The HyperTexts

Al-Qassim Abdulsalam Uthman

Al-Qassim Abdulsalam Uthman is a Nigerian poet, born in 1992 in Dekina, a local government area of Kogi State, Nigeria. A graduate of Kogi State University, he currently lives in Abuja, Nigeria, in the western part of Africa. He calls himself the "Bloody Poet" and uses the hashtag #BloodyPoet. He also publishes as Abdulsalam Uthman Kassim. He has written many poems yet to be published. "MY MENTOR AND I" is a poem he has dedicated to his mentor, Professor Wole Soyinka, for whom he has an undying love. His poem "Papa" was nominated for Best of the Net in 2019 by Better Than Starbucks. He also has a collection of poems on Duncan Gillies MacLaurin's blog.



I WILL TELL GOD

I will tell God.........

Nigeria is a snake,
her venom makes me dizzy and pale.

If I die before noon
or in an evening of a full moon

Dig me a grave at the balcony
of the national assembly;

Make it shallow.
the size of their senses

And let them feast in the company of triumphant flies as my body stinks.

If I die,
Assemble my bones and make the president a fine bracelet and bangle.

Tell him to wear it
whenever his conscience fails to reason.

If I die,
I will tell God how I became a forgotten citizen of Nigeria.



LIBRARY OF DEATH

Life echoes nothing
but the alluring sounds of emptiness

Every day we sniff in a new array of
blank pages of untold stories

Stories of twos and fours striving
on a meal too large for the ant's mouth

This life is a library
Of books authored by men with kola-nut stained teeth

Each chapter comes with her own wisdom and wrinkles

Each wrinkle is a footnote
to a lesson learned

This life is a library of death lurking
behind dusty shelves

In death lie men who never cared to stain their teeth with the kola-nut of wisdom

Oh! how vanity rests upon vanity like piles of forgotten books!



PAPA

Papa was bend and curve like a crescent moon.
He spoke softly but consistently, like the babble of an adamant baby.
He is wrinkle and veins running all over his crooked body like wiring done by an apprentice electrician;
he is soon ripe for the belly of the obese mother earth, woe unto mother earth!
No flesh to eat this time,
papa died skinny and feeble.



AFRICAN CHILD

This is for the child
the colour of a fading shadow

who lives at the cold bosom of death, thinking of facing tomorrow

and then at dawn
a new death casts her light aglow

This is for the child
whose song echoes like the tiring voice of a bellows

under the spilled milk
of the evening's beaming moon, they bow

for a trigger-happy gun man
in the hood will come with a
blow

This is for Africa:
a coffin of mahogany and the perfume of Arabia

box her up and let
the children lift her shoulder-high

amid nursery rhymes
and glowing eyes

Take her down,
mother earth, where the worms are
hungry

This is for the African
child hopeless and homeless

whose mother wails
over the fallen fence of the household

Africa oh Africa
your sun no longer
lights up our paths

We are your children
lost in your hardship's dust

This is for all black children,
this is for me.



MY MENTOR AND I

In days of my nudity,
when dirt was my little pet,
before I knew myself,
and my guilt ...
have I adored you!

In days of my running nose and addled babbles
when my shabby clothes made me shaggy,
have I kept your portrait,
cleaner than my palm,
above my mat, where my wee eyes can behold
your greys sailing on a long Nile of wisdom.

In days of my blooming roses and tales of witnessing moonlight,
of willie willie and her evil half brothers,
in these days have I adored you.

In the days of my innocence, before the world stole it,
you scribbled the 'Abiku'
in mysterious lines and stanzas;
I read and memorise them like a sacred incantation,
and I wish to be you; like a jealous devil in a luxurious Eden.

I will be you when you submit to the waiting earth;
my hair will be grey and full like a pregnant cloud;
I will be another soyinka from a tribe of the kogi,
where rivers share endless love.



ULOMA

Beauty has a name,
uloma,

uloma,
in your eyes the sun sets,

beauty has a heart,
tender like uloma's,

uloma,
at the beam of your skin the moon smiles,

beauty lives in the east,
far far away,

uloma,
you twinkle like filaments of minted gold.



EPIGRAMS

Haters are your clan's men who broadcast your failure and whisper your success.

Putting out my candle will not make yours shine any brighter.

I don't cry, I write poems instead. #BloodyPoet

In my blood are pigments of poems,
laced with lines of haemaglobin.

The HyperTexts