Saraba 12 - The Justice Issue

Adebiyi Olusolape knows this. In The Ideal Husband: ‘Let her add on the name of another man to the name of an older man the length is a statement…’

And Fela Anikulapo-Kuti in Mr Follow Follow ‘Some dey follow follow them close sense.’

“Poetry makes me stop” – David Gruenewald Pause and consider what happens if I am bent on achievement and not on purpose. What form of satisfaction will I (re)gain when the antagonist has conceded? What is that satisfaction? Will I even be satisfied?

I will stop, right there, when all fists around me are clenched, voices chanting refrains. I will stop and be poetic.

It will make no sense to be part of revolution that transforms my country’s economy and not mine.

Poetry makes me stop because in poetry all things become clear.

“I write to un-silence, not to speak.” – Hélène Cixous I will not ask ‘are you listening to me?’

I will ask ‘why are you not listening to me?’

It is not that I am not saying what needs to be said. It is that what I am saying does not come from that point when everything becomes still. I am too much in the noise. I am so much with/in others that I am lost to myself.

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