Message from Aso Rock to a Poet in Exile
- By Pius Adesanmi
- Published June 16, 2005
- Poems
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Pius Adesanmi
Born in 1972, Pius Adesanmi obtained a First Class Honours in French Studies from the University of Ilorin at the age of 20. He subsequently obtained a Masters degree in the same discipline from the University of Ibadan and has since pursued a career as a scholar of Francophone African and Caribbean literatures and cultures. He is a Fellow of the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) and has guest-lectured in Universities in South Africa and Lesotho. In 1998, he chaired one of the sessions of the prestigious annual African writers fiesta in Durban, South Africa. His collection ?A Fit Of Fury? got an honorary mentioning at ANA Kaduna 1996. He holds a Ph.D. in African Literature from the University of British Columbia. Adesanmi has held the Walter Koerner Fellowship and the Isaac Walton Killam Fellowship.
View all Entries by Pius AdesanmiNo Third Coming
Your first coming
Loosed Ita Oko on the land
Where famished crocodiles frolicked in
Anarchy, feeding blood to sand
Your second coming
Loosed the zombies on Odi
They obeyed orders like the folk of Nuremberg
Their act cleansed by your advisors, the oldies
There should be no third coming
Return to your broilers in Ota
Chain sanguinary instincts to Olumo
We shall rid this land of slaughter
From ?The Way farer and Other Poems?
Message from Aso Rock to a Poet in Exile
1
Your grandfather is a pain in the ass
Self-appointed flusher of imaginary morass
He held up a radio station
Screaming of a doomed nation
He raved he saw an open sore
And disturbed our giant snore
We asked him to fend death off our roads
He roamed Western capitals, croaking like a toad
2
Your father, ah, dat one was worse
Small pikin, shouldering a foolish cause
He abused his elders, calling them vultures
A so-called man of culture
He shelled Shell?s dollar-spinning pipes
His lips married to his own pipe
We invited him to come and eat
He clung to a pen, clung to shit
3
You, having ventured under Northern skies
Please, remain there in your cage of ice
Oja Oyingbo, beseeched by a million haggling voices
Never notices the absence of one tardy trader
From ?The Way farer and Other Poems?