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On the green pastures of tranquil peace
And prosperity may my soul famished
Ever be laid, to be fed and sated . . .

May my heart parched find solace
Beside the brook of goodness still
And cool, and my emptiness refill . . .

Serenity for trouble, joy for sorrow:
Let singing boughs bear the barren
Figs--bringing forth fruit of wren . . .

Arrow aimed at a flying sparrow,
Man must live not by bread alone.
He gains heaven that hell doth disown.
Hugging the devil, refraining from the Lord:
Filling my hollow and empty life, the gourd
Of my soul, up with the mirth of lechery;
Making frenzied fortune from debauchery,
While the account of my heart is credited
With slush happiness: full, yet never sated.
Lured by diverse lusts; rain do not up fill
A basket. Man is vapid outside God's will.
The ability to not in faith waver
Is grace uncommon--to not cave in
Like Abraham to Sarah's honeyed voice,
When tarrying seemed the promise--
To the pressure around, but to linger
The more in hope still, daily waiting
For God's time, like Joseph, when other people,
As the butler chief, are trotting in life and career.
Man, for what man truly is, can buckle
Down and be seeking for "better" option rather
Than be languishing, holding unto the Almighty,
Who is nevertheless the Helper of man and destiny.
The ability sincere to not in faith
Waver, to never for once cave in
Like Abraham to Sarah's chocolate
Gift of Hagar--

For by her Midas' touch, she
Turned her own maid to a mistress:
The genesis of a prolong distress--

When God's promises look lingering
Like a night dark and weary,

As pressure like tides keeps rising, but
To tarry still in hope and be decidedly
Waiting for heaven's bright day of reality
Like Joseph when folks, as the but-
Ler chief, are

Excelling in life, marriage and career--

Is verily an uncommon genre of grace,
Especially in this world of rat race.

For man, for comparison and jealousy,
Is no sooner despaired than he'd be
Seeking for an alternative in Ishmael, in-
Stead of waiting more for the blessing

Of a great child Isaac,

Who is the promised son and the only
Inheritor of the land brimming with milk--
Canaan--and dripping with honey.
Walking alone, even if it's only a mile--
Though you'd have wine, bread and cream--
The journey would be weary, and very dreary
Would life to thee be without a lone smile;
Howbeit if you've gotten by Grace a deary,
A companion sweet, though you should walk
A thousand miles together; yet it would seem
Like a furlong as you both are cheeringly talk-
Ing sans the comforts of chocolate and chicken,
Save for water and crisps into pieces broken.
Like this to me doth this issue seem:
That a man falling in hot love with
A fraulein at first--a verily dream
Damsel--would be thinking forthwith
The world of her, and would not
Notice in her even a single fault.
And he all earthly treasures may
Her promise--saying things that never
To light would come in order to sway
The heart of that babe like Lucifer
Eve deceived. "Make my mouth thine pit,
Peach, and i'll swallow up thy sweet ****."
Yet having wedded her at last whom he,
By her comeliness, was moved; why then
Would a man his wife--the perfect lady--
Afterward seek to divorce? Most men
Do choose alone by our wandering sight,
Seeing not marriage with an eternal insight.
At times I am verily weary to the bone,
Confining my soul in a self-made cocoon
By shutting out the world from my heart
As my mind meanders speedily tween
The hills of despair thru' rueful spleen--
There was a country ere things fell apart.


Pining for the wonder wand of Bro. Jero,
Our hopes have turned to zero--
Hit by the arrow of God--ha, penkelemesi!
Who can now this nation's nemesis remedy?
Acknowledging Wole Soyinka (Nobel Laureate) and Chinua Achebe--both  of whom august Professors of Literature; chronic critics of mad, mediocre regimes, lack-lustre living and advocates of the small fry--whose master titles are initiated herein.

*Wole Soyinka's: Ibadan: The Penkelemesi Years, and The Trials of Brother Jero

*Chinua Achebe's: Things Fall Apart, and Arrow of God
She, good signor, whom in stormy sea
With thee faithfully and firmly stood--
Steadying the family boat with fasting
And prayer whilst thou hard wert  rowing
Against tempest--should nay in peace
And prosperity be by thy head misunderstood
Nor for another girl be in thine eyes contemned,
Lest by heaven thy new blessing is ******.
Just looking before I leap,
Musing with my lone self deep:

Betwixt her gracious sweet lips
And her honeyed graceful hips,
Which should I first of jolly take
That will not my gay heart break?
Will an eligible bloke happier be if he
Marries a ranking *ele like Miss Universe
With all her glory and graces, and 'cause
Of marriage mirth? Will a sheila pretty
An unbroken regalement have for a dream
Prince Charming--the fairy man of her whim?

