Category Archives: Prose

WALKING ABOUT NAKED

Posted on September 15, 2019 | 2 comments

cover pix of book 2

If someone had told me two years ago that I would be writing a book, well.

I wish to clearly state, not in the manner of a disclaimer, but as a matter of fact that this should not be seen as exactly a book. I honestly can barely find remote similarities to one. This means that this is to be approached with very low expectations. Thank you.

It is actually more like a journal of my musings on issues relating to the science-religion discourse. More than that, it shows some actual conflicts I may have gone through as I tried to navigate this curious issue.

I hope you enjoy seeing me walk naked.

 

The link to the pdf file, hosted on google drive is

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11TvLfGVkrD5_o8ybeAVhj8t79ecLkJDT/view?usp=sharing

Download and enjoy freely.

I should post the link to my first collection later. Apparently, I have two collections to my name now. *sighs

 

Yours shamelessly,

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Posted in journal, life, Prose

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Harmattan 2016

Posted on November 30, 2016 | 2 comments

Harmattan (source: nairaland.com)

Shadow,

How have you been? It’s been aeons since I last reached out to you. Since I last reached in to you.

But you have always been there somehow, haven’t you. You faithfully stalk the soul. Lovingly following your owner. Through his busy days and dark nights.

I have been silent because I went away on a trip. I have been busy being stranded on this trip. But you were still there somehow, reminding me of what was inside me. Reminding me that I was not nothing.

I went out tonight like I had done many nights before. And imagine the very simple joy that I had seeing the dusty mist. This is what heralds the harmattan. And I fondly thought of you.

Make no mistake, the rain has its magic. But the rains of this year met me at night. The dark days. And I was not even home. I had travelled lost into the night, working away my bones and blood, alone and lonely, comforted with the numbness only the living dead enjoy. I had travelled dead into the night. Living like one who does not live. So, when the rain came, it was like a flood. I barely escaped with my life –figuratively and literally. Never mind that I was properly drenched. I stoically looked forward to the relief of home. The rain was faithful to the mission life had given it. It made a frank mess on my hut of a life. I had slippery clay everywhere and nothing made a lot a sense. Many things made very little sense. I could not reach out to you. I could not reach in to you. I was just A-W-A-Y.

Harmattan however did not fail me. Hence my coming here tonight. Harmattan blows dust that settles on my flesh like a soft protective cocoon and cold that cools my blood. I remember how I came to be. I remember how life all started. From dust. Harmattan does not fail me. It comes and kills the trees. The green leaves turn brown and most fall away. The whole ground is littered continuously and human intervention won’t outwit the downpour of death. Death fills the air. The trees leaves die. The animals run away. The whole region is bare. The sights, sounds and smells of death do not fail me. They put me at ease. They remind me of how fleeting everything is. They remind me of how I must take time away from my toils and cares and dying, and focus on the state of existence –the frailty of existence itself. They remind me not to focus on the frailty of existence itself. But to live for life.

 

Shadows,

No, I am not deep.

Instead, I probably am shallow –for something as the weather change to be what turns me on. I must be shallow for waiting for external changes to bring me back to you.

 

I am not the best of the pile. Please accept me the way I am.

I wait to see how long I stay at home this time before the wanderlust maggot starts eating into my soul again.

I hope I stay this time.

I hope my soul does not get lost out in the jungle of life this time.

 

Yours,

 

2 Comments

Posted in life, Prose

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CHANGE

Posted on October 16, 2016 | 7 comments

(source: joshbenson.com)

 

My Dear

Who is to say the outcome of the argument over change versus regular?

By nature, humans are change-seekers. We get bored easily. This is a strong argument against monogamy. People spend luxuries at restaurants trying out new dishes for the sake of the palate, not the stomach. The intellectually successful ones (not necessarily academic professors) thrive on the thrill of new challenges, and therefore are self-motivated.

