More than 12 days ago I got a direct message notification instructing me to write this, an article with the title ‘My Valentine dreams’. At first I chuckled thinking it must be a joke of some sort. But I got a reminder to that saying that I have been given a deadline, with eyes wide I muttered ‘choi’ in my twitter voice. This was no rough play; it was more than that, a classical example of what the Yorubas’ call ‘Babanla ika’. Where would I start? I didn’t know. How could I? Continue reading
And so I sat on the marble floor, my back to the smooth white wall, legs crossed to form an ‘x’, having incomprehensible maneuvers, trying to write and occasionally glancing at the television. A boring asian ‘mercenary’ movie is on, but that is the least of things on my mind, for I am busy trying to cure the ‘writer’s block’ syndrome which have affected & plagued me time after time, the day after the D-day, for the past 2 months which have made me litter the floor with pieces of squeezed papers and junk. Continue reading
The time is 2 O’clock and I’m still in the cubicle which is my own office space, a gazillion papers,files & folders lieing around on my ebony shined synthetic table, necking and romancing themselves as if they had lives of their own. I sit with my body arched towards the table, shoes kicked out, sleeves rolled, head hurting, back aching, & for the millionth time wishing I had a different job, a much easier one. But Continue reading
I remember returning to the boarding school hostel after going home without proper permission from the authorities, it was an in-thing we did those days. I chose to get to the hostel when the whole school was in the classrooms to avoid being noticed.
I remember meeting some students in the hostel, many approached me for goodies which I’d brought back with me, unlike them all, one was persistent. He wasn’t really a friend though, just one of those people you said ‘what’s up’ to and pass by.
NB: I wrote this in July on one of those days that half of Lagos and other parts of the country almost got submerged by flood due to massive rain fall. Read on.
In the darkness of my room I heard music playing near by, it wasn’t something I was accustomed to, no! the jams was an 80’s old school. It played on and my mind kept going back to the past and returning to the present, and each time bringing a lot of memories back with it. Somebody snored beside me, I didn’t care, I just laid there and had these incomprehensible maneuvers. Continue reading
By Yuwavelli G.
The Portugese saw a great need to explore the seas.They needed a new line of trade to sustain their economy.Henry the Navigator,a Prince of Portugal,under the commision of King Afonso V,set sail on the Atlantic sea.After months of sailing,they harboured at a port now known as St. Louis.It was a journey that would bring years of slavery and racial prejudice. Continue reading
Tears in eyes, heart beating fast, but breath seizing, skin ravaged with goose pimples.
Blood rising & boiling, hands growing bigger, muscles emerging, hair at the neck’s back standing.
Palm fronds dancing, subtlety, air cool, yet skin crawling like lucifers’ close by.
Nose dripping sticky liquid, eyes sparkling, louis Armstrong’s music in ears. Continue reading
[Conscious] – Taking an evening stroll on the road, mind wandering free, here and there.
Sky black, moon halved, air and weather sweet and cool. Musing on life, my life, this life, pondering what man is here for, what I’m here for.
[Subconscious] – Mind gliding, maneuvering incomprehensibles, traveling through time and space continuum in speed 10times faster than light. Kris-crossing Vortexes, permeating portals, venturing through the unknown, the dead zone. Questions in bags, answers missing, yet mind journey in vain, alls futile. Continue reading
And so i got out of the black and yellow bus and walked as fast as my legs could carry me, a minute more and i would have been suffocated. God! i thought as i walked, ” i hate Lagos”. My neck ached, my back worse, i battled for air as i could not breathe well due to the carbonmonoxide and dust particles i’d inhaled through out this day. My air ways are clogged like pipes in a steam engine, every moment that passed, i thought i’d faint. Yet i walked on for the traffic was terrific and i was better off on foot at least this way i’m moving.
I kept walking, i was thirsty, i was famished, i was tired, most of all, i was already late from picking up my laptop from the repair village. Yet i kept walking, i got to the village and to the repair shop, walked by throwing a glance at the up stair shop knowing fully well that no one will be there by now. Of course they weren’t there, how could they be? Extending a 6 o’clock closing time till 6.30, dem neva try? ah bow to you oh. I didnt bother calling them cos na me fuck up thanks to lagos traffic. On my way out of the villa gates, i sharpened my eye for a water seller. Any water would do. Pure water, bottled water, well water,all of them join. I didn’t see any till i got to bus stop by the rail tracks, i flipped 5naira note out of my wallet like John Wayne does a desert eagle when about to shoot somebody. I also bought popcorn and chewed voraciously and swallowed the cold water hard while walking up to the join the waiting people.
