CSR & the Law: Olufemi Amao's research site

This Ebola
(For William Pooley with thanks)
The unlucky ones
Born into a life between cracks
Survival, a struggle
On a daily basis
Praying in hope
For life here is already a lottery

Then came the plague
To consolidate their mystery
Death became a lottery
The odds deadly accurate
Mother and father were buried within hours
Died in the pool of blood discharged from all openings
Sleeping in delirium on top of  diarrhoea discharge
And little kids followed soon
In smelly body bags
Buried by strangers
Dressed like alien
Unceremoniously, nondescript
What have they done to deserve this?

Femi, October 2014

The old woman

We sat for a wee bit
On a Sunday afternoon in the high street
People of all sizes, shapes and age
Walk to and fro on their Sunday business
Then she approached waving her
wrinkled hands for attention
Hunched a little, walking unsteadily
She has seen better days
Then she spoke, voice echoey
'Sorry to disturb you, but is today
Saturday?'
No. Today is Sunday!
'Oops' she said dejectedly.
Were you planning to do anything
particular on Saturday?
'Not really, but I keep losing track of days'
'All days seems alike these days'
'It is not the kind of life that you want
Just by yourself with no one to talk to. It is
a weary life'
'So sorry to bother you'

April 2013

Escape into Darkness

I have known not, love
Abandoned from a kind of love
Moved from home to home
In random quest for my home
Here, finally I find a place
To call home, a kind of home
Amidst hundreds of my kind

Then I found a kind of love
That I have not known
In one, a kind of me
What momentous bliss
What warmth around my heart
The sun shines with brilliance
The moon's radiance a pleasure
Morning brings delightful hope for the
future
Night brings the sweetest of dreams
The love of father, mother and siblings
that I never had
All rolled in the one
I felt for the first time, alive
In eighteen years, alive

For 399 days, alive

Thank you for the 399 days
And I do not blame you for the
descending darkness
Perhaps we are restless spirits
Perhaps this is how it is meant to be
But if you can, you may remember me
once a while.
Foster moms & dads, you’ve done
your bit
My kind of home, you've done your
best

Darkness is descending
This fog of despair and despondency
This confirmation of my worst fears
I was not meant to be
I am an accident of other people’s
existence

The rope is measured as instructed
The noose as the net says
My messages are written
There is also one for the mother I
never knew
Perhaps she may search, one day
I have alerted him that can clear away
what is left
I have no tears or pain
No bitterness or sorrow
My part is done

Let the darkness descend.

London, December, 2013

REFLECTIONS

Can you comprehend the rustling of the river as
you pass by?

Do you understand the whispers of the wind as
you walk by?

Vegetation: the trees, grasses, roses and all
shouting in silence

The birds, the butterflies and all their like

All chorusing ‘dia dhuit’ in appreciation
and respect

Creation grovels

As your presence lightens this moment

May the New Year bear your grace

Replicate your charms

And bring as much as you have given
to the luckiest soul on earth.

The Mardyke Story

These were no fun times to go to the Mardyke
Here more than half a thousand stories were
written three sessions a day
Examinations and collateral stories
Like the mischievous and salacious grin on the
face of the chap taking LW1153 (CRIMINAL LAW)
Smiling sheepishly
Perhaps reading his very own story in the question
Of parties, orgies, consummation with friends and
underage on a single night
Stories couched in legal jargons

There are stories of courage
Like the elderly lady perhaps 70
Sitting a diploma
Battling to find the door
Squinting to decipher the question
It is the spirit

And tales of gambling
Placed on unsuspecting examinees
Predictions on the numbers of apparels
Bearing the good tidings of American domination
In a bid to make the count
Starring at the chest of endowed ladies
'What the fuck is he starring at?
Not the mangoes baby
Only trying to make the counts!

I told my story to whoever cares to listen
She told her story
Of experimentations with cheese in the lab
Designing and improving the life cycle of cheese
A gift from Germany to the world
It is part of her larger story

There are stories that would break untrodden
grounds
Revealing the Eves behind the evil faces
From Sarajevo to Kosovo
Back to the days of the masters of the pogrom

And there are stories
Of post colonialism and writers
From India to the lost nations of Nigeria
A gift from Ireland to the world

There are stories told in other ways
Capitalist stories: Billabong, Deep River Rock and
of course Coca cola

There are stories of pregnant men and female
hubbies
Of Partial head Deformity
There are stories

Of Arsenal and Barca; Munster Rugby and Cricket

Of vomiting bug and hope of fantastic
compensation
Over black coffees and scones

Of smuggled tips in pockets, on time tables

And the advent of the cult of the Da Vinci Code

There are stories told in silent gestures
All part of a bigger story: The Mardyke story.

