#protestpoem
The building they lived in,
called home,
became their tomb,
became the weapon that broke
their bone,
took their lives.
But their stories have to
survive,
This City won't let you forget
about those
you were meant to protect.
I was actually looking for a room
but found myself
on the fiery streets
CRS batting the flames
as politicians took their seats,
business as usual
but the people stood in refusal
Feminists Familes and BlackBlok
Yellow Jackets Housing Groups
round the clock
only the holiday period
could douse the fires
and I went back to mother
the pressure smothered
How long is your attention?
Remember: this is a poem for the dead
For those who were crushed as they slept in their bed
Merry ******* Christmas
instead.
Aug 29, 2019
Aug 29, 2019 at 8:20 AM UTC
Take your ***
And make a new start
Turn it over
because the reason you
are needing is there.
It's revolving around
itself and you, slowly to
prove its penny
Cover it up
because the people you
get viewed by. They're
spinning ideas in their
minds, to scream, change
at you and for you, to
prove its penny
Make more sense,
It's not ladylike to be
A poet, or a writer.
To tell tales and metaphors
that spin on the world
to prove its cent
Quickly hide
now, there's something
after your holding bars.
It's not his fault he roams
but it sure does hurt
when he cries to
clean his craving
Turn it over
again because it's just
what you need, to change
who you were for into
who you are, a person for
the world to see and guess.
To play jeopardy over your
body, screaming runes
you scribble out
Crank the wheel
now, spin the bottle,
listen to the wind
as it's screams get coated
in a melody it never sung.
Press the level
now, pray to and for
the sky to fall
a penny to prove
Take your shovel
And make a restart
Jan 31
Jan 31, 2026 at 10:19 PM UTC
my identity is not yours
I claim who I am
and where I stand with that
you cannot label a fox
just because it is red
you can't call it a bird
just because it cries
it isn't a wide ocean
just because it holds water
my identity is mine
I call the rules and labels
and how I am called
you cannot change
the code written in my mind
you can't say it's a computer
when it holds nothing more
than the parts for a phone
you cannot label a fox
just because it is red
my identity is not yours
I claim myself
whoever that may be is
not yours
to write
Jan 12
Jan 12, 2026 at 8:18 PM UTC
Some praise singers mistake the python for rope
they stroke its scales and call the coiling an embrace.
Reno, you have read the scar as decoration,
traced the brand of iron across a nation's back
and called the burning a warmth of
bliss
He was no leader,
he was a scientist of sorrows,
a babalawo of betrayal
who cast his Odù not in palm nuts
but in the cold geometry of power.
His hands,
cold scalpels,
carving futures into fractures,
splitting the nation's sternum
to examine what democracy looked like
from the inside,
then stitching nothing back.
He distilled a nation in his test tubes,
pipetting hope into deception,
titrating freedom with the acid of his will,
until what remained
was neither the promised wine
nor the threatened poison,
only the residue of a people's patience,
crystallised beyond drinking.
We raised our calabashes
toward the promise of a river
that kept receding as we walked.
He told us the oracle was speaking.
He told us transition was a seed
requiring his particular darkness to germinate.
And we believed
the way the newly bereaved believe
the herbalist who says the fever
must worsen before the cure takes hold.
The Ifa that should have named the thief
slept in his khaki pocket,
its cowries scattered
by the same hand that would,
when the time came,
crumple an election
like a love letter written to someone
who had already left the country.
June 12 arrived wearing white,
Obatala's cloth,
the people's will woven into its hem.
Twelve million voices spoke
through the ballot's quiet thunder,
the deeper thunder of
a people who had decided
who they were.
Then,
the sleight of hand
that was always his truest skill.
A pen stroke.
The way a single matchstick
reduces the iroko's years
to an evening's ash.
Èwò violated
the sacred prohibition broken,
the fence around the people's Àṣẹ
torn open,
and what rushed through that breach
was not the wind of change
but the cold draft of a corridor
where the people's mandate
wandered without a door.
Iron-fisted,
yet afraid to clutch the truth
What manner of general
commands battalions
but cannot command
the simple declaration
the people have spoken,
and I obey?
If democracy was ever more
than a masquerade costume
worn until the drumming stopped,
he would have stood
as the oba stands before a new season,
arms open,
crown steady,
declaring the verdict of the oracle
even when it names
someone other than himself.
He would have dared
the surrender of power
to the principle
that outlasts power.
But the Odù he consulted
spoke only one verse,
remain.
So Reno
when you walk softly
on these footprints of fire,
when you stroke the python
and call its coiling leadership,
remember
the Àṣẹ of a people
is not a general's to dissolve.
He was afraid.
And a nation paid
the full price
of one man's fear.
What is a crown
that rests on a throne of broken oaths?
What is a nation
whose destiny was bartered
by the cowardice of a king?
The oracle unearths
what the praise singer chooses to bury.
© Lanre Adebayo
5d ago
May 30, 2026 at 11:49 PM UTC