Into the Valley 

After Gil Vicente 

I go out into the valley,
out into the valley, I go,
where a nightingale 
sings of lost hope.

I go out into the valley,
where bitter lemons grow.
I go out into the valley 
where my rosy cheeks 
have enough of the sun.

There is no fruit for
my labor. There is no love.
I go out into the valley,
out into the valley I go,
as I sing of false hope.

My gentle skin burns.
I’m too pale for the sun.
I go out into the valley
where the nightingale 
sings the saddest of songs.

*

57 Going on 60

I am not
only alive
and in the present,

I am not
in the future 
and the past is gone.
My memory 
is the worst of all.
I might as well be dead.

I have two years left.
I have one toe in the grave.
That is the future.

I may not have two years left.
Who really knows?
The present is fleeting.
The past was a blur.
And I never believed 
in the fountain of youth.

*

Moving Around 

I hide at night
in a home by
a river of
debris and mice.
Of Mice and Men,
I read that book.
I used to love
The Moon is Down.
Moving around 
makes me so tired.

*

Bundle of Dreams 

I was born 
and I will die.

I will die
and I will have dreams.

I will meet
my grandparents 
on the other side.

My hair will
grow long again
and I will be young.

Isn’t it great?
This is one of my dreams.
I have a bundle of them.

*

Words

Words betray me.
I leave them stranded in retaliation.
They get dirty 
with no one to tend to them.
Blank-eyed, they look 
at me with numb attention.
Their false smiles sting.
The words convince me to take them 
back. In a stream
of consciousness the words
start a poem
on the importance of second chances.
More poems come
out wrapped in barbed wire about
America’s wall.
I take a mop to the blood on the page.
I can’t clean it.
The killing has been going on for years.
Our life, our lives
are fed to the black night in the desert.
Off the rails, a
would be leader peddles fear to his lot.
My vote and 
my words are my most useful weapon.
I take a pen.
I write down the story I have to tell.
Nobody can
stop me. I must keep faith in myself.

A JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN

Life is a ball which rolls different faces. 
She gives you a part as a present, 
You have a beginning and in this mystery 
Lies also an end 
Life is a journey
You are a journey, too.

THE MYSTERIOUS BIRD 

A rare bird 
that you hardly see in the day 
but in the night, creepy. 
what a bird on earth 
perches on trees and poles 
scares you with its voice as 
fear and sorrow travel into your heart 
a bird with a circle-shaped eye, creepy
and her ears hear ten times more than humans
what a creature nature so endowed.

By Praise Danjuma 

A VISIT BY MY INNER CHILD

A child, in his innocence, whispers hope into my broken soul.
She said: trust the dreams long held onto, your dreams would soar, someday.

Thanks to the sense of joy and possibility felt as a child whose hope rises like the light of dawn though adulthood is a journey riddled with challenges and responsibilities.

Now, my inner child reminds me again and again of the magic that exists within me. It tells me to connect with my curious self and recapture that innocence that believes the sky is a touch from my finger.

I now know how to let go of my worries and bury my fears deep beneath. 
I ride on the wind of courage and trust the light in me that buries the shadow of the darkness.

Today, hear me:
I have mastered visiting the whispers of my inner child as she reminds me that hope is a tray serving juice to forlorn dreams. Hope awakens my dreams and can do so for you.

Kande Danjuma
(Kdy)

RAIN

The grey grasses can no longer console the tears of the clouds.
Their joy of welcoming the pacific rain,
Has faded in the darkness.
The petrichor seems no longer serene.
Where is your soothing beauty, O' rain?
O' rain! 
You stole their food and then their heart. 
Don't extinguish their burning pyres now. 
The soil, not being able to bear their agonizing pain,
Held their bodies on her lap.
Oh you!
How cruel you are!
You took their lives, who craved your presence, who appreciated your healing power.
Oh rain!
You made the dazzling fire roar and burnt everything down to ashes.
How can you, O' heavenly rain, be so cruel?

SEER

Between the game
and my aim
lust fills the moment.

Your reply’s flame
does the same,
fulfills the omen.

WORD

I started this work in cuneiform
but I couldn't undam the poem.
The stone wedged it. Bereft, mute, tuneless,
the task I adjourned to papyrus,
The flooding rendered it all a smudge,
its squiggly hieroglyphic unedged.

I converted to parchment and quill,
betook myself to tonsure and cowl,
to abstinence and flagellation, 
but manuscript illumination
of my holy writ couldn't complete.

Printing press further repressed my wit,
O! Its backwardness and reverses
transformed my tercets into curses.
Typing required guitarist fingers,
not these mallet hands of my nature.

Word processors came to my rescue
at last! Too late, alas, for my muse.

THAT Y IN MISER IS ME: A MELODRAMA

I had thought to hoard your beauty,
to store it safe and proud
in that place where you'd amused me
and none else would be allowed.
But you crept out through the tower,
and you burst out into World.

Now you perfume your universe
with circus, peacocks, clouds . . . .
while I stay locked in duty
with my memory and my
                              (shroud
    almost I wrote/ A miser's booty
    lost!!! Hyperbole for the horde.)

PARIS ERECTION

His cock had set the hour
when Paris’ city would die.

Eiffel made a tower
to mate Paris with the sky.

GAZA REDUX

This time there is no honey left in the lion
and there are no brass shackles on Samson.
Arise, mace and chariot of Dagon!

Trouble began when mythical brothers
confused their identities as others’
shadows and mirrors, instead of doubles.

Dagon resented the enemy’s reign.
Injustice and neglect made him insane.
“They’ve laid waste our land and multiplied our slain.”

Nova morning burst and then exploded.
Nova dancers flared up and then went dead.
The sun worshipers fled while others bled.

Samson was ordered to regrow his mane
and to resume his judgment, now unchained,
and yet remain blind to the others’ pain.

The jawbone of an ass – heartless orders --
Samson deploys 30-cubit shoulders --
the heaps upon heaps of children smolder.

Samson expands an eye for an eye
to peacock’s tails and needles’ eyes.
Gaza is as flax that was burnt with fire.

Burn all the wells! Keep the corpses hostage!
Grind up humanity into sausage:
tabulate but don’t value the lossage.

Samson/Dagon said: “Though you have done this,”
(each said) “yet of you will I be avenged
and after that” (they promised) “I will cease.”

Samson said, “Now shall I be more blameless,
though” (Dagon said) “I do them displeasure
to do to him as he hath done to me.”

Soldiers and martyrs measure their service
on the basis of duties, not mercies.
Each world regards the world as its world is.