When Mercy Bids the Eye, Goodbye – Odunjo Azeez.
When Mercy Bids the Eye, Goodbye. Today, every eye spells evil and smells evil like the silenceworn by our nights. Out there, aubade greets the morningfrom a man’s stomach, and he dances to the tune—likehe buries his sadness into the joy that will never come. At the market, a preacher is preaching heaven with the blazeof hell in his mouth. We have pecked at the sea in hell andgraffitied its taste on our subconscious so that our ears, eyes,tongues, legs, and hands are all testaments of what we want and hate. Here, a liege leads his folks into days that are not smiling;flails them by bastinadoing till stars fall off their skies. We read and memorize the tongue of the sky, but rescindthe lessons or tell them off into the mouth of oblivion afterward.What rules our souls, our world is a rule: “if you want to rule, follow no rules!”…
Riddles of a Lost Boy. – Asíwájú Babatimehin
Riddles of a Lost Boy I am something— wandering is my native heirloom. my ancestors, shifting lands & shape-shifting tongues. all oduduwa’s milk & honey not sufficing to quench their thirst for new land. the result: a minor(ity) problem. a leaf has fallen too far from its tree. a people in Kogi torn apart from their heritage by the thin lines that shape states. wandering is a family heirloom. I wandered from my culture as a seed in my father’s balls in search of greener pastures to plant me. which is to say I was a nomad before I was born. drifting through cities: Abuja, Lagos, Ibadan, and Kaduna. two…