Tade Akin Aina

“Merry me” Tonight

I work internationally
Fly night and day, sleep casually
Beds on rigs, hotels and bush stations.
I make change happen, get justice done
Make money work for rich and poor,
Build banks and bridges
Engineer plants and seeds
Connect the world Wi-Fi and cell
Keep fragile peace, war wounds heal.

I am John, international John!
Weary change-maker, here so forlorn
Bone- cold lonely in your Babylon.
In drinks and caffeine I find joy
Seek love in supine embraces hot
Ensnared by your laser green shy glances.
So, drink from my alien bounty pool
My Cleopatra, my low hanging forbidden fruit,
My Jezebel, star in my sultry tinted torpor.

Eat, drink and “merry me” tonight
My bride price is Sterling, Euro and Dollar.
Pardon my lack of graces, tipsy swagger,
Desperate rush to close the deal, your name,
Age and creed ignoring. I see the lurking Madam,
The preening peacock pimp, sneaky concierge,
All your pound of flesh waiting to carve.
Your svelte mystery, black pidgin modernity
In hot dark passion waves drown me.

Let’s not talk tonight about
Genocide in Darfur, slavery in Nouakchott,
Rape in Bukavu, hustling in Korogocho,
Mutilation in Gulu, despair in Cape Flats.
Let’s rave tonight, make merry and enjoy
Do what Europe forbids, America abhor,
Faiths condemn, all secretly covet.
Let’s the virus dare, the germs taunt
Sink all in surrender at this Aphrodite’s haunt.

Mouths are Made for Better Things

All our dead died long before the Colonials
The cemetery moved far from City center,
Ghosts laid to writhe in suburban bush heat
That native slums from colonials separate.
Reservations they built, Government Reserved Areas
GRAs for white skin rulers, tongues perched on
Hot stones spitting words through slit nostrils.
Mouths they say are made for better things
Like eating chicken whole but not the bones,
Feet, head, wings all sweeter parts
Except bits that the village gossip turns you,
‘God forbid bad thing’, tongue all loose
Restraint all gone, everyone’s secrets revealed.
Mouths they say are made for better things
Like smoking pipe tobacco lavender- perfumed,
Devilish cigars too, blue fumes evil spirits chasing.
The colonialists spoke through their noses,
Heard with their eyes, meanings sketched
In ethnography books, exotic tales of savage lore,
Tribal moods on canvas that denied recognition,
Understanding, wisdom, intelligence, our knowledge deride.
The cemetery they moved, bodies and bones they left
Homeless spirits to haunt our native souls at Ajele.
But recalcitrant youth, forerunners of “Area Boys”,
Turn tombs to, couch, beds and love nests where we sat,
Gambled, smoked weed, sang, danced and dared
Evil spirits their heads raise if they can.
Here women and strangers travel escorted
Across this dead cemetery of the forsaken dead.
We are the only demons that walked the daylight
The spirits that rode the wings of the night
Boys and men who the Colonizer’s Hades colonized.
Even now our masquerades speak through their noses
Voices of the dead that haunt the living, now we know
Mouths have always been made for better things.

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