Three Poems | Taiwo Odesanya
In This Green Land
In this green land, we do not breathe Oxygen,
We breathe fear for we do not know,
Where and when the next bomb or shot will fall,
In this green land, we do not speak the language of love,
It’s ethnic hatred that oozes from our mouths,
We hide like Chameleons,
For we do not know when ethnic differences will snatch a soul away,
We are not one, but we can be one,
We can allow peace to spread like a sea over a shore,
We can choose to speak the language of love and honour,
Consider the flowers before streams; they differ yet unified in beauty,
Consider the human body; it stands despite its parts and duties,
Consider the universe; it’s vast,
Varies in function yet together like ants,
Come, compatriot, come!
Come, gather the fragments of ethnic differences and knit them together,
Come; let’s hold our coloured hands in unity
And replace this country’s grief with Glory,
Come, let’s purge corruption, uproot colonialism’s whip and harvest peace,
Come, let’s uphold this flag and refuse the labours of our heroes past from being past,
Come, compatriots, come!
Come, let’s green this green and whiten this white Come,
Let’s replace these wreaths of thorns,
With joy, for diversity isn’t a road to disunity but unity in uniqueness.
Social-Hallucination
Tick tock,
No time for her son,
‘On Tiktok bleeping her cleavages to strange men,
Social media hallucination, living a lie,
Here, everything is perfect,
The sky is blue, it never rains,
Everyone is rich & poverty is slang on the lips of black men,
Here, love is beautiful;
Till breakfast is served in court,
We lie too much,
Like politicians, our tongues are twisted,
Curled, tangled, braided in self-deceit,
Sometimes God doubts he created us,
We lie too much.
Transformation or Transfiguration
It all hurled the day he said i was the yellow glow
Lightening his dark heart,
That I was the only light flowering his heart,
That I was the only building blossoming in his hollowness,
Spreading positivity around it,
I swear, the words shot chills into my veins,
Entangled me with awe,
Flung me to a million imaginations,
Your words, Odun, unfurled fortunes and stars and…
Until lust crawled into our lips,
Knitting them together; until lust led us to your bed,
Encroached us into mouthful moan,
Now that we’ve explored the maps in our bodies,
Now that I’ve rained my heart at your feet,
You want to sweep it into a grieving gutter of regrets?
Photo by Ayoola Salako on Unsplash
Bio:
Taiwo Oluseye Odesanya is a Nigerian Poet, Non-fiction writer, Blogger, and History enthusiast. He is a Computer Information Systems graduate from Middlesex University London with a deep passion for writing. Taiwo calls writing his first love and hopes to write something “groundbreaking about remarkable events from the past because of his undying love for history.
