POEMS READ AT LOUDTHOTZ POETRY OPEN READING SEASON 10 EPISODE 9 ROSES

WINNER POEM OF THE MONTH - KEMIBON

How a song can… Winner Poem of the month

How a song can bring up long buried memories:

The sweet smell of roses

Presented as petals, scattered on a well laid bed

Rich, red petals

A sacrifice, an offering to love and lover

How a song can pull at a heart in solitude:

Spraying the scent of love

So intense you want to choke on remembered declarations

Intoxicating like the smell of roses, like love

How a song can mess with time induced peace:

Ripping off the carefully placed bandage

So that blood appears and pain alongside

Like a finger pricked by a rose’s thorny stem

How a song can unfurl feelings long put aside:

Awakening lost dreams

Like a moss rose awakens with dawn’s kiss

Lazily 

Forgotten dreams of walking life’s path together descend

The result? Panic. 

How a song can reveal that:

You are still healing

Still a crushed rose

Once beautifully in love

Once in bloom

Now crumpled

Bruised

And gasping for the scent of love

Kemibon

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ROSE

You are woody!

You are perennial.

You are a woody perennial!

Not akin to a prepubescent youth perpetually at half-mast!

You are a flower!

You are a plant

You have 300 siblings

You have thousands of cousins called cultivars.

My friend, 'Wiks', told me all these about you and more.

Shakespeare thought that your sweet smell was not tied to your name.

Freud probably disagrees!

We had Diana, England's rose!

Wanjiku, Kenya's rose!

We have the cross of offence and the rosy cross!

We tend to look at things through rose-tinted spectacles.

 Our Lady's reference

A rose tint to their hair, their skins, but not their teeth. 

When men love their women, they give them roses, though not so much in these climes.

 We give other things,

As we should.

Love after all is both sharing and giving.

A Rose' is usually not sniffed at, even as the essence of rose perfume is sniffed gratefully.

Rosemary and Thyme- flavours and the name

Of a movie series.

Rosemary combining

The rose with the Mother of Jesus and naming my own mother.

A rose denuded, what kind of rose is that?

That is, of course, apart from the possible charge of indecent exposure. 

Lying on a bed of roses is a metaphor that teaches, as all metaphors do.

Teaching resilience in

The midst of beauty

And finery!

ANDREW WHYTE

/////////////////////////////////////////

1986

You arrived very late

Ten years of marriage

They sought you

You are that child who manipulated Daddy

Into taking another wife:

"Your mother didn't give me you on time. So, I tried another leg!”

Ten years into the marriage

Where were you for heaven's sake?

Our parents looked everywhere for you

Mummy swallowed olive oil daily

Mummy bathed with holy water at night

Daddy didn't need to

He wasn't the problem

Else, how did he get the other wife pregnant?

On the sunset of 1986

You knocked on this world's door

Mummy was in the kitchen

The neighbors brought mummy to the midwives

You made her spend two sunsets in labour

You refused to walk when humans walk

Your speech was delayed too

And you had a ton of allergies!

At 14, you had a huge swelling on your right leg,

It smelled bad

The pastor visited one sunset

And told us that you had a confession to make:

"You are an evil child!"

They stripped you naked

The pastor called Holy Ghost Fire

To burn you to confess

Mummy cried 

This happened for three sunsets

Again, the pastor declared:

"The Spirit says you will die soon!”

That sunset you collapsed

From the pains on your right leg

Quickly, they brought you to the doctors

A surgery was successfully carried out

But your spirit was destroyed already

On your last sunset

I was by your hospital bed alone

You called me, loved me in your looks

Let some tears out and pressed a weak rose flower into my palms.

Then you begged:

"Please go to the river and ask the goddess if I am her child."

Larry Onokpite

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DRUMLIN WEEPING FOR NATIONALISM

Father Ayeni Joshua, Loudthotz, 

I meekly tender my fleshly time,

My trees bow here and there,

This picture argues the toss of spiegel wars,

My ink wants a wort pen,

uffern or zion. It is no less...

' Ajakaye Speaking To Her Country. '

The land's tebel may mock syn hoes,

But look at that cup,

by imprisoning our mother ( Nigeria ),

by swallowing naked reds of apathy,

Looking pale and dead as lleuad prophecies,

The seren is our mother's perthnasau,

The zoquen of mighty heavens have spoken.

Yet... Our dreams

Make cries from within.

Her perthynas and kinsmen

Enslave her for facilities of lust.

The crown poet ' Femi Ajiboye '

Labelled you ' tide or angry waves. '

Happy runaway children,

Worshipping sickness by foreign ice

While your Sokoto loves you,

You called her a noc,

Ask the sane madness of Thomas Hardy,

Silence is wonderful to listen to.

After all the hypocrisy against mother,

This falling glass (foreign home) yo understand not,

Turns fair to war.

Let me ask you,

You run from your sea shores,

Screaming ' No Xenophobia.'

When prodigals smash their lands mercy,

They hang rusting nails

Under an absent roof.

Dry bread at home is better,

Than roast meat abroad.

The dark walls of this lust lands

Shout at your greatness,

Tumbling and tumbling till locks of death,

Driving prodigalities to ' Silent Ones. '(Death)

Be no unlucky qadesh.

