Lagos Lives, by Wayne Visser

Written after a recent (and first) visit to Nigeria.

Lagos Lives

By Wayne Visser

Lagos lives

Seeding and sprawling

Steaming and smoking

Grasping at the shoreline

Gasping at the skyline

Clinging to its oil-slicked ropes

And singing of its toil-stripped hopes

Praise be!

To the God who sets His people free

To the fiery preacher on TV

To the Sunday throng that still believe

Praise be!

To the beggar and the banker

To the fisher and the swanker

To the struggler and the smuggler

Praise be!

Lagos breathes

Coughing and crooning

Swaggering and swooning

Shouting at the winners

Flouting all the sinners

Unleashing hope with soaring psalms

And greasing all the outstretched palms

Praise be!

To the Son who died upon the tree

To the light that makes the blind to see

To the ear that hears each prayerful plea

Praise be!

To the leaders and the bleeders

To the hackers and the slackers

To the hopers and the jokers

Praise be!

Lagos moves

Churning and chugging

Squirming and slugging

Jamming on the highways

Cramming in the byways

Convulsing to the market mob

And pulsing to the Fela throb

Praise be!

To the Ghost who lit the flame in thee

To the Word of heavenly decree

To the Three in One and One in Three

Praise be!

To the movers and the shakers

To the moguls and the fakers

To the dealers and the healers

Praise be!

Lagos lives

And breathes

And moves

To a rhythm of its own

To an ancient mystic poem

To a purpose yet unknown

Lagos moves

And breathes

And lives.

Copyright 2011

Observe The Grain

It is the women that build the men,

Playing 'mother,'

Then later tear them down as good for nothing beasts,

(Brutes) only out to bight them...

I'm in a dream where I do not know my son in a class full of laughing children,

Tiny happy faces that do not seem of sex obsessed with right hood,

Where the music makes sense and the moving pictures are cool silent.

When I used to write from the heart,

Befriend the wild words then later seize the mind and clean the spaces in between them,

Groom the silence to be resplendent where the music will take birth,

Only to remind them that they are solely men and women in that silence,

Remind them that only the music makes sense...

Since it is the men that build the women,

Playing 'father,'

Then later tear them down as good for nothing beasts,

(Coots) only out to cut them...

Wide open from the heart and then write them out in parts,

To fill the room with laughing children in a class,

The dream where I

(Will not/ cannot)?

Find my son and know him.

New book: Wishing Leaves: Favourite Nature Poems by Wayne Visser

My new poetry collection - Wishing Leaves - is out. Here's the blurb:

This unique collection brings together nature poems by South African poet and writer, Wayne Visser. The anthology includes many old favourites like "I Think I Was a Tree Once" and "A Bug's Life", as well as brand new poems like "Let Bells Ring Out" and "Wishing Leaves".

Here's an extract from Wishing Leaves, to give you a flavour:

Then as we turned our faces to the moon

Our hands entwined, our hearts in sync, in tune

We felt the fingers of the silken breeze

And made our wishes on the falling leaves

Order from the publisher, or Amazon.

'tip' by the hypesters

'tip' by the hypesters
interesting...

I's like WORD!

I’s like word!

Eyes all bulged out in a mind choking on what they heard…


I’s like take it!

I’s like, burn!

I’s like dance…


Burn n*gger!
Dance…

Burn!

Dance!

Burn!

Dance!

Burn in the toppling fat fires of your fierce material desires you proud miserly fool!


I’s like shoo! Go home, back home back to Godhead…

Child’s like ‘NO!’

dwellers of 'The Fifth Grove.'

Dwellers of The Fifth Grove...
To those in your guise...
From where they fall,
Your shadows will stand erect from out the inside of those walls.
To dirty dance entranced in the sound of your demise…
Solid enough to be grabbed and hurled to the ground,
Hissing towards that dry hardness,
Where they will hit and shatter into hundreds of silent pieces, and then merge with the souls of our feet to sickly walk the paths to which we’re all bound…
These ghosts are now your children.
Food for the hype…
Riddled by the many trends fashioned from the latest hatred in this era’s slave trade.
Building blocks for the old hollow that shifts in fancy word jugglery to praise the dead with failed attempts to corrupt Absolute Truth…
And the divided dogs will bark themselves to bits in that night,
Fed by a fear of hunger, became fools who’d kill for this incredible stereotype,
As mad colorful beings stand in the white to sh*t this darkness into sight…

motherly love

Motherly love,
What with brief relief from that which you might have not understood.
Though We may prostitute ourselves,
With the hope that in the end, It will not all mean a thing…

Give freedom,
A name fit for that wild girl child without a wish to be won,
Yet feed on their passion to will,
And kill us all off,
With the hows of how they became beautiful when ‘The Man’ finally gave them back to our world,
Armed to the tooth, with Molotov cocktails, and the isms of femininity,
To burn their woman down to that crisp of toasty brown,
Back to the filth out of which they were formed,
With clenched fists, and smiling teeth,
Before they were all declared found.