THE POOR AFRICAN BOY

I’m but just another poor African boy

Searching for my favorite but lost toy

You may call me names, so me you can shame

But because I crave no fame, I’d take no blame

I was taught to use my mind

With but the intents to find

My way out of this mess

And one day wear a new dress

You think am a fool, because I hate rules

But tell me what you learnt in school

That makes you think you are cool

And I’d show you, my ultimate tool

To be intelligent is normally a birthright

But tell me, what about being stupid?

Is it not wrong to wrongly take what you need?

Knowing how grave the cost might be

I learnt successful people took the most risks

To wear their crowns and act in brisk

So they deserve the space on their hard disks

And the bulletins on their shopping lists

The day is still early, but I’m up already,

Off to the farms to get things steady,

While others go to schools to study,

Oh life, be fair to me, or am I not ready?

I wonder why so much inequalities in nature,

But I realized it’s all good for our stature

I am scared because I can’t tell my predator

From my liver and fight it like a gladiator

I know very well that you know this

That in Africa, we love beads

But in case you don’t know this,

Beads represent our special deeds

As a little boy, I was taught to be cultural sensitive

So I rebuke those who say we are primitive

I know poverty to be just a state of being

That’s why I don’t give a damn to their billings

Sometimes, it baffles me to the brim

That those who work hardest are the poorest

If you doubt it, just check on the streets

You’d see Africans dancing without beats

I’m the same poor black boy

Trying to make value of myself

With too many books on my shelf

But no degree to account for

I take your scorn for a motivation

For it serves a proper inspiration

I’m working hard for my activation

And when am done, fake admiration?

I’m just taking my time

To compose sensible rhymes

I know poetry is divine and prime

So I’m swimming it till it becomes crime

To be rich is every boy’s wish

But I’ve a differing mission to accomplish

That’s to reach heights beyond switches

And pave ways even for the fishes

I have the gospel to preach and a destiny to reach

I have wisdom to teach and a praise to screech

So I won’t bother because of some breach

But I’d be just and humble with my speech

Yes,I am that poor black boy

That lost my favorite toy

And all I want is to find it back

Before comes the dark

BY THE FIRESIDE

Gather, gathering, gathered we are

By the fireside, from every side

With a united spirit in arts

A magnified voice of hope

And a ratified treaty of peace

By the fireside like the riverside

We lay our burdens to be forgotten

We shed our tears heaped over the years

We heal our pains with antics of gain

And we crunch with faith, driven by fate

 

By the fireside, then or now,

Rains the stories of days, of people and of places

The stories of love, of freedom and of peace

By the fireside with burning desire,

Warms our soul to be free from control

By the fireside wholly without strife,

I see the brothers and sisters overjoyed

Across the bridges of pain, of hate and of losing

To the other side where resides, more to gain

And where dreams cross streams to realms

By the fireside in the trough of fire-tides

Blazes the flames of divine creativity

Coated in the flames of cosmic relativity

Penning pieces with poetic furnishes

Inspiring the desire to never retire

By the fireside with glimmering firelights,

Hovers our bloated thoughts of reality

Like arrows of furrows in rows

Stand firm brothers and sisters

We can realize our dreams by the fireworks

by the fireside