For the Love of Indians and Poetry

So the last time i came here was some years ago. And surprisingly i have had more visitors from India, than any other country apart from Nigeria. So here is the poem i wrote for Indians and performed at the Diplomatic Jazz Night Curated by Onyeka Nwelue and Organized with the help of the able Mitterand Okorie.


Date of Performance was 16th of January 2016 at the Indian High Commission Abuja.




When tomorrow comes,

And you do not find me here,

Search for me over there,

Between the domed roofs of the Taj Mahal,

For I wish to become the eighth wonder of the world,

And write my own love story,

on the temple walls,

Or on the surface of its waters.




But if I am lost on a winter's day,

Then bring me a coat without delay,

For I will certainly be in Kashmir mir, the land dressed with snow,

or upon the Dal Lake,

Humming the songs of paradise, with birds.




When life threatens to hold me down,

I will take a trip to Goa,

Lie upon its sun bleached, golden sands,

Or sway with the palms to the music of the wind,




For when we have traveled through the seven islands,

And bathed in the bright lights of Mumbai,

Then we shall plant our hearts in the gardens of Bangalore,




And set sail to Cape Comorin,

Where the waters meet,

Where the Sunrise is more beautiful than the sunset,

a good place to die.




When the tempest threatens my soul,

I will journey to the Palace of Winds in Udaipur,

To bring back a worthy crown for Lord Krishna,

I will see through nine hundred and fifty three small windows, a worthy route for escape.




In my dreams,

Lagoons are stringed together like a chain of glistening jewels from Hyderabad,

across the neck of Kerala,

Where water falls like velvet snow,

Across the backs of elephants,




Come, come with me on this journey to peace,

Let us feast on cherries at Pondicherry,

And sip tea at Darjeeling,

let the Queen of the green Hills take you higher than Kanchenjunga.




Let us gaze upon time,

cut out of rocks and frozen among the Amanda caves,

Let us send letters home through

the floating post office.

Tell our sisters we have found the home of shampoos,

Tell my brothers, we found the cradle of the chess game,

Tell them we are at the birth place of the Indus,

Where the Champions of Kabbadi baddi reside,

And when this letters are on their way home,

And we are let pass the Gates of India,

Then let us bow before the Lotus temple,

For within its petals seats the beating heart of India,

let us smile and say,

Welcome, welcome to India.

What do you think?

one problem with being offline for a few days is- you miss a lot, its like school, you go for two weeks, and nothing happens, its all boring, then you miss a day, and iyanya shows up, there are seven fights and fashola came around, its crazy.
have been on fb for a while checking out what i missed, and i feel like crying, damn the flex of this blackberry, anyways what have you been upto? o ye few but faithful followers?
today i'll give you all a sneak peek...............imagine a school of arts, where you can learn how to write? prose, poetry everything, plus bead-making, interior decorating, etc and the great thing is some of the teachers are your idols, chimamanda adichie taking you a writing class, chuma nwokolo, and more of the best in each field? sounds far-fetched? well i'm dreaming up that school in a few weeks......LYRIVERSITY, it will be called. wanna help? well buzz me and let me know what you think. Remember its our world, we can change it, one step at a time. i'll be signing off here... see you next time.......stay dreaming.

Click the link at your own risk: http://wordup411ng.com/chika-jones-my-love-poems-are-personal/

It has been quite a while you might say, unless you are reading this blog for the first time, which i am pretty sure you are, i mean its not like i am a professional blogger, so why even bother, but lets get two things straight, first.......hmmm.....never mind, maybe later.

So wassup people? how was the new year? christmas? val? have you settled into the grind? school? work? none of the above? still tryna find your balance? Well, its all good we all are> except me, i've found mine, i'm a student and writer, thats all. Have you heard about the douchebag Sanusi? lol......i mean what was he thinking right/? if i had his job, i'd just shut my trap keep my head low,and be pious in my bedroom. Anyway, he better go back to his family and hope they dont send assasins after him, mumu.

Hope you went to church today? if you didnt, dont worry, the end is coming for you, its coming for you and you probably will die, not like its any great loss.

So to the main agenda. i mean, why would Real Sociedad beat Barcelona, chai! and of all things, this time of the season, plus i heard they did something stupid in one area of lagos like that, something about stealing pepper, na true? but na wa o! just ordinary pepper, our people no they try at all.

Meanwhile this is a test run, lemme knw wat you think about my writing/rambling style.

Visit my facebook wall Chikatito Jones for football facts this sunday......am off to eat rice and finish liverpool match. see ya anytime!

Beautiful little things

Sitting still in the center,

Surrounded all around by weeping winds,

Enclosed by homeland walls,

Turning I faced the northern stalls,

Blood and gore spattered my face,

Grimacing in disgust,

I turned visage southward,

But oily tears and the dank damp smell of corruption,

From oil wells and their inhabitants,

Had me turning away quickly,

But not before I glimpsed,

The corruption of leaders,

Flattening with giant opulence the masses,

I watched through the crack in my shield,

The little boys across my street,

Dribble and score dreaming of stardom,

On famous soccer fields,

But their dreams dashed against reality,

Forced to fend and bend to another’s will,

I soon turned to the east,

The land of the daring and industrious,

Yet home was scanty,

Our young men abroad on foreign green pastures,

Tilling and farming a strangers land,

I walked slowly through abandoned homestead,

Hearing the frozen laughter of playing children,

The ghosts of a better past,

In the west I found,

A little baby growing,

By leaps and bounds,

Corruption, who cut milk teeth on servile blood,

I closed my minds blinds,

Determined to stop this painful drama,

To end this comic tragedy,

But not before I caught a glimpse,

Of chimamanda adichie,

Not before I had seen the works of,

Okonjo iweala,

Mikel obi,

Onyeka onwenu…….