Will the soul be jolly for the sophomore
More than for the frosh rapture of success
Had in the Ivy League of cosmic business,
When the heart cut a caper and an encore
Of hilarity requests of narrowed life--
To have constant binge in lieu of strive?

What man is wholly from trouble free, whose
Being be to sadness inured? Within, the
Spokes do sometimes snap at the rotary
Wheels of serenity, and chaos is let loose.
What thus can stay the pillars of pleasure in
A plagued world is above this little noggin.
*ele, in my native language Yoruba--which is spoken in the western part of Nigeria, Benin Republic and some other parts of West Africa and reaching to the Caribbean countries-- means a lovely girl.

Except if the meaning and translation had been lost in transist in other places but surely not in western Nigeria.
Who, 'tween God and the Lucifer, a better
Lord be, with all one's soul and heart
And mind to be served; the very Master
For whom this life fleeting, not in part
But in whole, should be expended daily--
Comprehending the reward eternal also, haply?
Why--the successes of our
Neighbours envy we seriously,
Coveting every passing hour
Their earned accolades highly?

Yet all men are not asame
In grace given and accomplishment
had; our gift, fortune and fame
From one another is so different.
Though he hath a woman fresh
Within--his faithful wife at home
To make him at any hour come;
Yet he's chasing without a new flesh.
Wherefore why doth a man seek a devil new,
Who has an angel, with whom to bill and coo?
O
foolish
soul
seeking things
lost
blessed eternity
for
vanity.
When my life doth touch down
On the other side, haply, at night:
Will I be welcome with a frown
When taxied is my earthly flight?

Here my stay may so unpleasant be,
But there shall be a place of utter joy
Save if i was by choice heaven-free
And had yielded to the Devil's ploy.
When my life doth touch down
On the other side, haply, at night:
Will I be welcome with a frown
When taxied is my earthly flight?

Here my stay may so unpleasant be,
But there shall be a place of utter joy
Save if i was by choice heaven-free
And had yielded to the Devil's ploy.
How her facebook friends did turn to foes!
Devouring their seeming pal like wolves.
And some still seek love on the internet
To their own good and peril, an intent
I can't in my judgement own fault. For
None can ever know another man's core.
Futile mental exertion,
blurring the vision
of wisdom
from
breakthrough.
Never of failure afeared, but of
Trying nay at all. To fail final
It is not. Success from botch enough
Come. Though life has an outlook dismal,
Nevertheless with persistence and grit
And prayer, things bleak will turn bright.
No head afraid can achieve any feat,
Which sees not at the tunnel's end light.
Would you still love me:
If the sun prevents its light
And the moon its glow at night,
That all at once becomes gloomy?

Would you still love me:
If all things awry go
And nothing at all to show,
But a good token of misery?

Would you still love me:
If my arrow cannot kiss
Thy waiting bow's release,
To have a bout of ecstasy?

Would you still love me:
If medical reports say "cancer "
That has no surgical answer,
Or another form of infirmity?

Or would you only love me:
If my life wields a touch of Midas
With the revelry of Las Vegas--
All sublime, all sweet, all rosy?
When remember I all the excellencies
That make us go into supreme ecstasies
Will someday be rotting fast away
In the grave and eventually turn to clay,
How my merry heart droopeth down
At once, letting go of my lady's gown!
  And my risen sun it duty shelves.
    
    The same fate thee awaited,
       Even if thou wilt be cremated.

So all those ravishing things of jolly joy
Which heaven on women glaring bestows
That turn a beefy man to a lackey boy
Shall by and by become the shadows
           Of themselves!

Howbeit I recalled the words of Solomon,
That man needs must relish is ***** wife
And his chosen work in this vain life,
Hence my hanging duty again was done
            In jolly, jolly yummy
     With honey, honey mummy.

— The End —