ALLI NAJEEBAT

BY OLANIHUN OPEYEMI JOE

ALLI NAJEEBAT (Resquiescant In Pace)
We tread same path
For she loved math...

When the news reached my ears
It took years ere it spread
And when it did, no tears
Only some rude shock, hot, red.

What stole your lil soul
Make me feel so old
Whatever stilled your heaving chest
Has roused in me a great unrest
What killed my little girl
Must have come with some spell
Should have taken me instead
Ought to spare your pretty head...
But time is different
And mine is lenient.

She was so young
Smart and strong,
She loved math
I teach that...

As for poems
She write them
With her eyes
Lucid and bright
-typical African-
In my heart...

Now, I've lost my rhythm and rhyme
A muse departed, I weep inside...

My pain non can comprehend
-For I've lost a faithful friend-
Not the pain of a hunter
For his assegai
Not that of a farmer
For his ruined Oryza
Its that of a rabbi
Whose's lost his rahki...
The pain of a teacher.

For We tread the same path
As she loved poems cum math.

CHURCH OF THE POOR

Yesterday, in the night
I stood by her door
And watched her her plight
The church the poor...

Wrinkled. women worn with years
Speckled. men, fewer, aged likewise
Softened, repentant
Burdened, expectant
Sit side by side
List' to the preacher's
Interpreter
Rapt... In non-perfunctory genuflection.

Tattered, tired, tried
A pure gold, She Cried
To God, this ghetto church
For poverty so much.

TWINS (A SONNET)

Dedicated to the Adeyeye twins on this occasion of their birthday.

MOTHER;
"What are these 'not so heavy' I carry
Feeding both on both my gland mammary?
Double bundle I just must clutch so tight
When I walk here, there I have to bear
Them, a perch on my arm, strapped to my rear".

A VOICE;
"Its a whole grain of cowpea as splint
That crisp cowrie shell in halves is split".

The total cola, bilabial, bitter
So incomplete one without the other
Just like the couplets in lyrical ballad
Journey nectared of butterfly ala'd.

They're gifts gifted not only the rich beings
But those in penury also have twins.

Copywrite 2011 Olanihun Peyemi Joe

Ibadan, Nigeria

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