Never Go Far

Ezra Bature

Ezra Bature's Profile

Ezra Bature

Tuesday 16 December 2025

Fear-mongering

The days are loud, yet truth whispers.

Knowledge multiplies, but wisdom grows thin.

We scroll faster than we pray,
speak more than we listen,
and call noise progress.

Love grows cold in crowded places.
Neighbors pass like strangers,
and mercy becomes a rare language.

Wars rehearse without rest.
Rumors travel ahead of peace.
The earth groans fires, floods, shaking ground as if creation itself
is tired of waiting.

Good is renamed outdated.
Evil is polished and reposted.
Darkness wears confidence,
and light is asked to explain itself.

Children teach rebellion,
elders are mocked,
homes lose their altars,
and faith is traded for comfort.

Hunger walks with technology.
Rich tables grow longer,
poor hands grow emptier.

Prophets speak,
but ears are busy.
Truth stands at the door,
but distraction guards the gate.

Yet still!
the sky holds its breath.
Grace delays the final page.
Mercy counts another sunrise.

This is not the end yet,
but the warning before it.
A call to wake,
to return,
to remember what matters
before the trumpet replaces the alarm.

Blessed are those
who keep their lamps lit,
their hearts clean,
and their hope anchored
for the night is deep,
and dawn will come suddenly.

Ezra Bature

Tuesday 16 December 2025

Social Zoom trend

The phone lights up before morning prayer.

A screen opens,
and modesty is the first thing to lose signal.

Girls learn the algorithm early.
less cloth, more reach.
A dance becomes a demand,
a body becomes content,
and applause replaces protection.

Breasts are no longer private language, they are thumbnails,
paused, zoomed, shared,
consumed by strangers
who will never know the cost.

They call it freedom.
But freedom should not need exposure to survive.
It should not trade dignity for data,
or self-worth for views.

The comment section feeds louder than parents.
“Go harder.”
“Show more.”
And silence greets the morning after.

Social media does not raise children
it markets them.
It rewards what shocks,
not what sustains.

Young girls watch and learn,
that attention is currency,
that the body is a shortcut,
that value disappears when the camera turns away.

Where are the elders in the feed?
Where are the voices saying,
You are more than a trend?

This is not about blame alone
it is about hunger:
for validation,
for escape,
for relevance in a loud world.

But when breasts become public property, and shame is renamed confidence, we must ask, who truly profits, and who is left exposed when the screen goes dark?

This is a warning, not a stone.
A mirror, not a whip. Because a society that consumes its daughters
will one day wonder why nothing sacred remains.

Ezra Bature

Tuesday 16 December 2025

Hunger and Insecurity

Night no longer sleeps in Nigeria.

It stands guard with one eye open,
listening for engines without plates,
for boots that do not knock.

Hunger wakes before the sun.
It sits on the table like an extra child,
counted but never fed.

Soup is stretched until it forgets its taste, garri argues with the stomach,
and tomorrow is cooked with hope alone.

We lock doors, yet fear enters through the radio, through WhatsApp voice notes, through names of towns we once knew.

Farmers abandon their ridges, hoes rust beside empty barns. The land is ready, but the roads are afraid.

In the North, markets close early.
In the South, mothers bargain with shame.
Everywhere, salaries arrive late,
or not at all.

Gunshots interrupt evening prayers.
Kidnappers price human breath.
A journey is now a gamble,
and home is no longer a promise.

Children learn silence early, how to eat less, how to ask nothing, how to sleep through fear.

We are tired of counting the dead
while the living starve.
Tired of speeches that do not stand watch, of assurances that cannot escort us home.

Nigeria, we are not asking for miracles. We are asking for mornings without fear, for food that does not require courage, for roads that lead somewhere safely.

Let security mean more than sirens.
Let leadership feel the weight of an empty pot. Let hunger and bullets
stop deciding who survives the night.

This is not poetry for applause. It is a record of breath still breathing,
still waiting, still hoping not to be forgotten.

Ezra Bature

Tuesday 16 December 2025

Pilgrim cry

We speak from rooms with tired walls, from ceilings that drip promises, the rain never keeps.

