"soyinka" poems
Alexander K OPICHO
(Eldoret, Kenya;[email protected])
from north in Kaduna of Okigbo to south in the Rhoben Island
of Mazizi Kunene and D M Zwelonke who sang the song of Shaka;
in Zulu Heroism that beautified our face in the armpit of Ezkia Mphalele,
the sons of Africa in the knighthood of poetry,chantery and incantations
you are hailed with with glory and dignity for your service to humanity
your service to literature and gods of poetry in the spirit of the song
that we chant in the spirit of love and peace the glory of hour heritage
is an eyesore to the lazy ; who though ill will can stop the flow of African river,
Sing our songs and chant our spirituals as you write our poems
open your poetic ***** for the world is a ******
in which the seed of African poetry will plummet and flower
to glory of man the essence of Godliness,
Let Soyinka and Achebe sing our songs without fear of home
As Okot P' Btek revamps from the ashes like a phoenix
to re-plant the bumpkin in the old homestead of Taban Lo Liyong
Who sang the cacotpic song in the dystopia of black diaspora
when he saw another ****** dead in the guest for Nocturnes of Senghor
who feared Marxist poetry and African songs which Aime Cesaire chanted
in the mayoralty of Paris.
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 12:45 PM UTC
Thanks thespis for another muse anew,
Filliping my soul with the spirit of a song,
To chant for the young world in these pepperish letters,
before my callous eyes on the skull of historical future
on my pykitonic torso of I another African pykin,
as I finish my coffin for the cadaver of poetry
that the law of poetry is a distorting neurosis,
neurotic abnormality its baseboard of time
giving classical balance for wondrous poetry.
Compensatory motivation a charm of its seed,
Taking dear eyes from the skull of Demodocos
Leaving songfull mouth his legacy for humanity,
Warped physique not short of history,
Teaching the world to drink in full pyrene spring
As hunchbacked dwarfism of Alexander Pope
was not in any sense dwarfism of his poetry,
nor club foot of Byron in ******* to Maugham
Byronic heroism to Europe of yester times,
That sired Proust, the Jewish neurotic
And Keats the most dwarfish and Wolfe the tallest
Of man and woman to the cultural matrix
Of Europe, the mother of art, poetry and synaethesia,
From which was born Pushkin that took poetry
Out of his nymphomaniac heart, to the solace of czars,
And Shakespeare the dear thief, luckily converted
Childhood kleptomania into royal theatre of King Lear,
The parallel of four brothers from the house of Karamazov,
Their father; impecunious penny penchant muzhik
In the name of Fydor epileptic Dostoyevsky.
A lull of the time to escape from world of rent and tax,
Gripped nerves of the duo to a new realm of art
wherein sensuous glory from ***** and Indian hemp
propelled the souls of Coleridge and De Quincey
to grandiose highness of poetry in the dreams of *****
bordering on the teutonic greatness of ritualistic breed,
poetry that transcended from rotten apples in the writing desk
of Fredriech von schiller the begotten son of Germany,
writing under the arms of Balzac dressed in monkey clobus,
that along with Milton in the lost paradise, gave him swaddles
only when the poetic vein of Milton flowed happily from nothing,
but from the ritualized autumnal equinox to the spiritual vernal,
as Coleridge was in full recondite of marquetry,mosaic and miracles,
the miraculous white male sheep, the white ram of Wole Soyinka,
that he gave as a gift to Achebe at the last anniversary, evil decoy
that become a car which deathly crushed Chinua Achebe
down to demise in the catacombs for the law of poetry
as abnormal human neurosis an equation of perfect art.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 8:26 AM UTC
I didn't have the wrist of Osundare
Nor the tongue that speaks Wole Soyinka
Yet, my anthology is not up to a Canto
Not until I make for you a Bible, ahead stretching Water
I lingered through the facets of beauty
A million turning a second up in my head
Nothing, no one soothes the burrow like the sky crying
No touch is so tender like the blow from Mama nature
Can you you feel the Lullaby she sings on the Roofs?
Tell me! Does your Mama placate so tender to lure you to sleep better?
A drop triggers a race,
Its menial calls for buckets
Her late stay claims furnitures of ages
A flow of bliss that built Eden here
In her pour makes Marmaids glitter
Puts the smile on Cutlasses and hoes
As more pockets surely would smile
With no paint,
Brightly, she paints the sky Grey
Your Ex-GF would wanna stay more Late
Make sure you didn't make it rain, else, you are in soup!
