Temple of Words

By Mide Benedict  In the company of mourners Not all who mourn mourn. Amidst the thousand tears that fall Not all tears speak the truthful thought. They all gather to sympathize Rolling words on your carpet of pain Petting you with their lips of saw, They pretend to heal your pain While in turn cause disdain. They are the mourners of laughter They are the mourners of vainess. In the mist of mourning sighs, The red seas pour out to weep and cry But not all the waters are red Not all the weepers really weep. They tear their cloths and fall to ground They ask the grave not to sleep Or doze, But to look back at the folks he leaves But with their hands they blind the grave, With their thoughts they Murder the dead. They only say that to please the eyes, But to truly weep, their hearts Are shut. The preacher speaks the words of saints They respond with the response of peace. Amen! They say, peace To you, they all portray But their hearts lip-twist To your

(setting: church; a wedding ceremony. Thematic pre-occupation: choosing between love and lust.) To say I do, is death to choose, Will I not bleed, if I sign this truce? To hold you close is pain to side. Will I not die, if you be my bride? Though beauty bows before your throne, For beside you beauty is stone: Your eyes are from Venus' source, Seducing me without a pause, Your lips like that of Mona Lisa, That could turn a king to a kisser. Your hips as high as the Everest, Going side by side without a rest. Your touch like that of a pure spring, Touching me, I dance to a tring tring. But are all this not vain, my dear, If for beauty only, hips and lips I care, Will you not run from me And me from thee When time is old, And when the lust in us is cold? If I agree to say I do, Will I not at last receive a boo From hatred, lust and odium too! For shame will be mine at last, If I die without a true lover's cast. If I sign this paper and bo

By Mide Benedict  To give this purging of heart a Fallopian tube, With foreshadow, I shall announce its coming. To the statue of the great thinker man have I spoken, yet more chains And binds I got, for I have been tied down by my own ways and deeds. Years ago, I travelled to a village far and old To seek the words of a shaman, great and bold. He poured down his cowry and spoke some verses, But his gods were silent on my quest and hitches. Then I told him to summon the dead, Those heroes who made captivity flee in dread. And with the speed of time, he yielded my tongue And quickly they came, those living voices that once sang the freedom song. First was Lincoln, that slavery King, Who chased slavery out of America with his civil war Sting. I asked him to show me the way I should trend, But he shook his head and left me to my questions and end. In despair and grief I called on Luther The Black freedom Dreamer To tell me how I might be free from

By MIDE BENEDICT  Now if I ask you what democracy is, you would define it, like everybody else, which is most likely to be the rhymes you have learnt in secondary school or perhaps read in a textbook or in a newspaper page, particularly the historical section, that according to Abraham Lincoln, the man who fought for the freedom of black slaves and also in turn was shot and eliminated while serving as president of the United States, that democracy is the government of the people by the people and for the people. You will certainly be correct and would even receive an applause for it, save you, if you are not in the mist of the 'non-oppressed' citizens, who will swiftly give you their own definition: the government for the few, by the few and of the few, only then will you not receive a send-me-to-hell swinging blow. Yes,  Yes, they know, It's oligarchy, in fact most of them are currently teaching that to their students or children or even neighbors,  but they hav

Arrest not your tongue and lips Resist not the wise voice of the gowns, skirts and hips. From man, you were formed by Him to stand To cross-taste your floggings and each expression strand; For such men who such words, they kill, their hands In doom they put and their bodies they find in sands. Julius, great, emperor, so sound and tall Into his sound canal was stuck the feminine call Beware I say! Of council! Of thy friend! But to heed the dressers’ voice, he refused to tend And at the back, his grave in blood was dug Brutus, towards his cup-shearer became the bug. Oh, such a great empire disappears like vapour Division and concord-slaughter began to pour. Oh pain, he left the womb, in crying and in tears Her then-still husband, dead now, but she…, left in fears. Arrest not thy tongue and lips Resist not the wise voice of the gowns, skirts and hips. MIDE BENEDICT

I sat a bench from where she stood, she- dancing and swinging her head from east to west and north to south. oh, her beauty so great that could make me mad, yet, I composed myself and looked away. she- Like a woman beads round her waist shook her bands till my eyes went there to taste again, it was a mountainous waist, that could make me mad again. I felt the pressure once again, to step forward to speak to her, 'can I have a Taste' my mind was set to ask her that which my flesh pointed out. I stood up and walked to her, I touched her and said my mind, but she- such a cruel lady she was, she painted a slap on my face, Oh my! I've never for once been humiliated like she did. Her slap gave me a hole in heart, I was humiliated by a holy devil who rolled her waist down the street. Not long, I looked to my left and like a dream to me, I saw my wife, boiling and rubbing her left spiky hands Her- Just arrived from her voyage To the ho

Gbaam! It drops, into man’s last element And beside that which was formerly mine I stood to watch. Waahum! Man’s second element gave it a banging bathe And Beside that which was formally mine I stood to watch. Yee! Yee! They cried Their eyes were filled with the bearer of an ancient ark And mark of the purge between good and evil. Handkerchiefs became their chiefs Black gele and fila tinted their skins Dust filled the air and like the third element Into their nostrils it moved itself, But they never felt it Pain has been what they’ve been breathing in. Their saliva was bitter than the goal of bile in them. For beside that which was formally mine, They stood to watch. They shovelled out man’s first element ‘Pain has cut us deep’ ‘No’, some avowed ‘pain he called to make us weep.’ They sucked their salty sea with their cheeks Yet, vision’s gate never waited for one to die before birthing another. All these for a coward me, they spoke Me, a minus to t

