The Adventures of Timi The Epic

Timi Olotu was born under unspectacular circumstances, but soon after, he talked his mother into giving him the name ‘Timi’ because it had the perfect unique to epic ratio. In primary school, tragedy struck and a nasty kidnapper man abducted Timi. However, halfway through the kidnapping, the nasty man made the mistake of striking up casual conversation with his abductee. An hour later, before the end of the school day, Timi was back in his class with a compensation fee tucked in his backpack. His parents never knew of his brush with danger and he spent the fee on sweets. Throughout high school, Timi had four different girlfriends – all of them despised him and felt there was nothing desirable about him at all. His shortest of those relationships lasted 2 years and ended when Timi decided to stop writing his girlfriend at the time any more poems. For his Masters in Creative Writing project, legend has it that Timi talked William Shakespeare into coming back from the dead and rewriting the opening soliloquy in Act III of Hamlet. He simply declared at Shakespeare’s grave, ‘To be just OK, or not to be epic… that is the question’.

Sonnet For Yellow and Disease

Trickling slow like pus down a sickly wound

Under sunlight which once ageing love blest –

Amongst green fields where youth did not dare brood

Upon the day when Time (aggrieved) would test

Passion with age and curse the hand which sought

And held and traced that skin so pure and firm.

A virgin place once plump with verve now rots –

Conquered by hands, then worms, which all but squirm

To reach at first, that lands sickly fiction

Of love eternal which cannot be lost?

Trickling slow like pus upon infection

This ailing love dying  (now free from lust)

Curses the sun and the colour yellow

Of hay, of pus, and atrophy mellow.

The Bi-polar Nature of Light Revealed at Sea

In a swarm of liquid waves, I see it reflecting I am naked.

Like something innocent, it flows and ripples and ebbs.

I have no clothes, have no thoughts, and no home

I can see.

Here, where there are no others

I am alone.

The windswept leaves, the water, and the dust;

They all pass through me.

It seems I am empty, like I am not here when

This babbling sea says to me –

‘What deep darkness is this

Lurking in the rays on the crest of my waves?’

Lurking in the rays on the crest of my waves,

What deep darkness is this?

This babbling light says to me –

‘It seems I am empty? Like I am not here when

They all pass through me –

The windswept leaves, the water and the dust.

I am alone.

Here, where there are no others,

I can see

I have no clothes, have no thoughts, and no home...

Like something innocent? It flows and ripples and ebbs ­

In a swarm of liquid waves. I see it reflecting I am naked.’

Red and Yellow

Orange burns like a flame through

Crisp autumn leaves

Desiccating for the cold winter prune.

Three By Eight Wall

There she lay

Down by the

Three by Eight

Wall or bed.

Urine drips

Unto the

Beer trails

On the floor.