A flag at bay

Olukemi Omoyeni

Olukemi Omoyeni's Profile

Olukemi Omoyeni

Wednesday 23 March 2022

Marriage drama and its many genres - a duet

I chose you my lover,

In the middle of a tirade

A disquisition on the lot of women of the world,

In my pool of hopelessness but With a myriad of hope,

A hope for difference.

Under the shimmering stare of the whole world,

We became bound in nuptials,

A world of drama and its many genres,

Where I’m treated second class in all,

By your mother and families,

In scoffs and scorns,

But you are still without defense,

You looked out for a dense woman

by your description of “wife material”,

You rubbed your own scorn right on me

And when I flinch, you say I’m no wife material.

A bit of being humbled by the privileges

The privileges the society granted your gender,

Until the reinment of kingship worn on you by our peers is torn

And you become a bit of husband and father,

You are only an eve away from our home.

YAKSPORT

Among suitors you chose me

I desired your love tenderly

You showed me strong affection

I promised to love and protect you

Yes, we were happy just as we planned

But oh, the burden of husbandhood is heavy

It seems our path is now murky

I barely can have peace of mind

Problem has marred my joy

Certainly, I cherish my mother

My siblings, my only family

They never hate you at all

But, obedience is the root of my tradition,

My family, you must revere

Just as you love me, adore them

That is the tradition of our dear Africa

My utterance was made under frustration

I should now present my sobriety

Support me and I shall prosper

Nag me not, and I shall blossom

I do not hate you, let’s make peace

You explain with bitterness

You paint me as evil

Let me love you, I implore

I'm tired of fighting

Take back my luggage and let's amend

My darling, my wife.

KEMI

Help me increase the heat of love,

That we may turn this he'll to heaven

Where our lovers will only but smile.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Tuesday 14 September 2021

The hidden force

see to the sea,

Ensure it is sealed,

We need no noise,

nor turbulence, nor unpoise,

We know our desperate desires,

But do we require what we desire?

Do we know what is treasurable?

We are sure emptily setting forth.

But there is a hidden force,

The hidden force within our claws,

Shows us a path to life and its flaws,

It is a burning passion, a strife,

Something that keeps calling on your life,

So quietly, but audibly.

The force that navigates quietly,

Our paths in this void and formless world.

We are born with it and the chord,

The chord you can severe but the force is unclear.

It wanes off in the course of time,

Only few hold on tight to its rhymes,

To manifest all its glade,

Endeavour is feeble if it is a man made,

Only the hidden force creates a lasting path,

Once you lose its hoose,

Then life becomes a meaningless cruise,

No destination.

The hidden force is an eggshell,

Do not smash it on the platter of societal and peer conformity,

Only to return murmuring angrily.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Tuesday 14 September 2021

It is called acting

I have falsely remoulded me,

No furrows, no taints, just thourough,

I find no fault in this new self, I am perfect,

But your imperfection I will hunt, and hound,

Adjudged sluggards and conformists,

Weaklings from whom I have hidden my tears,

Yet I see yours like a sickening river,

In my many proddings.

I will hound you till a thawed rest.

You will hear my roaring,

In myriad of scathings and strictures.

These are my imperfections well hidden,

Yet a disquisition for others I share,

Hounding their faults, still, mine hidden.

This is not dementia, it is called acting!

I have learnt to to hide and squint,

Hide my flaws flawly, and my imperfections imperfectly.

But far from the madding crowd,

At night when the soul rests,

Check my pillow, it is fertile.

Fertile with my tartly tears and sobs,

Nothing around me, it is empty.

My millieu is imperfection filled,

life's sourest lemon grows on my infertile pillow,

from it I drank, and shed a tear or two,

When I relieve my woes.

My pillow will be fertile again tonight,

I am tainted and thawed.

I quit hounding your flaws,

I quit my neighbour,all I did and hid,

All I did to make it glistening around me,

It is not dementia, it is called acting.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Tuesday 14 September 2021

How to love a feminist

save me mehir from this subtle flesh,

Older I grow, thirsty I become.

Watch Mehir, as I bury myself in between your arms,

In all my feebleness, though opulent.

If I had written a Will before

I shall consult the reckless lawyer,

To tell him to write a codicil or be mute.

