W A L L S.
From the birth pangs of the first farting man
to the last drop of his kin’s dust-to-dusts,
walls have served only to buy time
but even the hours of ‘dying minutes’ extracted from complicit refs
have been nothing but fading embers of false dawns
light years away from their architects’ wet dreams:
dreams on glossy paper
like sleek sketches of galloping thoroughbreds,
reined in by dark fears walking on all fours
festering, like the ferns of graffiti
that separated East and West Berlin
Walls.
if Jericho could capitulate at the echoes of a mere shout
What was the wisdom of the stone walls?
The plot of hydrogen sulphide that leaked out of the anus
with émigré-emitting consequences
was actually hatched inside the stomach walls
walls fed with rotten remnants of sacrificial egg,
left uneaten at crossroads by satiated gods
Walls.
Walls. We have seen roundtable conferees make their points in implacable knuckles,
In battle cries of clenched teeth
we have seen graphics of Power-
point presentations of live jugulars
populating pages of pathos.
It is that weather again,
of wind-aided insights into fowl anus revelations,
of cracks in walls touted maximum
security.
Walls. Cracking now like the spirits of albumens when yolks have already been
readied for omelets. So much for impregnable defences, of egg shells.
Walls.
The bend of Beckham’s ball beat a mollusk whorls closeness of stonewalls
walls. Many saw it but not the handwriting on the
walls. Not the moral of the mural
now staring Nebuchadnezzar’s scions in the face
like warning teasers from the midday sun.
When rams are on heat – the rams embedded inside the denseness of the sun
who can count the colours of their bleating lenses at noon?
Who would have thought that the deli of Delilah termites
packed enough seismic ammo
to expose the underbelly of Samson’s granite cast
for what it really was –
red mud
Walls. They that build walls
make geckos of men.
you could comb the farthest forests
of walled history
with a tour guide of Wollof dancers
pointing with their rising nipples to the curve of fallen civilizations,
you can listen to the lament of the cremator
as wayward winds stake claims
to the recycling rights of his own cremation dust
you can study history
from hieroglyphs to hash tags of in-vogue memes
you will not find sturdier grounds for walls
than the ego of the emperor.
