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| WINNER POEM OF THE MONTH - INCREASE NATHANIEL |
WIDE AWAKE – Poem of the month
You know it is more than the muffled moans of your mother
whimpering beneath the weight of your step-father as they ‘make love’ on that
old shabby bed in that tiny, thin-walled bedroom
of the small and rather austere apartment which you have known
all your life as home; it is the crimson dream and the beautiful banshee
screaming in your nightmares that keep you awake; they all just won’t go away.
The thoughts of his hand over your mouth, the aesthetic art of
his fingers upon your skin, the groans of pleasure a reverberant refrain of
abominations in your ears, the disappointment of a mother who hears you explain
without listening, for she is too afraid of the pain to let another man walk out
of her life, she loves to play wife; and it doesn’t matter what gives her lover
an extra dose of his insatiate, incarnate pleasure. Your mother reminds you
that tears are for girls, you don’t want to cast rheum over the grave of your
father.
So between daylight and pain, you join the clay people to that
place where oceans are made from the rain, you try to drown the years of
affliction, bury the hurt on the other side of the river; but pain is dough and
like bread cast upon the waters, you find them after many days; you learn there
is no ship to sail you away to safety in the bottle of martini.
Soon you find a beautiful boy in the broken building, he is one
hell of a Rasta; you seek miracles and magic, so he teaches you to burn
innocence at the altar of Jah-most-high. There’s a prayer at the corner of his
lips, you kiss him and your mouth is on fire. You acquire a new tongue, and
learn the fifteenth Rhema. The splinter shards the birth of rebellion at the
back of your eye; you know it is the time of separation, thus, the child must
stop crying for help. You say to yourself: ‘man must leave the womb’.
Fuck nostalgia, there is no such thing as paranoia;
you know it is time your mother got invited
to the funeral of her god.
So you recite in your new Rasta tongue:
“We are the stones raised unto Abraham as children.
We are the stones the builders rejected.
We are the stones raised to shatter the glass windows of temples
built from deceit”.
On the coldest day in hell, you return home to meet the jobless
deviant, your step-father, and again he wants to have you for lunch, before
having your mother for dinner. But you have only returned to break the pact and
end your contract with silence. So in split seconds, the house gun goes off and
the shaman’s monopoly is ended. You stare him deep in the eyes as he kneels
before you dying; you say to him: we are the paradigms of creation.
The neighbors gather in their numbers, mourners at the funeral
of god. Your mother arrives just in time to watch the cops whisk you away,
perhaps straight to the gallows, for a hanging; there are no fair hearings
here. As you walk in cuffs towards her, she holds your hands and asks you WHY?
And in your new Rasta tongue you make reply saying:
“We are the stones raised unto Abraham as children.
We are the stones the builders rejected.
We are the stones raised to shatter
the glass windows of temples
built from injustice.
We are the stones.
We are.
INCREASE NATHANIEL
/////////////////////////////////////////////
UMBRELLAS, BROOMS OR SPOONS
The sparks are here again
Riding in on winds of change
Trepidation and Dread
Sharing t-shirts and caps
Cunning and Deceit
Behind smartphones, wifi and rice
Must tomorrow birth more sorrow
Or will there be a miscarriage of hope
Anger and irritation
Buried behind hungry smiles
For the seas of aching teary hearts
Disillusioned is too long a word
Its here again
The pain
The suspicion of budding betrayal
The whispers of future lies
The suggestion of bloody fields
False dreams
Thirty six doors
Yet hope lies behind none of them
Maybe the thirty seventh
Amidst it all
The sparks grow
Traces
Glimmers
Fragments
Flickers
The sparks begin to fly
The Eagle may yet rise
The Eagle
Weary with waiting
Lost in past glory
Chained
Compromised
Like the ants and the bees
We still serve the Queen
The Eagle waits
Preening her wings
Fetching twigs
Will her mountain be torn?
By Umbrellas, Brooms and Spoons
Will she once more rule the black skies?