All my life I shall will to you Mehir,

I will gladly bequeath my chose in action in indentures,

I shall hand you the sepulchre,

And me you shall lead to infinity

Only if you make me a priority,

Not letting me depend on me for all I do,

Remind me by action that i am delicate,as you have fondly called me,

The way you will protect and handle the many raw eggs in your chiller,

Then forget feminism, it is flinty,

By your acts of reverence and care tell me I am a woman,

And I shall become a woman from the man that Iam now,
On the long run you shall see,
No woman is a hard nut to crack afterall.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Tuesday 14 September 2021

Die empty

confront your sublimity the "gen z" children,

At sheol all rests, it's silent as light,

No one sinks or succeds,

Hades is a sinking hallow in itself.

This upheavals ends here on earth.

You only hear the living mumble your legacies.

Lets take a trip, this trip,

A day and a night at hades,

See for yourself the writhing and the whirling,

The moaning and smiling at death.

Some smile, some moan,

Moaning in regret of their weight

Are some dead,

They did not let out much in their days,

Smiling are some other dead

They feel air light and empty,

They doled out all they in them had,

The calibre that accepted mortality,

They played time, no procrastination.

This clock I see,

It offers every spineless man a moment,

A moment to become a hero!

That time is ticking, seize it!

Die empty!

Your content is useless in the grave

Do not writhe in regret,

When your hair is grey and begins to fall off,

Die empty, don't make a grave mistake.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Tuesday 14 September 2021

Unconforming

we imagine hades,

Where all demons go.

As an opulent lady with a glow,

Still scrabblig for relevance in this globe.

Relevance? Woman? Uncalled for!

A stare to imagine the nakedness,

Thats all you will notice.

The woman gets bizzare,

ruthless, and crooked,

Are you negroid?

how negroid?

Are you of my clan and kinship?

No, I am human-that's my feedback.

This spot of mine was your status qou,

Now your craving is totally saturated,

And your belly protruding,

But this i shall relieve,

I am on the eve,

I no longer cringe nor cleave.

I am on the eve of a revolution,

This strait and penury will all be gone,

This poverty that kicked my breast as I moan,

With my reinment dangling on my neck torn.

I am not your clansman,

Swear? No, not even in any span.

I won't swear to being your clansman, changing my identity to be gratified

You may turn your back and go on rampage,

I won't speak your language,

I don't oscillate to be guaged,

I am just human.

If I need solace and soothing, grant me don't gum,

Let not this corrigendum become an addendum,

I may be glued to the wall as I writhe now,

But I am on the eve of affluence and opulence,

Nothing has changed as I envisioned

Olukemi Omoyeni

Monday 3 May 2021

Morning

The day breaks in serration,

When the soul goes to rest and welcomes the body,

The night is terrific and has injured souls,

But as the moon goes to rest to welcome the sun,

Let my body lay my injured soul to rest

Let it get the plough and plunder the field,

Lest both become so blanch,

Lest my strength wanes and weasels out

Lest my clansmen call me slothful.

That the yob may not be wasted,

Nor the strength of his youth worn thin.

The night begins in the morning,

Morning when earth hunters cannot be seen,

They are far spent by the perils of the night,

So that the noble man can jostle without fear.

A morning in disarray is a lost whole day,

Morning, when the tide is friendly and healthy,

When daughters of evil have soften the earth

In the night, with their junta boots,

The only time the sun smiles,

See, sloths cons the morning,

Forgetting the zest that rises with us at dawn.

This vortex of zest, do not thaw but use,

Do not thaw in the pool of slothfhlness,

Till the earth as you rise from your chamber,

Before the mildness of the sun effluxes,

Before the night hounders come through,

Till, that your straits becomes not acute,

A slothful man is a living corpse,

When morrow comes, you birth your dreams,

Or you squelch it in the pool of procrastination.

It is another morning,

Another chance to rewrite your destiny.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Wednesday 23 March 2022

The view from Ugele hill

I have spent half of my life span

Foretold by the holy book in demistification,

Ì know the groin that bore me,

The very father of my tender days,

But I also know him not,

He is to me and our gods a man of no descent.

We are sons of the soil by mouth not sight,

We can't locate our clime except with a compass.

We clamour as children,

Yet, he says to us in another man's language

What does a child know?

Today I will be home,

Tomorrow I may be on the quiet bier.

They told me, if you want to go home,

Go ring hollow,

In the thick mud of Okeruku,

Ugele hill to your left, olosunta hill to your right,

In between you shall find your clime.

Hostile the prophet of doom told me they are,

But I shall be home.

Today I am home,

In the serenity and serendipity of my clansmen,

Far from the words of my prophet.

