The Mid-night Dream ( A Poem)

At 3 a.m.,

Monday, mid-night,

While half sleepy and awake....

I saw a woman in my dream

Fetching water from my stream;

Quaking in her shoes;

Hair rounded my toes

Sitting beside me:

Just so close to me,

Touching my head,

Alive and dead.

I got more aware of the year

Of her origin from nearby

She saw the happiness in my heart

Tearing an intellectual me in a hearth

Wearing my heart on my sleeve

Like a new fashion called ML-vee.

I need a bite out of your apple, like Adam and Eve

This love, I owe thou, you must receive

For long,

I've been young and strong

Trusted, loved, and plagued

To ants who don't know my value

Took me for granted

Forgiving them my talent to be graded

Marked them my students in a test

For thinking, they'd best

Finding and never found

Wrong pairs I did bound

I can't find the heart in sweetheart

SWEETIE my HEART

Listen let me explain

A poetry text so plain

I'm misunderstood?

For years I stood,

By the woman of betray-

Gave her my heart on a tray

She traded me so low

Mixed with sunlight and snow

At the market of lies

To lizards and flies

Artificially learned men

Thugs of omen

Who ain't on a letter of the alphabet in my book club

Ignorant men who the only cub

That lass is last

Because I broke her deal at last

Need raw flurries to fructose

Energize me with your glucose

I'm crazy for you like a crazy-glue

This feeling I felt for you is so damn true

Sweet like a piece of cake

I'm now alerted and awake

Sugary like an angelic sugarcane

Jonny and John McCain,

You can't walk in my shoe

This garden needs a hoe

The black god to the church

Sang a choir of my punch

Love me and I'll love you more

Hate me and I'll show you hatred

Woman of my dream,

Rub me off your body cream

Lips like the Gospel of Mathew

Eyes like Suratul Nisa

I'm laying in the grave

My knowledge is natural and brave

Aiming at your smile

Piercing across the Nile

Are you willing to sacrifice your life?

To be my DARLING wife

I'm living in the future so my present is my past

Phrases and clauses at last

Let these doubters ask the climbers

Where the top lays in the chambers

There, I'm sitting rotten with health

Come raped my wealth

Defile my chest

For being single and zest

Unhuman and inhuman

For us the humans

I am incessantly willing

Of course, not, not joking

I fathom your heart

For  the wisdom, I'd craft

Be the snake of my human

First Lady, you to be your man

Only your finger fits my ring

She doesn't know why I gave her a thing

Which itself made her who she's

That unintelligent mind who speak me

Come, my dream woman--

Let the dream continue;

Come, bite my lips 

Chew me on the mouth

Eat me raw

Lean me against the wall

The verdure of love cost my eyes

Dying to tell you you're nice

Light is striking twice in this place

Red-blues, the height of this race,

She thinks I'm bordered

No, I'm even bored.

So, I pick a piece of song

To correct her wrong

Www.YouTube.com

Just type this it will come

Listen to Big Sean, "I Don't F**k With You"

So I don't f**k with you

Including you and all haters you

Talk bad about me if you wish

For the good I did for you, that all saw in bish

If you understand, Modou Lamin Sowe is Modou Lamin Age-Almusaf Sowe

And Modou Lamin Age-Almusaf Sowe is Modou Lamin Sowe

A MESSAGE FROM MODOU: All Rights Reserved!
Thank you for reading and following my blog. Should you wish to use any of my articles for personal use, research, lectures, etc, kindly address your messages to: modoulaminsowe1@hotmail.com. Copying any of my articles without a written permission to, is an infringement of Copyright. I hope this blog post finds you well and the new year has begun on a great note. I am well too and looking forward to a great 2018 as I engage more with you. I appreciate you for being part of my 2017 readers around the world. I write to tell you that you can now translate all my blog posts into any language in the world . Simply type the language of your choice in the textbox below the inscription " Pageviews", it can be found on your right-hand of this page. You're all important to me, for everyone as I look at the wholesome approach to the discussion on overall African protest literature and the link to religious poetry from a person-centered view.

