<\/p>\n\n\n\n
*From Shadow and Dream<\/em> (New Horn, 1982)<\/p>\n\n\n\n (in a season of omens<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the faint gleam of her eyes I<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hawker of curses crowded with the cock II<\/p>\n\n\n\n We called a war without a cause III<\/p>\n\n\n\n We sailed up a stream of sorrows IV<\/p>\n\n\n\n But why, why do you flee from our V VI<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here our roads meet within the bean\u2019s eyebrows VII<\/p>\n\n\n\n The wind has learnt our song a sail VIII<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the wind is for us who can be against us? Smell the rain-fragrance of their songs and our IX<\/p>\n\n\n\n A gleam of light touches lightly, moves, returns X<\/p>\n\n\n\n So reach out, reach out and clasp the rainbow From Animist Chants and Memorials <\/em> (Kraft Books, 2017)<\/p>\n\n\n\n (For Sesan )<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n there is a lie in every line that rhymes to tell the tale of a boy who loved beauty he couldn\u2019t take it here This dull, dull craft of words It was a Peugeot 403 Tyres inspected, engine oiled, brakes checked My tears and the car held through the journey We arrived an hour later, Father and son, On initiation night, I recited the prescribed words: Soon after, I lost the language of guavas and spirits I miss the coarse and colourful words I can no longer use I miss the language that once lived in my body.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/strong>Dawn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n dressed in white dressed in white i watched this Sunday scene at the threshold of this verb Noon<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n a day of dull showers slowly, very slowly the weary hour stretch outside every noun Night<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n grief grips us all in the silence of the soul a wasted rain, a wasted land\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n nestled in my heart for thirty years, I kept running, on windy winter mornings, and, sometimes at noon, then, at night, when the evening wind blows for thirty years, until, this midnight hour, in a clasp of clockhands, running away from me\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n and there, in the motion of wings in flight, hanging from the branches of your arms I long only for things prosaic like bread and flesh and earth like the body evidence of sweat, neither seas nor sunsets will serve this need<\/p>\n\n\n\n I long only\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n to clasp the trunk of your body a hairy love in an embrace of leaves<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *From Shadow and Dream (New Horn, 1982) Mind Buoys (in a season of omens) In the faint gleam of her eyes Is the flicker of a dying dream What flame will revive this dream? What buoys to anchor a mind adrift? I The hawker of curses crowded with the cock at sunrise and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4986,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions\/4986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Mind Buoys<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n<\/em>Is the flicker of a dying dream
\n<\/em>What flame will revive this dream?
\n<\/em>What buoys to anchor a mind adrift?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nat sunrise
\nand we rose to a rain of tobacco-tainted
\ntubercular spitum
\nWe will watch then, silently watch them
\nReap their garland of curses\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nWe found the cause in the battle
\nWhen the blood of men tingled
\nIn the glasses of deceit\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nSeeking balms to soothe the sear
\nOf sutured minds, oils to spread
\nOn sprained souls<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nlandscape of sorrows
\ncome, come let us build here an altar
\nwith the blood of our living martyrs<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nSometimes I wonder at the black
\nHide
\nthat shelters your throbbing blood
\nwonder at the almost inaudible tom-tom of
\n your heart
\nand dream of the untold story that agitates
\nbosom\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nhere the sweat and the tears are hidden
\nLet us plant a seed on this earth a seed
\nthat will flower on the face of the moon<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nabove their teargas and their bullets
\nabove their bloodlust and their fractured minds
\nthe cannons of our laughter are strangely singing\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nWe will watch the wine well on the lips of
\n maidens<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nExulted spirits will soar above the whirlwinds of
\n of hate\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nLight on the first seed planted in earth
\nLook! this is a tendril seeking, seeking
\nThe firm pillars of oak-minds\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nBetween desire and the dream, the shadow and
\n the tree
\nReach out and clasp the sun and the rain
\nOur shield against the seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n <\/p>\n\n\n\nDeath of a Poem<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\na line in every rhyme that lies<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nso much not take the warts
\n<\/span>that punctured the rhyming lyrics of his life
\nthe debris and the log that punctuated
\nthe flow of the river and the grace of the seagull<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nand one cloudless day
\nsunshine pouring like crystal showers
\nhis spirit soared above the skies
\nleaving behind the lies in the rhyme<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nCan it capture the delight of his life?<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeaving home @ 10<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nThey don\u2019t make them anymore<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAll in order as only an old Peugeot can be.
