KAMARUDEEN MUSTAPHA

KAMARUDEEN MUSTAPHA

I WANT TO WRITE YOU A LOVE LETTER

I want to write you a love letter;

And I want you to fall at once

So I have learnt to be a praise singer

A chronicler of lies and a pedlar of flatters.

I have learnt how to make my lines croon falsetto

And let my words scent like cologne

So that I can sell myself to you;

So that you can pay the price with your heart

Soon I will let my rocket roar alive

And rock the Venus of your face

While dodging the arid red of their Mars

I am a good soldier gunning for a kill

I am an avid reader of songs of songs

I will re-echo the lines the royal bard

To win you I will let my truth read like fiction

Truth is better, fiction is juicy

And my fiction will fare like a faction

Above all, I will be a poet,

For only a poet can swoon your pulse

The way I want it, my love and one.

OF A COUNTRY THAT ATE HER MAP

When a land is so greedy

And chewed her own map

Like a roll of kilishi

What remains of her dream?

When a river is too thirsty

And gulped its own water

Can the mudy river-bed flow?

What cartographer do we now invite

Leo Africans or Ibn Battuta

To redraw the map chewed beyond recognition?

With blurred Northern East stars

Snarling Southern South comets

And battered everywhere else.

A scar does not heal like a bruise

And our map has suffered more than a scar

Bloody cuts fresh from our gluttony

Of half a century.

And now that our river has consumed its river

And our rainbows its colours

Let gather the drizzles

In our patient palms, shriveled

Like dry petals.

Or wait for the raining season

Next boon, perhaps

Patiently, patiently,

To lubricate the patched throat

Of our black river

And its waterless shame.

THE VOICELESS

Some people have very big mouths

They say all they want like tubes

They are free like the winds and the birds

They swirl things and swerve gale

They take all the feathers and flutters

They take all the medals and glitters

But still they say nothing but needless verbosity

Without a single finite verb distinct

Some people however hardly have mouths

And their little lips are padlocked

By hunger anger and lack of outlet

Willingly, we peg them out when we

Are inside – deciding their fate,

Willingly we hem them in, when we

Are outside – planning onslaughts

To clip their wings, lest they attempt to soar.

They are the voiceless of this world

And they have much to say without any colouration

Their truths are plain without any pigmentation

Because they lack the verbosity that

Swallows the soul of reasons

But we won’t care to listen because

We want them where we trample there

Not in the forum where views are shared

We call them names to keep them tamed

And because we keep them down where

We deign to walk on them

They become our quicksand and quagmires

They hinder our selfish strides

So, we reverse often into our

Backwaters of yesterdays

More than we march towards

The leeway of tomorrow.

IF

If there were no death

I could have warred

To no end

To possess you

And become yours

But since I will die

And leave all possessions orphaned

I let you go

I will make do with

The colour of your voice

And the echoes of your shadows

And leave your essence

To my blessed rival

Be happy, you

I will wear the garb

Of sorrow you sewed me

Don’t remember me a wink

So your heart might never sink

Let me do

All the remembering

And take all the pain

How I wish I could absolve you

Of all entanglements.

WIND BENDING GRASS

Wind bending grass

Your love adopts my heart

Like a good matron

An orphan

I dance with all fevour

To your gentle whispering

Of breeze passing through

The pines of my heart

I march like a crusader

For my stake of Jerusalem

Princess, I am the knight

You anointed with your breath

Of life – the power of your lips,

The compass of your north – pole eyes

I am the sword sworn to your honour

And the service of your love

Bow, naked and unsheathed,

Plunge me into your fire

Put me atop your anvil

Let your fist be the hammer

Moulding me into your desire gem

Hold me to your heart

Hot and molten

Wrought me into whatever diadem

Would fit your head

What pendant for your bosom

I will never scorch your potter’s hands

I will never singe your smith’s fingers

I will acquiesce, to every whom of your love

Naked and hot therefore

In your, hand I will be a refreshing fountain

My water cool as cucumber

Ready to wash your feet of gazelle

Ready to sale the Sahara of your soul

KAMARUDEEN 

MUSTAPHA

KAMARUDEEN MUSTAPHA is a Nigerian from South Western part of the country. His mother tongue is Yoruba. He had worked as a photographer for about fifteen (15) years at Ilesha, Zaria and Ibadan. He attended Ahamdu Bello University, Zaria and West African Union University at Cotonou. He writes in English, Hausa and Yoruba. He was born at Iwo in Osun State and currently lives at Ibadan where he works as a teacher. He has so far published five children story books including: Winners Never Quit, From Grass to Grace, Zinari The Golden Boy, The Moon is Shining Bright and Wayon Bana. He has also written more than three hundred poems.