Monday 16 April 2012

Poems from Dami Ajayi's "Clinical Blues".


Dami Ajayi is a great guy, aside being a medical doctor. We’ve had a few drinks – he doing the alcohol and I watching the glass cups on the table. His first collection of poems, “Clinical Blues” will be published in November 2012. I’ve decided to share two poems from the awaited collection.  

GOLGOTHA
And they brought Him to the place Golgotha…Mark 14:22 (NKJV)

There is also a tourist                    
Attraction domicile
In my homeland called
Golgotha.

The catch is
Golgotha
Could be anywhere
From the Sahelian plains
To the mangrove swamps
Of the Delta.

Indeed any place
Will suffice,
In so far, it lies
Within the confines of
Flora’s christening.

And our brochure
Is replete with captions
Culled from foreign dailies,
Garnished with garish images
Of Musca and Musa’s domestic
Symbiosis—not mutiny,
We do not call it mutiny.

Indeed our brochure is
Nothing like firsthand experience:
Has your pale buttocks been scorched before?
Have you ever been in a soup
Seething with quotidian savagery?
Have you committed larceny,
With or without a PhD?

Our services are matchless,
With black muse and machetes
And it’s toll free,
It’s so free.

Who needs a Complete Idiot’s Guide
Where Conscience is the
First prey that warms
Instinct’s palate.

In Golgotha,
Survival descends upon you
Like a dove
With Avian Flu
And you transfigure into
A famished swine
Gorging on a plateau of garbage.
And indeed no Tourist
Knows when to leave.
You do not when we clad
You with our garb of citizenship,
When your passports become pillows,
As we lay our headstone
Above your head.















CELLULOID
(1993)
All fools make pictures
But pictures are no memories,
They remain darkroom scams;
My mind surpasses every camera.

I’ve tried to touch good times twice
But they elude me, like swinging
Pendulums, cherry mangoes, physics.

So what are my options: Fantasies?
Grandiose ideations? playback video reality?
Or plain youthful CPR?

My thoughts wash in old houses
Fresh with coats of dust.
Torn settees and a creaking dining table
Offering gecko shit as breakfast.

Quick glances challenge cerebral bytes.
Where is the Grandfather clock
With a stainless scrotum, the clattering
Icicles of our curtains, the smell of boiling beans
On sawdust stove, the broken manual rewinder,
The June 12 season?

3 comments:

  1. Critical yet humane, sharp and witty but never cynical. Brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:57:00 am

    dami ajayi another nice work being following your writing career

    ReplyDelete

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