Excerpt: Autobiomythography of by Ayokunle Falomo

October 17, 2024

LUGARD & I

ARS POETICA

Consider, first, the breath
before the breath that births the poem.

Then write a line to mark the start
of your expedition. Recruit the parts
of speech you want in your caravan.
Consider what you have to barter
in order to feed the nouns & verbs.

The prepositions too.

Count the cost. Ask questions. Are they loud,
the nouns. Do they speak back.
Consider each word as a rider must his horse.
How fit. How strong. Your adjectives,
how trustworthy are they. How much
does each word weigh. Can you account for every one
of them, for every single thing. Consider scale.

How once you were told to consider the stolen sky.
& then, to make a song about it.

Find out who guides, who guards
the frontiers of your poem. What are they
armed with. What treaty must be signed
to claim the poem
as yours. How many rivers must be crossed
to get from one stanza
to the next. No. Don’t start the poem

until you reckon
with distance. How long
each line must be. Consider longitudes
& latitudes as well as the difference

between a poem a map a mirror & the glass-like sea.
When you look inside the poem, what do you see.
Whose face is it, the face that’s staring back at you.

LUGARD & I

ASPIRATIONS

I bring you news, my friend. I come to tell
you say I meet Lugard today. He ’gree
for me. He ’gree for me well well. Oh yes,
he now my friend too, this fine English man.
He now my friend. I tell him, Yes sir, I’m
devoted to your cause. Yes, sir. Oh cer-
tainly, I am. I say, My tongue is yours.
I say, I now belong for you. My guy,
my life—it nice. He promise me a tent.
I think I get a wife when I get paid.
Oh yes. I teach her how to act and talk
like proper English wife. I love her like
Lugard, he love the Queen. I love her die.
Our love, it blaze like heat of sun. I teach
her how to kiss and make the love. I fill
her up. I make her belly round just like
a globe. We make a lot of kids. Like stars.

LITANY

O Lord, you: who
was born but did not bear, how great the works
of your hands, how great your sins; who made
a throne and then a footstool of another’s land,
whose heaven was the asbestos-roofed duplex
on Dendo Road; who ruled your subjects with iron
fists… Lord Lugard, may Satan double your Portion
of Fire in hell. No matter how wide the gates of heaven
are you will never get there. Lord Lugard, it shall not be
well with you. Lord Lugard Chineke Kpoo gi Oku any-
where you are! Oni sun re o, wherever you are. Thunder
fire you. Lord, if you return, return to us the bodies
the Adubi War swallowed. Give us back each breath.
This we ask of you, though we know you, unlike Mac
-Gregor, did not care to listen to what your subjects
wanted. Lord Lugard, can you see what you caused?
We only ask that you give us what’s ours and we will
pay your taxes, Lord. This time, we won’t come baring
teeth. We’ll lay them down at your altar, Lord. Shall we
become tongues for you, and lap up all that will spill
out the cusp of your hands? Teach us what we will need
to make this land again a lush and sacred land, before
your hands tarnished it. These things we ask, O Lord—