No Permanent Address

I love this poem coz I find it so easy to relate with what she is talking about. I got addicted to books at a very young age. They made structured sense vs. the real world doesn't really. I could sneak a peek at the end vs. I'm still wondering what the heck I'm doing here with no end in sight. Books were an escape, a refuge... they still are. Listen, like, comment and share my friend, Obii's entry for the NaijaPoetrySlam organised by Bassey Ikpi.

These are important... somehow

There's something I'm searching for, it leaves me roaming in my head a lot these days. I just can't figure out exactly what it is; peace? away? noise? quiet?

I need to stop re-reading Ntozake's 'For Colored Girls'

I think my writer's block is shifting. I hope it is.

I haven't slept in a while. I need the world to pause.

Sometimes I need reassurance, a stranger to tell me I'm doing something right. An email did that last week.

I want to move to Abuja, or I want my girlfriend to move back to Lagos. I need one to shift.

It's the year of the dragon, remember!

People need their heroes.

I'm in motion. Scared to stop coz then the push to restart might not come for too long.

Adebola Rayo get out of your head. Do.

Tumblr would make more sense.

Art, Law, Love...

This place has been too gloomy in recent times. Haba.




Went to the Afromysterics art gallery in Abuja today. Awesome, Awesome art works. Those guys are freaking good and uber talented - not just at art, music too. Oh and they were fun too. *sigh* I love visual art, can't wait till I can afford good works. There was so much culture, beauty and truth in the works. Felt like taking the works home with me.



Got called to the bar on February 14. It was a six year journey to that -well, six and a half, seeing as I passed my bar finals six months ago. Even if I don't want to practice, it felt really good to hear Musdapher Dahiru (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) say "you can now wear your wigs".


Also, my girlfriend got me artworks and this really silly card for vals. I hate vals but I love her, and the gifts.

I'm dope as fuck!

How did I survive the Shoah?
Me, in my corner, the devil bringing his army?
No answer.
And the self cutting, loathing, self taught to hate?
Devil, in his corner, me taking my stool for a sit-down.
Let's talk.

Silence.
I wear my scars like Joseph did his coat. Scabs
on heart. Tender. Raw.
Hope the scars on skin will keep
from reopening. Fuck it. I'll just slap a band-aid on.
In the end I am.

Phoenix. Rising from the ashes. Over.
No one is responsible for my pain. Live it. Move the fuck on. Heal.
Pause.
*Insert Bassey's voice*
I'm dope as fuck!

Ènìyàn L’aso Mi

Right now I am smiling and dancing; excited partly because I just wrote a piece and writing for pleasure always makes me high, and partly for no reason.

I wasn’t like that this morning. No. This morning I fell apart in a really unpretty way, for almost no reason.

I woke up and the BIS monthly I paid for 4 days ago was suddenly no longer active, thanks to Airtel. I called customer care and when she told me it would take 24 hours to fix, I started crying and shouting at the rep, and apologising to her for shouting at her but not stopping. She was nice, trying to calm me down and apologising to me. I think she realised there was something wrong with me.

After I dropped the phone, I lay on my bed and cried, shoulder wracking sobs, for about 30 minutes.

I am the first to admit that there is something wrong with me but it took me a while, and a psychologist, to admit that I am Bipolar. My responses to situations are not always ‘normal’, like the tears this morning. I had been having an 'episode' for the past four days, not that anyone looking at me would know.

This isn’t a post about my problems though; it is one about the people in my life. Ènìyàn l’aso mi, I don’t know how to translate that to convey what I really mean but loosely, it means “people are my clothing/covering”. I am blessed with wonderful people in my life. People who, when I am in my weird zones, don’t judge me, or tell me not to feel, or cry, or scream, but instead talk, hug, or just listen through it.

This morning, I called one of them to talk me through it and even though I know he will later tease me endlessly for it, at that point instead of telling me to grow up or snap out of it, he listened, made the right noises and talked me through it. That was all I needed... well, and my chocolate and strawberry yoghurt fix.

