Poetry

Obemata

Anti-Manifesto

a list of things to do

promises to fulfil

written on sheets

white against the backdrops of our lives

torn up before they are done

broken before they are fulfilled

now again they mount

the rostrums of our grief

makers of all things breakable

wishers of unfulfilling promises

o compatriots tear down those rostrums

drag let us drag them by their noses

tear down the rostrum drag him

by the nose to the grindstones of our miseries

burn let him burn

o compatriots!  

Lines on our homeland

(for Ogaga)

remember the rain that brought us feet-happiness as we skip puddles 

our children bathing in its waters of purity

remember the rain that hummed on roofs

its songs men learnt from the lips of their supine wives

remember the rain that soaked old roots into life

the fields longed to be beds for seedlings

remember the crops that yearned for the promise of water

and the harvests  

but here now in our homeland the new rain rains blood

everywhere there are rivers rivers of blood everywhere

rivers that pour into cities towns villages and hamlets

washing away children like stones of a bitter flood

imagine the blood rain attending to old roots

and saying 'rise I give you all life anew'!

imagine the waters of death stroking grieving mothers

with flowers of condolences imagine

imagine crops that won't grow past seedlings

children that won't earn the promise of life

Flight into memory

a paper-kite of our childhood

flown by the wind

tosses on the corridors of memory

in the sky

it flies it flies away

with the wind on its wings

no matter how high

or how low

it ascends

it descends

it's always in our sight

with each flight we imagine

things making their own journeys

things lost in space

things lost with time

time in hourglass

a paper-kite is flown

into the wind

we too take our flight

into memory

rekindling old familiar things

the face of things hard to remember

hard times we easily forgot 

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Obemata

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