But we can’t keep changing our diet. We need a regular schedule if we are to make it early to work/school. Even the saying goes on advising us not to change a winning team. As the mind becomes more complicated, it learns to adopt a tested pattern of thinking/logic. Why become a fool just for fun! We are happy the seasons, day-and-night cycles, and the beautiful breeze of the cool evening are fairly constant blessings we can count on. Change could be quite the pain in the bottom hole –something different from what we usually want in there. But, daily we are pleased even though the constant thing in there is *?&!

Please don’t talk to me about moving on. Don’t tell me it is hard to change, but that once I set my mind to it, and am open to it, then I would have a liberating experience; and maybe a love so much better than yours. This is not just about remaining in my comfort zone, having found someone to give me a sense of romantic security; avoiding the fear of being out in the lonely waters looking for a friend/partner for the rest/end of the world.

Maybe the reason I do not want this change is because it feels so bad. I know we criticize feelings all the time as unreliable, but can’t they be right just once? Is it wrong to feel so easy-at-peace after a favourite delicacy, feel passionate when giving a public speech, feel thrilled when in a craft moving at the speed of light, feel sad because you are no more in my life, or feel sleepy and very welcoming of a warm bed on a freezing night? I move to argue that this feeling is righteous. I dare you to come out of your hiding and respond to my questions. Or, don’t even come. Don’t see this as a cheap trick to get you talking. To get you to feel something. To get you to do anything.

If you want to argue for change, well how about we change my sad-and-miserably-missing-you status?

Maybe. Maybe you have all these sensible reasons in your head about why we should no longer be together. You probably have gone shamelessly far as justifying it as for my own good! Aw com’on! At this rate, I will find myself beginning to resent you. Don’t act the smart ass, because an ass will always be one. Step up to me. Level with me. Let’s have a tete-a-tete.

No. I don’t want to change saying the same good morning greeting everyday, kissing you on the lips, laughing with you, understanding your statements and jokes before you even complete them, hearing about your day everyday, or embracing you for several seconds. Since when has it become a crime to GET USED to someone. If you are such a novelty-seeker, why not take a hike and seek adventure in another universe. Shouldn’t you be tired of seeing same sun every morning or same birds? Why not make an argument for the nuclear bomb events of the past that caused teratogenic effects in the offsprings (resulting in babies with one hand). Look, you can’t win this argument. How can you be with someone for 10 years and not learn a lot about the person? Or, have you two not been honest and plain with yourselves all the while? Stop your fetish for mystery. It is childish. It is for new crushes. Longstanding couples thrive on better things. It’s like you wondering how anyone could ever get tired of candy as a kid, or how a human could enjoy eating vegetable salad or diet coke. Life has yet to hit you! I am not arguing there could/should be nothing new or exciting to look forward to in someone you have known for 5 years; but maybe we should begin to define terms here, just to know how much change is change to you. And here I said I was not going to get resentful!

 

 

P.S. I am a bloody monogamistophile!

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Posted in Prose

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LOOKING FOR YOU

Posted on September 5, 2016 | 5 comments

Source: online, unknown

Dearest,

Some would fight for love. I don’t have that as-noble-as-is-shameful aspiration. I am writing to find you. When I used to watch you write, I never quite understood it when you told me it calmed you. Well, maybe because I could not imagine you ruffled in the first instance. You said writing helped you collect your thoughts.

I don’t collect, neither am I quite collected.

I am writing to find you.

Where are you since you have been gone? Where do people like you go? Into the arms of someone else? Who can satisfy the appetites of people like you? Can even someone like you do that? I know I pushed you away. And I know the hurt in itself could drive you into the arms of another in a fit of rebound, yes? Or, are you beyond frailties? I like to think what we shared could mean so much to you to have affected you that way. Apparently, I am not beyond selfishness. Or, maybe that is the way the experience some call love ought to be. That what partly made it special was knowing that I was responsible for you and you vulnerable to me. How sick is that?

Is there any point to this? Why should I want you back? What is to stop this cycle from repeating itself again? People argue breakup-makeup cycles are bad. Others say one could learn from past mistakes and redo things better. What if the explanation is simpler than that? That we are meant to be, and part of what happens is we grow from knowing that we are bound to end up with each other again –the sense of the inevitability. That generally should make sense to you. It should comfort you that: the fact we keep ending up back together should mean that we are meant to be –the sense of predestination, certainty and rightness of decision. The proof that a force beyond natural must want us to be together.

