The problem here is that Odia's language is significantly dated and archaic: contemporary poetry dispenses with words like "upon" as much as possible, for instance. It is like saying "thou" and "thine." There is also too much self-conscious artifice, which makes the poem a little too, well, "self-aware" as we say. Elegant poetry should dispense with the morbidity of language that makes it desultory. There is also, the problem of coherence and a dearth of unity, not only in the rhetoric plan or movement of the lines, but in their ability as well to carry and capture, and situate imagery logically: one is forced to wonder, say, how a knife stuck at one's back gives them eyes. Even when we make that metaphorical leap, that offers license to the poet, the semantic data fails to add up. It becomes, not license, but licentiousness that stultifies utterance, rather than elevate it! What they hell is "to take the bitterleaf of his song to the soup maker," and pray, how does it connect with that significant mood shift in:
the drought that reaped his crops granted him
the Will that powered stones for rainmaking
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 9:51 PM
To: dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fela and Guevara by Odia Ofeimun
Subject: Fela and Guevara
Fela and Guevara
Fela's choice
Souls that were 'lagosed' to hunger,
unfulfilled by work or play,
reclined on wind-oars, abject.
Their animal cries, their starved-dream catcalls
trailed over the miasma of failure
till, plunged into the all-gobbling lagoon,
they joined forgotten humanity at silt bed.
Lagosed to a fault, they waited
not knowing for what they waited
in solo-spurts of scratching and seeking
hoarding small triumphs in a market of defeats
they yearned for small rebirths
in package-deals of purge-fire.
Always, they craned their lives to dance,
relishing messages that they gave and took
from drum, piano, gong, pipe and string,
but none ever has taken so much from or given them
what the Musician of rattles, jokes and banter
brought from all that he had absorbed
from their Lagos-drenched famish and life-wish
With abandon that knows no let or lag
he trains snob-ears to self-conscious flapping
in a sizzling riddle of ablutions, deep-water idioms,
he trains snob-ears to self-conscious flapping
at his rebel's dialect, wringing the neck of
their complacencies
he wrestles them from themselves, offering them
a new sex – the will to live a bit more –
and who says that that is not enough?
(from The Poet Lied)
CROOKED TIMBER (For Fela)
monkey no fine, but 'im mama like am
it was the knife stuck in his back that gave him eyes
the sky crashing upon the day of freedom
woke the natives of his person
to the joy he thought was only a dream
it was the knife stuck in his back
his broken sax on the rubbish heap
taught the musician of rattles and banter
to take the bitterleaf of his song to the soupmaker
the drought that reaped his crops granted him
the Will that powered stones for rainmaking
the silence of his prized cows brought the joy
of drumming to crowds preying upon God Almighty
true, the future we look forward to
also takes us by the hand to the past we left behind;
the secrets of evolution which taught us to fly
makes us siblings of the dinosaurs quitting creation's ant-holes
yes, we forever fear power because of the weakness
of those who possess it
we let ourselves be possessed
because of the fate that lacks apostrophes
it was the knife stuck in his back that gave him eyes
the eyes grown afresh from his wounds
brought match-flares to the darkness of flying knives
to rework life's crooked timber.
(from Dreams At Work)
SAXOPHONE OF THE GODS
Clear jagga-jagga commot for road
The master of rattles is on his way
homing to the horns that never failed him
where horns cannot fail their maker
He steps out in a casket of baked raffia
a million feet padding the earth in unison
to a beat that will not be heard ever again
After the wayfarer has cleared manna from the hyssop,
the spider-web of grief from its true dressing
in joy that climbs to the height of a muezzin…
The strange one steps out, becoming all of us
a worshipful march for the king hornsman
prime anarch who steeled hearts away from fear
with horns that never failed their purpose
to save the world from the need to bow
to tyrants high and low.
Clear jagga jagga commot for road
The patriarch of the barbed rhythm steps out
master of the stomp who measured the world
for the beaten to thrust down their roots
Down to the deep idiom of an underworld
where storms call, shaking up the mountains.
