‘Heaven Is A Place On Earth’ reflects all the reasons this ideal state is near impossible for mankind to achieve.
Poet Francis Otole’s nine-chaptered poetry collection’ ‘Heaven Is A Place On Earth’, is reminiscent of Berlinda Carlyle’s song of same title – with the chorus –
‘Ooh baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh Heaven is a place on earth. They say in Heaven love comes first. We’ll make Heaven a place on earth. Ooh Heaven is a place on earth.’
Heaven as a place on earth is idealistic. Otole shows us how easy yet very difficult it is to achieve. From his poetic renditions on ‘War and Peace’, ‘Politics’, and ‘Afrocentric: Slavery, Colonialism, Racism and Ethnicity’, where he paints man’s endless pursuit of strife, greed, power, materialism and government at all costs, to the detriment of peace; to his philosophical, humanitarian and naturalistic perspectives resulting from the ponderance of ‘Life and Death’, ‘On Love’, ‘Homily’ that renders human’s worldly pursuits frivolous.
In the chapter, ‘Tributes’, to literary cum freedom fighters – like ‘Niyi Osundare’, ‘Mamman Jiya Vatsa’, ‘Mary Etole (his mother)’, ‘Madiba’, ‘James Ehatikpo’ – he reminds the reader that individuals ‘Milestones’ achieved through a stand for their beliefs are celebrated by monuments. However, the reader is also reminded that one needs not move mountains to create Heaven on earth. Rather it is in the ‘Little Things’ – like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, that hope like poem springs.
To make heaven a place on earth, it will take a rumination of life and death – to attain the best perspective of life. Who says the dead are not happier for exiting life – while their loved one cry on earth wishing for their return? With death, there is no class or race, everyone rots and smells once six feet under the earth. And with the existence of most people on earth, death could be nothing but the sweet embrace of rest and peace.
Otole referencing of a popular song as an entrance into his work is well thought. His brief but concise poems, rides the balance of simple complexity, where lay readers with the references to history and their reality comprehends. His love and dexterity with rhyming, word play, similes, personification and metaphors are visible, and makes the work worth reading, even just to discover how he’d rephrase a mundane sentence, phrase or idea. He honesty comes across the words and imageries spun in the 86 poems in a manner indicative that they are not mere platitudes or pretentious.
Yes, while peace is relative – and does not imply absence of conflict, thus, we cannot have Heaven on earth, but it is an ideal worth pursuing for a better mankind.
It would mean that in the pursuit of life, kindness if not love leads. Where love leads, we concentrate on the necessities rather than wants that fosters greed. That in pursuit of power and sovereignty – we recognize others freedom and sovereignty, and in the midst of conflict – we stand for our beliefs without treating the other as an enemy – rather as a brother with a different opinion and outlook, and whom we would sit and share drinks with, after the disagreements.
