INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

A community of nations of the world
Where every member is a family member
Where every member is a stakeholder
A community where we are all humans
As if telling the extra-terrestrials to keep off
We are the most advance civilization in the Cosmos
That’s the community that’s truly international

Not an International Community of the Neocons
A community of wolves and vultures
A stage for vampires and scavengers
Where only the Big dance the music of policy
With brutal insensitivity and disgusting arrogance
And weaker nations are only spectators
Who must applaud very wretched choreography.

Instead of the contemptuous scripted drama
Let the Big declare ‘we are the international community’
So that when the Neocons and their apologists
Say ‘International Community’ we know
They are talking of only the ‘Big’
And the rest of us can have appropriate label
‘International commoners’

June 24, 2007/ 11:23 p.m.

Bushnization

While the international community
Talks of the dangers of Talibanization
Of the so-called moderate Islam
The peaceful and rational world
Is full of fear of Bushnization of the free world

July 22, 2007

NO MORE HEROES IN THE FREEWORLD

Where are the brave? Where are the heroes?
If justice is crushed by iron fist
Freedom is caged and democracy hanged
Yet celebrating brutality with fanfare
Turning liars into saints overnight

There are no more heroes
In the heart of the free world
There are no more brave men
In the land of the free
There are no more great men
In the land of the great

They have all gone wayward
They have all become accomplices
By looking the other way
While the killings of children and women is on
A people’s wealth is squandered without shame
Yet shamelessly propagating freedom and democracy!

KANO
May 18, 2007

IMMIGRATION LAWS

Why do you insist on crossing the rim?
Only to work on jobs they could not do?
Yet they don’t want you in their terrain
Why can’t you be contented and stay
Where God created you in the first place?
Let every one remain in his poverty or affluence
In his backwardness or forwardness
And see who blinks first!

KANO
April 22, 2006

HAPPINESS

Happiness is embedded
In what we believe
In the very little we have
In the people we trust
In the people we love truly
In jobs we enjoy doing
In doing good to others

Not in what we see in others
Nor in the corridors of power
Neither in the hands of wealthy merchants
But in the frontiers of our heart
That we alone know its worth

KANO
May 20, 1999

MATHEMATICS

Mathematics tends to be tick
Although it makes me sick
Even when I study it for a week
Figures do make me weak
Numbers always make me meek

KANO,
May 19, 1999

ARROGANCE

Like the Pharaoh of the flood
Who once upon a phase
See himself above all
In economic wit and military might
Arrogate unto himself, the status of God

The twenty first century emperors
Display too much arrogance of power
But God brush pharaoh’s face on the ground
So shall the nose of today’s arrogant emperors
For God never like arrogance
Though power makes mockery of human weakness

Birmingham AL
September 26, 2001

WHERE IS THE FIRE?

For Baffa
This is still summer, winter is yet
Although a season and another have elapsed
In this new season I saw you
But I could not sense the fire
Where has the fire gone?

KANO
June 25, 2006

THIS WORLD

From non existence to existence
A meeting space
From existence to non existence
A parting space

Wudil
April 13, 2006

DO YOU CARE?

I value my way of life
It is the best life can give
I eat what I want
Wear what I chose
Go to where I wish
Sleep in a nice house
Do whatever I want
Without fear of anyone
For I’m secured

I am rich and beautiful
I am powerful and proud
Tall I stand among others
Why should I care about any one
So long my way of life is protected

I waste a lot no doubt
I consume too much I am sure
But that is because I’m powerful
That’s why others envy me always
That is why I’m the best

Why should I worry about others
It is not my business to care
The way of the rich is not the way of the poor
The lifestyle of the strong does not look the weak’s
Civilization is what I think it is
I should care only about me

Who cares if you are hungry
Or have no roof above your head
Who mind that you are diseased
Or insecure poverty-stricken
Why should I be concerned
If you are oppressed and cheated
I care only about myself
I always feel I’m more civilized
I am a human being but not like you

Shhhhh!
It is a matter of time
The day shall come when
Everyone must care
About every other one
By the dare need to be truly human

Birmingham AL
January 20, 2002

I HATE GOODBYES

In memory of Ruqayya

I hate goodbyes, for long goodbyes
Are painful and they hurt
They take away from one
A pint of his blood or pound of his flesh
For it takes a part of ones being away

I hate goodbyes they make me weak and meek
They detach me from someone so dear
And turn the other’s existence into memory
In the hard disk of our busy brains

A goodbye may be for a while
But even if it is ephemeral
I hate short goodbyes, they too
Hurt and are painful

But a long goodbye is too hard
To bear but a must to endure
Yet sometimes in life we must say
A long goodbye sometimes too soon

The longest goodbyes are inevitable
Each one of the mortals gets
A long goodbye and gives one!
At a time appointed to get and give it.

Kano
September 19, 2006

WHOSE REFLECTION?

If you look at the mirror
What you see is your image not mine
If I look at the mirror
What I see is my image not yours
If they look at the mirror
What they see is their images not yours or mine
Your image cannot be mine
Neither mine could be yours
Nor theirs ours
Why then must you insist in seeing your image
When I look at the mirror?

Birmingham, AL
October 13, 2001