Times and Seasons: The Anthology

by Caleb Adoh



  Times and Seasons: The Anthology

  By Caleb Adoh

  This free ebook may be copied , distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration , and the reader is not charged to access it. More Importantly, poets’ names must be acknowledged wherever their poems are published.

  Caleb Adoh ©

  Copyright 2015

  All photos used in the creation of this ebook are public domain photos

  The following Poets are feature d in this Anthology:

  Caleb Adoh Charred Memories

  Wordsworth

  Abiku

  My Christmas

  Temi Wright Angels road Keepers

  The State of Our State

  Olatunji Sam To My First Beard

  Gbemisola

  Momma, Here I come!

  Ibe Alvina Life Seasons

  Ebonne Uche Together Apart

  To Our Heroes Past

  Ajayi Simon Paradox

  Toothbrush

  Oguntade Dami He Wields the Steel

 

  Dedication

  This Anthology is dedicated to the great guys I went to school with from 2009-2013 (University of Lagos). It was really great knowing you all. You guys brought the artistic part of me from where I hid it.

  I can’t wait to see you guys do really great stuff: Temi Wright, Ebonne Uche, Alvina Ibe, Oguntade Damilola, Angel Simon and Samuel Olatunji

 

  Authors Note

  Poetry is life. I spent four to five years of my university life studying poetry. A lot of people may think studying poetry at a university isn’t as grand or in a more 21st century context—“cool” as most people think.

  I realised that lots of the things in life are tied around poetry, or in a much larger sense—literature. You get to travel into people’s minds, world and climes from your face dug deep into that book in your room.

  What other way can you get to carve the future like a sculptor without applying imagination through art?

  It has successfully helped me to have a great career in Digital Marketing and Advertising.

  Literature is life!

  Caleb Adoh

  2348059820437

  Caleb Adoh

  To Oj: Charred Memories

  I watched in total dismay

  As the fire burned out

  Left with the charred remains of precious memories

  Blown away by the wind

  The morning rainbow was the cord that bound us

  A spiritual bridge from both hearts

  Time is a lumberman wielding an axe

  Shakespeare could not have described Him properly

  Like Ozymandias, “here lies a stump where a tree was”

  A tree where we sat holding arms overlooking the sun in the horizon

  It’s now a stump left out to dry in the sun.

  Dry stalks with grey and black

  The only colours that remind us of what use to be lush green

  Look! Cinders.

  A hope to rekindle the fire that once burned like Moses’

  I will rather blow into existence that tiny spark;

  That tiny burning cinder called Hope

  Even if the only thing I have in return is bloodshot eyes and

  Lungs clogged with smoke

  I have a clean state,

  Can we please write again?

  Caleb Adoh

  Wordsworth

  Let your words:

  Pull the silver strings

  Pull the harpsichord

  Make music like the orchestra of the heavenlies

  Blow across the land like pixie dust

  Make wishes come through

  Yours and those you speak of

  Add colour to the desert

  Of broken hearts

  Be more that sand castles

  That are washed away by the waves

  Be seasoned with:

  Lavish praise and approbation

  Be BandAid. Mend. Unite

  If your lips would keep from slips

  Five things observe with care

  To whom you speak of, of whom you speak,

  And how. And where

  A man is made mighty,

  Or little by the words of his lips

  Caleb Adoh

  Abiku

  Coming and going these several seasons

  Bringing to our door posts gifts wrapped in shrouds

  Draped in Angelic robes, but with an intent darker than Hades’

  Holding in his baby hands the Devil’s sickle

  He has come again!

  To bleed Mother’s oil dry.

  Like water seeping through crevices

  News of Mother’s birth

  Fills the Town Square with sunken faces

  Mother weeps!

  Deafening cries of pain and regret fill the quarters

  Are the gods not really to blame?

  The mid-wives revel.

  Unfettered by the tumult and disarray:

  Fanning the fire of confusion from the

  Land of the cold and pale-skinned people.

