POEMS READ AT LOUDTHOTZ POETRY OPEN READING SEASON 7 EPISODE 6 - THEN

KEMIBON WINNER POEM OF THE MONTH

THEN – POEM OF THE MONTH

when we were seventeen

the world lay shimmering at our feet

like the gold sequined dress that she

wore that night

Then

 when we were young and wild and

bubbled with promise of a future bright

Flighty, slightly floating above the ground

 We were richly blessed with dreams

then

 that night, first night out on the town

 we breezed through the streets

longing for privacy like intimacy needed to be hidden from adult eyes

because we knew

 then

when sheer lacing of virgin fingers

could send jolts of electricty through

 and eject emotions endlessly

seeking for privacy to find intimacy

 here

then

when her gold sequined dress

is ripped off in desirable desires

at first excitement meets anxiety

 and other garments meet gold sequins on the cold tiled floor of borrowed quarters

then

 when we young, foolish and free

embrace novel emoting

then

 she gasps

then

I clasp

sweaty hands in hazy frenzy

searching for intimacy in this young

jar

then

 regret

then

pain

fear

and

then

ageing

 KEMIBON

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THAT WAS THEN (WE WERE IN THE GAME)

Wind the herald of the orchestra

Lightning, thunder and rain intertwine

To make music

They play different genre from classical to rock

Sometimes blues to lovers delight

I stood in the crowd waiting for the music to stop

Forced to wait and listen to the music they made

My spirit sprightly embraced the music

The joy of growing up playing in the rain

Rolled back fresh and clear

I can see their faces captured in time

Such joy you see in childlike faces

As we played in the rain

Different sounds from different surfaces

Making rhythm and harmony

As the rain made its music

That was then

When we were in the game

We were the characters

We ran and shot our imaginary guns

Better than commando and rambo

Drove our wheels and tyres

Faster than any formula one

We were the football stars from different generation all in one field

Keshi, Pele, Okocha, Maradona and others

When sun and sweat, rain and cold

Played their roles in our body

We were world class chefs

Cooking delicacies with sand and leaves 

The old play station was the almost completed bungalow

The new play station was that two storey building beside Chisom’s house

It was an upgrade from PS2 to PS3

We were in the game

That was then

And now…  

IFEANYI OKWOSHA       

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YOU MAY THINK YOU KNOW

What happens?
When you look behind the veil
And the dust settles
When the cupboard door is opened
And the sun comes out
When the wind blows
And you find the master key
When you find the foot of a rainbow
And you see that crossed spot

What happens?
When your eyes meet
And your hands touch for the first time
When you bump into each other
And she smiles at you
When you hear her voice
And she finally tells you her name
When you invite her out
And you find you dance in sync

What happens?
When the clock strikes 12
And the sky turns blue
When the trumpet sounds
And its barely afternoon
When you reach the peak
And your certificates become four
When you read this poem
And wonder where its going

What happens then?

ERHIO OBODO

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ARE YOU GOD?

Three times I echoed it

It rang through the room

As if the rapture is upon us

It dawned on him grimly

What a gut he’s got

Boss seems to be saying to me

Tampering with my fierce

Ferocious willpower

It was temper on a rise

As he rose, we all rose

The rest sat quietly leaving me alone

On the battle front

I stood diagonal to him

A peek through the room

It was a Goliath David one sided battle

Unlike David my legs aches and shivers through my head

His voice increases tempo

My voice follows suit

I unlocked so many words

He stood speechless...full of ire

Bone of contention

Talking down on us all

Our Parents, families, spouses were his target

But his attack was more to our psyche

My boss is always right

Even on his path to perdition

Nobody questions the boss

Nobody talks when he talks

But here I am defying the age long rules

Tore it like a piece of paper

Into an unforgettable shred

The myth of my untouchable boss flew away

Instantly reality beckons

As termination knocks on my head

Even before warning

My boss though jolted for a minute

Went on spitting ... threatening stones 

Stone of fire and fire

He already fired me with his eyes rolling red charcoal ...  

Are you God? I echoed thrice 

That was enough to set me on a firing squad?

No I guess you are not

For God is God ...

Though I am fired without letter 

I was not in any way on fire

The boss wants me to be on the street

Still under fire

But I have since lost my love

For the job

To me ... elated and freed

Instead,

It was a timely fire

For me to lit a personal fire

That has been burning beneath

For a while, I enjoyed my liberty

Freedom sang her song on my head

Hunger eulogize itself through my lips

Street dust smiles at my shoes

Then, for a while... a reasonable period of time

I cried within... I wondered aloud

If my Boss is not God... Then where is God?