There was no point in rushing home to darkness, so i stood at the stop, chewed my popcorn, and kept typing this. Amidst more than 2,000 people i stood, they were also waiting to get back to their homes. The buses hiked their fares and people parambulated, while the touts were enjoying their business boom; Owo da! Owo da! The streets shone and the grey sky gradually turned black with no sign of a shining state across its horizon. I watched people and faces and shook my head, then shook it again saying to my self; “all this wan dey Lagos”? I then hissedd knowing that many didn’t even have a choice in the matter for this game of life most times is played not on our terms. My whole body ached, my eye had become dizzy, and i thought,” i think its time to go home now”.
Only God knows that if I successfully leave this place without going partially deaf, it’ll be but a miracle. My head aches now, I shall tell you why. I walked in here, of course my first time (not that I’ll admit that on national T.V) on a morning whose weather I must admit was overwhelming. The clouds had gotten so dark I thought the gods must be angry or something. And when it rained, it poured elephants and hippos, causing floods to rear their liquid heads up but I still got here.
In a transit bus i was, en route my home land, So fatigued, i had a “Paul Wall” state of mind.
Relaxed, although it was a bumpy ride,
It never worried me, i was more enchanted by d country side.
I couldn’t be perturbed by foul mouths & body odors i’d condoned, i just sat at rest because finally i was going home. Continue reading
By Blaise ‘Aphascea’
In this race of life, or what? is it of death?
I constantly wonder the existence of tamuz, nimrod and seth,
I ponder the irony of life…and its hidden secrets,
And sometimes a seed of rebel it had tried to secrete, Continue reading
‘Aphascea’
Deceit is sometimes nice, especially to the receiving heart, its so hard at times to play that as our part
Sometimes its for the best,it makes things bearable, but knowing that your loved ones lied to you is even more unbearable
This world is lunar, why must we always go through this? we’ve bin cursed, no exception, we are all in this
No matter how much we hoard it, in time we tell, the result is anticipated, fatal, d receive fills like hell. Continue reading
‘Aphascea’
There’s good and evil, there’s right and wrong, there’s heroes and villains, and if we are blessed with wisdom, then there are glimpses between the cracks of each where light streams through.
We wait in silence for this times when sense can be made, when meaningless existence comes into focus, our purpose presents itself & if we have the strength to be honest, then what we find there staring back at us is our own reflection,bearing witness to the duality of life, that each one of us is capable of both dark & light, of good & evil, of either of all, & destiny while marching ever in our direction is rerouted by d choices we make, love we hold onto promises we keep.
Culled from the movie ‘Heroes’
I was going back home, actually it used to be,for the past one year it was. With my heart heavy like that of ‘Thor’s hammer’ I touched. down at the park, smelt the air, oh! what a splendour I’ve missed. The smell of grass, trees, solitude, the smell of mud, thatch, rusted roof tops and the village people living there-in. I alighted from the bus, took a step and my heart fluttered, many scenes started to playback in my head like melancholy dreams.
As thoughts fly my eagle eye snaps a pot hole on the road with the semblance of the ‘depots on the high way to hell’, just as the bus driver swerves to avoid it. ‘Phew’, I heaved a sigh of relief which was not actually for me anyway, but for the other passengers who I’m sure ain’t ready to meet their maker yet. I get to my stop and alight from the bus, my thoughts fly as I walk through the market place, observing the ‘aboki’ who placed onions for sale on a brown haggard-looking loin cloth, the meat sellers whose table stench almost made me puke as I passed, the ‘corpse-rotten’ smelling gutter beside which smoked fish,
I sit here in this commuter bus, black and yellow is the colour; you know where I am,my thoughts fly as this anxiety grows in my mind. The anxiety; it is not supposed to be here, yet it is, like a 14year old in a skin club, like Obama with a goatee, like white bird shit on a black shoe,or like fire burning on water, feeding on hydro as if it were gas. As these thoughts fly, I watch cars, trucks, buses on the highway, people going to and fro with so much speed, some with precise movements, others random as if they had fire lighted on their buttocks. Continue reading
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