  Pantomimed faces showing phony attention

  They created the weapons—CROSS –CARPETING, MANIFSTO;

  DEMOCRACY; INDUSTRALIZATION

  With which Abiku deals deadly blows

  Ever wondered why our palm nuts fall at the foot of the tree?

  While Abiku flies across seven seas to our Midwives land

  To refine our oil , bringing back our oil of sadness

  Look ! here He comes,

  The Abiku, on a horse, shading the sun with an umbrella

  Painted white, red and green,

  With a broom in his left hand.

  Here they come with their empty promises!

 

  Caleb Adoh

  My Christmas

  Waking up to the blissful smell of fried flesh

  Intestinal Performances:

  Orchestral pieces far more appealing than the sounds

  Of Mozart and Beethoven

  Mother grants a piece;

  A peace of offering

  An appeasement for the whole year

  Face smeared with oil

  Pocket stuffed with pyrotechnics.

  Up to a mischief?

  Never scared—it’s a spanking-free day

  Mother takes on a “Cane fast”

  Children dressed in uniforms visiting the neighbours

  The day ends up being a great one—belly full!

 

  Temi Wright

  Angels Road Keepers

  I once read a poem by an Angel—

  ‘The Road Keepers’—and it gave me an ailment

  Who kept the road?

  From Soyinka’s Night Children.

  Spirits from another world after despondency.

  Well, Spirits the keepers must be

  For inhuman they are in-deed!

  Creepy things in black or armoured suits

  Gesticulating to stop the late night pull

  With flickering lights, and the feared rifle

  The jib of death and source of their strength.

  ‘GIVE NOT THE DOUGH AND EXPERIENCE A BLOW’

  That’s their motto and you don’t want a show

  Men
folk of twain policies:

  ‘The open eye to the tight-fisted palm

  And the tight-fisted eye to the open palm’

  The road keepers:

  The draw to themselves contempt

  And of dignity, they care not a tenth

  The road keepers:

  A people of valour, when it meant the conductor

  A race of obtuse injudiciousness

  A horde barely more chivalric than the swine.

  The Road Keepers

  Keepers of the road

  To purloin and exploit all of its gold

  Angel’s Road Keepers

  The converse of hard labour

  Venality put in a very nice way!

  Temi Wright

  The State of Our State

  My fingers are screaming for help

  Disenchanted rioters in a world that’s dishevelled

  Beauty speaks through the tantrum of words

  But voice cannot voice the indignation I bear

  A return to vociferous conviction

  As I look ahead to a platter of confusion

  I hear and perceive silence at its din

  My thoughts stumble over its very dissolution

  See! The never ending encroachment

  Civility resides in a place of embalmment

  Sleaze is no longer a thing as fart

  But a lot has suffered encouragement

  Over the land is the spread of disease

  And the vultures shrill for more deceased

  Somas can no longer writhe with insomnia

  Yet, the voyage through teething troubles persists

  Panacea is the irony of their injurious misdeeds

  But the-people give in for fear of beliefs

  Though they clamour, the bandwagon’s the silhouette gang

  Disfranchising the-people, retracting from all that is their will

  Hugger-mugger and near anarchy is imminent

  The continued lie and disarray all lead to mishap

  The present is gloomy and everyday’s future beclouded

  The-people are blasé and may well turn tales

  For a night by the moonlight raconteur

  Olatunji Samuel

  To My first Beard

  Gradually they appeared.

  Tiny lustre black diamonds on my chin,

  A one plus ultra of God’s divine beauty on MAN,

  They appeared like the black silken hair of a beautiful maiden,

  And they won my hearts medal

  They’re like the naïve hair on the head of a newly-born

  So beautiful that the mirror became my eyes,

  I apellated them., my ‘black beauties’

  An adornment of facial handsomeness,

  A hallmark of admiration noticed and envied by many.

