Category: Life

Bae, Life, Love, Response

With Me

I. Ogunbase

Letters found from a loved one to another…

“You have been absent from here in its totality because it has been difficult to find the words to explain what you’ve done to me. 

You entered my life almost four years ago, sporting the blue dress at our mutual’s graduation party… You being shy, I being I, interested in getting to know you. 

Fast forward to now, and even though we’ve only been official for nine months, it feels like you’ve balanced me for the duration that you decided to give me a chance. 

You prayed for me when I was down. Held my head up when all I wanted to do was look away in shame. You straightened me up, looked into my eyes and told me you believed in me. That I should not cower but look ahead and walk through…

So here’s what I have for you. A promise to you alone, away from prying eyes…

I promise to love you with my being, in the same way that you’ve shown me love. I promise to do my best to do right by you and by God. I pra…“

… Rest of letter found torn and words crossed down. A little addendum added…

“I think I’ll reserve the rest for a more private message to you. After all, your name pertains to being ‘with me’, so I’ll wait till it’s just us”

No other letter found

Life, Prose, Shorts, Thoughts, Time, Uncategorized

1

I. Ogunbase

The world is currently amassing into groups and crowds as the global clock ticks towards the end of the day. The end of the month. The end of the year.

As expected, numerous blog post will post up new things to look forward to in the new year, or new outlooks to embrace, or games to expect or movies to anticipate, so on and so forth.

Some will congregate inside churches, dancing, praising and worshipping their way into the new year, while the others will congregate in clubs and bars and all, dancing and welcoming in the new year with unbound reverie.

The darkness outside forces me to cast my mind back through the year, to inspect on how the year has gone and all I have is a sober gratitude to my Maker that I’m at the door to the next one.

If I localise the feeling, it’s been a wonderful year. I’ve got a girlfriend. I’ve got a new job. I feel different and happier. There’s a new respect between my dad and I. While admittedly, I have a few gripes with certain plans, it’s been a good year.

If I expand the circle past the boundaries of home, the world has become increasingly dangerous. Radicalism is back on the rise as people take advantage of deep seated frustrations and transform them to hate. So we’re back to hating each other as the ones that rule us intentionally cause discord and divide between us.

I don’t know what next year holds.

But my hands on the door, and I guess I can only hope and pray that next year goes as God wills it to.

Happy New Year in 3… 2…

Emotion, Life, Poem

Scare Tactics

I. Ogunbase

I notice when you creep ahead of me,
Your silent boots,
Not so silent
The dark shadows at the edges,
The creaking floorboards,
The whinging door frames…

I know what you plan,
As sure as you know what my reaction will be.
We’ve played this back and forth relentlessly

You, jumping in front me yelling “Boo”,
Me, debating whether or not I push past the fear and bring the dream to life.

I’ll have to admit to the countless times I turned round and betrayed myself.
Bought into your doubt and told myself I couldn’t make it.
I had watched you take credit for it then, parading the failed carcass of my goals to your colleagues.
I watched ashamed,
honestly,
broken by the realisation that you had blocked my forward movement, and left me with the backwards conveyor belt.

But that was then. This is now.

I can notice you creeping ahead of me,
Your silent boots,
Not so silent,
The creaking floorboards
And your silent whispers

I know what you plan,
As sure as you know what my reaction will be.
As we’ve played this back and forth relentlessly

I’ll be moving ahead this time though…
You’re not killing this light I’m holding in my hands.

I’ll be moving on ahead this time…
We’ll revisit this game,
next time I’m around

Life, Prose, Shorts, Thoughts

Cold Cases

I. Ogunbase

I can taste the blood in my mouth, strong, iron. My tongue flicks in disgust, curiosity and conceded to the truth of the matter. My gum is bleeding somewhere. My finger goes in to inspect, i feel the teeth, following the tongue as it led me to the culprit. I touch it, I check.

My chest rises and falls as my mind contemplates the occurrence of the bleeding gum. It is fleeting however, as my mind returns back to the conundrum at hand. The box of cold cases opened at the feet of my mental detectives.

It remains in the middle, as they all stare at it frightfully. Certain boxes, after all, really shouldn’t be opened, especially after much hassle and heart pain had been felt over the cases themselves.

Imagery aside, I find myself jousting with the same foes that I have battled for a long time. The same set of enemies, the same set of moves… just this time, we fight on a new battleground.

The darkness outside reminds me I’m alone out here. Minimal social contact, except for housemates but not enough to fill the void within. I feel lonely. A feeling I fought repeatedly when I sought work in a time when I had none. The feeling of being stuck in the cubicle of a room, staring at the walls and the phone hoping someone could draw you out of the house even if it was brief. But no… not over here. It’s cold out. And the absence of a four-wheeled beauty meant my legs stayed stuck to the floor of my room, as I found solace in what used to be my coping system. Gaming.

I power the system and wait for it to come on.

“En garde”, my mind shouts as I battle Frustration with frustration. Frustration at the fact the my future is still a mathematical puzzle with no imaginary number to solve it. I’m not even trying to take control of God’s plans for my life, but I’m quite literally staring at a blank screen hoping that it would eventually show static.