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 2:22 AM UTC
VERY IMPORTANT
I'm quitting poetry
(Part one)
I don't belong here
Nor do i belong there
Am not an author
Nor am i a writer
Am not a poet
I can't even write a sonnet
I don't write out of will
B'coz am not in a mission to heal
My pieces are not pure
So don't for cure
My poetry doesn't have a theme
Nor does it rhyme
I have done wrongs i can't undo
I need to apologize to my pen too
The paper need to take a revenge
'Cos i got no leverage
I have confused folks with my metaphor
But i can promise you this is now over
I tried to find solace behind my pen
It was futile it has just made my sorrow to deepen
I have lived a life of lie
Telling the truth i didn't even try
I have pretended i can write
Whereas i can't differentiate wrong from right
Someone called me tomorrow's wole soyinka
But now i realized it was an ironical moniker
I have been a shame to poetry
I should have tried the art of pottery
This are my confession
As i quit this proffesion
#kenyaismybeat
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 1:18 PM UTC
Africa's venerated literary
icon with words of eloquence
esoteric to the blind.
Distinguished in letters
for ages infinite.
Unparalleled in intellect,
and a gadfly of constructive
dissenting views.
Soyinka,
You are indeed a priceless
asset to the black race.
The wise grey-haired doyen
of literary geniuses,
whose ingenuity is in a century
once seen,
and in a Millennium, ten times.
Jan 20, 2018
Jan 20, 2018 at 8:34 AM UTC
I do not like Soyinka!
Except because I love him.
I do not like Soyinka!
That in obvious allure octogenarian man.
With whitish locks.
And this is my jocose to him.
That old jolly-jocund who's in a gay.
I do not wish to be garrulous,
Or loquacious.
So I will say
For I am an enfant terrible.
And I will enfeeble him with my euphoric words.
That elderberry with no egregious egotic lines.
I loathe him, yet loathing him.
Bend to him.
That fair dinkum laureate.
I hope this is not a lese majesty?
For I have penned this accord to his standard.
I do not like Soyinka!
Unless because I love him.
My sworn, utter coruscating model.
Is that I do not like him, I love him.
Dec 28, 2015
Dec 28, 2015 at 6:07 AM UTC
Wole Soyinka calls it the “one-eyed box”
It captures the tiniest of emotions
It’s lens, ‘all-seeing’ like an eye over the globe
With each picture, a fleeting glimpse of expressions
Stories stuck on film, a whole lot to remember
Complex negatives – images of unending scenes brought to life
In this moment we smile; maybe too much
Problems concealed with style – click and flash
flashing lights, euphoric … some blink in agreement
That reassurance, the light in our darkness
which Lifts the fog from our shadows.
Others, eyes wide open – flash!
Like tourists, they let their senses devour the moment
trusting this ‘one eyed box’ with their deepest secrets
In this spotlight, our silhouettes - naked
Our candid lives, as bare as all the places in our minds
we refuse to acknowledge the man behind this one-eyed box
An artist eager to retouch our imperfections.
Apr 27, 2017
Apr 27, 2017 at 6:06 PM UTC
Writing poetry is dead easy if you have two precious documents before your very eyes. The two documents in question are The Divine Comedy; by some 13th century Italian bloke called Dante Aligheri, and any copy of the Iliad that’s lying about the joint. You will also need a full-length mirror, a tin of Brasso and an English/Italian dictionary. When you have assembled this lot you can commence discovering whether or not you are a Dante, or just chancing your luck as a wannabe Homer
Having assembled all the necessary paraphernalia, you can begin your quest to become a poet, or discover that you are just another lost soul who wants to copyright spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in order to make a fortune from the literary outpourings of desperate to be Dantes everywhere. (Think about it, that’s not as dumb as it sounds nor is it as dumb as you will be if you attempt it.) That’s your first lesson in Danteness and Homericness. Writing literature is a paradoxical experience, and never a contradiction. So, you may have to shove Hegel out the window and line the floor of your pet hamster’s cage with the complete works of Marx.
Now you are approaching the very personal and very revealing bit of this exercise to discover whether you are a potential Dante or not. But, as always, there’s a but: before that, you may wish to check out a few historical precedents. Check out Chaucer Shakespreare. Milton, Pope. Shelley and Keats, and after the death of the Good Lord Byron, you might want to move abroad to Ireland and The USA, to get the best out of literature by having a glance at Yeats, Hopkins, Whitman and Emerson. Then there are a couple of Russian poets: Akhmatova and Ratushinskaya . Africa has the Nobel Laureate Soyinka, who shouldn’t be missed. Rabindrinath Tagore is beyond words and there is a Chinese poet named Wei Bo who is also a sublime read. World literature is like world music, a surprise around every corner-
Now this is the wonderful part of your poetic odyssey. At this point you get to look in the mirror, a lot. But first a word of caution: mirrors can be very strange, if not downright frightening things to see yourself reflected in. Put on your bravest countenance and look straight into the glacial glossy glare, and tell yourself you’re not scared of a piece of silver painted glassery that looks back at you every time you glance at it.
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 12:49 PM UTC