Cork, May, 2006

HERO
Roared in rocket style
Captured the scene
With a mesmerizing agility
He strut the stage like his archetype
From the backstage of nowhere
He stepped into the shoes of Kings
In lyrical Dom
His chords sent reverberating waves
And his words sell on the market place
As he leads millions along like the piper.

The star the hero
A deity under klieg light
Communicating in lyrical mimes
And as he traversed the dangerous world of no limit
He lost himself midway
Searching for a spiritual lifting
He turned to the darker side of existence
Probing the mythical world of illusion
The energy of the rhythm lost its potency
And the love in his rhythm turned to lust
A plaything in the hands of Eternity

In the backstage
Far away from the mirage of the spotlight
His father groan
As his son tore every page of his life into
nothingness
And mock every word of his aged wisdom
Contradicting every principle his life and livelihood
were wrought
In blinding rage he reached for the gun
Insanity blossomed
And the song changed to a dirge
As Eternity took its place

Coventry, 2005

FOR FREEDOM

Bearing a purple heart for freedom
He spoke to me in deafening silence
On the first page of the Metro
A returnee where others could never
come back
Doing what he was told by the
commander
Janna weeps behind her sacrifice
As the nation welcomes a new dawn
Dreaming to walk the face of this
earth again
Confined to the life of a cyborg
In the early moments of existence
He saluted the cause
For which his motion was lost
And Janna weeps behind her sacrifice.


Singing the song of freedom
Samir limped to vote
On one leg.

Coventry, 2005

The gods that came to the Mardyke

(This poem is dedicated to all the invigilators at Mardyke Arena, Summer 2008!)

They rode the back of expectant students

Yearning for success in these summer tests

Reaching for supports beyond the temporal

From different climes and cultures

The gods appeared in the academic hallow of the
Mardyke

There was the little tortoise from West Africa: the god of trickery

A shamrock from this clime: to greenness

The catholic saints in amulets

A miniature god of Liberty from New York

Mickey Mouse representing the hedonistic god of this age

A little bhudda from India

A cross

Nameless totems

Appearing in fairly meaningless ensemble.  

Mardyke, Cork, 2008

Small print: *I love poetry and I write poems. I have posted here some of my poems. Please note that these poems are not for distribution. It is a violation of copyright law to make copies or distribute them without my written permission.*



Suicide Syndrome

To the Mullins

They paid the ultimate sacrifice twice over
To help pay the deficit
They have given what is David’s to George
Gave back their passport
They walk away from the dignity of a rundown home
While their offspring has been taken away to help
Scavenging for food miles away from home
Slumdogs in the midst of plenty
And we ask why protesters are camping in front of St Paul.

November 2011

Us

(To Anne-Marie)

There are matters
Beyond the grasp of poetry
And poets may struggle to capture in words
But we may always try.

It has been a short and long journey at the
same time,
From randomness yielding a method, a
perfect method.
A method rooted in love, unconditional.

Now we journey in harmony
Holding hands
In happiness, in wonder
In joy and in sorrow
For now and eternity.

When it mattered most
You were there.
Holding his hand
Praying painfully for mercy
And for grace
Sharing the pains, agony and sorrow.
I will never forget.

Even in the dark days
When the paths seem all confused
And the sun and the stars have stopped
showing the way
You stood courageously
Fighting to find the path.

But we journey on
Holding on to what brought us this far
If all fails, I will always look to you
To discover my reason
To hold it all together and carry on.

As I look to the stars
And to the beauty that nature gives
Trying to understand the meaning of it all
In you I find, an ever-present meaning
And my reason to go on.

Femi, May 2014.

Border control

Put up a wall
Man the wall
With humans, dogs and guns
Shut out the illegals
Who steal jobs and joys

Sorry to report
But they will keep coming

The worst deterrent of death
Is not worse than the stark reality of their
lives
If they die on the high seas
At least they die on hope
They die on your conscience
They die challenging your humanity
Your rules and your regulations
Your threatening vans and history

As we enjoy the joys of Tesco, Walmart
and Waitrose

A woman died on a rickety boat on the
high seas
The umbilical cord of her dead newborn
still attached

As somebody wrote
Good health is merely a slower way of
dying
So is good fortune

October, 2013

Christmas in the Pub

He came earlier than before
The spirits were stronger
The familiar whiff stronger
The dames wilder
And the sounds radical
It was a celebration
A yuletide he knows but cant
comprehend
In the aftermath of a binge
He found himself in a manger
With a little boy on a throne of hay
Looking at him
Pityingly
In the split of a second
His story unfolds
In brittles of food, grime, saliva
mixed with liquor
Heavy odour from fag, traces of
blood
‘You do not exist’ he hollered
Not in the confinement of your
sciences
Nor in the stupor of your revelry
Nor philosophy
Nor in the clown you made me.

