Good morning, good people of Nairaland. Tomorrow, the 16th of July, 2013 is my 31st birthday. In view of that I want to give all Nairalanders a small birthday party in the form of a poem. It is a bit political, I'm sorry. It centres on the convening of a Sovereign National Conference. It is a bit long so I will have to present it in more than one post. Please, be free to offer your criticisms. Thank you, my people....... THE TIES THAT BIND............ CANTO 1 (i) Chains show the landmark we have laid,/The land we tilled, the price we paid,/Life has defined our steps in stages,/Some fight the fight, some pen the pages;/Now we have congregated here,/A gathering not just mere/To fashion the scale with which to measure/How best to share our sorrows and pleasure,/For at now this ark is tilting South,/Yet many run diarrhea of the mouth,/Asking that the bleating sheep be bled more,/Yes,we have long laid off what lies in store,/Though we know that the rain must fall/And a million years cannot it stall. (ii) The land is smitten to its roots,/And a distant drum discord moots,/Absorbed in this vortex we stand,/Numbed as hate ravages the land,/The judges have joined in the fray,/Siding with those with whom they pray,/It is a hundred degrees hot out here,/And those whom we have seemingly place there,/Have their baser purposes to serve,/And now, altogether, each frayed nerve/Is seething to be torn from the skin,/Setting the land on a speedy spin;/That is why we are here:/To find out if as one we'll stay. (iii) This day had been touted for so long,/That today everyone's come along/With two or three baggages as the case may be,/Yes,even toddlers are here as you can quite see,/No one has cried 'foul', the stage is set,/What you have come with is what you get,/The farmer home shall go with his yield,/And the chief shall be rich in his field,/But, wait, I am running away with my thought,/Let each of you talk, no voice should come to nought,/We will start from the Rising Sun/And around we will pass the bun,/Till the party is wholly satisfied,/And all shadows have been demystified. (iv) "I am Chief Okosisi Nwafor,/It's my beloved people I stand for,/To air to all our pent-up misgivings/Over the harsh blows we keep receiving/In this entity we call our own,/And have toiled,and have tilled,and have sown,/To make it a pride among men,/After forty-two years and ten,/The weight upon us is doubled,/Our children in the North troubled/By the cries of muezzins sang from rooftops,/"Turn, ye, now to the Prophet or like drops/of dead leaves be set ablaze;/Go ye home but he who stays/must bow towards the East,/And join us in our feast."/We care nothing about who they bow to,/But that they bring the Llamas pronto;/Yet we get caught by the arrow point/of murderers bent on the disjoint/of dis pact we dragged ourselves into,/Though deep inside we didn't want to;/It's be a rollercoaster ride of pain/for us, what more with the standing stain/of being the spoils of war,/We were pushed back on the floor,/Though not ''vanquished'', we're still the foe,/Hounded with passion as a doe." (v) Pausing, Chief Nwafor wiped from his face/beads of perspiration, yet a trace/of his anxiety was still etched/on his brows and as his brain fetched/for words to convey his sorrows,/Miss Eze his time borrows,/And genuflecting, took the stage,/Her vibrancy bellying her age,/And as her eyes flashed with passion,/She an image of her nation/painted in poignant pictures:/A people clogged by strictures/of the mind, imposed by regimes which/unyieldingly continue to stitch/different fabrics into a ghostly dress,/And while they drink their tea, fail to address/the discomfort of those the dress disfits,/The collective coffers this harder hits,/"We have to know our functions,/And stick to the instructions/that will make for a better union;/Back home we have a misplaced million/who scattered when the cord shattered/that bound the head tight and splattered/the blood of innocents against the street walls;/The unavenged innocents' blood our peace stalls,/And till we bring these bloodsuckers to book,/Grim is how our future will always look. I am so sorry my people for the inconvenience of having you read such a lengthy write-up. Though, I'll have to apologise more tomorrow for the next installment of the poem. Forget the annoying length and read into the meaning of the poem. Please, I need critical analysis of it. I would be very grateful receiving your comments. May God bless you all. Wishing myself a happy birthday tomorrow.[color=#000099][/color]

31 yrs old and you dont know how to use paragraphs. I ought to flog you

birdman: 31 yrs old and you dont know how to use paragraphs. I ought to flog you

....... Birdman, thank you. Actually, I don't know how to use paragraphs here. I tried but couldn't get the know-how. Moreover, I wrote a poem. You should be flogged for not seeing that my post is a poem. Untalented people can never appreciate works of art. Mtchew!!

Hapi birtday.llnp