#ode
I sit and marvel at my face,
a masterpiece of time and grace.
These eyes, twin pools of honeyed light,
hold secrets deep, yet burning bright.
My nose, a slope both soft and strong,
fits perfectly where it belongs.
These lips ah, yes a cherry bloom,
speak kindness while they light a room.
My curves, my lines, my gentle art
each part plays its essential part.
These legs, two pillars firm and free,
carry the woman I chose to be.
I love myself, my stretch marks, scars,
I’m my own sun, my own north star.
No passing judgment bends my frame
I wear my name like a war cry, fame.
The mirror whispers, “You’re a queen.”
I wink and say, “I’ve always been.”
And though the world spins fast and wild,
I kiss my shadow
reconciled.
15h ago
Jun 3, 2026 at 4:53 AM UTC
Before Ogun wore iron,
he wore music—
the same hands that forged the cutlass
tuned the strings of things unseen,
the same fire that tempered metal
learned first to temper feeling.
So when you came,
King,
Sunny as the harmattan sun
that burns without apology,
warm as the compound fire
that feeds the whole household
we knew whose cognomen you carried,
whose footprints you filled
without diminishing.
I met you first
not in a concert hall,
not in the amplified cathedral
of the wealthy and the ticketed,
but on the streets of Ibadan,
where the sun baked the laterite
into something almost sacred,
where my feet, bare and dusty,
carried the weight of a childhood
still learning what it was.
Your music leaked
through the louvres of strangers' windows,
spilled from the record players
of those who could afford
what I could only receive,
and I received it
the way the beggar receives the wind:
fully,
without owing anyone,
without the debt of purchase
diminishing the gift.
It was mine
the way Ogun's road is everyone's,
the path belongs
to those who walk it,
not to those who built it.
Your guitar,
not merely instrument
but griot's tongue,
oriki in six strings,
each note a proverb
the elders hid in plain hearing,
each strum a parable
the patient ear unpacks,
each lyric a lantern
at the labyrinth's entrance
the kind that does not say
follow me
but says instead;
here is what the darkness
is actually made of,
here is how to walk through it
without losing your name.
You were not merely musician.
You were blacksmith of sound—
Ogun's other trade,
the forge applied to feeling,
hammering raw experience
into the shaped beauty
of what can be carried,
what can be remembered,
what can be sung
when the original wound
has become something
the throat can hold
without bleeding.
Your voice
river of dark honey,
slow as a blessing,
deep as a wound
rose like incense
from the shrines of Ife
to the aerials of Lagos,
carrying the theatrics of the divine
into the ordinary afternoon
of a people who needed
to be reminded
that their ordinary afternoon
was itself a kind of divine.
You left scars of beauty on the soul
the specific wound
that only great art inflicts:
the mark that does not hurt
but illuminates,
that does not diminish
but defines,
that does not close
but becomes
the place through which
the most light enters.
From Syncro System
to Syncro Feelings,
you refused the comfort
of the already-known,
the warm repetition
of your own proven sound.
You reinvented
the way Ọṣun reinvents,
not abandonment of source
but deepening of it,
the river finding new channels
without forgetting
the spring it came from.
Her sweetness does not thin with distance;
nor did your sound lose salt by changing shape.
No predecessor sat
where you sit.
No successor
will sit there either;
the throne shaped itself
around you
the way the iroko's roots
shape the earth
they have inhabited
for a century:
the absence,
when it arrives,
will be
its own monument.
King Sunny Ade
today, as you turn seventy-eight,
the bata speaks your names
in rhythms older than your birth,
the talking drum remembers
what history forgets,
the Ifa of your art
stands open at the verse
that says:
a man who gave the people
back their own voice
dressed in beauty
they did not know they possessed,
this man has fulfilled
the griot's highest covenant.
The skies require no cannon
to honor such a life.
The music itself is the salute,
still sounding,
still finding the cracked louvres
of the houses of the poor,
still spilling into streets
where barefoot children
are learning for the first time
what they are.
Salute, King.
Your strings still remember
what your fingers taught them.
Your voice still carries
what your chest first learned to hold.
And somewhere in Ibadan
on a street the sun
still bakes to something sacred
another child receives your music
through a stranger's window,
not knowing it was ever
only yours to give,
learning only
that the wind belongs to everyone,
that beauty is not the property
of those who can afford it,
that Ogun's road is long
and older than the feet
now walking it
and that the music,
though it began before them,
begins again
in them.