  They made young ladies wonder in lust maybe in love,

  My aesthetic black beauties. So adoring ; so alluring ,

  Stunningly curled up like glossy black thread,

  A signal of growth , maturity and responsibility,

  Adulation to the eternal potter for the job well done

 

  Samuel Olatunji

  Gbemisola

  Gbemisola, gorgeous and gay like a happy peacock;

  Beauteous face, a bard’s delight;

  Ebullient with effulgent eues;

  Magazines’ model of manifesting magnificence;

  Immaculate daughter of the morning sun,

  Simple, svelte queen of the merry moon;

  Outstanding ornament of divine beauty;

  Limelight of living love

  Adoring of the Amazing Potter

  Olatunji Samuel

  Momma, Here I Come

  Momma! Momma! Momma! Here I come!

  With an angel for a wife as you asked for,

  A rare gem of sauced uniqueness,

  A well-refined diamond I bring back home

  Momma, take a look at her. Behold this divine beauty

  Her eyes blind the brightness of the stars,

  Her sweet voice silence the great Nightingale,

  I bring to you a love that will last for eternity.

  Welcome her with a motherly embrace,

  The jewel that makes me a lion.

  Welcome the mother of my unknown progeny,

  I bring her, a belle, am ornament of grace.

  Teach her womanly, enlarge her knowledge,

  Anoint her head with homely charity,

  Prepare her for wifehood and motherhood

  My love for her will never-cease. This I pledge.

  Ibe Alvina

  Life Seasons

  Once upon a time

  At the onset of age

  When time was

  A green emblem

  When men walked

  On all fours

  Time did not differ

  Life meant little.

  Innocence was man’s very essence.

  Recklessness, his watchword.

  Nudity was a beauty.

  A much coveted price.

  Ignorance, an achievement.

  Once upon a time, the world was full of roses.

  Once upon a time

  When man was no more,

  When man was stained

  With the throes of reality,

  When time was never enough

  When man had

  Two pillars to hold him.

  Life was contrary

  And knowledge golden.

  Once upon a time,

  The world was full of thorns.

  Once upon a time,

  When my ancient name

  Had only three letters,

  Pronounced L-E-G.

  When I had tasted

  The sweetest honey.

  And a pint of the bitterest bitter

  When I had on

  A cap of grey

  When my thirty –two

  Strongest friends

  Were fast letting go

  When my two lamps

  Grew dim

  Caution was my watchword

  Wisdom, my very essence

  My grey cap

  My honour

  My wrinkled clothes

  Much respected

  A cloud-burst

  Could not move me

  Nor could the world

  Cast a cloud over me

  Life was two-faced

  Life wWhat we made of it

  Once upon a time the world was full

  Of both Roses and thorns

  Ebonne Uchechukwu

  Together Apart

  In the large green tree

  Of fresh lusty flowery shoots

  And leaves nurtured from spread branches

  When healthy fruits grow naturally each season

  And defensive

  Trunks keep safe roots and tops

  To grow food and timber

  There be need for selfless service

  Though many troubled branches apart

  And choky tendrils fizzle around

  Hot wind causing significant shakes

  Changing colours, shedding leaves on thirsty soil

  One man wonders how this beautiful tormented tree

  Still exists together apart.

  Splitting wilt cause death

  But peace and work will bring about growth

  Ebonne Uchechukwu

  The Labour of Heroes Past

  Rising from the ashes of the dead

  The picture of villainy and sacrifice

  The raising of each sword

  The placing of each shield

  To what end do they come?

  Arise!

  Wake up this last time!

  Undo what you have done

  The banner of your children is with LITTLE stain

  Put yourselves aside; defend its fading colours

  Ajayi Simon Angel

  Paradox

  Every line has a meaning; every meaning has a line…

  We think we h
ave the worst story;

  We heard other’s, we exclaimed, ‘Glory’

  It’s cold now, when will it be hot?

  Now it’s hot, Oh Cold! Be our lot

  When it rains, we crave sun;

  Now it scorches, we say ‘Rain is fun’

  We dream, but are afraid of its reality

  We see reality but fantasize on fantasy

  We despise love—it’s cheap but deep;

  We idolize hatred—it robs us of sleep