I am much more comfortable writing prose than poems. However there are times when I feel a poem will do the most justice to particular subjects. I also resort to poems when I do not want to sound judgmental or when I do not want to take sides or sometimes when I want to be free to express what is in really in my mind without any let or holds.
I am not sure under which category the poem below falls I just know that I prefer to write my opinion on the matter at hand in verses rather than in the prose I'm so much more at home with.
Not being such an excellent poet, much as I tried as will be noticed after the first stanza, I surrendered and discarded any attempt at maintaining a rhyme. I opted to concentrate on the message I needed to pass which I might not be able to anytime soon if I had decided to make sure I kept the rhymes flowing. Still, I hope everyone reading will see this as a reasonably good try.
Enjoy...
A MAN OF YESTERDAY
I remember a man of yesterday
Oh no, he bears no resemblance
To the man he is today
The only thing same being a physical likeness
Yesterday, he wrote
Like a guardian of the Nation’s Estate
Respected member of the fourth estate
Oh, I remember a man of yesterday
Today, his new master guarantees his own mini State
Yesterday most mistook his writings
For a fight for their perpetually raped nation
Unawares that they were just applications
Those beautiful words no more than disguised frustrations
To be noticed and invited to partake of that famed cake
The longer his applications went unanswered
The more wisdom filled hitherto blank pages
The more truth flowed from his pen
Against the thievery & rape by those
With whom he now clinks glasses
The more the applause from the ignorant majority
Who responded by raising his pedestal
Oh yes, there is a man of yesterday
Who is now one of the men of today
With the primary responsibility of barking & growling
At the hypocritical men of yesterday
And of course those collective children of anger
Who dare get angry at the violent & merciless rape of their future
And those impressionable public
Whose brains cannot on their own interpret the rotting & rotten system
Who need twitter & facebook Lords to interpret for them
Oh no, he is a man of yesterday no more
Like the politicians he has crossed the carpet
He has transformed into a man of today
who refuses to think of tomorrow
counting on the public’s customary forgetfulness
if he can forget all those seemingly beautiful words of hungry days
how dare some people remember them today?
How dare anyone resurrect dead words to judge him today?
Surely yesterday is gone
And today demands an angry pen
Surely, he is now a man of today
Who can blame a man who changes his dance steps
To match the new beats that now fills his ears
Who dares blame a man for stockpiling today
So his children do not go hungry tomorrow?
Who dares blame a man for partaking of that irresistible cake
If the amnesiac people will forget before tomorrow?
Who dares blame a man for letting angry pettiness replace truth
If the pettiness will serve as his insurance against tomorrow’s hunger?
Who dares blame a man today,
For turning his back on a forgetful lot
Who have forgotten how they almost deified him yesterday?
Oh yes, he is now a man of today
And today is taking good care of his family’s tomorrow
©
Adenike Oyalowo 040213
