In the conversation you had with your sisters and friends
over coffee and chitchat,
you described me as perfect, a gentleman
adorned with a cloak of eccentricity,
Tagged along by a shadow who has has never been
in the dark or seen anything but the light.
At this time, your accent lifts as you described me.
"Perfect gentlemen don't exist", everyone retorted.
So you go on and on about
this and about that
And this too and that.
Till even the least enthusiastic
Buys a ticket to watch me.

So I perform. I perform. Only this time
I wear no mask on the stage of enticement.
I laugh out loud and carry the bottles.
I sing out loud even when my voice is muffled.
I play along, like a skilled ocarinist.
I blab about life in the slums and the impending economic crunches,
i brag about my dreams and the few nights I don't snore.

In the same conversation I had with myself,
Sitting to a bottle, a moleskin and pen all by myself,

I tell myself how much of me hasn't changed,
How my thoughts never changed
Despite my unkempt beard and bad breath.

I tell myself how the-same I am,
Only this time, I'm wearing a different shirt
stained at the pocket with oil from yesterday's tofu fries.

it wasn't like we didn't know what was right or wrong
but sitting under abandoned structures at two in the morning,
talking about work, money and betrayal felt like neither.

i held the big bottle of beer for the first time
while stretching it out to her.
"Add ciga join oga", was her next response.
so i pulled it out from inside the pack. her pack.

"who you be? you be pastor?
why you come? you dey n.g.o?
abi you dey dea dey form good boy
siddon dea!"

so she blew out some smoke from her mouth,
blew what was left out of her nostrils
took another sip from the green bottle
some spilling off the side of her mouth
she scratched her back and waited for the next line

we managed to talk about what we did in the day.
i, a popular janitor, for better job to hang on to.
she, trader in Brazilian hair, owed by all her friends.
but i admitted being jobless at night
while she pleased other men for cash.

so she blew out some smoke from her mouth,
blew what was left out of her nostrils
took another sip from the green bottle
some spilling off the side of her mouth
she scratched her back and waited for the next line

"teach me facebook", she said
putting the sudden silence to shame.
so i grabbed her phone with in disgust,
but with plenty of curiosity,
while wondering what i was doing here.
"na ikenna send me dis fone"

so she shows me ikennas picture.
a young man with another woman beside her.
i quickly flipped through other pictures and messages.
some were about fights, some about clubs,
the others about robberies.

she blew out some smoke from her mouth,
i stand to go. so she asks, 'you go come shrine,
fela shrine tomorrow?'
with a smile only familiar friends can read, i accepted.

afterwards, she told the security men to let me go.
'na my friend'. a wicked smile scratched on the faces
of these men who stood for balogun street's security.
and we were friends. familiar friends.

many months have passed,
i blow the heat from my lungs with a sigh
i scratched my back and wait for this memory to erase.
what was i doing there?

So you face Mecca five times a day
Muttering my name under your breath.
So you remember the nights and days
When your hands kept me from falling,
You pulling my weight from my coarse palms
And weak fingers.

You remember the seasons we reigned,
Ruling the world with straws, wielding lollipops
And cotton candy in our hands,
our own king your own queen.
We promised each other fortunes
only they were cut out of paper,
adorned with sketches of us
And I swore I could catch the last firefly
that glittered after dawn.

But suddenly it’s a real world. The castles were built with sand,
Our faces rid with pimples,
our hands separated by distance
You say I am not who I used to be;
my voice a tone deeper.
But I only see your own chest heavier.

Suddenly the mention of my name
is forbidden in your sanctuary
The same name you scribbled
behind your notebook in biology class
and wherever there was a pencil and paper,
where there was a nail and a tree,
where there was a finger and some sand.
You pick on my weakness and forget
That  its the same thing that we are made of;
that which makes us one.
You forget we were formed from the ground
The one we step on. You forget our mortality,
The topic we never brought up.

Friend, we are so lost. Tell me,
Are these wounds we can mend?
Or is this a chance to pretend
Again that we are not friends

but strangers

You pick every word I say
With rapt attention.
So I tell you about tangerine skies
In Vermont, how I shape them.
I tell you my dad invented Cuban cigars
In Argentina.

You heard about the prawns,
The ***** and the lilies. A story only I could tell.
I could tell it in fluent Yoruba.
You watch me sleep like I don't have a care in this world
Snorting away while chasing dragonflies and seahorses
In my oblivion.


You watch me walk in the shadows
My gait like gridless frames of a restless gate
blown open by the wind.
(If I was the night, I would be bright.)

Finally you see my hands well adapted to cutlasses and owes,
Irrespective experienced with oriental oils
and manicures.
'One day I will be king', I thought I said.
But you heard it from my mind.
You heard it alone.

Yesterday we owed this to ourselves.
Tomorrow we will be lovers
Today let's be friends.

We broke up and we broke down
Running from all that we were really looking for.
You woke up and you looked down
On everything we stood for.
You crept from beneath squeaky windows looking in
Till you saw forms and shadows,
And so you pointed and shot.

But there are a galaxy of excuses
Some from beneath our pride, others from surfaces deeper.
There is a gallery of our frustrations
But you quietly let yourself in.
You see, everyone wants to be heard
And so I voiced out.
I opened a palm and opened the other.
But you never asked. You never saw.
You never once thought the other way.

But what if our fears were a farce?
What if our trouble was meant for something noble?
What if this hatred for each other and the dark consequences
were buried below?
What if our worries were left behind?

Oh god, what have we done.
We are leaving our things behind
We are leaving our sins behind.
We are slowly losing

This beautiful place

lemon peach and ***** jeans
these are some of the many things
that keep my mind busy


and then it quakes  it tocks
like a pendulum talking
it ticks  like a dog scratching

it rocks like a door squeaking