I saw you and I saw me,

Determined to rise from ashes of diseased democracy,

And my roving eyes remained inert on,

This beautiful little things.

PIECES OF BROKEN GLASS- A SHORT STORY

Michael’s unslippered feet hit the road with a resounding smack, he was walking down a quiet side street in Surulere, a suburb of Lagos, it was midday, and the sun stood high in the sky, yet despite its intensity, its heat was hardly felt by Michael, the Harmattan was in full swing and the sun’s heat was tempered by the dry blowing wind.

Michael was in no hurry, he walked like one who had a lot of time on his hands, a young man came out of a red gate adjacent to him, “chei!” was the muted exclamation that escaped his lips, he hurriedly backed into the gate and slammed it shut, though Michael was sure he was peeping through the hole in the gate, he elicited such a response from people this days, if he could, he would have analyzed the cause, but his mind couldn’t be coerced into such a task, so he simply plunged on oblivious of the young  man inside the red gate, his cracked lips hurt quite bitingly, and he wished he could do something about  it, as soon as he saw the looming junction ahead, he veered left and bumped into a startled old woman, she fell down more in surprise than anything else,  he saw her fall, and his hand went out to help her, but his lips mouthed the formula of an organic compound, and his hand hung limply in the air, the old lady having overcome her initial surprise let loose a scream, staring in fear at the hairy, dirt caked, callused hands in front of her, Michael looked on bemused, her piercing scream, reminding him of late night horror movies, the gate man of a house close by charged at him stick raised high, and Michael stood rooted to the spot, until the stick had found it mark on his forehead, he leaped over the old lady, who was scrambling to get up, and his knee caught her in the ribs, she fell back, moaning weakly in pain, but self preservation had kicked in and Michael flew down the road like hounds were at his heels,
“madam, sorry na so him dey do, abeg stand up, he don go, but she muttered weakly, “please help me up, my ribs are hurting quite badly”. The kindly illiterate gate man, helped her up and assisted her to a pharmacy, but the learned old woman died three days later from broken ribs and internal bleeding, injuries she sustained while trekking back from the pension office, because she was so lost in thought she ran into Michael, she had been thinking of how long she could keep going to the pension office without any positive result, how she was going to pay her rising PHCN bills and afford foodstuffs for she and the little granddaughter her daughter had dropped at home before eloping with yet another man.

Oblivious to all of this, the next week found Michael in Orile, walking down another side street, if someone had monitored his movement ever since he went insane, they may have noticed that he favored quiet places, a residue of the introvert he had been in Olabisi Onabanjo university, before wrong company had introduced him to hard drugs, which fragmented his min beyond repair.

The Harmattan was still blowing strong, and his tattered singlet fluttered in the wind has Michael walked down a quiet side street in Orile, his thoughts unbelievably fragmented like pieces of broken glass.

An excerpt from the novel i'm working on.

  

 He stood arms akimbo, his skeletal joints folded, incredibly flexible, just as he had since the moon rose,        he looked at the horde before him and it took his breath away, it made him restless, and it felt quite unfair to have such a huge burden on his muscular shoulders, he scanned the surrounding darkness expertly, it would be hours before the light would pierce the inner recesses of their underground abode. He closed his eyes meditatively, he had to accomplish this great task before him, from the dawn of time, just as others before him had done, soon he could feel their worries and regrets, swamping him, yet like his forebears, shirking his duties never crossed his mind, the task was here and must be accomplished successfully.

He slowly began reciting the preparations for the umpteenth time……………………………………………

The internal clock had started ticking in him, several suns ago, he had felt it and had been slow to understand its meaning, then the waters had returned, ferocious and threatening, roaring like giant white dragons, they had crumbled the outer walls of the city, bringing fear like a dark cloud with them, the inhabitants murmured and became restless, after the second stampede which took some lives, the search was initiated and word was soon spread around, travelling like a bush fire during the Harmattan, they were searching for the pointer.

He had felt it ominous and threatening, they were coming for him just like each pointer before him had known, and as helpless as usual, all he could do was wait. it was the order of things from time before suns, from times before the moon…………

The Formicidae are an ancient race, their folklores tell of a time when their physical and morphological structures were more larger and complex, according to the old one kra, there was a time, when they could look a Hymenopteris in the very face, he said this when he returned from a very successful nectar expedition, he said they started shrinking in size and transforming, when the entire horde drank at the pool, during the time of Cretaceous. Some believed him, but some did not, old kra loved to make up stories, so much that fact was indistinguishable from fiction at times.

Kra and his tales were usually ignored; all they knew were what they looked like, powerful mandibles, large eyes, their narrow waists and large heads, were a source of great pride to this race.