Don't Praise Me When I Am Gone Poem by Stephen Olufemi Omolara

1.
What warmth is innate a fireplace whose fire is extinguished?
Any hand spreads on it, no comfort received.
Can illumination forth come from dead coals?
Can light it shed on the path of they that in darkness grope?

2.
What merriment, there in watching, a masquerade that is long crippled?
To me, he is likened to a fool, he that cherishes lamed man's dance.
If acrobat prolific a crippled man is, my interest is piqued,
The day mountains walk.

3.
What else has he to say, he whose head is already cut?
What he failed to say while the guillotine is hung?
Maybe a plea can be herd when gone is the head.
Can a dead man plea his case?
Answer to this, my ear I prick to pick.

4
This is a thank you note:
To them, the appraiser and trumpeters, of a man's good deeds in his time
Honoring him with a gifts when he can feel, singing his praises when he can hear.
When the good things he does, in his presence spoken.

5.
To the corpse in it, what value is the casket?
Either gold plated or diamond embroidered, to it means nothing.
‘Cus the soul is long departed just a stiff block of wood, behind left.
What is the game in a profit that cannot be used?

6.
Praise me when I am alive,
Clear your throat, that your voice, clearly I can hear.
It is a waste tears, singing a lullaby to a Dead man,
While a child is longing to be rocked in the cradle.

7
The posthumous gift, pleasure to you maybe,
But to me a dead man, a humor.
Stop the joke around my tomb.
Ills to the dead man never speak?
Even all his life ills did he?