Power is too sweet

From here on out

What will happen will happen

Power is too sweet to lose

— just like that

Graying laws will be dispensed with

Young ones birthed without a dint’s thought

Power is too sweet to lose

— just like that

Basic reason will be divorced

Brutality will return with vengeance

Blatant lies will be spun to new truths

Power is too sweet to lose

— just like that

***

Don’t show us our past

Only we can state it accurately

Power is too sweet to lose

— just like that

Fundamental change?

What fundamental change?

Respect for basic rights of all?

Are you daydreaming?

Democracy; Good governance; overstaying in power?

We shall deal with you

Power is too sweet to lose

— just like that

When Times Change

When the beautifully falling flakes

Subdue the still multicoloured grounds

And their whiteness radiates the night sky

Times have changed.

Then suddenly we gain extra pounds

The magic of extra layers of cloth,

As body struggles to sustain life

Times have changed.

With hands tucked deep inside

Pulling and holding us together

Our heads hang low, our pace quickens

Times have changed.

The immigrants long for lands long left behind

The ‘natives’ curse for once

The only troubling accident of their birth

Times have changed.

The days that test man’s endurance call out

The days that test the human spirit have come

The days when men hibernate like animals are here

Times have changed.

Say You’re One of Them

Courtesy Photo (The Oprah Winfrey Show)

My comment follows soon. Meantime, you can check your nearest bookstore and join the craze. It’s a collection of five stories surrounding children and told through their eyes. My best yet is Story IV; Luxurious Hearses. I haven’t read the last one yet, which seems the most appreciated.  I think the hype about the book is worth it. The author, a Jesuit priest, did his work.

As you might already know, the ‘Queen of Talk’ has already fallen over herself about it. You might also know, whatever [book] she touches turns gold. And why not? Although I have no way to verify this I’ll say it anyways;  she claims to have the world’s biggest book club with 2 million members who, I want to presume, read each of the books she picks without fail.

I’m not in the club. So imagine the numbers my kind add up to on top of those in the club. And by the way, about 2 million is number of copies you need to have sold for NYT to declare you a bestseller. So we can rightly say OW has the power to single handedly turn one into an instant bestseller. And she has. There’s this too; copycatism is in. I’ve heard a couple of other visible faces (like Arianna Huffington, of the hugely successful online-only news site http://www.huffingtonpost.com) trying to start book clubs too.

Ok, ok, I’m going off and yet I said my comment follows soon. I’m holding off until tomorrow’s worldwide live webcast discussion about it. I can only imagine Uwem Akpan’s (the author) state of mind.

When Love Gets Lonely

Sometimes,

Love doesn’t love anymore

Not because, like salt, it has lost its loveliness

Only in fantasies does love consume its lover

 

A midnight summer dream

Two souls bathed in moonlight

Promises of scaling the highest mountains

And treading the deepest of valleys

Of wading mighty rivers,

and plunging down violent falls

Of sailing expansive seas,

and daring the deepest of oceans

 

The rational world frowns upon fantasy

 

When love gives,

Memory is an unbearable burden

Every tiny thing returns afresh

With significance hitherto unknown:

 

The very idea of you, just the two of you

His purred sound of I love you

Coffee together, sipped in silence

His hearty laughter, your silly fights

 

His vulnerability, that cut his burly size

To fit into your tiny chest

Vulnerability that tore you to shreds,

As did his power over you

 

Love’s deepest pain is less in losing love

It’s more in disentangling from it.