In your hands of grace, me you bore, rose me from the dust of shame and sore. Drowning in the sea of sorrow, you took me ashore. Buried in the soil of disgrace; my grave you tore. Now tell me why I won't thank You when Your peace is core. Speak not o mountains and valleys, shut your lips o whistling rivers of Man, replace my voice not o giant trees and cloud, for my voice's pride I will bend to lift him high till I die, my heart will see to His praises from morning to dusk. I will turn back the hands of time, carrying it on my shoulder, for that is prime. I will journey to the time when man was none, before your marvelous voice formed the sun, I will fly to the time before sin grew a horn. I will praise you from before the heavens were born, I will call you till the world as incense, I burn. For you are a King I will always adore, So full of peace and the greatest ardor.     Mide Benedict

                         I Live Beside A River I live beside a river, A fish goal and life I live beside this river That flows with its mass kinging Huge leaves. This river This river This river that flows without a stop, Beside it I live. I live beside a river, More ancient than my thought. At the wake of a day I walked down arid ground Crossed the hindrance of night-men And the confusion of man Always seating on it Always thinking whether to or not to Jump down from it. I crossed over to the older world; The river world And then I, with sharp eagles, gazed At this river that flows Without a stop A deed I saw and cried aloud No, within, I cried, so the birds: weevil, Aiyekooto and its other folks Won't tell me to all the earth And not reveal to the earth the thing It passed each time time died, yet never saw (Though if truth is told to the earth, truth it will reject But if lies are sold at costly prices, lies it will digest) A thing n

With good mind I blow this flute, A flute of warning, a flute of truth. To good men and men so brute, This warning I bring to your senses and ears. Travel to east or rather to west, Running from your good deeds Or your sinful acts; Run to the world where the world is none, Yet, your reward shall stand by you like legs with horse. It’s not a blessing nor laying of hands, Neither is it a kiss, a bite nor cursing of man, It’s the truth that guides the universe, From head to toe And a law that leads From mouth to hole. Travel with the sun and shine with stars, Be a king, an emperor or a household slave, Route the wind and tame its wings, Fly with it to the ends of the earth: Try escape your act of goodness Or shame as well, But you never will, not even by the help of clairvoyants Know when your reward shall glue to you; Whether good or bad. Never forget this, neither in words nor in nous That you are your deeds and your deeds are you                        

'Get out of my house’, my fiancée’s father shouted over his voice range.  ‘People like you should be thrown in prisons to rot, die, then your bodies thrown to the dogs and vultures to dine’. He kept on shouting, standing and seating at the same time, but no one including me knew what had angered him so much that could have caused such turmoil on his daughter’s introductory ceremony, not even Iyabo, my fiancee, could figure out what had went wrong: we looked into each other’s eyes with an expression of, ‘what’s happening?’, but all fell on a great question mark.  I was still trying to recover from that shock and embarrassment, when his voice reverberated like the roar of three angry lions together.  ‘Are you deaf, I said get out of my house!’  I quickly took my cap, which the tailor who sewed it had called, Abetiaja and when I asked him the meaning, in order not to be disgraced when asked by any of my fiancée’s family member, he said: ‘because it takes the sh

I have seen what I sought to see, I have taken in this tetchy truth that my lord in time’s link Traded His life for mine. What lord could die for his servant, Except Jesus, yet equal with God, but humble till death. Each moment my life moves With my merciful lord, it does ascend. And who is this lord? The lord whose momentum is mightier than millions or mountains and more, And whose words will always withstand whatever fall I meet, For His forgiving blood has freed me from my fattened faults. Now I have clinched unto freedom’s wings. Mide Benedict

O love, o love! Your greatness is power I cannot deter but bare! How beautiful is that gift the heart offers to share? No matter how small or how little you have in there, Take in a bit zephyr of love and you won’t but care. Oh my dear, your thoughts I hear; Odium you say you bear? Or the actions of the break of heart you say you fear? I know when love touches your jumbled heart Which lies quietly in your sacred part Then you will know that hatred and its act  Only titters at your unwitting past. After that, this avowal you will orate at last: Lust is a fool but love, a rare pet. So far I know real love is rare to pick Nevertheless its scarcity would stink When your emotion is ready to seek And when you find the one you wish to tick, Certainly not will hatred try to peck Or put to play her wicked cut-rate trick; For love which has made you two angels prink And given you those hearts that agelessly stick, Would make you stand when dreads suddenly ki

Yet we know! Yet we know! Yet we know the trouble that cries When the night swallows up the sun. Yet we know their joy when happiness is lost And becomes a trampled dust, Yet we starve ourselves the promise of Eden And prefer to be chained in a perfect den. Yet we know these bad apples are Filled with wits of evil, Still, we plant, prune, and nurse Them to germinate To become the shade that offers us Directly to the god of thirst and hunger. Heavy is my heart that flows with The river of fire. Overburdened is my heart that carries a mountain Of sorrow with no joy to borrow. We know the truth, yet our lips are glued to lies Like a baby to its feeding spot. We have antidotes, Yet we die of poison. We shout and disagree in open doors, For us to be seen and called into close doors, To have a share of what they swallow, Then our right to speech is left to bleed And when next we try to speak, Our lives and hearts are shut with ease. We know the ants eat