Poem: Foolishness is a big-bosomed Lady!

Beckoning, wooing; flagging her fancy
for who may fall victim; inviting
to all with promises of safety and pity.
The understanding mother
and the soothing mistress;
her cushion bosom is full
of consolations and illusions;
ignorant men find sick comfort
and empty content in her cradle.
Foolishness sure has her besotting ways!

To the vain man who has come a little way
and stops to figure how much he has gathered,
she lends a magnifying lens and a spurious scale
that offers bloated accounts:
“for someone of your humble birth,
someone with so small a beginning,
so trivial education and so much enemies,
you can’t have done better!
You are the champion of them all!
You have reached the peak!” She offers,
and to her laudatory tune the vain man dances away,
soon lost and no where to be found.

To her lover who has made a little success,
she is unrelenting in her flattery,
she throws for him a party and fills him with the wine of pride,
then she parades same on the street when he’s well drunken
and makes him misbehave.
She makes sure the rest of his life is wasted,
feasting on the past achievements.

To the one who has tried and failed,
she plays -miserably- the understanding mother:
“The world is wicked and unfair…
you are a failure, but to change destiny would you now dare?
Maybe it is God’s wish that you like this be.”
To top her ugly consolations,
she pulls his battered head to her heavy bosom
and makes him suck from her demoralizing breasts,
but when next he fails a trial and comes sniveling to her cradle,
she binds him in chains and to his handicap says:
“that would keep you from getting further hurt.”
Foolishness the protecting mother?

And to the one who for very long she has been a companion,
who has dined on her table
and shared her bed many days,
who has grown to cherish the soft of her embraces
when in want of consolation,
to whom she has been un-miserly
in granting and justifying excuses,
and unrelenting in her other ministrations,
of same she would hardly let go,
At times when his weary eyes do not fail to catch the lure
of goldmine endeavors promising to rejuvenate him,
parading their booties to catch his attention,
his mistress, Lady Foolishness, runs over to his excuse as always
and quickly points out the challenges and sweat at stake:
“you could have this or do that if you were younger,
but now you are much too old…
you’ve survived your miserable life with me many years so far,
what now would you ask for?”
His-self is so lost in her love
than to appreciate passing beauties
with their offers of a better life experience with wisdom.
Indoctrinated by his ignorance he says:
“if they call it foolishness that has made me live till forty,
till my dying day, the same will suffice me.”
With his foolish head buried in her comforting breasts
he wants nothing more.

The bosomy old lady is a resolutely jealous lover.

©2001, Poem by Tee Akindele
Current Revision, 2010