Charlie Maison Ole Nkurrunah

If pillows could talk They'd narrate in detail the numerous times you murmured  Almost silently to yourself Your daily struggles, your pain and sorrow They would wake up as soon as you leave to discuss your issues in awe Lamenting at how you had to paddle downstream Without any luck in your river of life On the days you cried yourself to sleep they would wake up all wet  Soaked in the tired  tears of a solemn soul They would be in a dillema Between the rock that is being sympathetic to your woes And the hard place of blame towards you for staining their cases If pillows could read the minds of men They would tell the endless worries stored in their craniums  For generations to come They would tell their pillow grandchildren who would then pass down to their own offspring If pillows had the power to write  The stories that men narrate  They would be the biggest earners in show business They would pen down bestsellers  That would in turn be converted to ...

Do not drown me eternally In the bile of your inner guilt Before you know my pain Just before you turn the page Get to read every chapter in my open book For as  much as you blame yourself Thence you will discover  That am no saint either Behind this composed visage Is a tale never told A story concealed in the depth of my being My innocence is as much As the breadth of your guilt.

When the time comes For me to get drowned  In the pool of holy matrimony I want it to be a village girl With her naïveté intact Her treasures untouched A girl that would greet me  With the fear of the gods in her voice Her skin ebony in pigment Unblemished  Not the Dalmatians that city girls have become Owing to lightening creams That conceals the beauty in stretch marks Under false pretence I will marry a village girl  Unexposed to the trickery and deceit Of emergency medication with every rising sun