Nostalgia
By Ebrima G. Sankareh
Betrayed, forgotten, abandoned and left to vanish into oblivion
The scum of the earth some called it
The blue cumulus clouds dissipate,
The thunder shakes the Heavens amid the lightening flashes like riffle bullets on sparkling glass ceilings
The irritating clatters that chuckle the chickens
The chickens’ cowardice once masqueraded in a rogue’s regalia
Bemused, shocked, flabbergasted, awed, dazed, amid the cacophony of strangers
Still dazed amid the laughter of perceived comrades
Paranoia ignites telepathic communications galvanizing fears of perceived desperadoes
A rush to Kambuskia for ancestral intervention
Amid unbridled hallucinations about the fanatical bastards
Yes! Bustards, idiots, witches, oil their serpentine venoms to resurrect a betrayed, forgotten, abandoned, doomed megalomaniac whose citadel once the apogee of conspiracy, fibs, betrayals, and chicanery.
Tear him down, tear her down, and tear them down
Destroy the bastards for a bigger bastard
Yes! Betrayed, forgotten, abandoned and left to tarry like a drunken mad man in search of his identity
But even Allah the Creator seemed inattentive this time
Because opportunity knocks but once
And “those who purify themselves must prosper,” says the Koran.
To the desperate rescue they scramble for evidentiary notes from the Twains
They now sit to shit on
Like primordial beasts with no sense of shame,
The unbridled arrogance, the parochial narrowness, the mobile metaphors and the walking paradoxes, the forgotten, the abandoned, the lonely, the doomed, cry for help and not even the Creator seems worried
He too, complains about the missed opportunities or betrayals.
Confused in their garden of chicanery where the seeds of betrayal, conspiracy,
Malevolence, sham, germ, are grown higgledy-piggledy like the lost gardener of Kambuskia.
Abandoned, betrayed, lonely, doomed, a desperate attempt at resurrection
But God-Almighty feigns dumbness, amid the conspicuously hellish nellish of racing rats like a marathon for Eternal Glory
Like a drowning doomed ass, the ass kisses the ass’s ass as the ass giggles in poetic redemption probably to reminisce over the lost glory where lies and machinations were the engines of progress
It remains a sagacious tale of an Englishman’s nightmare
In this tell-tell tale, all non-poets must take a back seat and seek Soyinka’s wisdom
For truth telling in its simplest form has vamoosed like our cherished human rights
It belies the fateful Friday our tyrant was declared Chief of the Castle overlooking the Mighty Atlantic.
It was a day when false promises of a fake tyrant were traded
Traded for our sacred Constitution and not even the wisest men raised their index fingers
Lamentably, legal luminaries competed for prominence
And disaster was inadvertently invoked
For the streams of blood since, are rude awakenings
That democracy in its crudest form is better than tyranny
Our nightmare is a potent bye-product of all this lunatic craziness
My friends, my good friends, Alas there is hope that “the future governs with a golden finger” and there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Each human is an invention of one Man with multiple dialectical names of supremacy- God, Allah, Unani, Jah, the list is long and boring
But each human is responsible for his own seasoning, his own legacy, his own reputation, and his eternal glory carved at the edge of metaphor.
Neither a single hero nor a chest-pounding Lafayette makes a man what he ought to be.
Thus immersed, contempt, and blessed, we must never forget to help
Help! Especially, where a void threatens our civilization of love, hard work, brotherly existence and tolerance all for a better world.
In nostalgia we should use the wise words of wise men of yester years to curb the growing arrogance of rogues and imbeciles threatening our foundation, “for The Gambia Our homeland.”