Uche Peter Umezurike

 

By the Bed 

As would a child
I lifted my slow body
from the covers
of sleep

mouth holding a yawn
I pried open
hazy eyes

the sun sprinkled
diaphanous light
like a halo
about your lingerie-
dressed
body

as you arched
lissome over me
smelling of my eau
de cologne
and planted a kiss
of an angel
on my dull forehead

and my tongue tasted of wine.

Imagine a Land

Imagine a forest’s
Beauty without trees, earth
Without moisture; imagine

A sky without clouds,
River without flow, sun
Without light; imagine

Night without the moon,
A room without hue, floor
Without footsteps; imagine

A bed without sheets,
Faucets without water, perfume
Without fragrance; imagine

Wine without flavour,
A kiss without warmth; desire
Cold as ash; imagine

Lips set without smile,
Your flesh shorn of fire, me
Without you; imagine

Boughs without leaves,
Full of wilted twigs: forests
In slow decay; imagine.

 

A Poet Sees a New World

I.

A poet gazes out the window. A man
ambles by in a hoodie, torn Levi’s jeans,
clutching a cardboard with Homeless
help inked on it.

Above pine trees, a plane slants white
against the palm of blue, streaming a comet tail.

The poet thinks of home.

In the city, the hum of sunrise,
the scramble for space,
the scramble for bread,
the scramble for pleasure,
the scramble for ego,
power, fame, and currency.

Milk is still cheap. Love is online. A robin
chirps in the tree. Suddenly
the poet sees a new world,
the poet sees a new world,
in the soul of birdsongs.

II.

The laptop battery is dead.
The poet can’t find his notebook; he grabs a pen,
scribbles on a receipt. A sheaf
of receipts his thoughts deface.
The poet scribbles away,
backing the old world.

He sees a new world,
the poet sees a new world,
in the whorl of words.

III.

On the radio, Rihanna
has found love in a dim place. On TV,
a man masks his crime with style,
and society lifts a toast to him.

A wedding goes afield,

a spouse hunts for love abroad;
in a friend’s arms, a girl bristles
at the force of womanhood,
another winces beneath a man
older than her father, whose grip
leaves welts on her wrists,
yet another sobs,
—her mother hovering close—
while a midwife fingers pubic hairs for purity.

Somewhere far but close
to the poet’s heart, an ex-soldier
burnishes his past and retrieves
glory with a bile as huge as Obudu;

a chief orders some youth
to blow up their heritage,
another chief attempts to snatch history
and his blood tells the rest of the story.

IV.

In another place, riven by drought and oil,
between Libya and Iraq,
a dark symphony pulses overhead,
pilots flash each other thumbs-up,
then serve a phalanx of bombs below.

Twin buildings become ashes,  
once a shelter for art and history.

In the smoke,
the dust and grovelling,
brothers, fathers, sisters,
and mothers, lovers, strangers,
priests, doubters, and eccentrics,
prostitutes, and professors, and pariahs,
seek warmth in the shadows
of each other’s hope.  

A child cries for its mother trapped
between a boulder
and an ancient bronze head.

A wife lets out agony
in multiple tongues,
shrieking with all
the fire in her small body.

Crimson, the music of change.
Crimson, the fire in the streets.
Crimson, the stampedes and screams.
Crimson, the bodies familiar as junk.

A policeman says, The law is the law.
The nation is no home
for dissidents, or visionaries,
or women, unbending as baobabs.

The poet paints with words
a mosaic of blood
odd shoes and earrings.

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