Tares Oburumu's Poem

Title

Guitarist & The Audience, In A 2022 Van, Driving Through The City Cut

Into Two; On One Side Is The Body Of A Girl Burnt For The Beliefs She Once Wore

As Jewelries, On The Other Is A Time Bomb Seen As A Flower Growing Under

The Tuft Of A Flag Stained With Defeat: The Cry Of Mothers Called

The Elegies Of Beethoven. 

For Beauty

The word MERCY, I am like you,

soft as the freshwaters of Syma.

I am filled with rose

petals; brittle blessing – broken into pieces of

forbearance, then grace.

To confect, to put yourself together,

you grow into a single beet flower; the scent

is assertive, the colors – each carries honey,

each is seductive. Where can we breed the bees?

Over & over again, I sail toward my apotheosis

elfin or garden, poring the shoreline,

which the waters measure with the length my heart

can carry.

I paddle my mind away from the sea

I have known for days, too blue not to be true.

I needed a plot of sunlight & solitude to sit down &

to think, to reckon the hours till the country becomes

usable again. Yes, home is just a thought you

trump up as roof over your head; an ache

trying hard to glorify you. I sail toward my poise.

I have never been unhappy, watching you

in the split, glassy on the TV.

You spill, as color, all over the national news.

What can the small talks, possibly say?

Today, I stand in the grapevine holding on

to the emeries, where we can rebuild what has been

destroyed by hearsay.

They say you are the door I have been opening,

to enter the revolution the house keeps closing.

The things you would die for, do they believe in you?

Does God believe in Alain Borer enough for him

to believe in God?

Of sedition, there’s more to dying than the affirmatives.

In the corner of an inflammable street,

the rituals of surrender tiptoe over the tripwires.

A scope of arms spreads, briefly, within limits & loss.

I could see burnt courages, dreams shot in the heart.

A toy-car, too, in a plastic dump.

The weight of a hummingbird’s wing is heavier

in the nest than when it floats down the wind,

ascending in protest.

I am thinking, now, about my hands buttercups

rested on my lover’s thighs the night before;

long symphonies sang over the need to reinvent

the bedroom,

then the guitar: the strings come as clear as

daylights when you touch your own soul.

The music becomes Lilian Eze's mirror.

See how we preen ourselves in her notes,

vulnerable, yet outfoxing the pockmarks

added to the orchestra by way of a historical cult.

Her hairs float in us. The van has already

become an instrument. We strum the roadmap.

The traffic is sick. It is difficult to say it’s separated

from the governorate. The drive is long, & longer

is the will to reach the revolution; isn’t that word the horizon,

the image of the second coming of our lord, Jesus?

Love the little Nigerian that being a bum deals you.

& sing it as your own, says the emigrant.

What do you know about a nomad, a desert crossing robin?

Here is the city he left behind, & a sister raped by fire.

Here’s the epitaph & everything the aquarellist

says she is: beautiful, beautiful.

Even as a girl living now under a heap of blasphemed

stones.

The tweets die, too. Almost a practice. But mostly,

I wondered: how does a hand flaunting a vote

save the dead? Or a flag shot in the head?

Here she lies, six feet below the internet. Facebook allergies.

Time or apple on the wrist of a Miss can do nothing

but to be beautiful. She was infinite as the universe

on the pages of Forge Literary Magazine.

In the hands of the young Williams Blake, ticking away

in his photograph, hung above my bookshelf.

A wound always in the shape of all I have ever read.

I am the kind of inventions that would have

made him rich; ache drowned in the prints; words

intensifying the almighty love, endless in the way

the sky sings of its expanse.

In the warmth of my own silences, I walk into the center

of my mind & stare at all the wannabe poems.

I ask, do you want to be born in these hard times?

Tares Oburumu

Winner of  2022 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.

John Chinaka Onyeche's Poems

Breathing in pages of papers

And let us say these prayers again

If it is not what it is to be a writer

That when the last bell is tolled on

We will meet again.

With our hands clung to pages of papers

Where we had written our unheard pains

And the world thought we were jokes

For the words and languages, we experiment

But no, never they understood us

They never knew what pain we bear in our hearts

Like the cymbal clashes for tones

Our hearts were heated and hit by pains

That we think of nothing again but words

And these words that we hide within them

In these pages of papers, we will be found

Breathing after this breath is put away in death

When I think of you, my Africa

From this forest to no-land

From no-land to this forest

We are sitting as its survival

From the blackness of our tales

From the tales of our blackness

We are still survival of the earth

-the indigenous people of this land

Born to bear the brunt of history

The history we have failed to learn from

The same keeps repeating itself in our hands

Like scooping water into a basket

The water runs back to its source

Nights that echo back our names

When the nights come without twinkling stars, I

have learned the act of surviving your absence, as

this is another way for a dark-skin lad to make his

beds in memories of the future he knows not. I have

mastered this art now, this art where I tucked in

between my palms - our pictures, those we took

when we exchanged those vows before men and

angels that we will live for each other till the stars

are no more in the firmament of our hearts. I know

that this was not one of those promises whispered

behind the walls of my heart - that you had longed

for this one lost - lad to call your own. But it is a

decade now since you enticed the Moon into your

palms and shaded it not to give its light for a

sojourner with time and to a peaceful - night - walk

with your man in the meadows - of fringed petals -.