I saw mud, clay,

Mud and hills in marriage to make me a home.

I summit the steps of the dreaded Ugele hill,

In the stern glare of my kinsmen.

It all goes blank,

I went blank to all civilisation ever taught me,

The lead poisoning,

Lethal noise of monstrous engines.

I saw Olosunta, the dreaded hill that scares itself,

Whose footprints rovers only on muddy paths,

I saw orole, the only rock with a scrotum,
The proud husband of Olosunta.
The view from the top of Ugele drops jaws,
I am cocooned by the very nature that kissed my lips,
As I stare at half naked women preparing my pounded yam,
For what do people do with pounded yam in my clan
Than merry with it?
The excessive yam is the first identity of a true man in my clan.
I saw a little different world.
The birds spoke to me, so does Ajuni river.
Numbers of rust-induced-red roofs,
Red bricks, and thick mud coloured my clan
It is all red and a bit reeky where my real kindred abides.
It was then I knew my father,,
The great son of the revered hills,
Olosunta with the mysterious cave of a thousand birds
Today I am home,
I do not want to marry my brother,
Nor my children marrying their kinsmen,
Today, I have seen them all,
And I have seen it all,
I am the great daughter of the dreaded mountains.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Sunday 2 May 2021

Reminisces on the eve of my departure

Have you seen a whirl wind wreck?

It is fast, furious and violent,

violent, yet bearing no sword,

This I saw on the sea as I stood ashore,

Waiting to leave the shores of what's left of Nigeria.

The sea was calm yet a whirl wind I see,

A tempest, ravaging the commoner,

He knows almost nothing of his destiny.

This land has become flaccid,

Flaccid of milk and everything that bubbles its beauty,

We are near dissipation while the gods watch.

I await impatiently to depart,

Looking back on these fine green hills,

While I take the most uncertain step of my life,

Uncertainty of what is to come as my fate

In the land of strangers,

Wishing my clan will a day whisper to me;

Return! For the land is green again.

I looked around, again at the hills,

Rustic and cocooned in mist,

On the other side of these hills, is a land belonging to the unknown

Flowing with the many treasures of my nativity

Wasted and cheaply transported by it's very owns.

These treasures forged a river,

Upon which my boat will one day again sail back home,

But the currents of this ocean on which shore I stand

Plays me a rhythm,

A rhythm that pushes me more to the deep,

To leave and succeed, or stay and endure.

So I spoke to the wind,

I would rather sail with your rhythm

And behold the glory of treasures of my nativity,

As it flourishes another man's land.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Sunday 2 May 2021

To my my wife I leave

The death of Ajanaku quivers the forests,

The cold hands of warm death unseen.

I am at the gate of hades,

Knocking on heaven's gate my soul to present.

In the morrow of tomorrow I will be gone,

In the guidance of sparkling angels,

But my clansmen, let me leave words,

Will or codicils you may nomenclate this,

My wife you shall entreat with all my realty.

brother, my wife is the half flesh that completes my being,

Springing forth like a lily to beautify my gusto.

This land, observe it,

Our last destination it shall be,

Give her all.

In the morrow of tomorrow, maybe yet maybe not yet,

I may be gone

Collect nothing from Sebolatan that belongs to me.

I have seen the plundering of Aduke,

The levirated mistress of my dead friend,

That my wife may come no close after I am long gone.

Kindred, do you want to know peace?

Let not my ghost dissipate your serenity

Give her all I own.

Sebolatan my wife, the masterplanner, give her all,

Before I become the regular deadman I my clan,

The death of my father displaced my mother of everything,

So my clan assumes nor believes,

In the crucible of their callousness

A woman they speak has no place, not my wife!

Displace her at your peril.

Kindred, are you attentive?

All cozy shelters we built together

Kotila my brother, you swerved us at our perilous time,

Out of envy and vileness of your heart,

You did me no relief, you soothed me not,

But my wife, the cotton fibre

That sees through all tides and seasons,

Architect of all I built in my lifetime,

Give her all, to her and my children

In the morrow I may be long gone.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Sunday 2 May 2021

I am not dirty

I have refused to bath,

I have refused to drink water, not even an elixir,

I am not dirty, I am only scared.

