The Writing Pictures

24/10/2021

Title : Burrowed faiths

After appraising
As we are won't ,
It remained ,
a seedling of it
Precious little rock !
To guard and fo**le.
Kudos to learning
And patience for they bear
The fruits of strength
Almost last to soul to hold
Very last of frontiers.
It does rebound
After a new season
Of rain and Barakah
Only to rise again.
Man ! ....Men !
When they come to know
Of life's crucibles know
Of the rise and fall of it.
We bid time and pray
To holdfast to the rope
And stray not from the way.

Jealousy and ever
Hold even the faintest
Of strivings mustered
drab and dry,
Not forlorn and
Far from fatigue
But for much to cultivate
To the fiery eyes of the world
And the pleasures
Of the Maker
In remembering
the Covenant.
You just do not see
The lonely burdens
of heavy hearts
Clutching and climbing
All this time of seeming
Lost and listlessness
Fate ! ...... and Faith !
Still breeds smiles of hope
Hopes of the fallowing time
Seasons past a firmament
Green and shinning
Laid at glare and glimpse
We have been shooting
Too much into sacred holes
Good conscience pitted
With burrowed faiths
And ye men with little
Of it.
Climb ! Again, and again, conscious confronting and daring
Imbued with divine joules

Many hands and many voices
Called and uncalled
Many heads and many hearts
Touched and unouched
Showed up like a few.
Lo ! And Behold !
A crowd and a sight !
Won't you cry , o ye men
With little of it
This is a lesson in faith
And the like that lies ahead.
Rain comes after the heat
Day after every night
And succour after the trial
Faith is your friend to keep
A bumper harvest shaming
Thy little of it....

Lend me this when
I have a little of it
Give me this when
I crave a little of it
Men are forgetful
Of yesterday's bounties
Make me rise and bowed
Only to your cause
Your bondservant
Preoccupied to my sublimation

Copyright : Dr Akinlade Babafemi ...Arafat 1442AH

20/07/2021

Title : Burrowed faiths

After appraising
As we are used to,
It remained ,
a seedling of it
Precious little rock !
To guard and fo**le.
Kudos to learning
And patience for they bear
The fruits of strength
Almost last to soul to hold
Very last of frontiers.
It does rebound
After a new season
Of rain and Barakah
Only to rise again.
Man ! ....Men !
When they come to know
Of life's crucibles know
Of the rise and fall of it.
We bid time and pray
To holdfast to the rope
And stray not from the way.

Jealousy and ever
Hold even the faintest
Of strivings mustered
drab and dry,
Not forlorn and
Far from fatigue
But for much to cultivate
To the fiery eyes of the world
And the pleasures
Of the Maker
In remembering
the Covenant.
You just do not see
The lonely burdens
of heavy hearts
Clutching and climbing
All this time of seeming
Lost and listlessness
Fate ! ...... and Faith !
Still breeds smiles of hope
Hopes of the fallowing time
Seasons past a firmament
Green and shinning
Laid at glare and glimpse
We have been shooting
Too much into sacred holes
Good conscience pitted
With burrowed faiths
And ye men with little
Of it.
Climb ! Again, and again conscious, confronting and daring
Imbued with divine joules

Many hands and many voices
Called and uncalled
Many heads and many hearts
Touched and touched
Showed up like a few.
Lo ! And Behold !
A crowd and a sight !
Won't you cry , o ye men
With little of it
This a lesson in faith
And the like that lies ahead.
Rain comes after the heat
Day after every night
And succour after the trial
Faith is your friend to keep
A bumper harvest shaming
Thy little of it....

Lend me this when
I have a little of it
Give me this when
I crave a little of it
Men are forgetful
Of yesterday's bounties
Make me rise and bowed
Only to your cause
Your bondservant
Preoccupied to my sublimation

Copyright :
Dr Akinlade Babafemi
Arafat 1442AH

17/08/2018

Tribute to an Enigma.. Part 3
By the way, how is life in Minna now
You have had some quiet too
Aft the vengeful calls for your trial fade
And we all seem to know and see better
I will gladly value a visit and resolve many goggles
If I amuse you like the satirist columnist
Of your rock and rule years
To deserve an invitation to dinner
As my dry SAP long for some brown envelope
And I might also dine
Like Audu,my good grievances away
But I reiterate to my friends, trite fears
One is your much rumoured style
I am not asking nor crave the telling
Other than know about your large following
Made of maddening dons
And bulimnous traders
I have however been vocal in reviews
That made many a General bald and blind
So I won't mind to commune on the internet
To uphold my Nigerian ethics
I would love to greet you, "Ranka Dede"
When we meet on the golf course
Sitting with Chiji ,Mark and other pals
Je**ed up in purse and pose
And gladly invite you to my farm too
And show you my patriotic collections
One thing I enjoy about you has been
Your pendulum ideology of little to the right
And a little to the left
I have caressed all the parties
Looking for yours and I can confess
I recently found yours along with
The untiring Owu beast
As a CUP alliance
And I am wondering
How you make your friends.

