BABEL

BABEL

I feel invisible.
I feel unheard and unloved.
I worry about your worries.
Your fears become my fears.
Your dreams become my dreams.
Your name escapes from my lips constantly.
My heart cries out your name in my prayers.
Still, the mountain remains unmoved.
The hope of today is extinguished yesterday.
Tomorrow lies a new hope,
A new dream and still the hope is devoured.
Love conquers all, they say.
My love is yet to conquer the tower of babel Built to
separate mankind.
But still, the heart beats with love and continues to hope
even when the stars are gone,
the buzz of the bees have ceased,
the hummingbird retires...
I still hope.
Hope in the face

THE CLAY-FEET GIANT

Born in the '90s
Well-fed, well clothed
Been around a few places
Educated on 3 continents
Still home is a place, where the fumes and smells of a petrol-fuelled generator overpower your
nostrils, in your quest to drown out the darkness.
And the sweaty bodies of hundreds rub against you, on yellow moleue buses as you navigate the
blistering heat and the chaos of Lagos traffic.
Walking to a job that you had to beat a thousand others for,
And the rising freedom of school-going girls is devoured by a ragtag army of terror in broad
daylight.

A land that one must leave in search of distant shores
On airplanes after long waits for a miracle and a visa.
On long walks across the Sahara going through a maze of human smugglers and the thirst,
poisonous snakes, and scorpions that populate the desert.
A journey on a rickety boat set sail across the Mediterranean in search of eldorado.
The Giant of Africa, unable to feed and water the souls and bodies of her young.

I feel rage and dissatisfaction lodged in the depths of my belly.
It often rises and swallows the air and freedom of all around me.
Leaving in its wake an overpowering feeling of dread and foreboding.
Mama in her room alone with nothing but her demons and cries out to an unseen force, as if
daring the force to answer, “What sort of a country leaves its young with no choices”?

In a moment of sheer madness, I snap, pick up a sword, and face the giant.
A few seconds later, I hear a loud thud, like the fall of the ancient ruins.
I worry it's my mind and in a fleeting second,
I see with the side of my eyes the giant down on the ground, its skin the colour of earth.
I exhale and scream in triumph "I slew the clay feet giant".
I say it in an unbelieving way, in a desperate hope that my escape is sure.

Suddenly, the giant rises and it is chasing me,
Until it overtakes, no overwhelms me,
With its special kind of madness that only I understand.