Frustration at the fact that I’ve spent so much but gained so little from all the driving lessons I’ve done. Oh, I can drive, but when your job requires you to move about just before your driving test, then you get into a bind of sorts. Multiply that with the multitude of new lessons in a new area, plus the postponement upon postponement of test date, then you have to question why your bank account has a picture of you doing a back flip into the red zone.

“10/10 would Olympics again”

Frustration at the realization that I am prone to forgetting stuff which in turn makes me make blunders that I spend time apologizing for. I stress that audible articulation is not my best form of communication. Yet people expect just that. Heck, as it stands, written is not even as efficient but it tends to be more precise than the things I say because my mind is quite humorously inept in stringing sentences together well enough for me to say them.

Cue the ho-hum.

My mind flips through the other cases… Hope, Life, Career, Love, Motivation and a couple more obscure names flash across. It chickens out and closes the boxes with an exasperated sigh.

The cold cases get dropped as usual, as the mental detectives find comfort in the mental donuts of memes. Why worry about that which supersedes your mental strength?, I feel my mind whisper to itself as it wiped the sugary white dust off its mouth. I grimace and tighten my hold on the gaming controller.

The screen comes to life in a colorful glee that I gladly lose myself within the folds of that which remains unreal.

Why worry?

Life, Prose, Random, Thoughts

Picture Perfect?

I. Ogunbase

The sun hangs low above in the skies across England, even though the warmth it dishes out is minimal. Minimal, in regards to the North as the cold air of the yester-nights rain hangs overhead.

It’s chilly.

Coats and Jackets brush by each other as employees bustle about, lost in their own respective worlds. Everyone gets to Work to work, but really, hoping for something else. Something different.

By the time the warmth descends, it is lunch time. The working force pushing themselves away from their desks and out back in the open, enroute the canteen and the bars selling more warmth in the form of food. The mind is joyous even as the tummy rejoices.

Its brief, moments like this. When the sun hangs at the right angle to filter it’s light through the trees branches and shower the Earth with more warmth, the wind blowing the fallen leaves into the air.

Picture perfect.

For a while.

Then the moment lasts forever. The warmth turns to heat, as the jackets and coats come off. The body pores pour out sweat in record quantities as the body laments the heat. The trees wither and die, the leaves dry up. The wind remains, stuck in the air causing the atmosphere to get stuffy. Humid.

There’s a word that comes to mind here.

Stagnant.

Like the 9-5 madness of the robotic world. Waking up, getting to work, leaving work, eating, minimal free time, sleeping. Weird order. Necessary and yet, done in the most involuntarily subconcious way possible as the mind has rationalised it into simplicity.

“You must work. To eat. To live.”

Stagnant.

As the dreams mixed and matched in kidulthood get shelved because the “big-boy” adult pants are now being worn and luxuries can’t be afforded anymore. Dreams, offset by worries. So we stay content in mediocrity. Lament at the fact that others have made it while we are stuck here being stagnant.

Sometimes…

…sometimes…

…wishing things could revert back to when they were picture perfect.

Retrospect, huh?

Life, Pain, Thoughts, thoughts

Falling.

I. Ogunbase

These last couple days have been surreal to me.

I had hoped that eventually I bounce back to some version of normality that would allow me to cope and adjust to the injustice that the world I live in seem to revel in.

I was wrong.

The rhetoric has been said, directly or indirectly, by many. It has been repeated by many, shown in movies by different characters, written in stories, drawn in comes and the reality of it all still hits true.

“The world is broken.”

As of this morning, I woke to the news that 5 police officers had been killed by armed shooters in the middle of what was supposed to be a peaceful protest. I pictured it in my head as husbands/sons/fathers leaving their houses to assist in the protest of a movement, only for the reality of the job to set in as they lay bleeding in the dark because someone, somewhere found their organisation guilty of something and decided they’d pay the price. It’s been hours since then but we mourn.

In the space of three days, 3 black men have been killed under questionable circumstances which re-directed everyone back to the reality that out there, there are numerous people who are, by default, biased against us because of the colour of our skin. Like a phone reminder so we don’t forget that we are not generally liked by the world. As almost expected, we rose up in our droves and protested, social media, physically, at the sights that we had been forced to replay over and over again, burning the images of the men bleeding out into our brain. The deaths feel too close to home. SO we mourn.

Let’s not even forget the Nigerian kill in Italy for defending his wife against a racist. (<<It’s a link… Go on and click)

In just a week, the world watched as Baghdad streamed the atrocity committed at the end of their fast. Bodies strewn around like confetti as we had to realise, once again, that life is fleeting. Families torn apart at the whims of others because they want to get an ideal across that is contrary to what is current. So the hate spreads, deeply ingrained into the hearts of man as tears roll down the faces of the afflicted. The rhetoric that a specific religion was responsible for heinous crimes, proven once more to be untrue. Our hearts fall heavily, as we mourn.

These last couple days have been surreal, so to speak.

I had hoped that eventually I return back to some version of sanity that would allow me to cope and adjust to the injustice that the world I live in seem to revel in.

