Olumide Omoyele

Olumide Omoyele Poems

I am a God
Ordained at the
earliest point in time
The blood of ancient dynasties
...

2.

[For Ye 'Beji]


Like the fabled
...

Brother, Dear Brother,
Incredible violence.
Reign of fire.
Starvation.
...

Three children play at dawn
budding engineers of sandcastles
a large roar, deafening...
Best-laid plans and aspirations
...

Faster and faster, the thrusts get
The gyrations, poetic
Like a solemn, agreeable battle
Between Gods, those giants
...

elevated pretences
co-ordinated, powerful and
seemingly all-encompassing
believable even... well, almost
...

The innocent simplicity
with which a child plays,
falls and rises again and again,
and yet again;
...

Like a shot
a bolt from the blue
fun and games evaporate
disillusionment and anger beckons
...

Twin windows, beautiful
Gateways to a precious soul
Simple yet capable of
Incredible, varied emotions
...

The tenderness.
The complex simplicity.
The calm.
The silence.
...

[For Tupac Shakur]

But for the unintended
crack in the concrete
...

I dreamt of you
I imagined the magic,
the feelings I would
feel at the sight
...

13.

I long to write an epic poem
with long, soothing, sentences
and grand announcements.
The descriptive tenses,
...

Like the setting
of a rising moon, the glow
cuts across many
rivers…and squirts cool breezes
...

A towering inferno.
Alternating between rational
Thought and audacious imagination
A bird, with unclipped wings. A
...

What to do with this labyrinth
Of countless tongues? Children of
His Holiness, Chief Lord Lugard
Adherents of absent Gods
...

war is coming
the drums are rolling
human endeavours come to nothing
nukes do a dance of the forests
...

Do I hear
the screams
of an unborn child?
...

Intoxication.
Manipulation.
Compulsion.
The ability to compel…to have
...

20.

What to do when the night
speaks your name?
the echoes… O the echoes
they can be heard through the ages
...

The Best Poem Of Olumide Omoyele

I, God

I am a God
Ordained at the
earliest point in time
The blood of ancient dynasties
flow through my very veins
even now as I look in many mirrors
and see my ancestors
Great men and women of
illustrious triumphs and achievements
Of pride and of the credo of humanism
Of incantations and ceremonies
Of sacrifices and revered cultures
Of constant jubilation

Men, like gods, are
Intoxicated with prestige and
sacrifice and appeasement
I walk with a swagger, expecting
men to bow in my presence; and to pacify me
Even though I am today
sometimes ridiculed
in distant lands
Still, I rise

In the knowledge that I
gave birth to all of
humanity and
to every civilization
though I am told I have
made no contribution
to art, science, thought or technology

But I am rescued by the unimpeachable
fact that I penned
the very manuscripts of civilization;
and was present at the
Beginnings of ALL of
Man's progress
Birthed from the Nile Valley
to Timbuktu

My history was ambushed
Stolen by thieves who came
dressed as friends,
curious explorers I thought them -
so I welcomed them
with feasts and special
performances by legendary dancers
I presented them with gifts of
ivory and gold and salt
to take back to their kings and queens …
and so they returned for more
and more and yet I did not mind
I thought it was awful nice
of them to navigate in perilous
waters just to pay my sunny land a visit...
I prayed they'd remember
to make sufficient sacrifices
to their gods and goddesses
of water, to keep them
safe in such journeys...

Damn!
Such unforgivable naivety
borne out of my painfully kind nature

Since my hospitality they
repaid a thousand-fold
with great violence and fury, and the
nonchalant theft of my children
whom they cruelly chained and
shipped off to faraway
lands across the Atlantic
to Europe and later the Americas - what agony
to which the original
inhabitants of that latter terrain
must have been subjected!

I, who ruled empires,
Of farmers, philosophers and physicians
Of warriors, historians and craftsmen
I, who left behind my Neolithic Age,
a whole two thousand years
before anyone in Europe could
read or write or weave clothes
or even domesticate animals!
Yet, for a time, I was successfully
incapacitated by their most
effective creation, racism

But my capacity for rejuvenation - stuff
of legend! - shall be told for
ten thousand years
So, even now as the chains
of oppression weigh heavily
on my embattled shoulders
Still, I arise without bitterness

I talk big and with unadulterated pride, even
in the midst of nothingness,
oblivious to the risk
of disparagement
I celebrate excessively, I shrug
off my disappointments like the mere
flicking away of a harmless, humming fly
I just get on with it
I can hear it like the
little whispers of gossiping children:
How does he keep going even as
we try to stifle his ascent? How
does he keep smiling even
as we work tirelessly
to break his spirit? He is a demon
surely not of this world

They are right
of course, as surely
a god I most certainly am




From the book A PLEA FOR MEMORY
http: //www.amazon.co.uk/A-PLEA-FOR-MEMORY/dp/1491886765/ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF8&qid=1386765503&sr=8-1&keywords=a+plea+for+memory

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