Makinde Adeniyi
Biography: Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi is a Prince, Physician (by training), Poet, and Author. He has published 2 poetry anthologies titled "Night Marauders and Other Poems," published by Carrot Publishers in 2022, and "Echoes from the Savannah," published by Amazon in 2024. He is currently working on another poetry anthology. He writes poems about social issues, culture, nature, love, and medicine. Some of his poems are Afrocentric in nature with a tilt towards the Yoruba culture and tradition.
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Makinde Adeniyi
Saturday 15 March 2025

THE SUN WILL SHINE AGAIN

THE SUN WILL SHINE AGAIN


When fear comes visiting 

Like a secret lover from the shadows,

My heart welcomes her looney tunes

To my desolate cathedral -

Familiar stranger, 

In motley congregation.


My dreams scream like dirty wounds 

On arduous thorny grounds;

Fright takes hold in feeble space,

Fear smiles in gruesome glee,

Echoes of doubt stifle

My wailing heart in grisly dread.


I turn to _Elédùmarè_ for guidance,

He sends _Ifá_ for comfort -

Whose corpus coaxes 

in subtle motifs.


I hear the cock crow...

 _Kùkùrúùku!_ 


It's a new dawn.


#TAP4 (one of my entries for a poetry contest organized by Naija Poets' Collectives)

Published in Echoes from the Savannah © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024



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Makinde Adeniyi
Monday 23 December 2024

A New Hope

A New Hope

Straddling waves, changing tides Turbulent sea, bumpy ride Still, the anchor holds To destination progress Wake up and smell the morning It's the dawn of a new day Clear blue sky, bright new morn Sun smiling in sweet splendour The aroma of a fresh hope Greets the nose with lingering incense Savour the dish Dine and be full Life is what we make of it Arm yourself with knowledge and truth Harm ignorance and falsehood Salt and sugar look alike but Taste different Come with nothing Fight for everything Return with spoils Like the spreading ripples At the drop of a pebble Life is but a riddle

From Echoes from the Savannah © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024


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Makinde Adeniyi
Monday 23 December 2024

Anaemia

Anaemia

Who cares for her once glorious dreams Utopia is the new reality Dopamine-starved citizens gaze forlornly As blood feverishly flows out From her gaping wounds Siamese twins of hunger and anger Starving her of peace and progress In a land of high Testosterone Security gone AWOL Citizens on their own Slowly but steadily Life ebbs out Deprived of nutrients and water Homeland turned fiefdom by renegades Despising folks, they make foes Pious laughter loosens frown of frail freedom Blood-sapping East wind Turns grasslands into deserts Bruised and beaten by the day Body and soul in dread of dawn Conquer battlefields of the mind With riots of laughter This Mephistophelian theatre With broken social ligaments and Ruptured moral tendons Will one day get a transfusion of a new life Or die slowly and solemnly of Anaemia

From Night Marauders and other poems © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2022


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Makinde Adeniyi
Wednesday 4 December 2024

Black is Gold

Black Is Gold

Speak your culture Wear your language Profess your art Own your shadow Love the man in the mirror Don't change a thing Black is gold I am omolúàbí Omo k'aaro o jire Footnote: Omoluabi - responsible person Omo k'aaro o jire - Yoruba

From "Echoes from the Savannah" © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024


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Makinde Adeniyi
Sunday 24 November 2024

Let's Celebrate

Let's Celebrate

Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi 


Feel the gángan1

Talking to the roots


Open the doors of your ears

And the windows of your eyes


Raise the decibel

Let the waists move without hinges


Bring the calabash

Let the ògùrọ̀2 flow like a river


Invite the masquerades

Àwọn ará ọ̀run kìnkin3


Let the gods be in tune with man

For what is man

If not a replica of the gods

Here today, gone tomorrow


Let the ṣẹ̀kẹ̀rẹ̀4 accentuate

The taste of the talking drums


Let the body be clothed in dust

And the spirit drunk with music


Let the ìlẹ̀kẹ̀ ìdí5 and idẹ6 flavour the day

And ìrùkẹ̀rẹ̀7 fan the flames of festivity


It’s time to celebrate!


Footnotes:

1. Gángan – a type of African drum also known as talking drum.

2. Ògùrọ̀ – palm wine; an alcoholic beverage made from the sap of species of palm trees.

‘3. Àwọn ará ọ̀run kìnkin' – the spirit beings

4. Ṣẹ̀kẹ̀rẹ̀ – a musical instrument made of gourd and beads.

5. Ìlẹ̀kẹ̀ ìdí – waist beads; an ornament or a piece of jewellery worn on the waist by African women.

6. Idẹ - ornament made of metal, worn on the wrist, the ankle, or other parts of the body.

7. Ìrùkẹ̀rẹ̀ – (also called fly whisks) an object among the Yoruba, made of horsetail or ram hair, worn by priests, royalty or dancers.


From "Echoes from the Savannah"© Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024.







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Makinde Adeniyi
Monday 4 November 2024

On The Run

On the run


Hunted by my past, trailed by my shadow,

Intoxicated by elixir of youth,

I climb the ìrókò beyond the leaves.


Wail of woes, dehydrated dreams

Crushed in the battlefield of the deep;

Love lost, hoarse voice, greying hairs.


