The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances surficed
To fable them : faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes -

Silks at the start : against the sky
Numbers and parasols : outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies :
Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

Overcome with grief
But with unhushed tears
I dare not weep.
But the gullibility I see
Makes my heart roar like an angry sea
At the Stupendous actions praised
On high a single minded chameleon raised
We have all failed
And our "knowledge", a waste

At night they lay asleep
With sweet dreams on empty promises
In support of a wolf
Indeed covered in roses
I  am of the grass root, he poses
Of his evil deeds, he brags
Down south, his followers, he drags
And on the way down with smiles
And laughter eating rice with chameleon shell topping
They are all asleep.

When will our youths see visions?
Sometime soon I hope
Because it seems the old dreamers are on a mission
To enslave us all with gold plated ropes.

I have seen countless bridges
In multiple nations
And they were built out of necessity
And not stupidity
A waste of our very limited resources
In fact a direct and open robbery of our future
Yet we sit in silence
Our bellies filled with rice and the warmth of a friendly chameleon
With no direction, productivity or creativity
All our natural resources lay in waste.


We need to change our mind set
If we must save ourselves
From the single minded chameleons
Whose goal is self enrichment
And wealth procurement.
We must be weary of those who feed us rice
And rob our children of a promising future
Oh,  What a price.

I want to watch as the cobwebs clears from their eyes
The awakening of a new dawn
A people on a mission
To overcome this impending destruction
Through their devotion
To the correction
Of our direction.

We must empower ourselves
We must stand together
For there is power in unity
And failure in division
We can't continue to live in foolishness
By indulging the chameleon's greediness
And enduring his insults in silence.

If there is a time to rise up in unity
It is now
If there is a time to do the needful
It is now
Sleep and slumber no more
For that is for fools


I'm nobody's fool...


© 2018 Busola S. Kolade

On the last page, a question lingers around,
A little gem for the reading crowd.
“Look up at the sky,” the book does implore,
And you start to ponder what you read before.

“Has the sheep eaten the flower?” you ask yourself,
A cosmic riddle, revealing itself.
For in this thought, the universe sways,
And shifts our view in wondrous ways.

If the flower still stands - proud and untouched,
Is the sheep’s hunger forever unhushed?
Would it dream of petals, soft and sweet,
While munching on grass beneath its feet?

But if the bloom has met its fleecy fate,
Is the prince’s planet now desolate?
Would stars shine dimmer in the night,
Mourning the loss of that floral light?

No grown-up sees why this matters so,
But children understand the question’s glow.
In pondering sheep and flora’s dance,
We glimpse the magic of happenstance.

Perhaps in asking, we become more wise,
Seeing the world through children’s eyes.
For in life’s garden, strange and vast,
It’s wonder, not logic, that truly lasts.

So gaze at the heavens, mind roaming free,
Imagine the possibilities you might see.
But watch out for a question, horrific, yet deep:
What if the flower ate the sheep?