When I turn sixty

Please send for Sumonu onisakara
to play tunes of old
when my bones told the muscles
how to turn and twist on dancing floors
made from reused wood,
trampled upon by recycled soles.
Did I not know when the Naira,
that same Naira bought a Beatle for what
just one tyre costs these days?
There is nothing just these days,
the jaws seek justice, while the nuts
cry for power taken into the Rock
and the East like the eaten, hope for luck.
Has the national purse become like
hidden honey every hoe seeks to dig?
They cannot rig, if we form a league,
They cannot eat if we turn on the heat
like the famous Re-Bad-Do
who hits and cannot miss.

When I turn sixty and the holes in my
account remain unfilled and the dreams
I have carried like the hunter's pouch
still sticking to a worn-out side.
I plan to take every dream apart
and give new parts to a tongue
that refused to lie,
a new role to rolling eyes that saw evil
and won't tell...
If the powers sell the national theater
I plan to steal a stage for tired feet
to perform a new play for a nation born deformed
when others accepted reforms and
coerced individuals and institutions to conform.
So that their future may be sweet.
When I turn sixty will be song still be
about the sweetness of life
or the life of sweetness?

Life sweet oooo
Can't I tell from the color of hunger
that paints a face blue black
and a red tongue as white as wool
for lack of rice stewed and peppered
at different mama-put joints.
Have I not seen the rich, hunger for Cognac
sold at a good percentage of a poor's yearly wage?
Have I not heard of rich daughters who cry for lack
of pancake that costs more than the bride-price promised for the Agbero's
daughter?
In all my years I have never felt that
gutter water could taste so sweet
and the salt in tears good for left-over stew.
Days have crawled into years
And tears have formed fine patterns on
a sinking chin but the ship of state remains afloat
carrying unproductive thieves and chiefs to Dollar destinations.
As every day takes from the journey to sixty
We the people cannot allow our imagination run dry
The poor must pour their dreams like dry gin
and dry their tears with numerical Sun.
When I turn sixty, the song of the poor
must seek that Sankara's tune cut before it grew.

(c) Kole Ade Odutola

Re: and the poet, filmmaker, EBEREONWU died

Igba mo dele mi o re ni kan o
Oju mi somi….
So indeed on my return
Visits to graveyards
Conspire to fill the time
And nights spent consoling
the living still in their sack cloth
has been tailor-made for my diary

Igba mo dele mi o re ni kan o
Oju mi somi….
Now I feel the pull....
One more drawn into the skies
from where water as paint falls
on our earth the canvass
He wrote Suddenly God was naked
and no reviewer gave clothes
or close marking of the text.
I knew him with a red beret
and a spirit ready for kinship
To Ebereonwu ideas were king
and a willing mind the link
between the streets and sheets.
The road has mixed man and metal
while fixing our minds to 'next on the line'
Now I feel like a fool
not sure of when I'll be drawn...
Igba mo dele mi o re ni kan o
Oju mi somi….