The Fulani Gypsies Poem by Olayiwola Olarewaju Metamofosis

I have seen many drovers of your kind where brisk egrets preen and perch with twisted limbs on cattle rears in acrid fields and dreich grazen turfs.


I have seen the clumped colony of your clans spreading drab tarpaulins on dung-coated velds.
Such is the pedigree of your tribe.


Queer, querulous, abrasive dwellers of the subconscious zone,
morose, maudlin marauding invaders that swoop in the night,
limp-trousered ramblers
staff-reared stooping leggers in torn-tattered togs
held incommunicado by the communion of cows.
You claim no territories
but all territories you claim to be your own.
You tread long and trail the vast motherearth.
From Sahel to Somalia with pert, sun -tanned noses, crunching the cackling jungles with clogged jungle boots.
Your female folks hawk in bare, coloured heels pouting currant lips above heaving breasts in skimpy skimps.


There they sat in clumps lowering their wan, glowing eyes to sip from fura cups.
Their brows spun blank and their flat-clobbered chests seething of tantrums of miffing gripes.
The arms shrugged and spurned with hostile abnegation from other tribes.


Such is the long pedigree of your estranged tribe, minding none,
and none cares to mind.


(Written in Kaduna, March 8,2013, with Debby)