From Animist Chants and Memorials (Kraft Books, 2017)
Death of a Poem
(For Sesan )
there is a lie in every line that rhymes
a line in every rhyme that lies
to tell the tale of a boy who loved beauty
so much not take the warts
that punctured the rhyming lyrics of his life
the debris and the log that punctuated
the flow of the river and the grace of the seagull
he couldn’t take it here
and one cloudless day
sunshine pouring like crystal showers
his spirit soared above the skies
leaving behind the lies in the rhyme
This dull, dull craft of words
Can it capture the delight of his life?
Leaving home @ 10
It was a Peugeot 403
They don’t make them anymore
Tyres inspected, engine oiled, brakes checked
All in order as only an old Peugeot can be.
Its creaking body held together by care,
My father drove me to the boarding school
In a small town one hour away from home…
My tears and the car held through the journey
Through the porthole in my heart and the tear on the road
Through the window, I watched the world rush past
The houses and the trees and the streets and the names
I had known and loved, all running backwards, with
No time to pause for a goodbye, no time to wave
To the departing son leaving the embrace of home and hearth
We arrived an hour later, Father and son,
driving through the school gate to the dormitory
that was to be my home for the next five years.
Then my father left…and averting my eyes, I cried.
On initiation night, I recited the prescribed words:
“I am a fag, a rotten green toad. I promise
to give up all my rustic and outlandish ways
and to become a true student of Government College, Ughelli”
Soon after, I lost the language of guavas and spirits
And ever since I have been boarded in a new home,
A new language with neither spice nor bite.
I miss the coarse and colourful words I can no longer use
The power and potency of the curse uttered with a gob of spittle
Let loose in the language of the body and the spirit
I miss the language that once lived in my body.
Three Moods, One Sunday
Dawn
dressed in white
she lingered by the doorway
hanging to the knob with a gentle sway
as the sun walked through the
doors of the east lighting up her eyes
dressed in white
her face flowered before my eye
a dress, a door, a knob, the sun
i watched this Sunday scene
the sun rising on my tongue
I mouth a simple chant
at the threshold of this verb
your soul will open like a flower
Noon
a day of dull showers
somnolent noon of rain
warmed by a lukewarm light
slowly, very slowly the weary hour stretch outside
lingering in dull puddles, brackish gutters,
this cadence rides you slowly
like a dream as you descend
into an oasis of vowels
every noun
pronouns her absence
and in the void of the vowel
the qualifiers become a cortege of sirens
a procession of broken-hearted verbs
brooding on this noon of her absence
Night
grief grips us all
clouds wrangle in the skies
the rain weary of its showers
moans in the slums and
darkness feeds on every face
in the silence of the soul
echoes the voice of a lost dream
a wasted rain, a wasted land…
