Lines and Lyrics

By Sodeeq Akintoye

Lines and Lyrics is a collection of poems and songs on diverse issues and human frailties. Some of the poems and lyrics are laced with relevant quotes to shed more light on the insights gleanable from the lines.

Poetry in its purest form is ultimately an attempt to put the ineffable in black and white. Like other artistic works, it is not a passively static enterprise; it dynamically takes on the shape of the reader's understanding and turns out to be only as deep as its impact on the perception of the audience. This is because of the quandary of making use of nothing but words alone as the medium of expression.

We can liken this to the predicament of an artist who is, for instance, enamoured by the beauty of the sunset and inspired to make a painting of the spectacle. Obviously, the only tools at his disposal are just his brush, palette and canvas whereas he can never come anywhere near expressing the true grandeur of the scene unless he has access to a canvas as wide as the sky itself. Recognizing the impossibility of this feat is what necessitated the prefacing of the anthology by a quote that implores that the message of each poem be extracted "between the lines."

It must always be borne in mind that everything expressed literally in words is a mere symbol of something inexpressible. This can be attributed to the fact enunciated by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Therefore, the use of words as a means of communication can very well be seen as an unconscious process we have developed over millennia to make use of plain codes and encryptions to transmit complex messages.

Encryptions have usually been known by their incomprehensible appearance to the untrained mind. However, it is curious that the subtlest of encryptions is that which does not even appear as one. Thus, to encode messages in plain comprehensible words is the height of encryption as manifested in the various religious Scriptures. Although the art of breaking codes generally requires an expansion of perception and awareness, it is the nature of plain-text encryptions that they can never be deciphered in their entirety for the simple reason that they spring from a source that is far vaster than our finite minds can handle.

It is thus safe to conclude that only encryptions that wear the garb of codes can be completely fathomed. The implication of this is that every single line of the poems and lyrics can be given more than a thousand interpretations and none of them would completely capture what the author is fixing to say.

On the other hand, when we consider that people can only meet us as deeply as they have met themselves, it becomes highly plausible that the words contained within the pages of the book can also serve as a vista to catapult the reader's mind beyond realms conceivable by the author as the lines and lyrics were penned and polished for the edification of anyone that picks up the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sodeeq Akintoye
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005571115

Sodeeq Akintoye

Sodeeq Olasunkanmi Akintoye, affably known as Surdeec4bliss, hails from Ifelodun Local Government Area of Kwara State, Nigeria. He graduated from the University of Ilorin in 2016, proceeded to the Abuja Campus of the Nigerian Law School and was duly called to the Nigerian bar in 2017.Although a legal practitioner by profession, his passion has always been creativity. Essentially, this has always filled him with an inexhaustible zeal to adopt every means and all the tools at his disposal in creating beauty and appending his loving signature on anything life deems to bring his way.He derives inspiration from Nature's ever-evolving landscape with figures, often enlists the aid of music in getting through his mundane day-to-day affairs and is always turned on by whatever has to do with stringing words together elegantly to create maximum effect. He aspires to dish out sumptuous literary meals that are not only inviting but also highly nutritious.His hobbies include singing, calligraphy and meditation.

Book preview

Dedication

To the loving memory of my late grandmother:

Hajia Hajarat (Jaratu) Abegbe Akintoye

Thirteen years have passed and I’m still learning to swim.

Contents

Dedication

Contents

Part One: Lines

True Beauty

Purity of Love

The Greatest Gift

The Coward

Blessing of Possibilities

My Bliss

Power

A Thankful Spirit

Being My Bliss

Little or Plenty

Fine Flavours

Blockage

Symphony

Thirty Lines of Bliss

Without Trace

Whether it Rains or Shines

My Private Universe

Today or Next Century

True Hearts

Something Somewhere

Master and Slave

Nigeria at Sixty

Nigeria @ 60

Part Two: Lyrics

Immortality

Beyond a Ruse

Filled with Faith

Al-Haq Anthem

Putting on a Show

Come Whatever

Omoboriowo Anthem

A Glorious Day

LHS Anthem

A Song of Life

Nguuma Gugu Anthem

About the Poet

"The instruments are used, notes are used, sounds are used for that silence that is music to happen. Between two sounds is music, and between two words is poetry, and between two lines is all that is significant. It is never in the lines but always between the lines. And one has to learn to read the intervals, the gaps."

― Osho

Part One: Lines

"The more prosaic, the more dreadfully ordinary anyone or anything seems to be, the more I am moved to marvel at the ingenuity with which divinity hides in order to seek itself, at the lengths to which this cosmic joie de vivre will go in elaborating its dance."

― Alan Watts

True Beauty

Upon a day Beauty and Ugliness met on the shore of a sea. And they said to one another, Let us bathe in the sea. Then they disrobed and swam in the waters. And after a while Ugliness came back to the shore and garmented himself with the garments of Beauty and walked his way. And to this very day men and women mistake one for the other. Yet some there are who have beheld the face of Beauty, and they know her notwithstanding her garments. And some there be who know the face of Ugliness, and the cloth conceals him not from their eyes.

― Kahlil Gibran

The best creation’s a smelly stain

Lacking beauty to share and retain.

For beauty is the essential quality

That endows each man and entity

With the privilege and grace

To inhabit the divine space.

What is beauty but the touch of heaven

To appreciate the honour we’re given

To share in the works of the Infinite

From this realm of the indefinite!

Wonder if it’s a ploy to hook

How it is that in many a