Best Served with Quiet by Rachel Yamagata

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcSM0v9XcWA

 

You remember this?

Our past; riddled with books and beating,

With afternoons of backyard football,

Our blood; swimming in the meat pie we were eating.

 

Do you remember it?

The eye-service we paraded,

Our bodyguard; it stood tall,

Blocked out Aunty Oyin’s noise,

And the stoning of our house gates.

 

Do you remember us?

Nights we scrunched our eyes not too tight,

To pass Daddy’s inspections,

Because we watched Africa Magic at night.

Our sin; I’ll keep it to my last light.

 

Do you remember me?

How I used to be?

A naïve, naked, bigheaded caterpillar,

A decade has passed and I’m still the same.

 

I remember you

How you used to be,

An arrogant butterfly; larger than life,

So many dreams,

So little time.

 

I know now we’re all tough and grown,

You seem to have it all together,

But I wish you were a little more childish—

I miss my old big brother.

 

Do you remember Eze goes to school?

It was the first book Daddy asked me to read.

And I read it on your bunk bed,

It was short, lonely and immature,

But it was the best book I ever read.

Best Served with: Pussy is Mine by Miguel

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI3sSlKvA3o

I have been in love with you for time,

Tried everything to make you mine,

Misfortune for me; your presence so sublime,

Brine-like love, love like brine.

 

Piercing brown eyes penetrate,

Like rusted needles commanding submission,

A tower of grace on you exuberates,

My despair a wonderful addition.

 

Lush brown locks; insidious,

Smooth chocolate skin; enticing,

I’m so stupid I believed in us,

Bathsheba’s poison; reciting.

 

I wonder if you ever loved me?

Love let your circus monkey’s stupidity fester,

I now realize the role of you and me,

You’re the queen and I’m the jester.

 

Angels sing everything you say,

I’m a comedy for your friends to play,

Though that elegance for me refused to stay,

My love still chased you all the way.

 

Your Highness,

Lofty heights you conquer,

Those lofty peaks I lust after,

Self-conscious of the entertainment I am,

I can’t help but stutter.

 

Fields of flowers bow,

Plastered on every step taken,

Mother Nature gave you a crown,

And your subjects stand shaking.

 

Love and laughter with each word spoke,

Laughter kills love with each joke told.

 

I have one last act,

Tale of tales, finale of finales,

Under all that glory and grace,

Lies not a speck of regality,

With the spite and ugliness you hide,

I’ll fit your corset but first I’ll die,

 

Tonight, the curtains close,

My dear Audience don’t look aside,

This woman is a decomposing lemon,

Sweet on the surface, sour inside.

 

So ladies and gentlemen

The most expensive line ever spent,

My greatest punchline to you I present,

The funniest words I ever spoke

“Your kingdom exists as a single joke”.

Best Served With: 80s by Berhana

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT62dDZIeQo

You think my destination is a choice?

That I transverse this roughness because I am able?

You think I’d come all the way here just for this noise?

To be saddled and spanked like a horse in a stable?

Unbelievable. You are fucking unbelievable.

 

I had a home.

Its warm branches cradled my face like a sunset breeze,

Rooted in culture’s succulent embrace; I’d grown,

Covered by family, friends, lovers, tradition, ‘twas bliss,

Hope chased happiness in the front yard,

While Love stood tall in the back.

Yes. I had a nurturing, caring, loving home.

And I was free.

 

And then it all vanished in broad daylight,

Blasted to bits by propaganda that terrorists sought,

My relatives obliterated before they could think a thought,

Worse still these eyes could not witness so sorry a sight.

 

That selfsame fate left me no time to unwind,

So, with an infant in hand and grief in mind,

I packed my emotions as they hurt me so,

And crossed the Atlantic as I had nowhere else to go.

 

So here I am laid bare in front of you,

With a bleak past and an unfortunate present,

But it seems my fortune is bent,

Delivered to your mercy though suffering I relent,

 

Whether your country becomes my new home,

Or I and my child die; lost in place, stuck in time,

Depends wholly on your thoughts and talk

I hear Fortune’s laughter reveling its best work;

My whole life has been a cruel joke,

And it seems this point—right now– is the punchline.

Best Served With: Easy by Mac Ayres.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoSmX1xNnAQ

Stop. Breathe. Think.

You’re a basic student in school,

With a dark uniform that stands still,

Beside mediocre grades and friends, careless and cool.

While fate and fortune dictate your will.

 

You began as an infant,

Whether pink, yellow, brown or black,

Sprawling helplessly like an earthworm,

While life prepared to attack.

 

At that age with a simplistic cycle,

You stumbled through the beginning,

You knew nothing, and lacked desire to know,

Your sin was emptiness.

Your wall; ignorance.

 

With time a flower bud opened;

To the knowledge of life; brightness of day,

And with friend’s and family’s support,

Eased into a world of comfort.

