This aptly sums up the Nigerian Tragedy. Lady Liberty / Dame Justice acknowledging her own rape!
So sad!
Month: June 2019
Visions and Selections
by
Noel Ihebuzor
What you saw
You say you saw
patterns heave and dance
you say you saw them
Weave and leave
No one else says they saw
what you say you saw
just you, with your diamond
periwinkle eyes
at the three quarter corner of night
when straggler angels
flee the light of the returning day
Yours was a vision
Filled with emptiness
Where bleached blankness
Empties all other visions
New Jungles
The jungle always,
half dormant
wakes up and a new day
dawns, slowly
Sounds soon crowd out silence
prophets see dimly
but their rising voices
Soon outdo agberos
In this space,
a life is worth
three sparrows
In this place,
men combine religion and region
creed with breed in the service
of a contest fuelled need
and sustained by greed
Locked in their frenzied contest
the wrestlers have locked out sense
the present overwhelms the past
drowns the future
and yesterday’s smiles
Wakes up in today’s
tired sheets
Uncertain saints
Self beatify, uncertain of outcomes
as uncertified foul odor
floods the present
overwhelms the air pregnant with hope
nourished by dope
stunted elves dance and sway
waving a medley of signs and symbols
crescent, cross and stars
and I sensed I heard the moon howl
Predators now prance like Simba
the lion king
the story teller casts
his charmed beads around legs, heads
hips, feet and heels held by hope
but fettered by dope
One Book, two views
Adaobi Nkeleonye @Adankelonye review of Father Uwem’s book “Say you are one of them” via Say You’re One of Them.
Say You’re One of Them.
Job satisfaction amongst secondary teachers in England is declining. Now we have some of the least satisfied teachers in the world
Check it out
Reflections and refractions
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. – Stephen Hawking. Something similar can be said about the greatest enemy of Nigerian development. It is not ignorance of the right pathway to sustainable development but the illusion that the pathway that we have chosen, this tired and tiring pathway that leads us nowhere is the right one.
How can a pathway that rewards mediocrity, that sacrifices excellence for quota and ultimately enthrones nepotism ever lead to development? Such a pathway only breeds indolence and an entitlement mentality plus an unjustified arrogance that always plays up whenever the less qualified are put ahead of the more qualified by the pursuit of foul, flawed and suspect social policies.
Excerpt from The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald
The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.
My thoughts?
When such moments happen, challenge your paralysis, take inertia by the throat and choke it. Never ever be an idle spectator at the unfolding spectacle of your demise. Leave that role to other stakeholders who have less at stake. Rather, choose that moment to live. Invoke your agency and combine your agency, self awareness and choice and use these as the energy to create, direct and act out a script you and the world will remember. Then, you will truly have lived and when you have left would still live on. Noel
Wise words
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. – Robert Frost
Reflections 