Tales To Tell Poem by Yusuff Uthman Adekola

I know of a house
Whose roof is full of holes
Whose body is made of cotton buds
Whose floor is smeared with blood.
Painted green, white and green is it.
What about it?
I've got tales to tell.

Bedwelling its belly
Are some Tom, Dick and Harry.
They've got protuberant bellies
Like tortoise of the fairy story.
I've got to tell the tales.

Tom says, 'I'm here to stay'
'I've come to illuminate your day'
He speaks with lips of sugar
With honey words, ready to pounce like cougar.
His doings are a scourge of heart pestilence
When all he munches and vomits is pretence.
He bereaves the masses of the world
And insidiously slits throats with a gentle, smiling sword.
And that's a tale I've told.

Another tale is that of Dick;
About the friendly exploitation he wreaks
About how he gives fire for water and water for fire
Oh! I forgot he is called a liar.
He asserts, 'I've come to help.'
'No need to make a yelp.'
He cloaks himself with black.
Maybe, for that, his heart is dungeon-dark.
A church rat bites a piece of cheese
And it gets its freedom seized
But a lion wolfs a wolf
And he is acquitted by paying just a loaf.
Now, that's another tale told.

The third is with acts so blurry
And that's the tale of Harry.
'I've brought glad tidings from the Supreme.' He says.
'So you may be conscious and not go astray'
With lifeless snakelike fabric wound round the head;
With a plus-like artifact on chest and a book held,
Brains are washed away by his holy-feigned preachings
So that pockets are drained of their sweat-borne earnings.
The words he wields walk and work in a different world
While he lives in another distant world.
And that's the last tale I've told.

Now that I've told the tales
I guess I've shed some rays
So we may be cognizant
Of the destructive ants.