Un-becalmed by time and season, he reaches out
to join storm to storm in our hearts and to witness
his going that is also a return, the hornsman's return
to the ancestral flow and banter that was always his cup,
always, his wrap of hemp, the routing skill
of the mermaid of his harem, his last massage,
the salve of bruises that hurt him into song
a continent's heartbeat, never hidden but lived now
and forever as the rod, staff and comforter
of the down and out counting double to widen vision
Clear jagga jagga commot for road
For him who built chance into an Atzec feat
a republic of yabis to toughen groundings
jolt of power, against horsewhip and baton charges
which drew maps of Africa across his hide
in a seasonal swoop of plagues upon the shrine
where he worshiped the Ancestor and where now
he is the ancestor to whom we pour libations
oiling the world's rusted joints, as we gyrate and juba
to the master of the lyric of grain and groin
whose face of kaolin told a constant tale of laughter
too old to kowtow to the transient juju of office
to roaches and rodents who deny ritual in praise of fashion
Clear jagga-jagga commot for am who threshed the eternal
weave of human nerves to stay above the chink of coins,
crush of paper moneyand the promise of easy victory.
Clear jagga-jagga commot for road
for one man who was always a multitude, sailing
above the crests of the mountain of hearts swelling
now in homage, to touch the sweated story of the body
lying so perfectly still and cold in the raffia sheath. No,
no longer is it his body, merely ours to lift or lower down
to the earth that he gave fulsome worship as spirit to spirit
to clear jagga-jagga commot for road
not as dust to dust for him who rendered death boneless
now emptied out of the pouch in which he held it
down to thirst that would not slake, and hunger
whose rigours his undying saxophone overtook
to fill the earth with license, fighting music that broke deadends
to find new paths without need of iron
without need to cower or retreat
- spirit to spiritnot dust to dust -
from any jagga-jagga on the road
SERMON OF THE KING HORNSMAN
Teacher don teach me nonsense: to look and laugh
and perambulate till trouble comes like 'expensive shit'
spattering our Sunday best and riling the skin
like yellow fever – see why blackman dey suffer!
'swamped' in dirty sweat that peppers vision
Teacher don teach me to stumble and fret, as style
and to bow, no, to prostrate to the latest minion,
VIP of the block , to whom we make rankiya dade
we salaam and shuffer and shmile in Jungle City
toasting overcrowded molues, overcrowded prisons
We go on wheels headed for the boil of the lagoon
where tribes and moieties lose self in a stalemate
of jobless lives itching to correct alleys of fear
through broken speed-limits and nighttime markets
where policemen collect toll for the Most High Boss
Still, war-mongers of the old colony, we pinch
snuff and pennies and farthings from last hurrahs
at crossroads where the Unknown Soldier hits high
in gory settlement of burnt roofs and roasted lives,
breaking bitter in unseeing looting and laughing
We look and laugh: what lives we live, stepping up
to scratch the backs of other men as we thirst away
for pure water wey e no get enemy. And, talking enemies,
how redress nightmares fulfilled beyond glorious dawns
after prophecies found in the mouth of the news vendor
What a teacher the news vendor! such a foul mouth
full of bad news that other people's lives dictate
breaking bones with words that have no encore
as we sing No agreement today no agreement tomorrow
and dream the World upside down in order to stand up
Yes! we ask to be slapped for cash in canned laughter
forever willing to bow to thugs in office, masquerades
who dole out the justice of the gutter and the dustbin
knowing that we fear for our mothers, fathers, children
- a holy river of excuses to keep the skin unscratched
A high tide of dark greed maiming hands that rise
for healers of the earth in truth and freedom's city of yabis
dazed, who cares, by the smoky mother of all cannabis
we wallow in muck and prostrate to Area Fathers -
strutting birds with torn feathers – who run our alleys
So we ask, how many must carry our mothers' coffins
for heads of state to dine on, to alter algebras of power
and army arrangements celebrating stollen presidencies?
How many must walk six feet down the last mandate
for heaven to turn from interim agendas to eternal dance?
We look and laugh: still a whited race of shit carriers
- and who says this dark skin that dresses us so well
is not bark-brave enough to rough storms and thrive
and to ask the unanswerable, to civilize zombies
who make apes obey at checkpoints to liberate booty
We, we stand to make palaver, we make shakara big!
We whom tragedies overtake as we make comedy
we empower dark holes of impunity till we ourselves
flogged by Opposite People we become impunity
we look and laugh; teacher don teach us nonsense
From Alagbon, Kirikiri to Gashua, all dungeons,
where cockroaches whisper to would-be Nobel laureates
whose heads do not bow to a logos made for suffering
we learn monafiki of the gab and the gall of the gallery
till justice begs to see the shaved head of innocence
We stretch unbowed heads Stuffed heads Sufferheads
sassheads chancing the sleep walker, zombie of the turf
barging right left and lost for cover, a Johnny Just Drop
making show: a power of errors in a dark trip of power
in the monochrome fervour of shabby martial music
Zombie music, in the four-cornered jam of legends
at Ojuelegba and wherever traffic lockjaws tell
minds that do not move, hearts that do not melt in love
pupils of planless 'doms jamming questions to unmask
beasts of no nation who 'chop and quench' as creed.
