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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Home

Confetti.
Colored sheets of paper.
Tarpaulin
Left over blocks
Half burnt wood
Gnarled iron rods
Sand
Mud and pebbles
Old cans
Old tires and a rim
A car door
Three stereo cases
Three tree trunks
One bucket
Another bucket below the leaking roof
A beaten bucket
One and half tubers of yam
Half boiled water in a steel helmet
Memories of meals on empty stomach
Sweating shirts
Rough boots by the door
Wall clock, right time and broken face
Second hand ticks away
History recorded every second
Naked boy playing in the mud
Naked woman stretched out
Broken voices
Broken songs
Beats from broken bottles
Chorus.
Swallows, kites
Solitary nightingale by the rubbish heap
Lonely pup sleeping at my feet.
Home.


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Will you hear me now?

I have calloused my knees
On earth, rocks and Persian rugs
I have calloused my forehead
On walls, frescoes and marble

I have sang alleluiah
The birds echo the chorus
I have counted beads
From decade to decade

I have grown beards
And dreadlocks longer than my waist
I have chalked my eyes
And rouged my cheeks

I have stood on mountains
And beside the oceans
I have walked around the Iroko
And painted the caves

I have sacrificed the young
And decapitated the beautiful
I have split blood
And splattered entrails

I have banished thought
And woven legends
I have hanged heretics
And burned their books

I have sought the whirlwind
And the locust
I have smashed homes
And uprooted street lights

I have sought Ogun's wand
And set fire to Amadioha's shrine
I have allied with the desert
And laid waste the rivers in the land

I have laid across the track
And borne your footsteps
I have sat with the dogs
And eaten your scraps

I have stopped the sun
And stayed the night
I have seized the rain
And whipped the wind

I have wailed in the night
And cried in the day
I have called your name
And counted the curses

I have kidnapped your children
And held your ancestors for ransom
I have blocked the roads
And blown up your pipelines

I have empaneled committees
And formed factions
I have held conferences
And rewritten constitutions


Will you hear me now?



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Will you hear me now?

I have calloused my knees
On earth, rocks and Persian rugs
I have calloused my forehead
On walls, frescoes and marble

I have sang alleluiah
The birds echo the chorus
I have counted beads
From decade to decade

I have grown beards
And dreadlocks longer than my waist
I have chalked my eyes
And rouged my cheeks

I have stood on mountains
And beside the oceans
I have walked around the Iroko
And painted the caves

I have sacrificed the young
And decapitated the beautiful
I have split blood
And splattered entrails

I have banished thought
And woven legends
I have hanged heretics
And burned their books

I have sought the whirlwind
And the locust
I have smashed homes
And uprooted street lights

I have sought Ogun's wand
And set fire to Amadioha's shrine
I have allied with the desert
And laid waste the rivers in the land

I have laid across the track
And borne your footsteps
I have sat with the dogs
And eaten your scraps

I have stopped the sun
And stayed the night
I have seized the rain
And whipped the wind

I have wailed in the night
And cried in the day
I have called your name
And counted the curses

I have kidnapped your children
And held your ancestors for ransom
I have blocked the roads
And blown up your pipelines

I have empaneled committees
And formed factions
I have held conferences
And rewritten constitutions


Will you hear me now?



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The lion eats the deer, the deer eats the lion

The lion eats the dear
And grows fat
The lion eats the goat
And grows strong
His roar fills the savannah
His savage claws mark his territory

The lions claw splits on a thorn
The thorn spills a little blood
The thorn makes a little wound
The lion limps along
The fly lays an egg in the wound
A small egg between the claws
Warm in the flesh now rotting bit by bit

The egg becomes a maggot
The wound rots the claw
The roar stills the night
The roar expels his pain
The lion goes to ground.
The vultures take their piece
The jackals take their piece
The hyenas take their piece
The earth takes her piece
The grass grows from the earth
The grass grows lush from the leftover blood
The grass blooms from the leftover flesh

The goat eats the grass
The deer eats the grass
The grass from the earth
The earth from the blood
The blood from the wound
The wound made by the thorn
The wound in the claw of the lion.

The lion ate the deer
The deer ate the lion.



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