6. The Blacksmith’s Soul (Ogun’s Presence)
The God of Iron haunts the narrow cell,
With Ogun’s hammer ringing in the brain;
The poet crafts a heaven out of hell,
And finds a sacred rhythm in his pain.
As Pathfinder, he cuts through thickest night,
To forge a blade from solitary days;
The prisoner becomes the source of light,
While walking through the labyrinthine maze.
He is the smith who tempers every word,
In fires lit by fierce, internal heat,
Until the silent, hidden truth is heard,
And tyranny is forced into retreat.
Though flesh is bound by metal, cold and grim,
The god of forge and forest dwells in him.
7. The Watcher and the Watched (The Jailer’s Shadow)
The peephole is a cold and glassless eye,
Through which the faceless hunters seek his soul;
They wait to hear a broken, whimpering cry,
To prove the "crypt" has taken back control.
But Soyinka stares back through the heavy door,
With gaze as sharp as Ogun’s ancient spear;
He charts the patterns on the dusty floor,
And leaves no room for any trace of fear.
The jailer is the one who truly waits,
Imprisoned by the keys he holds so tight,
While he who sits behind the iron grates,
Has found the wings to take a mental flight.
For walls are thin when spirit starts to climb,
Beyond the reach of lock, and key, and time.
8. The Scraps of Paper (A Petrarchan Sonnet)
On toilet rolls and cigarette-box backs,
He scratched the ink of A Shuttle in the Crypt,
A secret harvest that he slowly ripped,
From out the void and all its hollow cracks.
The system sought to leave his mind in stacks,
By ensuring every creative vein was tipped;
But through the dark, the poet’s spirit tripped,
And followed life along the hidden tracks.
The "Man Died" when the silence won the day,
But here, the man is resurrected whole,
Through words that refused to fade to grey.
He kept the ledger of a wounded soul,
Until the bars of Kaduna gave way,
And let the thunder of the message roll.
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