Stampede at the graveyard

The dead didn’t die equal
Death, a trickster it was
In the peregrination that beckoned
Death came so close
The jugular armed with tubercular headache
To him, the time was still green
Death defied daunting guts
A war without blood
Fought with pains and thoughts
A thud landed on the rusty roof
The taker of life stamped its foot
The door betrayed trust
As it flung open for the vector of sorrow
He died, but death did cry
His time was still green

The dead didn’t die equal
But the dead still lives
In the dead silence of the dead den
His full fledge flung him up
He spoke through the waves
Obedience crowned the messenger of his voice
The air
The whistling trees bowed
To his odyssey in the graveyard
Signposting his existence
Julius’s ears sprung up
The voice pierced, he cried
Through him Lekan lives, he must live
Through the small gods Lekan lives

Now, the war of wits
A stampede at the graveyard beckons
Death must be buried
In the antiseptic bowel of its den
So Lekan lives, death dies.


Dedicated to the late Olalekan Obadimu

The goddess in his dream

Fagged and hungry, I returned from a lecture on ‘Industrial Safety’ to my room, which was next to the world head quarters of Kegites Club. History had it that the club started in the university before its tentacles grew across borders. Every year, members of this club would gather in Obafemi Awolowo University from different parts of the world. Delegates would come with variegated attires showcasing their heritage in terms of culture and traditional beliefs. Chiefo, the world chief of the club would use a crown-like head cap, his wrists and neck adorned with beads, with a traditional green wear emblazoned with a map of Africa growing out of a gourd, depicting their notion that the soul of Africa is in the gourd, the warehouse of palmwine. During their annual rituals, they would pop palmwine, drink palmwine to stupor, bath with palmwine, exchange banters about palmwine, urinate palmwine and even excrete palmwine from their anuses. The general belief among the members was that bathing with palmwine would help secure good grades in academics. This myth was once argued heavily among the students of the university. Some students believed that the claim was a ruse. Another group of students opined that such myth was typical of African tradition and as such the club should not be weathered by tongues, while others, the religious ones, were hell-bent that the claim was a strategy to win more souls into the earthy club.
Read the full fiction here as first published on Hack Writers