What does one do with a burnt out fire?
The ashes are here, but not desire.
Residual proof of what I once held---
Fleeting:  memories of oaken trees felled.
Brother collectors, whose work is complete
taste it akin to me; something unique:
The fact is collections (like my heart, whole)
have all the components, save for that hole
left by the fury, drive and frustration
Requisite for our very creation.
Second fact is wholesome hearts freed of greed,
Unfettered by love, (the great earthly need!)
Have no direction or key to the map
So listlessly wonder with toe a-tap.
Completed soul, with perfect attention:
buying cars perfected  without engine.

Take it from me,
These city streets turn grey.
A sight for sore eyes,
Every never ending day.

The looming towers,
A headline of a coming age.
Flipped the script and tore the page.

This little vault, this narrow room,
Of Love and Beauty is the tomb;
The dawning beam, that ‘gan to clear
Our clouded sky, lies darken’d here,
For ever set to us: by Death
Sent to enflame the World Beneath.
’Twas but a bud, yet did contain
More sweetness than shall spring again;
A budding Star, that might have grown
Into a Sun when it had blown.
This hopeful Beauty did create
New life in Love’s declining state;
But now his empire ends, and we
From fire and wounding darts are free;
  His brand, his bow, let no man fear:
  The flames, the arrows, all lie here.

Chasing dreams tied to a paper kite, in flight on fire and outta sight
To light the way for the specters in the night, who march to the dirge, your funeral rite
While emanating above will be a shadow dressed in blood watching his soul dissipate into dust
His choler rises, till heart is fit to bust
Have caution, don’t fall prey to the charms of battle’s lust
For he who draws his sword in anger shall find his steel has turned to rust
But that burning rage lingers captivating a vacant touch
Ignited the blade swings ending with an unforgiving ******
Forcing flesh to paint the canvas with an uncanny brush

the chain of thought
doesn’t seem to break
and streetlights doesn’t seem to fade
and the pills wouldn’t take.
the battery from the alarm clock
adorn the floor,
the faintest whisper
seems like a knock on the door,

ubiquitous anxiety
plays a tug of war
with my cousin of death,
the stares at the ceiling
grow heavy with each breath,
the page lends a shoulder
the pen a helping hand,
the highway traffic finds its way
to my ear,
and its only darkness I befriend.

WHEN cold December
Froze to grisamber
The jangling bells on the sweet rose-trees--
Then fading slow
And furred is the snow
As the almond's sweet husk--
And smelling like musk.
The snow amygdaline
Under the eglantine
Where the bristling stars shine
Like a gilt porcupine--
The snow confesses
The little Princesses
On their small chioppines
Dance under the orpines.
See the casuistries
Of their slant fluttering eyes--
Gilt as the zodiac
(Dancing Herodiac).
Only the snow slides
Like gilded myrrh--
From the rose-branches--hides
Rose-roots that stir.

(the city had fought the fortnight before)
fire burned through the little skirts
and plastic lunch boxes
carrying the nourishment of our future
doctors and worldshakers—

                                 Future
tax paying Americans
And beacon of the nation.

Wide awake, in the thoughts of a light bulb,
(Where sidewalk stairs politic with the devil,)
A raindrop fell and whispered to the asphalt,
“Tell me what you know about happiness…”
And somewhere, in the middle of a pineapple parade,
A Pepsi can smiled and danced the night away with Nyquil labels.

Midnight thrall:
middle of the road, fingers
tucked in long full-sleeves
but for floodlights
emerging off mists:

An event. A memory. A bell.
No end in sight.

Silent night. Mad owls prowl.
Confused crows some still awake.

Milk clogs the kitchen drain.
Hour of the shadows.
Nothing ever lasts,
nothing ever lasts.

Distant clock. Pitter-patter tap.

Stupid evolution.

The gene pool flows on
to utter unknown ends.

Meanwhile we dream up
heaven-like unions and revolutions
and coronations.

Stupid night. Confused crickets.

Spider and insects. Enter
the lizard. Half a telephone ringing.
Man at the summit.

See-saw, swing. Dying distance.

After the wind lifts the beggar
From his bed of trash
And blows to the empty pubs
At the road's end
There exists only the silence
Of the world before dawn
And the solitude of trees.

Handel on the set mysteriously
Recalls to me the long
Hot nights of childhood spent
In malarial slums
In the midst of potent shrines
At the edge of great seas.

Dreams of the past sing
With voices of the future.
And now the world is assaulted
With a sweetness it doesn't deserve
Flowers sing with the voices of absent bees
The air swells with the vibrant
Solitude of trees who nightly
Whisper of re-invading the world.

But the night bends the trees
Into my dreams
And the stars fall with their fruits
Into my lonely world-burnt hands.
_

Source:
http://www.universeofpoetry.org/nigeria.shtml