Or maybe my lost job is God

It was a period I was muttering altar dance to my bae

My kinsmen scolded reality into me

My friends shot me down

"Just go, beg, stoop and get your Job (God) back"

But my Bae stood by me

She echoed hope and faith in me

Her presence alone radiates a better future for us

But the altar dance needs more than hope and faith

Less we become a laughing character in a wedding series

Then and then

I mean right then at the verge of the mockery

Something showed up like a proverbial Deus Ex Machina

I mean He showed up

After several questioning and loss of identity

God showed up and echoed

Nope!!! None of all these are God

I am God and no one else

Five years down the lane of the altar dance

I concur with my bae

It can only be GOD

ALAYANDE STEPHEN T.

1.48am

6th June, 2016

Re-jigged for my 5 years Wedding Anniversary

True Life story

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THEN, CAME JOHNSON

Then

Came Johnson the left-handed

He was a happy-clappy, chatty chap

Muse of poets and for songwriters oddities

Born in a climate of clumsy possibilities

Reared in the waters of culture vulture trap

He had his rope of hope

But at the end of his rope

He needed a hand but there was none

And then

That night his mother died, he didn’t cry

For his little mouthful tears will be a dishonour

To a mother who was nurture and succour

No more heart to hear is fear and pry

He had his lamp of faith   

But that limp mirage was fate

He needed a light but there was none

So then

With unanchored hope he ordered his spirit’s grief

Through the darkest alleys and the highways of the castaways, he gropes

With wilderness for his pillow, loneliness for a companion, he probes

He knew his grief won’t be brief

Now emperor of uninhabited places

Of his father, there were no traces

He called a star to be his brother and the moon a sister

And the cloud slammed the door on his tender voice

From then

The moon died in his sky

That night took his rope

That night stole his hope

That night was his one last try

And that night he sold his soul

And there and then the birth of an enfant terrible, a troll

He was now broke and broken, a blade of darkness

What then? What pelts of peppered provocations?

When heaven tries the patience of a saint

Johnson bade a final good-bye to good old night

With discordant choir of unnamed ghosts they sang a requiem to light

From the epicentre of savage depths, a lethal angel sent

With the forgotten old gods and surrogate deities

They forged a ferocious cathedral of atrocities

Dark, dreary and eerie “This is home”, Johnson said

And here darkness is message, massage and passage

Where tragedy ripens

Now then,

Where are the guilty bystanders?

Johnson once a sweet morning lark now cunning night owl

Harvest of earth’s darkest hour, there they prowl

In this sacred rite of disorientation, blame not the bartenders

Oaths of vengeance were made: blood and deed

With a bleeding reed screed in the creed

Inked, ringed, dreadlocks and tortuously tattooed

With Johnson’s terror, Hitler’s just a footnote

Even so

On this tortured lines

God did not border to write straight anymore

Johnson a pain in the molar, not a minor tremor

This is not a survivor’s script. A witness whines

Of a reserved plot of weeds in our tidy garden

Like an angry librarian am mortally saddened 

To tell this tall tale stewed in humour: how mad can a mango make a man go?

That far Johnson went, I won’t dye the truth 

Overpriced! Like a tomato freshly plucked from Buhari’s Nigeria

One last night

His presence made the living envied the dead

Upon a deal with a resident malevolence the sea sees.

Washed his face and wrote his sins

He looked up, smiled and said: the tide will come, and shred

This withered writ.

For no tome of alien gospels can make him contrite

He needed table talks on life’s menu and there was none

With the weight of the world’s anger upon his grave’s lid

Here lies he. In this dark vault, dead and buried: Johnson the left-handed.

Every now and then

I pray for him before a wooden saint

Who neither blink an answer nor fling a frown

Then and now.

@MICHAEL UMAMEH (FRESHLY BREWED 02/06/16)

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A MAMMOTH,

The planner

does not know

The squirrel

a spontaneous fellow

yet the squirrel

has made so many effects

in the life of the mammoth

When will the mammoth

Get his epiphany

And learn to know

the squirrel?

When will he

Realise that he doesn’t

Have to remember

the dark regions

He occasionally finds himself

Whenever he thinks

Of all that he has lost

Family, love

And that keen support

He feels like

A jamless doughnut,

Uninteresting

A over sweetened coffee,

Desperate

A wingless fairy

Unambitious

A bow without it string

Useless

A soft unripe mango

Unpalatable

An empty pandora’s box

Unfamiliar

All he can do now

Is find the nut

That leads

to the squirrel

BIOLA BONUOLA

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                                                                              THEN

We want only to show you something

We have seen and to tell you something

We have heard

That here and there in the world

And now and then in ourselves

Is a new creation.

