I would roll

primordial grasses of cannabis greens

And plaster with the glaze of my wet tongue,

Long-rolled, tightly packed, pipped 

to let out 

blue haze, diaphane smoke—

and watch the spirals in the air 

like a stripper’s sultry moves 

I would knock on the gates of hell, 

a mafia room, redesigned as capital,

and ask the question, a question silenced by the bellicose Lion, 

bestowing in nods of hollow veneration 

and prodigious fabrics of Agbada:

Do I not matter too? 

I would hold on

to ancestral statues and idol masks ambushed, 

coerced and cajoled,

swindled in ships to 

foreign-greed lands

DAMNATION! 

and dumbfoundment,

upon the holders to the keys of the city 

You see—shame!

The Giant figure’s foolery at 66

continues 

in theatrical fashion,

I shall roll up some trees.