From Greatness Too Is Meant for You, an unpublished 2014 manuscript by Adetimilehin Inioluwa Victor (Vic’Adex). Lightly edited for grammar while preserving the original voice.

Where are the likes of Fela?
In this age of no storyteller,
With the thorns and the tears,
Yet we smile under the mask of pain.

Where was the world
Where it took two to tango,
Where my dreams were calm and still
And not a bundle of scary tornadoes?

Where did my smiles go,
Leaving me all hung and low?
Where is the world we were promised,
Where the future is treasured,
Not a bludgeoning mirage?

In this world of no lights,
Where the days are the same as the nights,
Why do I stomp and cheer
At the entrance of the devil’s lair?

Is this the life that my mother envisioned
When she was priming for a son?
Why do the claps and drums
Feel like the praise of the mourned?

Why does the truth
That should set me free
Rip me apart
Like tornadoes through the trees?

Why do the laughters of children
Seem like the chuckling of a hen
In the blood-ridden den
Of the jaw-crushing beast?

The anger keeps rolling
Like the order of an endless list.
Now I am branded the beast
Because I tried to do the least
To clear the fog of the mist.

Now I am the target of an evil list,
The talons of death hovering close,
Caught up at the end of an opened close.
Shattered and scattered are the hopes of all.

These days it pays more not to dream,
Like a badly exposed nightmare.

Editor’s note: First drafted in the early Vic’Adex voice and preserved here as part of the Words on Rampage archive.