Tillich said that and he was not even writing poetry

What then was he doing?

What then is this furry, fuzzy animal?

What if it is all poetry?

If it bites and stings and wakes us up with a blow to the head

If it smashes the frozen sea within us

And makes our whole body so cold that no fire can warm us

If it feels as if the top of our heads were excavated

Then it is poetry even if as in Tillich’s case theology is being written

Then- speaking of consequences; of cause and effect

Speaking of a time in place, a time and place and a place in time

Virginia Woolf’s room of her own and 500 pounds

The solitary philosopher sitting in his room

Examining his own thoughts

Listening to his own breath

Then counting costs; assigning value and knowing things

Seated like the solitary reaper awaiting the grim one.

And then, what if it is all poetry?

Putting the best words in the best order

Using words charged with their utmost meaning

Appearing almost as a remembrance

Seeing the truth through the lens of passion

Experiencing now, when and then moments

Focusing not on meaning but on being

Arriving at intellect by way of the heart

Then- pursuing necessary implications to their logical

Conclusions

Bringing them down to their grave yard

Identifying stones and cenotaphs

Helping them to dance on their own graves

On resurrection morning

Then- spoken in stentorian, sarcastic tones

Wanting to know on a self-declared need to know basis

For us the conclusion of the matter is not the ecclesiasts

Nothing new under the sun

Or fear God

Or vanity of vanities all is vanity

But that here and there in the world

And now and then in ourselves

Is a New Creation.

ANDREW WHYTE

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THE SON OF ORUKU 2

I remember then when

Deep secrets were formed

In the abyss of time

Realities hidden deep

Covered by flesh and lucre

Mediocrity made up

Evil shrouded in silk.

I remember then when Unabashed spirits

Spread their wings wide and wade through humanity

And made Oruku the land for deities to play with

Those were the evil days

Then prayers where carved on wrinkled trees

That threw different hues on Oruku

I remember, I remember them very well

Incantations dragged from the depths of Uro

In the swampy underbelly of Oruku

How can you “un-forge” what was forged in the depths of earth

How can you “un-judge” the sentences passed

The son of Oruku asked these to a chi he cannot see

The son of Oruku did not ask this of the chi in the sea

The distraught earth wept for Oruku

The heavens looked down on Oruku in pity

I remember then

But now the son of Oruku has risen

His soul and blood to oruku given

That no man nor god nor spirit

In Oruku spread injustice

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THEN MAYBE... MAYBE THEN

I crave bullets of unarmed guns

Bloods of uncracked skins

And the melody of muted tunes

I desire the peace of haunted ghosts

The glide of a sinking boat

And the happiness of broken hearts

I long for the sentient of a dying soul

The restriction of a floating leaf

And the freedom of a possessed mind

I seek the blinding brightness of the dead night

The lasting shadows of the burning sun

And the decaying carcass of a living body

I pine for truth in place of lies

I dare leaders to put their heart where their mouth lies

Life is already too hard without so much lies

Then maybe…

Maybe then… my pen would be at ease

These are the cravings of my naïve pen

Cravings as good as delusions

I crave for a country, where 

missing girls are not treated like missing funds

Then maybe …

Maybe then… my pen would rest in peace

AJIJOLA HABEEB

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ONCE UPON A TIME

I

Remember, remember; once upon a time

Then, when we were children, young and at ease

We chased aimlessly at butterflies and lapped at nectar

With joy-filled eyes we took in the harmattan air of Christmas

Recall, recall; long before then we were old and bitter

Then, when we contemplated all that was and wasn’t

And fought wars to right the wrongs of men wronged,

Whose rights were taken by the very wrongs we allowed.

Refute, refute; all that spoke of your disillusionment

Then, when you imprisoned men with words, in your cave

For you proclaimed light dim and scarce; the Sun, naught.

Your words were shadows, a death embrace that held the covers to your sepulcher.