 

Stop.

Then came anxiety, baring its fangs,

Its teeth poisonous, its breath stank,

A wall of predation, it consumes and confiscates

Leaving in its wake, changes and deadlines and academics and—

 

Breathe.

Peer Pressure seeps in. Friendly as always,

An acidic wall of suggestion you can’t refuse,

An idea becomes a shout; a shout, a chant.

And slowly you do things you don’t want,

Like that one party you hated,

Or those old friends you spoke to with hatred,

Till you look in the mirror and scowl at the person you’ve become.

 

I know what it’s like to be yo–

Actually I am you.

As I am everyone

And everyone struggles just like you.

 

So Start. Live. Act.

Because you may just be a basic student in school,

With a dark uniform that stands still.

But fate is fleeting; fortune untrue.

And only you can dictate your will.

 

Best Served With: Amen by Falz

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxMkDK_OCEA

Humanity spends its life buying hope,

Deducing and detecting supreme will,

Wide-eyed, white-eyed-higher-than-man man,

Instructing ants on how to cope;

How to make heaven. Convenient.

How even though He made us in His image,

Through our self-righteous pilgrimage,

He looks like us in our thoughts and dreams,

But none of us have ever seen Him.

 

Salvaging everything, our saving grace,

Like capitalism or insurance,

His thought train condensed in a single place,

His presence the ultimate assurance.

 

Is your landlord harassing you?

Are your colleagues salivating your downfall?

Is your despair the world’s benefit?

Does your life seem derelict?

 

Come to Him,

My brothers and sisters,

The Lord has seen your sins and he will forgive them all.

Come to church

Looking for a mister,

The Lord surpasses that dread of downfall,

For “you reap what you sow” does not apply to all.

 

 

 

 

In fact, as I preach to this congregation,

A gentleman sits at the back,

Having killed his mother in swift elation,

Seeks salvation from his will to attack

That beautiful lady in the third row,

The public used her body for extra green,

Now that death’s scythe is inches from her brow,

Her diseased garments seek solution from a higher being.

 

I, Myself have impregnated an extra-marital affair,

I refuse to marry this result of the devil,

And she currently strides to my house; inferior and unfair,

She hath opened her legs only to be swindled.

As Despair grips her broken, luscious mumbles,

She aims to set my house alight,

And while my wife and kids against carbon struggle,

Here I am, preaching about the good fight.

 

But at least I’m better than you;

I dare to tell myself the truth.

Though you “Amen”, kneel and dance your sense away,

Your heart is corrupted,

And this lifestyle you’ve adopted,

Infects your house every single day.

 

Monday, you’re monopolising a multitude,

Making many a mind miserable,

Your mouth a makeshift moat of platitudes,

Muffled mumblings moaning to the less able.

 

 

Tuesday ties tiles of titillation,

Your tits tell teasing tales of his forbidden touch,

And while your tantalising marriage tends you at home

Tis not enough; appeal lacking as such

To tether your tumultuous tendencies,

As you toggle his trembling torch of temptation.

 

Wedding Wednesday to a wandering woe,

wondering whether Wanda and Walter,

walk and whisper your wheezing wilts,

warlock Pride worries; wakes the start.

The walls of the whining walnut whipped apart.

 

Thursday. Tottering Thursday.

Tickling theriomorphism turns tears turbulent,

Though Timothy teaches to turn away from sin,

You tumble totally; unsalvageable it seems,

But terrifying turning point tussles to redeem.

 

For image, glamour, glory or ties,

The world you fake your face; yourself you tell lies.

 

Friday’s following a faith foundation,

Forcing farces on faces with feverish fervour,

Finding failed fillings to falsify,

As fake feelings relish the flavour.

 

So Saturday’s sad sorrows sing

singed solutions showing

shoved sororities of sin,

Saying “slithering snakes shed

soothing songs of salvation”.

 

But on Sunday you change.

None of it shows;

Not the monopoly of Monday,

The tangled titillation of Tuesday

The wary worryings of Wednesday

The tickling tinges of Thursday

The forced falsification on Friday

The sorrowful sinning of Saturday—

None of it.

 

No. Because it is His day.

Righteousness pumps your veins when you wake up,

Your mind’s dysfunction transforms to make up,

Wear luxury to shun your neighbours,

Smallest iniquities turn major:

 

You want to get sober and sombre for Sunday,

It all must be done His way,

Your clothes, car, house and husband,

But His way, to you, is as solid as sand.

 

Everything you do on that day must be perfect,

But the reality is you don’t digest.

Don’t treat His veins as worth it,

Every other day an indulgent sinner,

On Sunday a prosperous prophet.

 

May the Lord bless us as we sin with men and women,

And may we bless His Name till we get money,

He always forgives so sin again and again.

In Jesus’s Mighty Name we have prayed, Amen.

 

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