Coventry, 2005

Extrospection

The evanescent bubble of modernization cannot
conceal it
Nor the scepticism of science
It would not matter whether the world believes it or not
It is in every song ever sung
Every word ever written
Every faith ever professed
And every child ever conceived
I see it in the source of River Lee
The rising of the sun in summer
In the whispering of the wind
And I see it
In the effervescence of your eyes
The graceful gait in every step you take
The serenity of your smile
I see it
The Angel in the groovy chick

Cork, 2006

THE TWELVE STARS

The advent in the blue empyrean
But now, piercing the hallowed region of
the retina
In dozen of blazing blinding yellow
The stars in the turbulent blue yonder
Where the nation is surrendered
Without war nor blood
Identity is lost in ideology
To assume the image of a deity
Mandate submitted into a pool
Welcome the ascent of the unelected
But they came
Bearing gifts
Of rights
Economic, human and social
And a tower reaching to eternity?

Coventry, 2005

* The above was published in a local
newspaper in the UK.

NEO SLAVERY

Their forbears were taking out in interlocking chains
Bangles and iron necklaces, linked man to man
Cowering in impotence before the barrel of smoking guns
On a transformative journey to an existence in vacuum

To serve as the precursors
Of the machines of mass production

Many centuries on I met them again
Transposed by circumstances
Protégés of an ignominious past

Volunteering for captivity
Putting their very life at stake
To surrender their existence
To a soulless existence

Hope fades
The homestead is in chaos
The decadence side of the glorious globalized era

They laboured through the dessert in Lorries on their last
journeys
Crossing the ocean on condemned fishing boats
They glanced at each other wondering who would die and
who would not
In roulette that some must lose
In a bid for the same place that consumed their forbears

I saw them on fringes
In a vicious circles that produces
Children killing children
Hooked on drugs and all trivialities of a meaningless
existence
Living to die

In a new serfdom

London, April 2007

HEAVENS GATE

They come
Headless children of the universe
Back after another circle

They are the evidence
The proof of the flowering of passion
The passion of self-immolation
The other side of the currency
Of globalization, of modernisation
Of a world that has left all the milestone of morality
A world running into nothingness

They are the sacrifices
To satisfy the cause of a hydra headed eternity
A cause in the custody of self appointed acolytes
To quench the primordial lust
In the battlefield of manhood invincibility

They are the collective judgement
On the conscience of this age

A poll
That is not opened to debate
A debate that is not subject of argument
An argument that is not shrouded in the mystery of faith
A faith that is not celebrated in blood.

Forward or backward America? Obama
v Romney

In this land of exceptionalism, democracy,
liberty and religion
Money is free speech
Corporations have more rights than humans
and can legally buy elections
270 million guns and counting and ‘stand
your ground’ laws
The death penalty a national artefact
Counterfactual history and conspiracy
theories a national past time
Universal health care is an aberration
Strangers are unwelcome aliens
Taxation a burden for the rich to be avoided
at all cost
This land of guaranteed equal opportunity
and guaranteed unequal outcome
Another election looms.

Reaganomics unchained and unleashed the
banks and corporations
On the global market jungle
Creating the illusion of wealth
Harnessed into a positive energy by
Clintonism
Bushism tapped into the wild side
Wars, wars, wars on a global scale
Tax cut for the rich at the expense of others
The epitome of trickle-down economics
Recession cometh with fury: housing
collapsed, banks cracked, investors’ money
disappeared into thin air
A recession made in America rocking the
globe from Greece to Portugal.

Then came Obama
The personification of the original American
dream
A dream that the ‘right’ struggles to rewrite
and recast
And jobs started crawling back, wars
reduced by half and Osama left the scene,
economy growing slowly, the banks reined
in, health care for all

From the horizon emerged
Spurred on by the Limbaugh and Fox of the
American universe
All guns blazing and holding high the banner
of free market fundamentalism
The man who went on a verbal war with the
Brits at the Olympics
Mr Romney
With a pledge to block universal health care,
pick a war with Iran, unchain the banks
Pledge anything that pleases the coalitions
of the Tea Party agenda

From this corner of the world
We are tired of your endless international
war
Of false and dubious financial products
Could you please leave women alone to
decide on women issues?
AK 47s and the like do not belong in a
civilized household
Counterfactual history and conspiracy
theories is not fit subject for civilized
discussions.

God bless America.
God bless those who connect with the
human race.

August 2011