Or proudly raise the dual coloured flag
Across the seas are turbulent lands
Yet as they paddle their ships
They focus on our land
Wondering which one will be the chosen door
Its now a quarter to four
By five history will open her window
Traces
Glimmers
Fragments
Flickers
Hope is nigh
The Eagle watches...
Erhio Obodo
///////////////////////////////////
SPARK
Produced by a sudden disruptive electrical discharge through the
air.
Disruptively creative
Creatively disruptive
Iron sharpening iron
Generating the Spark that can light a fire
a fizzle of anger that can become bitter waters
Which untamed can turn into an inferno
Consuming both the originator
And the person to whom it is directed
The iota that will not go unfulfilled
The speck in my eyes
That prevents me from seeing my brother clearly
The crumb from the rich man's table
Which could have saved him from torment
The widows mite that is more acceptable than the Rich man's
largesse
The hint of a smile that can effervescence into a full belly
laugh
doing the soul much good
A drop of water that makes a might ocean
The light touch that preceeds a full embrace
The whisper of gossip
Spreading like wildfire
Wrecking havoc in it's wake
A shred of decorum
Calling out to integrity
The spark of truth that brings freedom in it's wake
a sense of liveliness excitement
And expectation
Speeding progress
The Spark that starts it all!
Funmi Eyeoyibo
/////////////////////////////
I AM WORDS
I am…
I am that I am
I am the being that has been
Before any being came to be
I am the last whiff of breath
In the lungs of the last being to ever be
I am… Words
I stand tall from within my wretchedness
Towering high above the futility of my skin
To cloth my scrawny bones
My pocket missing jingling of coins
Yet I possess treasures
Robbing sanity on the mind of the insane
And granting a peek into the other side of sanity
I am words
I possess no silver, bronze or gold
Beyond scales and currencies riches count
I am words
I am words healing and filling
Reaching, tearing and awakening
I stand but a titan in circles of riches
Flaunting my agbada of imageries
I am the giant iroko tree
Deeply rooted in the brown earth of mother’s tongue
Bearing fruit of imageries sprawling from branches of legend
Emi gangan loro, emi loro omo oro
I am the smith of words in reclining scabbard
I tread to rethread, this thread, the world, with words where it
breaks
Emi lomo oran to oro bi lati wa fi oro ran aran aye ni bi to gbe
ya.
I am that fire that has refused to stop burning
I am the tears in the eyes of the widow that never stops crying
I am words
I am stories unwritten, spoken
I am verses structured, free
I am lines rhyming, versified
I am sonnets, I am haikus
I am limericks I am acroustics
Couplets, tankas, epics, stanzas
I am words
AJIJOLA Habeeb
////////////////////////////////////
AURORA
Our love is the fourth state of matter;
Plasma.
Plasma.
Every day,
Lightning and electric sparks.
Your eyes neon lamps,
filamented light spectrums
illuminating this dark cave called life
where I've come: miner
seeking to find the minerals of hope
buried in the belly of oblivion,
to foot the bills of a destitute’s lush dream.
Your eyes neon lamps,
filamented light spectrums
illuminating this dark cave called life
where I've come: miner
seeking to find the minerals of hope
buried in the belly of oblivion,
to foot the bills of a destitute’s lush dream.
Tell me it is valid
to have had my soul trek barefooted
to cover the Debye screening length of fear,
Just to reach you, touch you, have you, hold you.
to have had my soul trek barefooted
to cover the Debye screening length of fear,
Just to reach you, touch you, have you, hold you.
From the circuit of your heart, I am fully charged,
thus, let the world conduct:
Love in voltages,
Peace in watts,
Faith in kilowatts
And hope in Kelvin.
I am ionized,
let the winter come
we'll weather the storm.
let the winter come
we'll weather the storm.
Alas!
Just maybe you and I
can find substance
to fill the black holes
of our porous existence;
new light, deeper insight
and we shall thrive no more in valid nothingness.
Soonest Nathaniel
//////////////////////////////////////
SPARK
Uwa ezu oke
The world is not enough
It is never all green in anyone’s turf
Its only the hue you paint it.
