Black President

This tale is woven around legends

It will be peddled around for decades

Historians will use it as a point of reference

It will be told to kids as folk tales

This is the story of the man

who raised a band to fight an army

Am afraid that is not the plan

If you find that alarming

It was he, they said carried death in his pouch

and his birth the mark the beginning of an epoch

Strange one, Abami!

Oh! … You should know the woman he calls Maami

The lioness of Lisabi

She was the great Amazon

who led the popular women revolt

against arbitrary taxation

For which the then king had to bolt

This was no axiom

It was at a time when women couldn’t even vote

This was a feat no one then could phantom

It gave women liberation a jolt

Legend has it that she breast fed him with rebellion

The chief priest as he was later known embraced no religion

These images Kodak lens could capture

But may I suggest you close your eyes to view this picture

To understand its elements and features

Hmn!

Maybe he is not even the picture

am trying to paint

So, I will leave out scriptures

for he was not a saint

Yes!

This is the man who married a harem of women in one day

Then divorced them all in another

A man served a packet of cigarettes in one plate

But chose to diet with marijuana

But to the down trodden

He was their prophet

To the high and mighty

He was no puppet

You might ask,

Was he a man of faith?

What became his faith?

I will tell you

His ankles were fettered

His body battered

His mother murdered

He martyred

For his lump sum verses

He was held on trumped up charges

He was kept close to the gulags

as the scalp is to the doo-rag

Why?

He waged a war against

Corruption, nepotism

Oppression, despotism

Music was his weapon

And it was as potent as venom

From a scorpion

No one knows the sound of war drums

Better than the soldiers at Dodan

I t was not dundun or gangan

Neither was it uclu

This was kpegisu

It was as heaps of hot coals on their laps

And they sprang up and danced the fire dance

They came rushing down, like water gushing down a tap

It all did seem like a trance

A thousand soldiers came marching

Down the road they were advancing

With chants of war songs

Into Kalaluta they throng

With chants of war songs

What was heard next was the boom of their gun

Followed by the beat of his drums

They fired their canons

He blew on his horn

The battle line was drawn

There was no cock crowing at dawn

But Owls hooting on the lawn

The battle was soon over, a war was never won

His aged mother was flung like a piece of clothing

From the balcony of a story building

She never landed.

The soldiers had the whole premises surrounded

He watched as his sweat burn

The whole kalakuta republic was razed

This was not the city he was born,

But on this street he reigned

In their trails

They left sorrow, tears and blood

Properties of inestimable value were lost

His mother never recovered

She died from injuries sustained

The government couldn’t be bothered

Status quo had to be maintained

He returned weak and frail

Took his mothers coffin to the barracks gate

A token for the then head of state

He waxed more political song about the ordinary mans strife

In this bitch of a life

This is the story of the man

who raised a band to fight an army.

Am afraid that’s not the plan

If you find that alarming

He said all we have left to conquer is fear

All we have to do next is dare

His story has inspired a nation

It will inspire generations

This is no myth, neither is it my imagination.