Melancholy

Melancholy is clay in memory's hands
Moulded into words, Moulded into songs
The heartbreak of losses of things never really owned
And of valor vanquished by superior malevolence
Melancholy gives purpose to the sculptors hammer
It chisels the roughness out of rocks and angrily builds armies that cannot defect
Warriors that cannot be toppled
Melancholy is the poets friend
A muse with a bag of words
Recreating memories best forgotten
Writing histories that never was.
Melancholy creates the passion to cherish
The assurance of things unseen and
The urge to destroy the ones we see.

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A death so suddenly died

A separation so dreaded has come
The harmattan marks the course of our tears with
Ravines and mastiffs in the wilderness of pain so suddenly painful
What do we tell the mother that remembers the pains of labour
The kite has carried off the chick
The eagle has snatched the lamb
The feast in their eyrie is torn from our hearts
What do we replace her hopes with?
A death so suddenly died
Laughter so suddenly stopped echoes in our loneliness
A memory so suddenly paused flickers still in our wails
What do we tell the cub that has lost a play mate?
The dog did not return the stick.
The chorus has gone with the singer
The koso is playing by itself
Who do we ask that will answer us?
Death so suddenly died
Memories so suddenly frozen.

For Chioma Ayogu.


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The wind brings me news

Silence is a blanket
Worn to restrain the cold fingers of knowing
But I can hear through the silence
I can hear the birth of new stars in faraway skies
I can hear the scream of light rays striking blue waters

Silence
Is the news that the wind brings
News of the conspiracy brewing in the air
The swallow and the kite
The dragon and the fly
The nothing and the stillness that follows.
The wind brings me news
Of expiring hearts left in the battlefield
The toe pokes of scavengers picking up the pieces of bravery
Bravery hung out to dry in the silence

The wind carries the smell of the kill
Laid out in the savannah
The wind leads the jackal and the hyena
Where the fallen returns to earth
The wind only asks me to listen
Listen to the silence
The loud silence of existence trying to exist
The emptiness that drives the addict back to the pipe
The hunger that drives the wealthy back to the toil
The vacant stare from life unlived

Silence is loud in imagination
Of what was said and what will be said and what could have been said
What was done or what could have been done
Regrets that come before the act.

The wind brings me news in the silence.




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