Poetry: To Dead Presidents | R2BsL

Our ears are used to warnings of sirens,
Noted signposts that clear us off your route.
These days you’re mute. Are you dead?
Drowned by apples from the palms of Irenes?

But I heard rumours in times past: ‘gods don’t die’
That their souls are graced to immortals,
Well welcomed by predecessors spirits;
Victims of dead but now alive and beyond.

So, Dear Dead president,
How huge are your castles over there?
How lofty the beds that smooch your backs?
How tasty the waters that quench your thirst?

If you fall sick do you have a Dubai?
For checks and breaks do you go to Mumbai?
When last did your pens kiss cheques to siphon?
Can you recall your Swiss accounts and pass?

Eulogists have stamped graves ‘REST IN PEACE’
sorry for the questions, curiosity caused.
Your present worlds are yours to enjoy,
They’re fruits from trees whose roots you employ.

I was sent to wake your ghosts from the coasts,
So before I take my leave to live please,
Is my President dead or Alive?
I will never knock again your spirits if answered.

Bamvi

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To Dead Presidents whose legacies are in death palaces,
I greet thee and the god of thy will.
We have lived as you rightly would
with tightened feet.
Conspiracy grows from your graves,
we have forgotten your headstones
and now have stone heads,
we beg for your tongues
for ours have rusted with heavy lies.
Promises and truth that have not outlived the fire from our hearts.
To you o dead presidents
I know not where to knot my words from.

To Dead Presidents whose stories are 6-footed stories,
I write to tell you how freedom is the new chain.
I understand your cause only if you lived to tell me,
I know not what wombs these heads came from,
their grounds are corrupt
yams germinate after a day,
the air is a fouled scent of peace
that waves around bodies resting in pieces.
To you o Dead Presidents like Fela, Malcom, Queen Amina, Mandela, Marcus Garvey, Huey Newton and Da Vinci,
my words are scored from a tiny little dust of nothing.

Ruddapoet

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Eggs of words I will lay
For my dead presidents
through my voice I will hatch.
On my voice my sincerity will walk down into your ears
Off loading how much I never liked you,
how your policies I hated.
How your presence stole my source of income
How my three square meal lost it weight

To my dead presidents
My words will travel down into your caskets
To sing you joyful songs you can’t hear
Nor feel, my heart will celebrate you
For you left with no goodbyes
That would have being worst than a blow

To my dead presidents
I will tell of your poetic cabinet members
How poetry never left their tongues
How pun was the most familiar figure of their speeches
Forcing it down the throat of the have nots
Swallowing with their eyes closed and tears dropping

To my dead presidents
I present this gift of Apostrophe
With no simile or metaphor
For you are of same species
Abrupt ,Greedy and selfish.
Rest in peace when peace turns war.

Bang1.

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Did you hear
That presidents now rule in hotels?
Is it clear
Why the stool for the feet
Orders the hands to submit?
Are we here
Where numbers are repeated dates
So it’s hard to figure?
Do we wear
Different clothes to
Hide these bodies resemblances?
Are these heads dead,
Or is death convinced to run as president?
To dead presidents who would read and weep
It’s daylight and the morning is falling asleep.
To dead presidents who bathed blood to feed the weak
Decades have shrunk into weeks
To dead presidents who never served
The dinning you left is dusty still,
The bones of these plates are tired from lack.
To dead presidents who never wished to die
The living is the land of the dead.
To dead presidents who left us hope
Doubt is now the guard of the tomb.
To dead presidents who are still living
How far is the land of the dead?

Leon