So we fight in roforofo that makes nations smell
as the basket-mouth already open cannot close again
against colo-mentality that infects tout and professor
altering DNAs, to round up dreams and fake skin-depth,
faulting destinies whose today eats our tomorrows
How their yesterdays wrong-foot our today! at Mushin,
Ikoyi and wherever Middle class blindness wreaks
the hearty slavery of 'cooperative mobs' in paid dissent,
large loaves crawling on their bellies like army recruits
facing payday afraid of the soggy downpour of market forces
So we trot from millenial promise to unfinished story-telling,
scoffing at Year Two Thousand arrivals to end all plagues
in search of selves lost for good Where women are burned
as stuffed pillows, stumped pads, cornered by sloth
like monkeys sold on bananas erasing nation-memory
We look and laugh. Adversity mows the playing ground
till the impervious wall becomes a porous baft
and the deaf learns from the eloquence of tremors
How time baits knowledge for the trousered apes
bragging'you give me shit I give you shit. God no vex'
All Area Boys, Gang Lords prowling, till no way exists
to know cracker from cretin, knave from freeborn
hurling kicks and sticks and burning tyre-necklaces
at petty thieves already down and out, in anger's after-foam
while the TV messiahs steal the mat from the Good Earth
Surely, we look and laugh at our world upside down,
black and bled upon the hundred and one tables of power
where customs in illicit loves inebriate high commands
till sleep presses all to touch bottom with crocodiles
whose jaws bowl 'no agreement today none tomorrow.
(from Go Tell the Generals)
GUEVARA
With so many islands foundering under the sea
in a heroin of power; guns growing into wrong hands
from the compost of other people's wars,
he was not afraid to be Bolivar. Bored
with the clerkdom that held restless dreams
down to banana tastes in the simple idolatories of office;
he was not afraid to be Kristi, not ashamed
to have enough of victory in one republic
rising like buried Atlantis with the sweetness of cane
.....he willed time to reach out from the nightmare
of red carpets, the best of Ganguin, rare Picasso
the seduction of manicured lawns, and Chopin
filtering into air-conditioned boardrooms,
he swore to renew the mountains' fever
as sambas angle for the gut of the dance
to put spine through jelly
he would renew the mountain's fever
He reached for his kalashnikov in the boardroom locker,
his gaze widening from streets gloating;
and alleys cavorting, feckless with joy
in the stomp, raw bump and sweat of carnivals;
his ear cocked towards the broken voices
in the mines, sweatfloors, and fields
peppered across the knees of strutting caudillos
He reached for his kalashnikov, time to split
before his will leaked into the moons rising
on faces that he saw; faces that drove him
into the dark nights of the millions
denied the samba of their hearts
assured of no better day of sunshine
He turned to the sleepless valleys
convulsed with stainless laughter
of rivers seeking breath for a continent
being garroted by a rash of dictators.
He reached out towards receding dawns,
eyes grating with pain worse than his asthma
as he foresaw the crumbs grown mouldy and soggy
in estates looking North to granaries
bled away in a market of gunboats;
he reached for his kalashnikov to steel himself
against loss of himself in extreme wind-pulse,
where he stood contemptuous of death,
guided by gaiety that shielded his tracks
against fear, such fear that looked a man in the eye
and, for the thousandth time, promised
only a life of crawling on hands and knees
And that fear asked him: what if...
what if he fell to the dragons
burning the forests to trap his dream. What if.....!
He preferred to be reaped far from altars,
far from shrines and gravestones
far from grooves calling to pilgrim's feet -
far from the herohood of grand gestures -
far better to be honoured by birds
flying with strips of his song
to fertilize barren acres
He preferred to be reaped in open spaces
echoing the larger day that will not bow
to the gods of loot and the supermarket
a day that will neither stoop
to the sale of comrades downriver
nor silence the voices that ask
only that no child may look to the sun
as drones of the flipped coin
guided by the burst of a kalashnikov
(from Dreams at Work)
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