For loving you now, a terror to behold by the same

hands that held you yesterday and called you

beloved. Now, how is this love misjudged and

killed at the altar of tongues unbridled for the nights

that echo back our names?

    © John Chinaka Onyeche

John Chinaka Onyeche is an author, poet, and teacher of History and African History. He is the author of many poetry books. He is the Best of Net Nominee. 

DIVIDED WE STAND; UNITED WE FALL(David Onojah)

The lamp on your feet cannot brighten

the whole earth.

Lead your people to the path they would follow.

The son of man drowns in the blood of his siblings,

that floods through the nation's streets.

Still, in silence for a thousand years

Our leaders betray us with a quiet eye.

We have suffered enough under their cruel watch

Mocked with their faeces

left at our doorsteps

The scorn, the waves of laughter, the jeers

fell on our feet.

And our faces glowed with a caked smile.

Our hearts rumbled

with echoes of a dying era.

We read our country's anthem

with tears in our eyes.

A country that serves you

a cup of your own tears

And feed you with a loaf of stone

You barely digest.

I'll rather marry pain than death.

United we fall, divided we stand

Hold your breath in the palm of your hands

Let everyone be responsible for their own death.

We live in a country

where silence prevails and truth hides in the lips of prey.

© DAVID ONOJAH (DAVEPOET1)

The masquerade dance (Poetry)

Google image

They blazed into the arena, 

Routing previous bleak and gloom, 

With their spectacular apparel,

Creatively crafted with colourful raffia strands.

They embraced the gong's rhythms,

In the back and forth motion dance, 

With raffia heads pounding the dusty ground,

Back and forth to the throng's amazement. 

The metal and wooden gongs synergize,

Partnering osha, udu and kongas,

Making rhythms that lifted our hearts, 

As was the splendid dancing spirits.

The anchorman restrained them with ropes, 

Aptly checking their unpredictable rage,

As they gyrate in the kingly dance, 

With a majestic stutter and swagger. 

Offspring of Umunneoha ,

Where ebony cultures are still alive,

And our dance, the lovely export,

Which took our people far and wide. 

@Akakuru Darlington.

Mendicant

My heart erupts 

Like a molten magma

My eyes jiggle

Tears drip like droopy jelly

I hear not like a man

But the tiniest of sounds

Hit the caves of my ear,

Voiceless voices,

Of mendicants, 

Beseeching

Sadaqah sadaqah,

For what to eat

They slide down defenselessly

With hands tied haplessly,

Agape, we watch helplessly.

Their blurry vision 

And drying vital vitality,

Dying in a blaze of agony out in the open

Asking again and again

Sadaqah.

A Poem by Muhammad Muddathir Salihu

Arise Nigeria Children

 

Arise Nigeria children

We own tomorrow

Our parents own today

Let no today

Spoil our tomorrow

We're young

We're dynamic

We are strong

We are creative

We're land 

Ask yourself

What're your plans

What're your plantations

What's fruit

What's future 

What's your vision

For our mission, 

Remember, you own today 

We own tomorrow

Don't destroy our tomorrow

Today

Poem by Taiwo Soyebo:

Salute! Mother Africa (Poetry)

 

 Africa, God’s Golden Fleece

A Continent carved out of Glory

Enriched with fertile soil on which the world grow

Decked with bronze, embedded with gold, crowned with ivory

The land with green pastures, flowing with milk and honey

 

Africa, old as the Dinosaurs

The land of lands, mother of the lands

Where culture, heritage , tradition are overflowing ripples

A relief of hospitality, sanctuary for harmony and peace

 

Africa, the cradle of civilization

A land of abundance, where the rain wet ,

And the sunshine nurtures what we sow

Africa, the jewel cherished by people of great favor and dreams

A land where great heroes were first raised

A land of hope, where smiles and opportunity reflects it’s dimple

 

I am an African

Not because I was born there ,

Nor my skin is black

Or I live in it’s soil

But because,

My heart beats with Africa

My mind is merged by Africa

And my soul at home in Africa

 

In her agony,

My cheeks are stained with tears

In her triumph,

My feet are alive with dancing

In her weariness,

My hands are joined in prayer

When she honors her elders

My heads are bowed in respect

 

I am an African

She is the cradle of my birth

Nurturer of ancient wisdom

Her blue skies take my breath away

And my hope for the future is bright

The land of my tomorrow

I recognize her gift as sacred

And I’m proud to be an African

This is  a poem written by  chinenye chukwujekwe, A guest writer