He has been on the receiving end of some of my hypomanic and depression episodes but still he is there, even though the last time I asked him if he thinks I am crazy, he said he doesn’t know (which I know is code for “crazy don’t even begin to describe you, woman!”).

Three wonderful women in my life have constantly done, and do, this for me in the past couple of years; Tolu, Tayo, Lati, I could never thank you guys enough for keeping me sane, happy, loved. I remember when Tolu moved away from Lagos, I sat on my bed in Kano and cried for three hours because I felt like my constants were all falling apart in my brief absence from Lagos. Tres unpretty, I tell you. The gods made these women specially for me.

There are those who see a facebook, BBM, Gtalk status or tweet of mine and immediately know I am in a bad place, and call and even though I always say it is just random depression (which it mostly is), they still call the next time. Thank you guys.

Indeed, Ènìyàn L’aso Mi.

Not a 9-5

I need the nights of insomnia,

early morning scribbles accompanied.

Need me sleep till 12p.m.

flip-flops, tee-shirts, tank tops, jeans well worn,

Hung dresses haughty, unworn. Shirts un-owned

No stuffiness here. No formality, yes sir!

No four inch click-clacking. ankles strained.

Love me words, letters all day long,

making sense, making pretty...

Love fulfilment and wind in hair on bikes.

When I got back from Law School, I immediately returned to my job at 234NEXT, left there a couple of weeks ago for another media house. Everyone expects me to get a 'Law job', I can't. Won't.

Finger speak

Once said speech makes loco,

makes tongue tied like child’s shoelaces.

Easier to hide in the light

of this screen. Pecking words; strong

confident. No ‘erm’, ‘uhh’, ‘what I’m trying to say is’,

'forget I said anything'...

Will try to pick out one thought or emotion everyday and write short lines about it. I haven't been writing, haven't been listening to myself... someone forced me to admit that recently... thank you.

Writing Opportunity

Melrose Books and Publishing Ltd is seeking manuscripts! If you have written, or you are interested in writing prose fictional works for pupils in Primaries four to six (4-6) and students in Junior Secondary School one to three (JSS1-3 send your manuscripts to melrosebooks@yahoo.com and copy amaka.ukwuegbu@melroseng.com.

Melrose Books and Publishing is a company founded on the basic principle of introducing new ways of publishing through innovative and modern methods of creating content that would make learning easier, interactive and interesting to the reader or user. In addition to educational books, the company is interested in promoting and exploring the creative minds of Africans home and abroad through literary works. One of their goals is to create a reading culture among Nigerians, whilst sustaining it.

Here Lives a Flawed Soul

I have never been one to hide my flaws. Not because I don't want to, I just don't know how to. I've never been one to pretend about things, for the same reason I can't hide my flaws.

When I was younger I tried so hard for normal, especially at home. Tried so hard to toe the lines that I'd lie or pretend but I always outed myself. Always! After 15 or so, I just stopped trying.

This place has been a good place. I read through my old posts, from the days when I was 19, to the person I am now. I have grown. In some great ways, in some not so great ways.

For more than 2 years now, this place has not been about the creative aspect of my writing; it has been a dumping ground. In the beginning, for the random things that clustered my mind, life. After a while, for the sad and mad. The things I'm carrying that I have no business carrying but which seem to cling to me.

I have constants. without my constants I fall apart in unpretty ways. This blog, like my creative writing, has been one of those constants for over 3 years. Sometimes I blog and I know that no one else will understand it, that whoever reads it will probably misunderstand it completely but I do because this place has, for a long while, not been about who read it, if anyone read it. No, a lot of it has been for the times I am Sade's 'King of Sorrow', "crying everyone's tears", taking on too much of other people's pain but never able to take on their joy.

I am like a swing set - up and down - never quite still. Tormented by some wind...