Or, have we become an old love? The kind that just gives off smokes like a locomotive, which can never aspire to be a spaceship giving off fire. You know such crafts are not practicable on this earth’s ground where we live, right? Why not enjoy the familiarity that we have. Why not gain from growing into each other. Or, does that make us like poles which repel?

People argue a little drama now and then is good. Does breaking up sound little to you? Should one deliberately start a drama not knowing if it had the capacity to escalate into a break? How does one perfectly control the situation? Would someone in love be so calculating and manipulative of love itself no less?

I know we are generally a complicated lot as humans. We criticise some for making issues complicated. Yet we somehow deep inside enjoy complications in life. We say it makes us feel alive.

But, please, believe me when I say I want to find you. It’s not about finding love as an experience. I want you. And this desire is without complication or another shade of meaning. It is as plain as my thoughts, as my words.

It is as wonderfully calm as I feel when writing. When writing this.

Don’t make me wait forever. The waiting game does not necessarily breed passion. It can finally kill whatever spark is left.

Please…

I wait to hear from you.

 

Yours,

5 Comments

Posted in life, Prose

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About wit

Posted on August 23, 2016 | 12 comments

wpid-description-of-autumn.jpg

Dearest,

Somehow, I hope you are taking a little break from work at this time to read this. What are the chances you are online now?

When I woke up this morning, I was brightly smiling to your face. I knew you were the special one for me, even though that could have meant different things if one were to analyse it. I told you how I was ready to spend the rest of my life with you. You smiled with so much warmth in your eyes, I almost dropped a tear onto my pillow. Usually it’s my saliva that wets it when I sleep. But you never complain about my drooling, the way I never faulted you for snoring, both of us despite different head/neck positions we had tried. It’s just our queer romantic thing, I guess.

You then asked me what would happen to our love after our lives on earth.

I replied I did not know.

Really, who knows what comes next after? Who has gone and returned to tell us, and why should we believe him/her?

You then sweetly tugged at my warm succulent cheeks. The kind of cheeks a masculine man should not have. I swiftly beat your hands away, telling you sharply not to patronize me. I told you I knew what you would say next. You looked condescending as you smiled lovingly at me, telling me not to be presumptuous. Even now, I can hear you laughing sarcastically at me for judging your look as condescending. I retorted that I knew you would call me shallow. You would say I don’t usually analyse things properly. You would not exactly use the word “shallow”, but would every letter imply it. You act at times as though you understood everything. You had once told me it was just the way your countenance was, and that you really did not regard yourself as very knowledgeable or wise. You should know that your body gestures are important. I had often told you to look in the mirror as you practised your facial expressions. You can never become perfect at understanding or manipulating people if you could not understand yourself, or control your own expressions. Then you tell me that to be more romantic I had to learn to look at issues more closely and clearly. How do you do that! You are so amazing for managing to link intellectual wit with romance.

So, let us be clear.

We had a hot argument this morning because of what would happen to us after we died? Or because of what would happen to our love? Or because you wanted to romantic with words? Or because you wanted me to have given a better and more romantic answer –if only I had thought more deeply of course! Well, how about: “We will never die because God would never want a love like ours to end?” Or, “We would still continue our love in the next realm?” Well, you and I know that you’d sooner throw the second answer out as a painful cliché. You’d then pick on the first one, asking how God would break a core rule of mortality just for our sake. Then the discussion would still hit the rocks!

Am I looking at issues more closely now? Have I been right in my analysis so far? Am I smart enough for you to respect me now? Am I right enough to match your wit now? You know that in a twisted romantic way, I am fatally drawn to your mind?

Because I really need to. Somehow, I am convinced you are the one for me. And we have to be a complementary match.

Will you tell me something different now? Will you be warm towards me? Or will you tell me I have yet again totally misrepresented you, here in the face of the whole world this time?

Well, that would even be if you happen to be online now.

 

 

Fatally yours,

12 Comments

Posted in love, Prose

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