You don't know me
I am the tick that stick to the northern herd
Feeding on my southern green grass
I am a broken song hanging in your
Early morning throat, the cock that keeps
Demolished time, the muezzin that calls on the faithless
I am a forbidden morning
You don't know me
I am the dewdrop that formed your teardrops
I am the butt of the old broom that removed the dry blood
Of your fervent killings on the roads and groves
I belong to the food chain, from the top to the bottom
I will be foundprey and prayer of the predator
Of broken egg and congealed milk
You will know me when you see me
I am the elastic neck, I am a hunted giraffe
In search of tall hopes
You don't know me
I am the ripeness that hasten your fruits
I ferry tomorrow's anxiety to today
So you may know where I am coming from
I am the stone that knows the nucleus of the palm kernel
I count my labored hours
Should you forget my honors
My depressed face will be a reminder
You don't know me
I was the groom of your daughter
The broom she jumped to laughter
The lace in her wedding gown
The tears of her glorious moment
I am the poet that took her home
Sailed her to the night and unraveled her
Secrets in white linen
My morning came with mourning
In a provoked calabash
A poet is too poor for the daughter of a general
You remarried her to Abdullahi
You don't know me
I am the swollen stone, the yardstick
With which ego is measured, I have killed elephants
With a stone and lions with a donkey jaw bone
I am the carte blanche of a true bullet
I am the kettle whistle in your conscience
I invite your tongue to be scorched by my anger
You don't know me
I am troubled water sinking your sail
The peppered water with which you've washed your face
Now tell me what does blindness taste like
Does it taste like darkness or broken promises
Does it taste like dreams deferred or land defrauded
When you know tell me
You don't know me
On my head have I carried elephants
And gathered a thousand crickets
That is my struggle, definitely not your problem
With my mouth have I curtailed thunder
With my hands have I tilled the earth
While you disgrace my land with your swollen swagger
Every where I go I am spat on, subject of uncontrollable laughter
You don't know me
I am the ticking bomb under your agbada
I am the gunpowder keg under your uniform
I am the eager trigger under your soul
I am the needle mingling with your stolen coins
Bring your handshake to me
You don't know me
I am the poet, son of a woman who watered her land
With tears and blood
And a man who tendered the earth with his whole heart
I belong to a tribe whose river you have drained
And whose forest you have raped
I belong to a country whose tomorrow
You have made chewing sticks and whose maids
You have frustrated to the neon cages of Italy and Amsterdam
They will be back tomorrow with "monkey disease"
Ready to rub it on your protruding "big man belle"
The hen will definitely come home to roost
The hen must come home to roost
You don't know me
I am the harmattan koboko writing history on your back
The bamboo growing in your groin
The millipede crawling in your eyes
The dirge waiting by your tomb
I am the bile you taste in your waking and sleeping
I am the hydra headed headache
the gods refused to kill me for you
Yes I am the black scorpion
I am back, ready to tell the tale
Of my tail to your middlefinger
You don't know me
I see you gathering your sacrifices
To bribe the gods before the sun goes down
But
The gods don't eat stolen meat
The gods don't drink innocent blood
The gods don't drink muddy water
Will the white chalk be enough to cover the human blood
On the streets of Ibadan and Benin?
Will the white cockcrow silence the wailing
Of pregnant mothers whose children you swallowed?
What will your supplication be?
You don't know me
You lied to my father in his innocent constituency
You lied to my mother with a basket of cassava on her head
You lied to me with my degree tucked under my tail
Running round the world with fake identity and ill-lusioned life
You don't know me
I am the crash at Ejigbo swamp
The early morning Ikeja letter bomb
The Maroko of a displaced and dispossessed dream
I am like Kirikiri who feeds on the mind of prisoners
I am the over flowing tear of the bar beach
The loose canon of Kaduna jihad, I die for heaven's sake
You don't know me
I am the slaughtered lamb in the mid session of life
I am the one whose time you robbed
I am the one who you turned prostitute
So you may ride high in Abuja
I am the hungry teacher
The marauded student
The murdered civil servant
The hopeless market woman
The poet with a dead muse
The song without a singer
The mother without a father
The father without a mother
I am the one you proclaimed dead
You don't know me
I am not the sugar cane anymore
I am the elephant grass now
I am not the highway to heaven anymore
I am the bush path to doom now
I am not the super eagle anymore
I am the bedraggled bat shacking with woodpeckers
I am not the scientist anymore
I am the experiment of another broken man
I am not the dentist anymore
I am the rotten tooth that decays the night in slow motion
I am not the red carpet anymore
I am the door mat to every tired sole
I am a forgotten story
I am the past glory
Of a once glorious land
A vulture with a conscience but no talons
You don't know me
I am a troubadour in entranced in France
I have dipped my middle finger in my mother's oil
And ripped the tongue of a dog that barked at my dreams
I have serration in my back, signs of a safe journey wished
On me by my mother in her forefathers' shrine.
Yet your gun found me in the loneliest path of a far world
Your killers found my dreams and smashed it on the rock
In a dead end with a sign saying "NO OUTLET"
If my mother knew, only if she knew
She would have bathed me whole in oily balm
I would have bled for the gods not you
Too late now, the gods who would have received me
Are sleeping and the acolytes have gone to America and Europe
The shrines are pungently empty and impotent
You don't know me
You have heard my song before
This is not new to your ears
The corpse is not new to a dug earth
The gong is not new to the town crier
The moon is not new to her night
The noon is not new to her light
You have heard my song before
My forefathers and friends sang it
They all live in unmarked graves now
Oh you shameless sword of a shameful scabbard
You killed their songs
They await you at heaven's gate
Like the sniveling immigration officers at Heathrow
"Did you get this visa from Lagos?"
You don't know me
I am the old song now broken and tired
I am the masquerade whose face has been revealed to children
Whose toe protrude to the open laughter of the world
I am the maraca without beads, I am silence silence silence
I am the cow without her tail, flies feast on my inflicted wounds
I have finished counting the dimples of the ceiling
In my mind's cell
I have dreamt my dreams in forlorn
You don't know me
I am the poet with the old song
I have cried my cries
I have given you the last blood
And the last pound of my flesh
The tenth month has no room for the
embryo any more
I am coming home, from the valleys of Europe
I am coming home from the alleys of America
I am like a ready scribe
Waiting to write your dirge on judgement day
Then you will know me.