READ ( A Poem ) by Modou Lamin Age-Almusaf Sowe

READ!

Read the alphabets of mankind,
The common subject of thought,
Taught by the moon above the sun.
Tell knowledge it is but to know.
Tell man he is but an error.
Tell them that wisdom is a gift
That resembles knowledge.

Like a broken conversation
Laid to rest in the grave of sensation,
Whirling to a stop
In the middle of a sentence.
The human mind stammers,
Endlessly hoeing an arid patch,
Fuelled by the aridity of petrol.
Low vocabulary is not knowing many words.

As a result,
Fraying into the gutters of deception,
The string of the balafon beats,
Its sound preceding legends into beetles.
Cowardly spoken, silken old cottons
Dress the human of my description,
Fitting into the ignorant cap worn
On the heads of civilian flies,
Buzzing around lust and love.

Let greed judge the creed for bearing grudges,
The guilty for not being innocent.
Tell betrayal it is but courage,
Nakedly pronouncing time.
Readers do know,
And the ignorant read not.

READ!

Iqra! (Read) in the name of your Lord.
Read not to gain this world.
Read religion, read God—just read.
When you learn, teach.
When you arrive, act like you have not reached.
When you have, give.
When you know, do not say all.
Trek where the fools fall.
Read, shall you?

Knowledge is found in reading,
And ignorance is reading nothing.
Read!
If you want to know—read!

READ!

I see Muslims who do not know the Qur’an,
Christians who do not know the Bible.
From my far left, I see a nation without citizens,
Driving around in the car of the lost.
I see animals creating an Animal Farm.
I saw the ghost of George Orwell.
I saw a divided Africa as a result of not reading—
Ironically divided for reading in the name of Satan.

---

Explanatory Note

This poem, READ!, is a passionate literary intervention against illiteracy, intellectual laziness, and moral confusion, using reading as both a spiritual command and a civic responsibility. Rooted in the Gambian and broader African context, the poem exposes how the failure to read—religious texts, history, literature, and the world itself—has contributed to social decay, ethical contradictions, and political disorientation. The poet presents reading not merely as an academic skill, but as the foundational act of becoming fully human.

The repeated command “READ!” functions as a moral alarm. By invoking Iqra—the first revealed word in Islam—the poet reconnects literacy to divine instruction, reminding readers that knowledge in African societies was historically sacred, purposeful, and transformative. The poem contrasts this sacred reading with what the poet calls “reading in the name of Satan”: selective, manipulative, and self-serving interpretations of knowledge used to justify greed, betrayal, division, and exploitation. In this sense, the poem critiques not only ignorance, but also miseducation and intellectual hypocrisy.

Through dense imagery—the moon teaching above the sun, broken conversations buried in graves of sensation, flies buzzing around lust and love, and the echo of the balafon—the poet illustrates a continent trapped between inherited wisdom and abandoned responsibility. References to Animal Farm and George Orwell signal political allegory: societies repeat oppression because they have not read history deeply enough to resist it. The image of “a nation without citizens” reflects populations physically present but mentally absent, disengaged from critical thought, civic duty, and ethical reflection.

Ultimately, the poem is both indictment and invitation. It indicts societies where Muslims do not know the Qur’an, Christians do not know the Bible, and citizens do not know themselves. Yet it also invites humility, action, and generosity—teaching after learning, giving after having, and remaining modest after knowing. For Modou Lamin Age-Almusaf Sowe, reading is not for status, profit, or power, but for truth, God-consciousness, and collective awakening. The poem insists that Africa’s healing begins with a return to meaningful reading—reading that enlightens the mind, disciplines the ego, and restores moral clarity.

All Rights Reserved! Thank you for reading and following my blog. Should you wish to use any of my articles for personal use, research, lectures, etc, kindly address your messages to: modoulaminsowe1@hotmail.com. 

Copying any of my articles without a written permission to, is an infringement of Copyright.