17/08/2018

Part 2
Concerning the learning process
Sir, may I report your ageless bad students
Who imbibed nix of your hybrid lessons
And have grown hungrier now
In countless probes and panels
Stealing is now a fancy for delight
And no longer deemed corruption
The new sheriff has been busy with these pests
Many said you treated with pesticides
Banning and unbanning to our chagrin
They have become rather irredeemable
Save their profound eating habits
Draining our treasury votes
And seem perhaps shallow and indifferent
To popular destinies and good
Lacking depth than their uncivilised new teachers
I suppose those shameless teachers
In office, "Sorry",in power have salient nepotic motives too
And need modern and civil lessons too
Concerning justice and restructuring
To combat some ageless bad students
Sir, we are waiting impatiently
For your long sought memoirs
Now that the sheriff is back
History was no longer taught
And we miss the demon in the news
Everything looked boring until recently
When the kindergarten was shown the untarred road
Back to his village in the delta
The same way you aborted the beast' third term
I have always enjoyed your Diego runs
And it looks like you found a good student in lord of boudillon .
Sir, what about the debacle
Of the famed annulment
What was it exactly
Those heresays demand you educate our ignorance
Wrongly fed by the western press

17/08/2018

Title :Tribute to an Enigma
(Part 1)
Let's recount the intrigues
Since you stepped aside
The 'Igida
That forced your flock flying
A generation of locusts many said
You... their hero! They.. your boys !
Villains of one clan adjudged
In eight vulgar years of wine and dine
A rustic theatre of power slobbering
Replete with masturbations of our ego and treasury
Tell us about the man we knew not
Did you say he was Yankees ' mole
Or unacceptable to the boys
Or was it a kufr you called him
Some said he was your debtor
I have had a hard time believing you
In the face of those smutty slogans
That became an anthem
Drawing those catcalls from our China shop
And stampede against your wishes
The buck stopped at your feet
And led you out !!! Of the arson rock
Your sandals on your head
Showing you, the vistas to Minna
How true that pretty Mary wailed.
Sir, with this piece l intend not a wigging or excretion
Of my bad fantasies
Nor preclude the excesses of
Your Maradonic deft touches
Than draw your hush pose to the gales
Demanding an audition
Though I may inveigh
I am my no little mean, an admirer
To have caused me to spell you, "IBLIS"

05/11/2017

Look 4 yours

The rhythm of the tongue brings wordless music into the air; it is in poetry that the human essence is refined to such ritualistic purity. It's in the steady beats, the sonorous rise-and-fall of speech; for a moment it appears as if all the mysteries of the world have unlocked themselves to our priv...

31/10/2017

Title: Passing

Visiting home again
Poems became the spade
To unearth the ruffles gone
Sparse dry gourds
And the crusty walls that freshen
With the rains of bulging memories .

It is the king riding past
In the company of eagles
To whet and behold a dejavu
Sights of a lost old city
Whence the horsemen moved
On abiding to a call sublime
Away from the thriving inertia
Promises that were never redeemed.

The Chariots are going
To the cradle of the muse
That remain ever charming
In the minds of the ageless horsemen .
The zeal like the dream
Is an old sunset
Set on a vast new land.
We will be passing to relive
The old spurring poems
In the writer's thin velvet garments

16/10/2017

Honour suffices the noble.
That lends to Bubu
At this incredible hour
A bowl of virtue.
Truth cuddling the sword
Of conscience
defies the might
And b***y of the deaf tyrant
we shall all be condemned
To waiting.

Help us tell the old masquerade
To do the dance gently
For time swings going and coming
And the rainy season
Do not honour
An old elephant that
Shamelessly chooses the muds
As its dance stage
It is only a revelry to oblivion.

Who will teach Bubu
That the day is renting to sleep
It is time to tarry home
Like Nelson our friend.
When the old desire to
Carry our b***y on his head
What then will a child wish for!
What more does the old desire
Than suck the breast of his child.
Will it be the young
To teach today's old men
Lessons in honour.

