by D.M. Aderibigbe

The Famous

To Manny Pacquiao –

You came from the woods somewhere near
The Indies,

The land of Gloria Arroyo,
full of potentials; some fulfilled, some unfulfilled.

You were in the former group,
You covered your fists with the gloves of glory,

fight in the ring of life.
You brought gold to your fatherland,
With the groan of your teeth.

Paid the prices of many people’s survivals,
with the cuts on your stainless mien,

You are a hero, where you were once despised,
You are famous, where you were a nonentity.

I hear about you, from the walls of my charred continent, at the
Feet of Earth,

About some millenniums of breath from your
Country,

Who could be more famous than you?

For Wilberforce

The unbridled breeze rocketing from
The heart of the Ocean makes

My buttoned shirt sway
All over my slim body. My friend laughs

Hysterically, like an insane man. But
I won’t laugh, instead I

Stay gloomy, like a doll.
The comfort is too cold for me. Cold

Is a foreigner to my body, after so
Many years in a

Desert city. I leave the
Shore of the Ocean for the centre of

The island, where many skins could
Provide heat, as I

Desperately seek shelter,
Like a chick without a mother to brood

It in the midst of a torrential rainfall.
The show begins on

My way to the navel of
The city: i see fashionable bamboo

Houses admiringly lined one after
The other, like

The buttons of a shirt.
At the facade of each house, I see

An elderly man, sniffing heat through
His nostril. Beside each

House, there’s a canoe
Tethered to a pole, like a Christmas

Goat. I don’t have any pukka reason
To wonder and wander

That much, I’m yet to
See a car since I arrive, so Canoe is

Car. But there’s just one other article
That seems to

Supplant Canoe – Fish.
I see hundreds of fishes in every

Leviathan bowls. For some time, I
Thought I was

Opposite the earth. The
Future generation of the island a

Thing in common – they hang their
Hopes on fishing

Nets, and one more thing
About them, they have wretched

Tongues in foreign languages. I ask my friend why their

Land rather Island is named
Wilberforce,
When none of them could

Pronounce ‘will.’ The question
Seems smarter than my friend, but his

Wile answers for him, saying the island
Is a European creation,

Of course that is somewhat
Acceptable.

Madagascar

The white speckle in a Black
Continent. Almost drawn into the
Indian Ocean, maybe

Outrightly drawn into the Indian
Ocean, if I’m to be faithful to the words
Of my young cousin, who

Seems to have a wander-lust.
Well, I don’t know much about this
Island, as much as he does,

But I know it is close to the
Cape of Good Hope, which Vasco
Da Gama disvirgined

In the closing years of the
15th century. But that’s not all
I know. I know it is the

4th largest island in the world,
I know the island divorced India 88
Million years ago, after the

Great Gondwana break-up.
Do you believe over 90 percent of
Breath found in here,

Can not be replicated anywhere
Else in the world? Come on, the million
Species of lower animals,

The higher animals, who are
Made of East African and South East
Asian history, all bound by

The Ravinala. The susceptible
Fauna and Flora, suffering from the
Good-propelled evils of

Humans. Antananarivo, when
Will you call your children to have
A tete-a-tete?