MUSINGS OF A TANGLED TONGUE – A Few Thoughts

I love poetry. There’s no hiding from this fact. It awakens my senses, it arouses my imagination and it connects with me on a level that prose hardly does. Of course when I say this, I am referring to a body of words well sculptured.

A huge chunk of my thoughs and scribblings are poetic in nature, and so it is unsurprising that I get excited when I lay my hands upon or feed my eyes and mind with words in ink or fine print or swipe and scroll through prosaic layers of text.

Recently, I purchased a copy of Yemi Adesanya’s poetry collection titled MUSINGS OF A TANGLED TONGUE (Prittle-prattle and pickled poems) and found it to be highly engaging and filled with gems for life, love and being.

 I thought i’d recommend this collection, but first, i’d supply a few thoughts on a number of the poems in there to arouse the interest of the potential reader.

I have no doubts in my mind that this collection will pique the interest of anyone even remotely interested in the beautiful art of poetry. It comes highly recommended by me (I hope that counts for something. Lol)

Here goes…

HERE LIES LUST implores that one should beware of all-consuming affectation. For as euphoric as it may seem in full flight, it can swiftly taste like gall when the eyes clear or when something clips its wings.
“Fiery stars die fast
Then everything turns to dusty memories
That gather in stricken craters of frozen passion.”

I love the conciseness of WORDS DO THE TRICK, and the fact that it is very easy to be related with. I’ve always wanted to write short poems that drive home the point in all profundity. I secretly wish I wrote this. 😀

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS is an appropriate lamentation of an insomniac/sleep-deprived-fellow. I like it. 

MONDAY MADNESS.. Oh, how I love the part in between the Monday mornings and Monday evenings; the rhymes in there make it sound all the more beautiful. All in all, the poem accurately describes the effect of the first working day of the week; how one feels in the morning and then in the evening after the day’s work go a long way in determining how the week plays out.

I love the playfulness of LOAFDAY. Shows the steadfastness of the subject of the poem on her bed on a lazy day, completely refusing to do anything.

MIND MIRAGE portrays the masking of many a man’s true nature by outward/outer adornments. If only we could see beyond the façade, a host of people stink, are dark, and are empty underneath.

WORLD OF HYPOCRITES In four beautiful verses of genius wordplay, shows the effect so little, of words, thoughts, rules and hypocrisy in the grand scheme of things.

The lines of WAS BORN IN SIN sound very appropriate as lyrics for a beautiful song yet to be sung.

I doff my hat for BLESS THIS DAY. The verses are so unique and fitting for what the days of the week feel/look like in reality. Lines like:
“your bin so neat but your table’s full of it”, “your dawn’s still young but alarm is right to chime”, “milk this day of its moody midweek lump” get me all gooey and in awe. Beautiful artistry!

SPECIAL CHARACTERS playfully discusses the punctuation marks. The punchlines in there are pleasing to the eyes and literary mind. “Now he’s gotta live with a semicolon” is one beautiful line that comes after a line that tells us his colon has been set on fire.

I love the message of LIFE ON ITS GLIDE. The verses describe different stages in life and the activity and going-ons of the mind in those stages. Life on its back, feet, seat and knees showing how our worldview as well as battles to be fought change over time.

THE AILING SOUL aptly informs that worry or doubt hardly make anything better. It stresses in its final verse that life is what you make of it as time passes by.

DEATH LEFT YOU A NOTE leaves the reader with a sad but accepted whiff of inevitability of his sooner-or-later demise. Its lines and phrases preach that no matter what is done, no matter the attempt at pretending or refusing to come to terms with its inevitability, death still comes. All we do, all we become, all we are, are but pieces of the puzzle that are arranged to birth the picture of death in the end.

IYKE THE KITE’s conversational form is an interesting one. The message is loud and clear; that death comes in whatever form, on whatever day, and the idea of sad and happy/tragic and peaceful deaths are only for the living to ponder… In the end, death is death.

NO KIDDING is a tapering kind of poem; every succeeding line a few characters shorter than the preceeding. The consistency of the tapering of verses by no means masks the fact that parenthood is the subject of this poem.

PATHFINDER accurately points out that the path to be trodden by anyone will likely be laced with twists and turns, but still on one must wayfare. The third and final verse stresses that leveraging on the experience of one who has gone ahead can come in handy in lessening the hardships any voyager has to face on the journey of life.

