A Time to Change

This poem was written for and delivered at Daystar Leadership Academy's (DLA) Basic Leadership Course Weekend Programme July 2011 graduation ceremony. It was met with great ovation.

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Everyone is battered by change.
Broken and bruised and shattered by change
Change is unavoidable,
Its violent assault is inescapable.
No mercy  in its flinty eyes.
Rain falls on the fool and the wise.  
Still, Do not let change be a foe.
Do not bow beneath its blow,
Starving leper, why wait to die?
Take a step, make the Syrians fly!


So, what would you rearrange?
What is the road towards your change?
A better way to love your wife?
Break the addictions in your life?
Hand to the plough to till the land?
Plate pushed aside, reduced waistband?
Fingers magic on the keyboard?
A ministry serving the Lord God?  
Building the next great enterprise?
What sharp vision fills your eyes?


Yet change is so hard to embrace
Harder still to maintain the pace.
It's tough to leave the familiar
We don't want to face the stranger
Stinging is the scoffer's laugh
Painful blow from a brother's staff
Sleepless nights, reddened eyes,
Blistered hands, repeated tries  
Working, working all through the night,
When comes the dawn when shines daylight?


At DLA the work begins,
Adeyemi and Folarin.
The field is planted by Seedy,
Adisa shares on family.
Kpandei and Dada show the way,
Growth comes with Oloyede.
Skills by Williams and Oladimeji,
Methods by Aje-Oluyomi,
Akoni, and Daniels do the rest,
Mr. Thomas brings on the test.


You do the things you learnt in school,
Applied the word and used the rule.
Though the fight was hard and long,  
You wouldn't quit, you held on strong.
At last you raise your head and see
The battle's won,  oh glory be!
You see, You have changed.
Your life has been rearranged.
You fought when none believed in you
And now the dream has come true.

Oladejo Fabolude.
July 16, 2011

Steel-Cased Heart 3

A steel-cased Life, a heart alone,

Is not a fortress but a grave.

Running solo away from pain?

Stop, you fool! You'll be hurt again.

Hurts don't make hearts a hermit's cave.

If yours is, raise a tomb-stone.

An African Christmas

Why sing we songs of mistletoe?
Why exalt we the pure white snow?
What meaning, tell, Rudolph's Red Nose?
What romance bears fireside repose?
In an African Christmas.

Why not sing of Harmattan air?
Why not laud bluest atmosphere?
Extol the smell of burning grass,
Sing of dust not frost on glass,
In an African Christmas.

It's not the seasons of the year
That make the wondrous air,
But Mary's Infant, Meek and Mild,
Praise, all men, the Holy Child,
In an African Christmas.

Dejo Fabolude

The Return

Have I still rhythm in my soul?
Can I still rhyme?
Is the writer's art still a mole?
Burrowing deep within me,
Still there, yet so hard to see?

Can I still regale a reader with words?
Can I still write?
Enchant like a flock of birds?
Winging in formation through the sky?
A goodly thing to the scanning eye.

I am still of the wordsmith's ilk.
I can still weave,
A verbal web of spider's silk
Laying wait for some to fall,
Perhaps, spellbound, this poet's thrall.

Oladejo Adebola Fabolude
Copyright ©2005 Oladejo Adebola Fabolude