like...

…without guns and fanfare, except a crown for the festival and raffia skirts for fans…!   I think of the wide-eyed gaze of the masquerade mocking what it sees. I must admit, I’ve always liked the power that comes from being behind the mask. Tradition invented the festival, and custom dictates the rules of the game. Nature, the harvest granted in yam barns,– I am inviting the world to see. The harvest week is approaching...

Christmas season soaks in fervent anticipation By wishes of children everywhere that hunt parents. Christmas eve is as happy as a smile! In the air of the night’s sainted tannery A goat’s fated dream hates epiphany! Smoke that ascends in annihilation! The sun rays from the window pane opened our eyes That see not when the ephemeral breeze kisses The spirit fortress inside the grounds of our family yard. Across the endless land The cool...

The sky is open and welcoming; The cloud turns it into a moving news: Stories about floating hopes, Of time lost in a whimsy, About time-waiting hopelessness, Hanging on a thin line—the divide Between rising aspirations And declining expectations. As aspiration yearned into moonlight, Hours before the coming dawn, Fresh with expectations Wrapped around every living thing, Everything breathing but gasping For fresh overconfident air. “Don’t ask me how fresh”, But everything felt it, took...