© Lanre Adebayo
2d ago
May 31, 2026 at 11:15 PM UTC
let me hold onto a moment in the shadows!
o sickening, festering, blind darkness, and melancholy!
before you take everything from me, let me feel peace within my ribcage
and allow me to leave this on my face!
o vile creature called the evil feeling
i want to take all the treasures from you!
all the beauties and the heart of the sun!
that is why i fled from my home
where all the demons lurked, long ago!
i was torn from the ***** of our bountiful mother and came to this place where the ashes eventually fall!
o evil spirits! window of time! spiked shoes!
devil-free parks! strange streets leading to the unknown’s good end!
hold onto my existence among you!
far from my beloved who cast her conviction
a witness to those days filled with misery
as she found the outcome of her long struggles in her arms
into the putrid waters of the time and separation between us
i am truly in exile!
one day she came to me and at a moment when the river was teeming with all manner of creatures, gently caressed my cheek
that is why i am always unhappy in this world!
even though i am now in her world
i no longer see her face on every sidewalk!
oh god, how much longer will it take for me to make happiness the sun of my tomorrows
without closing my hand or letting it bleed
in your world and in this world we know!
i wander on, sorrowful and far from home, trying to understand the language of foreign lands!
the days bear witness to seven! there can be no more!
the truth that longing will exist on seven continents!
and under seven skies as well!
i hope everything keeps my being alive with life and its tireless, fresh heart!
May 23
May 23, 2026 at 12:33 PM UTC
i feel escape
i feel the go
i feel the life
to-and-fro
i feel the undoing of all that is done
i feel the freedom and it isn’t fun
it isn’t fun they scream
it sounds as if a dream
a dream where I am here
a dream which is full of fear
the fear of all that is seen
here which where i have been
as i cry and weep to my mother
i look up and see my brother
as i scream and cry out loud
i begin to feel a shroud
a shroud of silence that screams
screams for me to stay
stay where i was layed
but feeling more and more afraid
afraid of what this world can bring
afraid of everything that is starting to begin
i see my parents looking down at me
i see their smiles full of glee
full of happiness of the child
the child that is me
Apr 22
Apr 22, 2026 at 11:05 AM UTC
Shout out to Hello Poetry
My favorite website
Released in 2009
I wasn't even bored then
So much history this site has
Poems upon poems
Poets of all sorts
Too much talent to handle
But never enough
I'm so glad I found you
Apr 15
Apr 15, 2026 at 4:04 PM UTC
you've spent a long time weaving memories through words one might not care about
how intricate they were, and how surreal the coming and going of people has been
you have carved them the way time carves a life—slow and unrelenting
like a bard, you have sung of your grief and anger
you've been more a slave than a storyteller, a poet more than a mere human
time has made you play with words rather than face the quiet art of crying
trust is one thing you give to your paper and pen more than your friends
to you, tears were the verses you offered to the world
ink pooling like small, quiet bruises on the page
while silently waiting for someone to tap your shoulder and say:
you are allowed to grieve—
that it's okay to gather the scattered pieces of the past
and let them rot in the coffin you wouldn't dare to open again
so, for once, i am writing this poem, for i owe you grace
to let you know that you aren't a puzzle wailing to be solved
not a paper-boned kid, not strong enough to carry yourself
but a boy not bound to what's written of him
Apr 3
Apr 3, 2026 at 9:41 AM UTC
From the dry and dusty desert
Thine father did vow to rule to the sea
And such as his greedy eyes would see
He did vow to move to the desert
When you should brighten up your land
Using the glorious sunlight of education
You rather used religious indoctrination
To build monsters to defend your land
Into daredevil Dragons thine monsters have metamorphosed
Rubbing raw pepper in your greedy eyes
Forcing their way through your women's thighs
Truly, thine calamity is self imposed.
Mar 19
Mar 19, 2026 at 5:47 PM UTC
O Hypnos, king of sweet repose,
How I wish I could be as mellow as you.
The dew from your garden is soft as your wings—
But the feeling of drifting away is softer.
Though slumber will be ephemeral,
The tranquil, light in your fingertips,
will always remind me of a fathers.
You lull the weary, aching heart to rest,
Answering the tired spirits quiet call,
Night blooms like your poppies petals,
Oh come and bring your soothing, gentle slumber soon.
Take my worries away,
The restless cares that I couldn't count,
Let them fade with your embrace.
Ode to the god who brings quiet rest,
The tender, fleeting, peaceful pause
O, Hypnos, bring us your solace from the world of strife.
Mar 4
Mar 4, 2026 at 12:38 PM UTC
Sleep, O sleep, why do you not seep,
Into my soul, as I cry for you and I weep?
Why do you leave me alone in the dreary night
To fight with the day’s cares with absent might?
Oh! how I cry for you whole nights through-
“Come, O dark beauty! Settle my senses and woo
My tormented soul, veil my bleeding eyes with your black skirt.