The world is tough.
Oge chi ka nma
God’s time is the best
The world puts you to test
You must create your time
And be as big as your dreams
Ka osi ta di nma
Let it from today be better
Let it from your soul shine
Without strife a man can not
Appreciate the fire in his heart
CHISOM
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
NO SPARK
God save our gracious queen
Long live our noble queen.
God save the queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious!
LONG TO REIGN OVER US
God save the queen!
No! No not anymore
Just 19 he allegedly killed his father.
And was to be sentenced to death on the electric chair
Rob already had a criminal record
And lots of circumstantial evidences piled up against him
If he were found guilty he would receive the mandatory death
penalty!
Your last words Mr. ROB!
I don’t have something to say,
...but I have to say something!
He raped my mother many
Got her pregnant many
But mine withstood the pains
The weakling won’t even stand the same measure of what he dealt
her
I AM NOT GUILTY!
Death on the electric chair? With which electricity?
Stop telling Mary everything would be okay when chaste is taken
away from her
You ask that God give him long reign over us
Because he has put bread on your cheeks
And butter on your palms
No not anymore
We keep going round refusing to grow
Look at the air we don’t fly there
The land is smeared with blood
Zombies have taken over
Passion goes hungry here
But get wings to fly. There!
Lies everywhere even in the church
It is no news that Sunday school teachers still lie
Solomon was not the wisest
Neither was Adam the first man
Yes!
Has it not taken freeze to make them all confess?
No! Not anymore!
Mactaiwo Oluyomi
////////////////////////////////////
SPARK:
Life bursting on the scene
Creating a scene not now
in a movie but a veritable
'Hemingwayan' moveable feast
Releasing potential energy, making
it kinetic creating fission, fusion
and diffusion in multiple combinations
Einstein and Bohr senior and junior would have been proud
Showing off the burst of creativity;
the Elohim imperative which flows
from free flowing combinations
of varied and disparate fields of knowledge and endeavour
Combined words; combined ideas
and agricultural combines using
multiple technological coming
from a spark of ingenuity
Like an apple falling in Newton's garden
The water displaced from Archimedes bath
The cool ocean breeze in Einstein
brow leading to E equals MC squared!
Not forgetting serendipity in Penicillin's discovery
Spark. Life. Potential. Energy. Creativity.
Spark!
Bright spark
Twinkling light
the bright and morning Star that
has arisen with healing in it's wings
Spark of Divine life
On De Engles swiftly tilting planet which is a wrinkle in Time,
creating a wind in the door through which many waters flow resulting in an
acceptable time
Spark- a time and timing even time-in,
when you hear the word, when you must not harden your
heart,
when you refuse provocation and the spark ignites your heart and
like Elliot's Magi pluralling Magus, you follow the Daystar and pay obeisance
to the
new born King
Spark!
I am like Wendell Holmes in this regard as in not very much
else-
if I could think that I had sent a spark to those
who come after I should be ready to say goodbye!
Without nitpicking, though, I have another point of
divergence-
I wish to be a spark but
I am very far from being ready to say goodbye!
The spark of life that
catalyses genius;
The bright spark that
is the soul of the party.
The spark and splutter
of putative illumination.
Check to all of the above,
In addition to being the
luminous spark of light
on the hill that cannot
be hidden under a canopy of trees;
a spark of light bringing out the
colour of God in the affairs of men.
I accept these extant responsibilities;
that is why I am anywhere!
The spark in my eyes is the entry point
of wonder that spreads and fills my
body with light.
No squinty, dull-eyed lugubriousness, causing my body to be a
dank, dark cellar
I am the bright spark who has pulled
the curtains and let the floodlights in!
Spark!
I am a spark
I spark and sparkle
I am sparkling
I can also spark up
And light sparks
I spark in a most
combustible manner
I am a shiny bright spark
My singular spark lights
fires
I encourage others to spark
not in the colloqual sense
of showing anger but of
expressing light!
ANDREW WHYTE