The wind slaps me cold,

Drunk with evil pleasure,

Sweet sorrow envelopes me;

Then it dawns on me,

I’d frittered the forest and harried the sea

With eyes larger than my stomach

While lost in the jungle of ambition.


I have impregnated the sand 

and birthed blood;

Now,

Buried in the remnant of the night,

Fame 

Is a remote treacherous valley 

of thorny roses.


Wandering in the wilderness of civilization,

The stench of my decomposing sins has found me out.


A prisoner in my own skin,

I must hide and run,

And run and hide.


Solace in firewater and ghettos,

Like the hourglass,

I must hit the highway 

And journey to nowhere.


In the end,

I can't outrun my shadow.


From "Echoes from the Savannah" © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024



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Makinde Adeniyi
Wednesday 16 October 2024

CANCER

It began as a swelling Localized swelling Painless at first Then painful Then came a period of recession Oh! What a sweet relief Wellness reigns again Then again the swelling Only bigger now Persistent Bigger And bigger They say its cancer And it has come to stay No cure, they say The cancer has metastasized Through lymphatic vessels To distant regions Where it eventually Commits apoptosis. The conqueror Has conquered itself Relief for the conquered Succour has come Finally.



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Makinde Adeniyi
Wednesday 16 October 2024

Time and Chance

Time and chance Faith and fate Strive succeed, relax regress The charm of beauty And the pride of life Are often the fortress of loneliness And vast sadness Time and chance Faith and fate The heart is the real deal Beyond the veil is the seal For only in you lies the verity Time is a tyrant Chance has no script Time and Chance Faith and fate Mingling in the matrix of the mind Face your fears, feed your faith Soar like the Eagle, conquer space Take the plunge, dear to float In adversary lies victory


From Echoes from the Savannah © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024



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Makinde Adeniyi
Monday 7 October 2024

Black

BLACK

Olè! Olè!! Olè!!!
Petrol spattered
Strike the match!
Let him burn! A born brute
Bringing brawl, bruises and blood

Death! Death!! Death!!!
They chanted
No mercy
I saw violence in their vision
Venom in their voice

Stench of burning flesh, choking
Death, slow and agonising
Mercy took to flight
When the devil seized the wheels

Alas!
When it rained
Shea butter made fun of the
Salt, forgetting that
After the rain comes
Sunshine.

 

From Echoes from the Savannah © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024



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Makinde Adeniyi
Saturday 14 September 2024

The Audacity of Hope


Day, fresh and fearless;
Night, a distant dream;
The sadness of noon, 
gone.

The sun sheds radiance on a new moon,
Crowning the hills in beauty and gold.
In blissful awe, the mountains 
Welcome the rains to the green.

Like dew, promiscuous fortunes,
Swallowed by the Yew.
A newborn, birthed with hope.

Desire, dare, seek.
Resign regrets, despise doubt.
Ponder, pause, pray.

Toil in the mines of knowledge,
Where courage silently labours 
into victory.

Believe,
Watch the future fall 
in line.


From "Night Marauders and Other Poems" © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2022



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Makinde Adeniyi
Wednesday 11 September 2024

New Yam

New Yam 

 

Death brings life

New, tender and green

Earth brown, immaculate white 

 

The priest heralds her coming

The town crier drums it

The farmer dances to the market

It's time to celebrate

 

Let loose the masquerades

Celestial visitors from yonder

Let the melody of the odó

Echo the birth of the new yam

Like the birth of a newborn

The drums are rolled out

 

The market is flooded

With news of its coming

The homestead salivates 

The streets jubilate

 

Vegetables will bleed today

The fattened cock will crow no more

The slumber of the pestle is over

For what is in the yam that the knife doesn't know

 

The noise of pounding

Will keep the neighbours awake

Iyán funfun báláwú is on the menu today

 

From: Echoes from the Savannah © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024



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Makinde Adeniyi
Sunday 8 September 2024

Silence



Every night I pay obeisance 

To all the pillars in the house 

Yet, by the morning

Clothes drenched, bed soaked

Awakening becomes aversion


At first light, mama said 

"How was the night"

Silence

"Oh! It has happened again"

More silence


Then shame 

Of drying the raffia mat

I looked up to Eledumare

Deliver me from opprobrium

Again, silence

Forlornly, I embrace fate

Doomed to be an Island


One day

I woke up dry

Is this a dream?

I told nobody

It must be delusion

Next day dry

Again! 

Then dry

              Dry

                   Dry…


 From: Echoes from the Savannah. © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024



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Makinde Adeniyi
Sunday 8 September 2024

Mágùn

 

He left the way he came

A dog deaf to the hunter’s call

He visited the pot for a quick bite

Unwelcome guest, scheming swindler

 

He left the way he came

Drawn to the grave

By a ravenous craving

A quick bite from Eve’s apple

 

He left the way he came

The forbidden mould on an ingrown toast

A poisoned chalice

Beautifully irresistible

 

He left the way he came

Forgetting to distil his lust

Choked on his thrust

Just before he could burst

 

He left the way he came

Drawn by the depths of passion

Drowned in the shallow abyss

Of an irresistible pool

Sucked dry by the puddle of life

 

He left the way he came

Struck by mágùn1

Three somersaults like the slaughtered

Cockrel in preparation for dinner 

Or better still cum till the last drop of life

On the streets of El Dorado

 

From Echoes from the Savannah © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024



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