Ajani Samuel Victor

 

Ajani Samuel Victor
is writer, (performance) poet, author and political enthusiast who hail from the pace setter state in Nigeria. At the moment, he is studying Physiology at the University of Lagos. He is a writer at the Invincible Quill Magazine, and a Trainee head at Earnest Writes’ Community, his works can be found on IQM, Feral Lit Journal, AlphaWrites, Solvicblog and everywhere else. He is a weird guy wedded to a blazing dream of tomorrow, lenient as whatever definition you give to that. Cool in all sense. Not a bibliophile. Partially spiritual. Serendipity is his definition of sanity.

 

SARS IS A METAPHOR

The voice of eighty million phone
pressing generation sparks like
thunder in every news flash
CNN reads: “angry youths wants an
end to police brutality in Nigeria, #ENDSARS.”
But what is SARS?

SARS is the big tummy guy
in the green chamber
Tucking the nation’s fortune
For a seat of sleep in
his disgraceful paunch
at his seventy years of existence.

SARS is the bad road along
Lokoja, Benin city and Bida
SARS is the death gulley express
way that drove Shola and eighteen
others to heaven when he was twelve.

SARS is the failed manifestos
Of our governors and president
wrapped with the goody-goody
of election rigging.

SARS is the darkness that
covered my street for six months and
eight days when the rain fell
for thirty minutes in 2019.

SARS is the song of guns in
the head of “laptop-carrying”
young’uns in my state.
It is the kick in my friends
balls for being a youth here.

SARS is the sum total of
bad governance spelled in
Special Anti-Robbery Squad
jackets and armors,
SARS is a metaphor.

 

WE DIE HERE EVERYDAY

Yesterday, my brother met death in a stand
I don’t know his father but his
lifeless picture I saw on TV
said he was my brother
A shot was enough to get him
gone beyond.

We die here everyday and that’s
not a metaphor
Our electricity company has a rope
strangling their cables and wires
So the bulbs in my room is masked
in cobwebs.

Our president hasn’t spoken
about the bullets in the youths
throat for the past five days.
I guess he’s dying in small
doses.
We die here everyday and
that’s not a metaphor.

From Borno to Niger Delta
and/with a sway down South-west
the voice of death yelp thunderingly
than a roving aircraft
We die here everyday and
that’s not a metaphor.

The streetlights that blared
in stunning embers along
Airport road two weeks ago
is now buried in the repulsive
arms of darkness at 11pm
The rain that fell yesterday
uprooted the poles.

 

OF DAYS NOT LIVED

Some days, I’m just a wind blowing
Across the Sahara desert.
                   So I watch as the ticking
Hands of my watch pirouette me in
                   The wings of a twenty four
Hours ride.
On days like that
                  I’m a widow in ashes
With a sack cloth of blurry hope
And tunic of dying fortune
                And of a dark heart
Waiting impassively for three moons
To sail by.
Regret is another name for
                Days not lived.

BARRACK

I swear to god we live in a barrack here
We wear sorrow on our necks like
Travelers handbag
Hoping to drop it before
The centurion calls halt.
My sister’s workplace is an
Arrow in her back
She’s having insomnia
And Fsc115 is a teargas to
My eyes I can’t see the formulae
In my lecturer’s textbook.

Mum and Dad is in the
Guard room
They were copped for
Trying to wipe my 3 year old
Brother’s tears— he’s scared
Of rifle.
Price of fuel and other
Commodities drops like
Molotov cocktail every news hour
I guess that’s why Grandpa
Died of hypertension.

Our sky is amethyst
Penury and privation is written
In the star dust
I may soon be fifty at
My twenties if I don’t see
A way out of this Garrison.

 

FREEDOM

My grandfather said:
Freedom is a haddock swimming
In water with no hook
Grappling it gill;
Freedom is the breeze
Whirling in space at night.
But here,
Freedom is a 60 year old
Learning to mumble “yes” and
Hold her feet on
The floor.
It is sometimes a
Gun on my head and a
Bowlful of beans when
I stand to cast my vote.
On the 15^th of April, 2014
I found freedom flowing
Like a river
In the hot tears of 276 girls
Up North.
Freedom is the fluid
of men and women
Spouting facilely on farmlands
In southern Kaduna.
Freedom is in the swords of nomads
On the head of farmers.
It is in the potholes and
Pits on our roads that
Ushered my friend to the
Province beneath my feet.
Sometimes it is the men in black
Battering you in an incinerator
For having a brown hair and some ink
On your skin.
Freedom is a hate speech
For hitting the nail on
The head, a mirage, a bloodshot
Of shackles.