Wednesday, March 1, 2017

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.



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