**** me and bury me in your soil if you are the Earth
Let me be the dead if you are a tomb, the child if you are a womb.
In your palace of darkness, for a night, give my worn soul a room.”
Even the firmament hears my odes and cries out stars and rain,
But you do come in the end, to drive away my pain,
Like a silent cyclone after my cries. Love melted your heart, cold like ice.
And your silent lullaby drives my broken boat into your sea’s depths.
Jan 23
Jan 23, 2026 at 12:51 PM UTC
/Strophe/
O Vesna, breath returned from iron frost,
Breaker of ice and winter’s hoarded cost.
You rise where fields ley mute and bound,
Where dead grass bit the frozen ground.
From buried roots your summons runs,
Sap climbs the wood, the thaw begins.
You lift the river from its chain,
Unseal the hill, unbind the plain.
Lambs find their feet, birds test the air,
And lighth relearns to settle there.
/Antistrophe/
Not soft you come, nor gently crowned,
Your hands are wet with soil and wound.
You draw Morena from her reign,
Lay her down to sleep again.
The fire is lit, the old year burned,
Ash to the furrows duly turned.
We dress in bloom, in wreath and stem,
Bind our young hopes to you and them.
Blood warms the feast, the lamb is slaoin,
Life fed by life, by loss and gain.
/Epode/
You stand between the bone and shoot,
The seed split open, raw, uncute.
Not mercy, but continaunce sworn,
The law that rot must feed the corn.
O keeper of the narrow way
Where death gives ground to breathing day,
Remain until the grain stands tall,
Then leave us to the turning fall.
For we are yours, and briefly live
By what you take, by what you give.
Jan 6
Jan 6, 2026 at 1:46 PM UTC
Rise and falling to the shore
a motion moving entities
into the shadows of her fall
wild calm persuasive and strong
crimson waves locket graves
A womans heart
are
the
vast
ocean's
gate.
Nov 7, 2025
Nov 7, 2025 at 3:54 PM UTC
O radiant screen, my sleepless moon
You hum and pulse a familiar tune
Your whispers fill my hollow room
And light the shadow of my doom
You promised love through glass and wire
Connection sparked from coded fire
Yet every ping that calls my name
Echoes anxiety I cannot tame
I scroll through faces, hearts, and lies
Beneath your blue and endless skies
My hands, once warm, now coldly trace
A thousand lives I’ll never face
You taught me words without a voice
And left me numb beneath the noise
For every truth you seemed to show
You stole a piece I didn’t know
So here I kneel your faithful thrall
Adored, consumed, and ruined by all
Oh, gentle tyrant, bright and sly
You teach us how to live and die
Nov 4, 2025
Nov 4, 2025 at 1:08 AM UTC
In nine years — those nine years ago, where it all first bled, my hand
chased after words like birds startled into flight; each letter a feather
I tried to hold, each silence, a wing that trembled. These fingers ran
that day — still running, from the moment ink first called my name.
Less of a speech, more a prayer pressed through assembly lines of
thought; for the soul is not a factory, but a forge — and every verse I
hammered, sparked and seared another part of me alive. Like a leaf
falling in love mid-air, I found gravity too gentle to fear; I fell, I wrote,
and somewhere before hitting the ground I truly learned that _leaving_
and _leafing_ were the same thing: growth disguised as a humble descent.
I could never leave the pen alone, though sometimes I’d put it down,
just long enough to hear it whisper back, "Are we really done, or just
beginning?" And so I’d wait — for new trees to rise from the mulch
of old ideas, roots feeding on yesterday’s failures, branches reaching
toward an unwritten sky.
Nine years — and I, the son of my own beginnings, a poet, a writer,
a craftsman made of paper cuts and persistence. Now my body is the
parchment, my breath the ink; I left fingerprints in every stanza as if
to remind myself — __I was here!__ To leave this body, and to leave this
breath, is not to die, but to scatter — to bleed into every margin of the
world. And when the last drop dries, they’ll still find me pressed
between these pages, a ghost of graphite and grace.
Nine years ago, I met the pen — and it said to me, "Take my hand,
and believe." And I did. And I still do. Every line since has been
proof of that promise.
Oct 15, 2025
Oct 15, 2025 at 4:54 PM UTC
Ode to this cherished space,
Where words find their graceful place,
Half the poems I've shared and spun,
Blossom here where things get done
Gratitude spills from my pen,
For the joy of creating again,
In this realm where dreams ignite,
Half the poems owe you their light.
I'm so thankful for this site
Oct 9, 2025
Oct 9, 2025 at 9:01 PM UTC