\nIts creaking body held together by care,
\nMy father drove me to the boarding school
\nIn a small town one hour away from home\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThrough the porthole in my heart and the tear on the road
\nThrough the window, I watched the world rush past
\nThe houses and the trees and the streets and the names
\nI had known and loved, all running backwards, with
\nNo time to pause for a goodbye, no time to wave
\nTo the departing son leaving the embrace of home and hearth<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ndriving through the school gate to the dormitory
\nthat was to be my home for the next five years.
\nThen my father left\u2026and averting my eyes, I cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cI am a fag, a rotten green toad. I promise
\nto give up all my rustic and outlandish ways
\nand to become a true student of Government College, Ughelli\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAnd ever since I have been boarded in a new home,
\nA new language with neither spice nor bite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe power and potency of the curse uttered with a gob of spittle
\nLet loose in the language of the body and the spirit<\/p>\n\n\n\nThree Moods, One Sunday<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nshe lingered by the doorway
\nhanging to the knob with a gentle sway
\nas the sun walked through the
\ndoors of the east lighting up her eyes<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nher face flowered before my eye
\na dress, a door, a knob, the sun<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nthe sun rising on my tongue
\nI mouth a simple chant<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nyour soul will open like a flower<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nsomnolent noon of rain
\nwarmed by a lukewarm light<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nlingering in dull puddles, brackish gutters,
\nthis cadence rides you slowly
\nlike a dream as you descend
\ninto an oasis of vowels<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\npronouns her absence
\nand in the void of the vowel
\nthe qualifiers become a cortege of sirens
\na procession of broken-hearted verbs
\nbrooding on this noon of her absence<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nclouds wrangle in the skies
\nthe rain weary of its showers
\nmoans in the slums and
\ndarkness feeds on every face<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nechoes the voice of a lost dream<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n <\/p>\n\n\n\nRunning Poem<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n<\/em>is an ache so strong
\n<\/em>it stabs and soothes,
\n<\/em>it lives and moves
\n<\/em>in the blood like a potion
\n<\/em>that kills and cures<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nrunning away from
\nfrom lines, verses, songs
\nrunning away from poetry<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nwhen I remember
\nthe harmattan of my native land
\na verse will arrive like a line of egrets in flight
\nteasing the eye in curves, in angles, in poses, pure and picturesque,
\ni\u2019ll shut my eyes, close my heart to the coming poem<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nin the season of rains,
\nwhen the light, grainy and translucent,
\nladen with the dust of pollens,
\nsows a fragrance so strong the nostrils flare with delight\u2026
\nmemories of soothing oils, of spices, of flowers, flow
\nunto a delta of tropical passions and a new song surges within,
\na seasonal song, smelling of rain and grains and poems,
\ni shut down the senses, close my heart to the coming poem<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nand from the distance the sound of flutes –
\nsailing through silence and solitude –
\nseeking the company of a poem to ride through the dark
\ni plug my ears, close my heart to the coming poem<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ni kept running, running away from poetry,
\nfrom lines, verses, and songs, closing my heart,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nthrough a burst of fireflies, a verse stabbed me in the gut,
\npiercing through flesh and marrow and memory
\nand the blood flowed in lines, in verses, in songs<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ni found you, hidden in the open place where the ache lives,
\nthe open place where the dream hides, waiting for wings\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\nMonkey Love<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\ndreaming of bananas,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nthings without poetry or fire<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nlike soil and seed and water<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nundeodorized, fresh with odour,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nand hug you like the monkey hugs the tree<\/p>\n\n\n\n