Recant, recant; shamefully declare your ignorance

Then testify, that the sands of Troy once drank the rays of the Sun

That the giants once rent waters of a sea apart and,

That men once courted, in conquering the sky, the friendship of dragons

Rejoice, rejoice; that death opens doors to ever new births

Then you will know that the story of you

Is etched unto always, and the times

Are but points in the constancy of time

II

Remember, remember; once upon a time

Then, when we were children without mothers

We knew not of our pasts, for we had none

And wishing to become selves, wished to school

Requite, requite; the love and kindness shown you

Then in doing so, you will know what you sort to know

That in giving what this school offers you

You yourselves become teachers of selves

Refrain, refrain; from the wrong principle

Then and only then, can your energies be channeled

To breaking the covers of your sepulcher

Fastened by the shadows of your imprisoned selves

Receive, receive; yet upon a time

Then, when the Sun will bath you in warm light

Rejoice, rejoice; for the schooling is done

Then, and only then, will yourselves be pure and true

IFEANYI MBAH

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THEN!!                                                                  

Then spoke men

With bright lit faces and tongues unend

In tonal dialects of idiolects

Such laden with no regrets

Did they all in words express

Of happenings of yester-years

When mother earth had her rest

And man did not live in despair.

Then the fields gave their best

And the hairs of corn on shelves stayed fresh

Market places lived as squares of incessant fete

And men as infants, crawled the earth

Love inhabited the air

And joy and laughter were found every where

Neighbours were nearest port of help

Then life was priceless

Contentment and virtue were priced jewels

Assets of inestimable worth that non would sell

Fools and confused were not adorned with rulership strength

Hard work and merit were currencies for exalted robes and bench

Then Nigeria did reign in grace,

 Her warmth, lush and affluence her citizens felt.

Then peace and unity dwelled our borders

Tribalism, religious xenophobism and bigotry were strangers

For oneness and progress were the utmost plights of our fathers!

FABIAN MCROB UGBECHIE

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LIFE

In the beginning, it was unknown and unseen

Life indeed came into existence

Beautiful, when you behold it........

Creation makes it so.

It’s a happy one, in a place yet

A sad one in another place.

A beautiful life of freedom

yet a hovering cloud of darkness, 

The fog of death,

The mist of sorrow.

Life, beautiful as it is!

It’s so strange.

One morning you wake up to a beautiful sunshine

Another morning to the horrifying screams of Pains, Terror and Death

Sunrise and sunset sends man to its grave

You can never choose for it.

When it comes, you accept it.

When it’s gone, you accept it.

Like a mist, it appears for just a day

And disappears tomorrow.

All we are might quickly fade away,

Replace with tears and sorrow.

When its enemy “Death” comes

It can’t fight.

That’s as bad as it is, yet beautiful.

Life is inevitable,

Its opposite, Death! Is also inevitable

They are very close, yet an enemy

While it last, it gives you the priviledge,

To live and enjoy

But when it’s gone, it’s gone and its memories are forgotten.

Somewhere and everywhere in life

A dirge is being sung.......Everyday!

FLORENCE SALAWU

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COFFEE MEMORY

The coconut hits the floor and mothers wean babies on spilt milk,

Gods drink cheap wine as they watch Venus decomposing.

She never wanted to dance in her evening wear,

She asked, what will the neighbors say?

The day after, three birds began to sing by your windows,

They cry on the panes.

You lose your religion,

 you drink the potion concocted in her mystery.  

She left her longings when she got off the boat,

She left barefooted, her shoes lingering at your door.

In your closet still hangs her favorite coat;

You searching but can’t find you pride on the floor.

You urine begins to reek of coffee and antibiotics,

You are drowning, river deep;

You stretch your hand to find your personal Jesus

But she has refused to bear your cross.

The cockroaches make babies in your bed,

Porno movies begin to play in your head.

But you swore, you swore never again

to go skinny-dipping with apparitions.

So you eat green onions,

Put on your blue suede shoes

And dance with yourself.

You get on the street again to stalk shadows.

Two turtle doves lead you,

You follow their trail to where the ashes lie.

The dog with a wet nose

Narrates the tale of how angels die.

You stop by the dockside

awaiting the return of the tides.

Fear is a gondola; you sail away into the stream’s heart,

Hoping this small boat will founder beneath the waves of dreams.

You are washed ashore,

No rest for prophets on the sea bed.

Sometimes moving ahead

Is returning to where you have been before.

You get on the train homeward bound,

That which is not willing to be lost is easily found.

She’s sitting right in front of you,

hair so soft, so succulent, the ferns were nurtured by the dew.

You breathe, buoy your spirit

Perceive the smell; it is her you can tell.

You touch but she can barely feel it,

She’s deep asleep, you can only pray that she hears you weep.

SOONEST NATHANIEL