If I drink and bath this water,

It may wash away the memories of my beloved.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Sunday 2 May 2021

Aloof from your "crazy"

You hit me, save for my minute strength,

I will not kill you,

Atleast not with my bare hands,

I will kill my cowardice and my many insecurities, to take a walk

And the death of these will snap back to kill you.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Sunday 2 May 2021

Brigandage

Drag me to the hallow chambers of his lordship,

To the Snares and nest of this worship.

Charge me without the habeas corpus,

Let me remain in remand till allocutus.

I am an accessory yet a victim,

I am an accessory and a victim to the same crime.

Charge me for brigandage pay no mind to the clime.

Five persons have robbed me with arms,

These five persons my lord I know like my palm,

Bickering, fear, sloth, wrath, lechery,

They all reside in me, a team we are.

I am guilty of aiding and abetting with stern glare,

These things that robs me of life's fortune in me gauged,

I am the sixth man of this five - man brigandage,

I am an accessory and a victim to a single crime.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Saturday 1 May 2021

Dying declarations

Mahalia, she muttered as I retard,

She's plagued with an epidemic.

Though in the struggle to give another soul,

Another soul into the turbulence of the land of colour,

Mahalia, she muttered repeatedly,

The gods would think I am the one dying,

As she screamed with the remnant of her zest.

In law, dying declarations is stating the cause of death.

Mahalia, tell my newborn the cause of my death,

That the land of colour soothed me not,

Nor reserved so much for her coming generation.

Tell her about the colony of tender blood,

Where a million lives were jeopardized,

And some lost forever,

In the quest for language sovereignty.

A language not yours not mine,

A language of memories,

A language that speaks suppression

A language that should speak the old memories of slavery,

Is the crown prince in the colony of tender blood.

They'd spill the blood of their future

They'd lay down anything to sustain this disgust.

Tell her mahalia,

Tell her about the colony of missiles,

That I smell and see metals,

Lethal metals of self destruct,

The missile base of poverty, and a life too costly.

It comes with no recompense that the metals are here,

The shepherd is fed, the field is no longer the sheep's.

Tell her of the madibawasu colony

Slayer of his own blood,

Despiser of his own brothers.

He'd kiss the feet of the new vanilla than honour his own kind.

The hadassah of vanilla oozes sweetness,

But the madibawasu vanilla oozes torture,

It reeks of blood,

the rings on our noses,

The the blood in the Atlantic,

The skull of scores,

Scores of our brothers and sisters.

Madibawasu will lick the horn and feet of this vanilla,

In reproachful exchange for the blood of his kins.

Tell her about the colony of the niggers

Where the strength of a giant is bought

For just a shekel of silver.

The once ravishing peaceful sea of oil mahalia,

Has become the river of flowing bloods.

Bloods and sweat,

Sweats of duress, and invincible writhe,

From the follicles of many skins,

The skins bearing the mark of the thumbscrew.

From the gushing sound of boiling blood

A gush of hate and resentment from her yobs,

Of resentment and betrayal,

Of mismanaged funds and underutilised potentials.

The gush of different bloods, blue bloods, bad bloods, red bloods and plasma.

My grand mother never again sings of the land of colour,

But you will sing it to Kumini my newborn

In a different tune,

A tune that will tug her heartstrings,

A tune to return the land of colour

To nature and the beauty of several colours,

A tune that takes recompense for every march of juntas,

Of emissions and deposits to the horizons.

Kumini will learn to hug her brothers,

And not despise her sisters,

But the traitors, slayers of brothers, she shall not save.

Mahalia, I endear you,

Tell Kumini that the many deficits of the colonies

Transited me into the world of knowledge

I didn't die of her birth nor breed,

The colonies killed me.

Olukemi Omoyeni

Saturday 1 May 2021

A flag at bay

When the torrents of the world beckons,

When it beckons and keeps me at bay,

I waved a flag,

A call to the people at shore,

People who already laid at anchor,

In the affluence and fortune of the sea,

I called for rescue, I am ensnared,

I am trapped at bay, no one stuttered.

Bay - a state of helplessness,

Where even a man of strength cannot trod.

Bay - a situation, a time once or twice,

In the lifetime of every man,

Man only hope to get a lifeguard,

A life guard to the rescue at a time of sinking.

Olukemi Omoyeni's Profile

Marriage drama and its many genres - a duet

The hidden force

It is called acting

How to love a feminist

Die empty

Unconforming

Morning

The view from Ugele hill

Reminisces on the eve of my departure

To my my wife I leave

I am not dirty

Aloof from your "crazy"

Brigandage

Dying declarations

A flag at bay

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