LESSONS; the title says it all… The charges that those closest to us give us could go a long way in setting us on the path to future stardom.

I’m not completely certain my understanding of “MY PERFECT PAIR” is solid, but still, I’d like to say the poem to me is about how one loves all parts of another; the light and the dark parts, the smooth, and the rough edges.

Reading BY RIVER THAMES, all I could think of was adventure!

OLD NUMBER asks questions about the changes that happen to a man as he grows in years. The lines are rich with ponderings about how one would like one’s activities and ideals to be as the tick tock goes on and on.

FOREVER LIVING is an assortment of the good and the not-so-good ways that life can be lived. The rhymes of the last two lines of every verse send pleasant chimes of not only the orderliness of this poem, but the meaningfulness as well. The poem ends on an appropriate note that in the end, no one can live forever… Aging and age are facts we have to deal and live with.

THANK A BRAVE SOLDIER is a brilliant tribute to the men and women who fight day and night to restore peace to war torn areas… I love it.

A BRIEF DISTRACTION suggests to me that comfort and solace is found sometimes in writing, in weaving, in building with words.

COLD STEEL is a harsh case of unrequited love. I love how it ended. Bringing lips to her ear, I thought he was finally going to oblige and maybe nibble her earlobe, only for him to coldly condemn her to heightened misery… “Get a life…” Sad, but unpredictable.

My likeness for SO RIGHT, SO WRONG stems from the fact that I have always been a staunch believer in the idea that a lot of things in life lie in the greyzone. Poems or lyrics that bring my ideas, values or ideals to life in artful brilliance win my heart every darn time.

I WANT TO LOVE YOU feels like perfect (non-stereotypical in sickness and in health) wedding vows. The lines powerful enough to bring tears to the eyes of many an intending fierce lover.

THROUGH THE BLIZZARDS is a poem that sings of enduring bond/love even through the most daunting of tempests.

Ooh lah lah… #SealedLips hath no one helped. Taking a chance on what/who your heart beats for without wasting time is forever going to be the only right move. The input of “Shoot you shot” in this poem makes it mighty relatable and definitely a fans’ favorite… Well, those that ply the streets of twitter mostly. Lol.

GRAY VALENTINE SHADES is simply breathtaking… Even if I tried, I’d not write a befitting review that the lines cannot themselves tell.

LOVE IN VINE AND WINE sounds like a consolation for those who cupid’s arrows elude, to down the contents of goblets as a substitute for romantic love.

PLAY WITH ME is beautifully suggestive oh Lord! The imagination runs wild as one reads through the verses. Butterfly, microphone, Lollipop, bestseller… My my my. All four of them are incredibly appropriate.

BRIGHT VALENTINE SHADES is just as unique as its grey counterpart. Love is beautiful and sweet when all things go well.

LIFE BUOY aptly describes contented in-the-moment love, unperturbed about the storms that may (or may not) arise at a later date. 

Love is present in the mundane and the extraordinary… All that counts is the sincerity in the moment… That’s true magic. That’s what MAGIC LIVES HERE says to me. 🙂

I love what you did with JACK AND JILL. Mind went back to the nursery rhyme upon seeing the title. And when I read through, I couldn’t help but think of the little kids back in the day that entered toilets and secret places to play with each other’s “thing” as some called their privates then.

DEAR FRED… Needless to say, I’d revel in mon amour writing me poems like this one to tell me what my love has done to her, as well as subtly say where I might have gone wrong. Something about beautiful, articulate, witty writing calms frayed nerves and pumps the heart to dance well to the tune of love.

The imagination that went into KAHLO’S PICASSO, as well as the active imagination it stirs in me makes the poem a befitting one to end a truly satisfying journey of the musings of a tangled tongue. 

I am in awe of Yemi’s mind and its musings, and I look forward to reading even better collections than her debut one. 😉

You’ll find below, links to where you can obtain a copy (or copies) in a host of formats that suit your need/fancy.

Musings of a tangled tongue

Musings of a tangled tongue #Smashwords

Musings of a tangled tongue #Okadabooks

Musings of a tangled tongue #Lulu (ePub version)

Connect with Yemi on twitter for engagement @toyosilagos