Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Breaking News:

AWCABIG60: Spoken Words “For This I Was Born”

By Guardian Nigeria
23 December 2015   |   12:19 pm
Ayo Ogundipe performs a stunning rendition "For This I Was Born."  at  the AWCABIG60 event . Read and enjoy as you explore Ayo Ogundipe world in poetry. "For This I Was Born" I was born to the Sub-Saharan African geography of legends and folklores To the witness of the sun that baked my skin to perfect…

Ayo Ogundipe performs a stunning rendition “For This I Was Born.”  at  the AWCABIG60 event .

Read and enjoy as you explore Ayo Ogundipe world in poetry.

“For This I Was Born”

I was born to the Sub-Saharan African geography of legends and folklores

To the witness of the sun that baked my skin to perfect oven temperature

That brown of terra-cotta clay fabric…
To the sweltering heat of the tropical warmth

Wearing beads of sweat that glisten on my skin of fine cocoa-butter milk that gleam…
Where the harmattan haze frisk the wind of free-will

And coats the frame of all things that matter

With a protective foil of dust.
I was born to a centenarian of a country

With eclectic enclave of states …

From the coastal lines of Lagos
To the red earth soil of Enugu… hmm laterite, that’s right.
Down South -South

Gushing with oil, like spoils of war…

 

To the five emirates of Ringim, Gumel, Kazaure, Hadija

All siblings to Dutse
The five emirates that makeup Jigawa state

Now let me state my mission;
And although I was born an august visitor in the August month of the calendar year … Go figure!
I was born without a silver spoon …
As a matter of fact I was born with no spoon.

I was born without a spoon cause I did not come to the world to feed

But to feed the world with the wheat of my wit … food for thought.
Now think about it

While listening to the whispering palms

Along the lines of pines down the grape vine

Gossiping the hectic traffic of tropical topics – stop!

 

I did not come here to impress you with words of my mind

Using lines that rhyme.

 

I was born to do a number on you …

Eclectic 21, in a minute or two,

Forty-two will be the reason for a verse in two to you and you and…
Ladies and gentlemen, my fifteen minutes of fame is almost over

Yet you still wonder why I was born?

 

If poetry is the soul that wears the poet,
I am the unveiling of it in flesh
I was born to do this – poetry – in a pose of Green White Green

I was born to do this – Poetry

Cause I was born a Nigerian.
Salute to the Flag!

 

In this article

0 Comments