Rabiu Temidayo

A dictator is a ruler who has lost total power,
A diplomat is a person in government cleaning the desk, with other countries,
A descendant is someone who comes from within,
A constitution is basic laws that keep people off the lawn
A genocide is an attempt to kill everyone
A guillotine is an instrument for cutting someone’s head
or a poet cross with a heavy blade
A vision is something seen in the mind
A trapper is someone who traps wild animals
A theory is an explanation why something is usually based on scientific study
To recognize is to accept the government deals with business and trade
To migrate is to move away from one to settle in another
To irrigate is to bring water to dry land by means of canals
A liberator is one who frees certain group of people
A front is where the actually fighting is going on
Feudalism is most of Western Europe during the Middle Ages
To forge is to shape by heating
To smuggle is to move secretly because it is against the law,
A scapegoat is a person blamed for the mistakes and problems of others
A pyramid is a square base and four triangular sides
To repeal is to cancel
Representation is presenting the body before the government,
Pollution is the waste materials in the air or water
Nonrenewable means not replaceable
A canal is a manufactured waterway,
Imperialism is the practice of conquering other people’s lands,
To impose is to wish on others,
The parliament is the body of lawmakers,
Resistance is the act of a working class,
Reunification is the act of joining together again.
A sniper is someone who shoots down a hidden spot
A serf is legally tied to the land

 
 
 
 
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Plateau

Holding bus tickets and waiting for salvation
at Leventis. I’ve waited for this day
where I could be bought I could be sold by then.
A lorry waits at the entrance to break the entanglement.
Trees just at the shore of the Atlantic wave to a line of sterns.
Every night I hear a goodbye that resembles tì.
An improv painter set his easels before VCD stores,
For an imprint of buses, bellied men in front
of the lottery shops called jè. Which means to win
which is same as to owe.
I owe it to lightships leaving the Lagos Island shore,
almond shade where Chidera makes its way nearer
From microstations and high-rises. P&O Neolloyd
with scrap irons to Jos. Supramatism.
jé èníyan,
A thaumaturge screamed in a starbus.
Jè hung to dry on steel rods like a Paul Cezanne. Outside the window.
Jè means to eat. In the interior Amulo Odofin. Eat
semolina in front of distribution stores, jé èníyan.
ati jè èníyan, a deflection of the tongue.
What do we owe the sea? Acculturation. The air?
Expiration. The land? Experience.
mechanics at the bank of the Atlantic sea beat Chidera together.
Guinnesses roll on to the sea.
jé means to emerge, to abstain, to ease
The painter emerges in the sun and jè paints everything else,
In the quantum level, everything in the spectrum of exchange.
The machine is perfect when there’s nothing else to remove.
Erycaryocytes are renewed every three months.
Cells die and a man reborn every seven years.
Lagos Island in the morning. Buses full are leaving.
The swallows on mainmasts. The National Anthem.
After all these years seeing you at the port, moving
towards north with a plateau of waste, Chidera.

 
 
 
 
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7:06PM

I’m touched by the Easter holidays, because they’re
crawling up the ceiling, making the house
heartbeat under the weather changing weather.
There was no way the pain we felt
had a shape