I was mistaken.

As the years went by, realisation struck me in the meanest of ways, opening my eyes to notice that we, as a species, are becoming more and more divided, pulling away from one another because we want to “take our stuff back”. Our “countries”. Our “lands”. Our “money”. Our this and that, so we fight to break off in a world where we should be drawing together to fight off the evils in the darkness.

The internet is rolling as I speak, mud-slinging and tearing at each-other’s throat as the blame game is played extensively. It is always someone’s fault at the end of the day.

United we stand. Divided we fall.

…

I guess we’re still falling.

Brexit, Emotion, EU, Life, Thoughts, UK

Uncertainty

I. Ogunbase

It’s 22:26.

The day’s uncertain weather lingers, as if to mirror the emotions of the people under it’s gaze. Uncertainty. The motivation behind fear and the blood that runs deep within the body of irrationality.

Uncertainty.

The sun has hidden itself, retreated back as the world turns so that it might let us retire, and stir those at the other end to work. The night sky remains dark and blue, coolly letting those still aware in the space of reality, time to think and reflect back to their early days. For some, it’s nostalgia behind rosy tinted glasses. For others, it’s the face of stark truth staring back at them. It’s chilly. The air remains abuzz with quiet conversation in some areas, drunken livery in others. Some are drinking to quiet down their worries, others? to celebrate the victory of the day.

Uncertainty.

The youth lament at the choices being made for them, angry at the solution being presented before them. But their voices are not heard. Their voices are not going to be heard. After all, it’s not at the best interest of those who would, should, do the hearing.

The larger world watches with growing concern. The same theme remains. Uncertainty. Questions already being asked with no answer to follow. They remain ever watching with bated breaths.

In a world filled with war and darkness, blood and madness, hatred and division. We vote to divide ourselves from a union simply because we want to “take our country back”.

From whom?

Life, Pain, Poem, Uncategorized

[Lost Pages]

I. Ogunbase

I went through my drafts and found this. So I’m gonna post it. It’s from 3 years ago. Hope you enjoy it. I’m going to start posting any old work of mine that don’t have a particular theme, be it prose, blog post or poetry under [Lost Pages] from here on out.

*

She

is

Locked within herself like a prisoner…
Everyone sees the ‘lady’ but fails to see her…

Innocence chained up by the experiences she’s been through
one can only guess how she’s lived through it…
Forced to ‘grow-up’ against her wishes,
so she compensates with binges of drinks,
white upon her nostrils,
and momentary lapses of ‘faked’ intimacy…

Nightmares still caused by the memories,
leaking eyes – at the thoughts she remembers,
Father’s cold eyes as she falls subject to his ‘dominance’
was this what he meant when he called her, ‘my little princess’

“It’s only for a moment…”
but the moment’s seems to last forever

Maybe this is what her mum meant
when she said she could be ‘whatever’

Alarm goes off, and she knows its time to work,
Mascara and make-up to conceal the hurt,
Back on the streets, about she walks…
Searching for the next pleasure pill to forget it all…
*

Coping System, Emotion, Life, Pain, Poem, Thoughts

Little Miss 21

I. Ogunbase

Hello Ms 21.

Look at you all grown…

It’s funny how, over the years I’ve,
raged, argued and butted heads against your stubbornness.

Because, goodness me, are you difficult.
But I love you, nonetheless.

It’s funny how, you’ve brought me joy and sorrow,
tears and laughter,
fights and fun fights…

I mean, we have had our share of childish antics,
and we’ll probably have more crazy fun,
especially now that you’re grown.

“Little Ms 21” is now an adult,
ready to take the world by storm.

[Laughs]

Happy Birthday, Girl…

—–

I miss you, Ms 21.

Thinking of you, all grown…

It’s funny how I think, over the years we would have
raged, argued and butted heads against your stubbornness.

Because, goodness me, were you difficult.
But it made me love you all the more.

It’s funny how, you brought me joy and sorrow,
tears and laughter,
fights and fun fights…

We had our childish antics back when we were young,
but that was a long time ago,
when you were still here…
and now you are gone…

“Little Ms 21” would be an adult now,
ready to take the world by storm.

[Sighs]

Happy Birthday, Lil Sis.

Life, Thoughts

Is it okay? / Rhetorics

I. Ogunbase

Every now and then, humans get a burden. Sometimes it’s taken willingly, other times its forced upon you.

And as life would have it, this is where the human gets to make a choice; to share the burden or keep it to themselves. A lot of things comes into play here as a lot of emotions and situational awareness gets latched to he reasoning as to why a person would choose either decision.

And out of all of this, there is something called fear and doubt. Brothers who work hand in hand to cripple the minds and hearts of those they descend upon.

Life gets dark, and slightly claustrophobic as one ducks behind corners, carrying their own personal mountains.

It attacks the reasoning and the peace of mind as mental decisions become impaired from the stress of shouldering a heavy burden. Focus becomes weak. Motivation begins to laze about.

Is it okay though? To hold all this pain to self as one seems to watch their own personal world go up in a slow burning flame?