The old man who comes
To the house of divinity
With a live fish on his head
Seeks what again
in the midst of men ?
No knife will sharpen its own butt
And no sane sage
will seek his own coronation
Let us tell the old man
who chooses to pursue
A pig to a refuse
That he drags not only
His name and honour.

Bubu has hired another thug
The tyrant has a python pet
Let us admonish the old man
In his costly obsession
That threats will never deter
The berth of an imminent dawn
And the noise of the shoddy pig
Will die within its belly .
The old elephant is not a match
For a pride of young lions.

Let us render to the old man gently
That flares are everywhere
He contends not only with many
In the race to the villa
but also with the Okanran.
Let us bring all the contenders
And read them their dossiers
It will be the turn of the old man
The old man from your village
It will be said..
"Take away his white clothes,
Give him these red rags"
Didn't we tell the old man
That good old honour
Is the pathway of the wise.

Let us lead Bubu back to Daura
Quietly as we once did a brute
From zombie's constituency
Who stormed into our China shop .
Let us respect the old man
And es**rt him to Gereje
Without ruffling his hairy ears
We will make a feast for our elder
To honour our own Mandela
In the company of old wise men
If a good name will suffice the elder
We will kill a she-goat and adorn our tables
Feasting while forgetting our travails
Into the night
Till the elder goes winkling in his sleep.
Copyright
Dr Akinlade Babafemi
October 2017

31/05/2017

The room

26/05/2017

It was a rain with fiery storms .it barey gave notice to anyone.everyone scampered for the only shade in the midst.A rarely used bus stop near a post office.it appeared neat and dessert.it had been designed for the Lagos Bus rapid transit popularly called the BRT without accommodating the popular Danfo buses who are the mainstay of transport in Lagos,
As the rains poured many more made their way to the shade and many were obviously wet and shivering cold.it was getting tighter now as the Nigerian in us begun to rear its head.Pulling,pushing,and noises started ,if it was staining of clothes,it was marching on someone's leg.i couldn't figure out how a shouting match started it was between a Yoruba man and a Biafran.there was plenty of laughter.the Ibadan man was older and fiercer with his tongue.We almost forgot the hard rain.somewhere in the shade a lady laid accusations on a guy wh she sid hs been trolling her.it was a cacophony and laughter interrupted by occasional bouts of thunder.
I had earlier visited Canada,the famed Ebute metta canteen for some nice Amala and gbegiri soup.it was sure digesting in the emergency shed that i found myself.I couldn't resist the lure of laughter as the ibadan old man deeped into Yoruba idiomatic oratory to outclass his igbo opposition who returned insults and jests.A phone rang,definitely Chinese made one.we were taken aback by the Calabar tone.the owner picked it up and the conversation appeared to be in a similar tongue.it was loud and seemed to worsen our situation .many were in tears of laughter now..what an endurance ! The british and white man must be enduring our dysfunctional lifestyle.Our leaders deserved commendation.
I thought we have had the best of time until new couple alerted us to a pungent smell.it was diffusing fast....suddenly there was movement at the rear and a Rastafarian like figure sat up..
"God" many seemed to exclaim,a mad man in our midst.it was a short burst of laughter that finally broke the suspense. "Ma binu..ore mi..miko rii ara musii ni "
That was the same ibadan man contributing another fart to the now polluted shade.the mad man has had enough of us now.He reached for a stick ,reeling out curses..."awon oloriburuku enia...e ti ba ile aiye jee tan....ejade. ! In the fiery burst of rains everyone took to their heels and scurried away.

07/04/2017

VOYAGER

Rapt in my strive
I bear all, patient
And sanguine
You would heed my oyez.

Down here, inured
To the wind and currents
Ardent on your cause
I know of no honour
Save your grace and mercy

O Lord! I pray
Out of my trials and tests
You will fill me
Like the singing birds.
You will house me
Like the holed-up crabs.
And make me rise
In love and fear
To answer your timely calls.

I would with the grace
Paddle in found serenity
And gladly honour my turn
Of the ushering cockcrow
To the realms of peace
Where the lighted soul
Find their eternal nests.

07/04/2017

THE TRUE SEEDS

…. Had watched
The dolorous seeds in silence
Waving pleasantly in dreamful chance
Hoping to suppress
Their mother’s avarice
And find their best new homes.

Wishing to bring forth
Lovely seeds spreading out
Their beautiful nature

Lost to their domiciles
At the brevity of so blessed a wind
What a cascade of beauty now!

With such firmamentary finery
And valiant flowering
One wishes to have been the sower
And know the gladness
In sowing,
The true seeds.