Kaduna hears us
in Rigasa dust, in Barnawa nights,
in rent receipts folded like prayers.

Landlord, do you hear the cough of the house?
Its doors know hunger.
Its windows blink from sleeplessness.
We pay before we breathe,
before children learn their sums,
before light remembers our names.

Agent, you stand between roof and mercy, measuring shelter with profit’s ruler. You add years to rent
but subtract repairs from duty.
You knock only to collect,
never to ask if the house still lives.

They say, Pay two years.
They say, Pay three.
As if tomorrow is guaranteed,
as if salaries grow like neem trees,
as if survival is not already rent enough.

We are not refusing responsibility
we are refusing strangulation.
We are not asking for free rooms,
only fair ground to sleep on.

Kaduna sun already taxes us.
Fuel bites.
Food argues with the pocket.
Must shelter also become war?

Hear us before anger learns to shout.
Before families scatter like dust.
Before eviction becomes our only address.

We cry not against ownership,
but against forgetting humanity.
Let the house be shelter again,
not a weapon,
not a noose,
not a debt that wakes before dawn.

This is the voice of tenants
many mouths, one breath
asking for justice
to share a room with profit,
and let both survive.

Ezra Bature

Tuesday 16 December 2025

African Marital Vow

Before elders and unborn names,

before the drum that remembers us,

I take your hand.

I vow you to the soil that raised me,

to the river that taught me patience,

to the fire that shaped my voice.

I will walk with you in the market of days,

counting not coins but seasons.

When the granary is full, I will give thanks;

when it is empty, I will stand guard.

I vow you my labor and my listening.

My back in the sun,

my shadow in the heat.

I will not leave you to carry silence alone.

Before ancestors who lean close to hear,

I vow to mend what breaks,

to speak truth even when it trembles,

to keep your name safe in my mouth.

If storms scatter our path,

I will be the roof.

If night forgets the moon,

I will remember it for us both.

This vow is not mine alone

belongs to the clan,

to the drum,

to the dust that will one day receive us.

I take you,

not until comfort ends,

but until our footsteps

become one story

told to children yet unborn.

If you’d like, I can

Ezra Bature

Tuesday 16 December 2025

African Marital Vow

Before elders and unborn names,

before the drum that remembers us,

I take your hand.

I vow you to the soil that raised me,

to the river that taught me patience,

to the fire that shaped my voice.

I will walk with you in the market of days,

counting not coins but seasons.

When the granary is full, I will give thanks;

when it is empty, I will stand guard.

I vow you my labor and my listening.

My back in the sun,

my shadow in the heat.

I will not leave you to carry silence alone.

Before ancestors who lean close to hear,

I vow to mend what breaks,

to speak truth even when it trembles,

to keep your name safe in my mouth.

If storms scatter our path,

I will be the roof.

If night forgets the moon,

I will remember it for us both.

This vow is not mine alone

belongs to the clan,

to the drum,

to the dust that will one day receive us.

I take you,

not until comfort ends,

but until our footsteps

become one story

told to children yet unborn.

If you’d like, I can

Ezra Bature

Tuesday 16 December 2025

Never Go Far

What I place in your hands must bear no wound.

Draw it near

fasten your sleeve against the wind,

quiet the space around you

as the Shunammite once prepared a room

for what heaven would pass through.

This is for your night

a rose that knows no withering,

the Son of Man who chooses silence over song,

who writes instead

a living letter unfolding,

descending gently into your depths

and leaving you whole.

Do not exchange this for lesser weight;

small coins cannot purchase what time itself respects.

Cradle every word.

Leave space

something sacred already waits

at the threshold of your door.

You know it.

You carry a healer within reach.

Let me be the remedy.

Let my herbs rise and sway

to Solomon’s ancient wisdom

upon the resting place of Eden.

Ezra Bature's Profile

Fear-mongering

Social Zoom trend

Hunger and Insecurity

Pilgrim cry

African Marital Vow

African Marital Vow

Never Go Far

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