Some days I cry. Some mornings I wake up with tears, like this one. I was about 9 the first time I can clearly remember it happening; I didn't understand the needless sad, couldn't stop it, couldn't tell anyone.

Some mornings I wake up with tears, like this one. There is no reason for the sad, it's just there. When I am done writing this, I will get out of bed and go take a hot bath, put on some clothes and a smile and face the world like normal people do.

Limbo

As the plane descended, she thought how very unlike the place she had left this was. An hour and forty five minutes ago, it had been glinting colored aluminium roofs and a cluster of houses which became tinier as the plane ascended. Here it was just land, and trees, and very few houses that welcomed.


She hated landings, her stomach lurched as it always did, her ears filtered sound as though through a thick cloud, she unhinged her jaw to relieve the ear pressure. Last time her mom complained about how her ears felt during flights, she had tried to teach her, Ma hadn’t understood the unhinging, she guessed it was in the doing.


The cab men insisted, from the airport to Bagauda 6,000, she remembered falling for that once, never again. Even the airport cabs in Lagos were not as expensive as the ones here, and they at least were air conditioned. She did not bother haggling.She pulled her bag by its trolley and took a rickshaw out of the airport instead. A cab outside was 2,500.


She remembered another place. A market in Lagos. Lingering over it. Dithering. Reluctant to buy it at 250, afterall it was just a water melon. In Kano, I buy it for 70 she grumbled, under her breath she thought... not, as the seller’s screech and hands shooed her away, telling her to go and buy it from Kano or did she think the melons rolled down to Lagos all by themselves? Did she know how much fuel cost? Nonsense!


Now, She glanced at the man who got in the rickshaw beside her. Then she did a double take and moved away from him discreetly, trying not to stare or cringe as he picked his nose.


Black wires slithering along her neck, disappeared into her ears as her head bobbed up and down to B.O.B's Ghost in the Machine. She frowned as she watched Nose man's mouth move. He nudged her,
She pulled out one of her ear pieces, what?
He muttered in Hausa, gesturing at something in his right hand, she looked and saw the nylon filled with sugar cane he was offering. She smiled and said no thanks.


String of words spewed out, fuzzing her brain. She took out the other ear piece. I don’t speak Hausa. He was taken aback.

Why you no speak hausa.
Because I’m not hausa.
Yes, why you no speak hausa.
I don’t live here.
Wey you going?

She did not like inane conversations, but the smile on her face would have said that was a lie. Bagauda.

Ha! Law school?
Why you no want sugarcane?
I’m filled up thanks.


Everytime she passed through these roads, she felt like she was stuck in a Cyprian Ekwensi novel. She raised her phone, zooming in on the baby calves being herded by 3 boys not as tall as the calves themselves. She smiled as she recalled Bliss asking her why she only took pictures of the poor North and accusing her of pandering to what the West wanted to see of Africa. She was about to click when the man nudged again, she watched her shot disappear through fields of grass, then she pulled out the earphones again, trying for a smile to mask her irritation as the last of the calves and man cubs disappeared behind the tall shrubs.

Me!

What?

Photo

He pointed at her phone. She lifted it, took a quick, not focused picture of him, showed him then scanned the road, hoping for another scene. That was one thing she loved about this place, the roads and the shots that lined them; the nomads and farmers, almajiris and hawkers, sometimes widening brown stained teeth for a click from her. No matter what Bliss said, those photographs were true. They were life as a lot in these parts lived it.


She stared at a cow wrapped strangely around a tree, head twisting - up, down, side, down, side - spit dropping, an unending transparent swinging rope anchored to the ground beneath. She wondered if it was a mad cow then realised it was only scratching an itch...

She thinks about this last lap and hopes that after this, the feeling that has plagued her in the last 8 months will fade. That feeling of neither going nor coming, being neither here nor there...

P.s I'm back in Kano, writing my bar finals in about 3 weeks...

P.p.s this was me trying to write about stuff I experienced in a detached way...