UDEME RALPH

We’ve been invaded, Harassed and battered Broken and torn apart By a strange, nameless menace. It started as nothing, And grew into a wild beast, It began like a cool breeze And morphed into a storm The noise keeps rising: The shouts, the loud halleluiahs, The buildings keep doubling, Here and there a new structure Now and then a new signboard Each new day, a new nomenclature, Each season, a new, troubling doctrine. The number keeps swelling, The offerings keep getting fatter, The sermons keep changing To meet the longings of the age. Retreats are on the increase, Concerts at every corner Now and then the globe is toured This moment or the next a soul is won But all things are as were Before the dawn of the hoy ones The world is still the world And men are still men Flesh still feels like flesh And blood still flows like blood. The saved and the unsaved Still tread the path of all flesh.

At her grave we stand and mourn, And think of the days of her youth, When inventions were few, When guns were still new, When prudence was still precious, And men hadn’t yet the heart of beasts Evil has unseated reason, Humanness lost in the abyss Of greed and rotten isms Sound souls have fallen away from the simple byways  Of truth and commonsense Our hands made the guns, Our labs nursed the bombs, And our leaders helped to launch the two wars that marred the world. Once we knew peace and bliss And dreamt of big and lofty things Once we sailed into strange new worlds Vast lands of gold, sugar, and corn. Then the revolution came: Machines worked harder than men, Homes of smoke littered the globe, Cars and trains bade bicycles bye, Houses towered into the sky, And knowledge peaked like a plague. Then the awful warming came: Sings of an impending terrible end, Green house effect; ice melted away Flood and famine, th...

On a cold and rainy night, Walter, a world-weary thinker stayed up to write a short story about a writer. At first, the idea seemed absurd. Even so, his obsession with absurdities made it desirable.   Before him was a blank sheet of paper, time-yellowed, resting somberly on his reading desk. The light from his lamp was growing dimmer and dimmer; but he had to write. He had learned to exploit his growing sleeplessness by writing—writing anything. He named his protagonist “Okoro” and plunged immediately into the burden of whys, how, where, when, and who did what. At first, his mind was blank, blanker than the paper before him. He knew nothing about this creation of his, other than this: that he was a writer, with a name like that of a typical village chief. He was not very good at details, especially at faces, and heights, and other things of that sort. He was not actually a writer, so to speak. He was a thinker, a master of the abstract, the metaphysical, and of countless exi...

        Imah was unusually happy that morning. Happiness was not a luxury she possessed: it seldom crossed her path. She had found solace in the busyness that work offered.         She came to the camp four years ago, at the age of sixteen. She had just started form three--senior school--when the rebels invaded her village. That terrible afternoon, she was in school, quietly listening to a long talk from her Government teacher about the efforts of the nationalist towards the attainment of Independence, when she heard a very deafening sound, ‘Kaboom’ followed by a rising cloud of dark smoke that enveloped everywhere.        “It’s an air raid!!! Air raid!” a voice bawled, as dozens of military choppers began to drop explosives into the hapless town. The air darkened. People ran in different directions, as though running was the ultimate cure.  Imah and other members of her class  sallie...

Age of Madness I’ve seen An eclipse of the stars A sky full of scars Madness born and nursed Chaos ruling over all Glistening blades and riffles Raised unto the heavens By men of faith and spirit, Empty earthlings daily seeking Things never known or seen Pursuing with great zeal The false and the unreal. I’ve seen, Madness in another form Books upon books, Aphorisms and thoughts Esoteric creeds and nonsense New forms of cosmic wreckage Thinkers thinking us into decay Writers writing us out of the way, Leaders and common people Tearing the climate into pieces Animals are bad, But humans are worse We make guns and bombs To bring our species back to  dust Policies and laws Daily draw world Into wars and chaos.

To the wars and strife and all the maladies of life Love is the way the narrow path the strait gate the last resort to be sought Love lies in the heart. It is close, it rests on our palms runs in our veins waiting to be unveiled It's not in countries not gone or in worlds unseen Not a virtue to seek or a gem in a lost world It's here, daily beckoning on us, on humankind It cries, and wails ceaseless to see these bombs all gone, to draw us to our senses.