Your mother (glass cup) still waits straight,

Straight as die for you,

Make the throats of nationalism,

Turn voices, mighty screams of the ' Big Man.’

Remember thunders of Soyinka by Biodun Jeyifo,

Nationalism is androgynous,

See our dreaming mother (Nigeria)

In that cup,

The moon moves slowly but by daybreak

It crosses the sky.

Life is a struggle,

Countries form continents,

So development is a struggle,

Do you love your persistent mother (Nigeria)

Go save her somebody...

I steadily own no tide

Than my drumlin weeping for nationalism.

When nationalism breathes in all pains,

We will see our roses.

Ajakaye Rashidat Olamidayo.

STRIDA- (Striking Ideas)

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A ROSE & A BUTTERFLY 

1.                      I heard here was a place where roses grew unhindered

A field watered by her innocent tears

The sun shines endlessly on her and her nights were as silent as the words we do not speak.

She was a garden full of colours until she met him who peeled her body open like ripe fruits

And devoured her soul like a burnt offering

She threw her name away and shifted shape 

She hid her petals and the thorns grew wild

Piercing everything that came in for fellowship

2.          I was a butterfly with a torn coat holding a promise of forever that could not be held

Wearing guilt like a second skin

Shaped in shattered shadows, finding soul mates in sojourners with saddened smiles

But they do not stay

The goodbyes that came anyway

Taking me down brick by brick

Till I am laid bare looking to the sky like one last offering

My heart heavy with knowing 

There is a river with a broken bank in my eyes

It do not stop flowing

3.          Butterfly with a torn coat saw the sun shining on a hidden rose

I fly close but I was caught in the thorn

Stories of torn petals and wings

But mine is a love that do not leave

A place you do not go back from 

This us that lives like a passing wind

Determined to dance to the tunes the gods are playing

Live a life worth dying for, Ours, a love worth fighting for

Every love we’ve found left us

4.          Now if you will remember,

I am the laughter of the birds

The whisper of the dew

The song in the rain

I am the story you read at night

The smile in your lover’s eyes

Clashes of thunder and lightening

I am one, I am two

I am many things, I am nothing

Remember.

Imisioluwa Ifedayo 

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A Blanket of Roses 

Give me a bough of love-filled flowers,
Those kind dancing naked near the silver-coloured seas,
The ones whose radiant shrubs
Make the hibiscus turn green with jealousy.

Give me now that my grey days are far ahead,
And I can tend tenderly to them,
Their sweet fragrances -
cleansing the world from its musty stench.

Give me a dozen bouquet of green roses
So I can shake the blossom from each bud,
As they sit peacefully on my window pane,
Enchanting and breathtaking.

Give me now!

Not standing at my gravestone,
Your gloom wrapped in black apparel,
Blank eyes filled with unshed tears.

Staring at the slab where my cold body lies
And the flowers you left the previous evening, scentless and dead.

Wishing you had given me those blanket of roses when I could smell them.

Pricilla Ahaiwe

//////////////////////////////////////////////

Roses

That is what first love feels like

You want to hold on to the aura

Longer than necessary.

We both know, like roses,

Beautiful thing not nurtured,

Fades with time.

…so, you called to wail

At the dialers shop,

Dawn knocks with hushed voices

Hearts racing against time.

Yes, we walked the moon and fort

Bare footed with nights of butterfly lullaby,

Yet, like the knowing glances

Behind mother’s rebuke,

The brook has washed away our vows

Spoken with naïve exuberance.

That you are bent on

Fanning the ember of lost passion,

I hope you find your asking.

But for the tinge of indulgence,

Love is not in it for me,

Not anymore,

Not with you.

There has been another.

-Amami H.

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RESTORATION OF LIGHT

They say a poet’s first greeting is also his goodbye,
‘today I am born, today my father is gone’.
So in the new mother tongue of dead poets,
I begin to interpret memory,
let the lake at the back of the country
remember the doctrine of waters.
Let early birds learn faded songs,
for the poetry left behind
births the songs of tomorrow;
the future shrinks
when we lose our heads
in the many parts of the world.

Yesterday, I learnt the history of roses

is incomplete without the stem of thorns,

So I left full of shame,
I return today in a coffin,
the coffin is a boat sailing away from that place
where the war which ended on the battle field,
still rages in the hearts of many.
One loses the zest to die
after one watches a fellow
set himself ablaze for human rights;
I can hear the voice saying: ‘go into the streets’.

I am one who loves to celebrate others.

Last night, I was an empty sky, thirsting after peace;
I was standing at the loneliest spot in the country,
little pilgrim on the snow path,
grave digger, erecting his own cenotaph.
They say the mind’s highest state is true rest,
but what peace is availed a broken soldier

dependent on alcohol and tea?

On what protein shall the bone people feed

now that fiction has become the new fact.
I too have loved for too long,

but all those years died in an evening.
I know what is lost

and what is found in translation,
some call it peace, others call it freedom.
It is dawn again; I must walk out of my grave.
A baby’s cry has shattered the china of human impudence;
the soul of a dead poet has found home in that small body,
now the people must erect a temple for sunlight.
Let those who can no longer stand the greed of the world,
become barking dogs, let their age-long contract with silence

be annulled.

And if they ask us
why we too
long to torch our spirits
in protest,
we shall tell them,
we want our loved ones to pluck

the blossoming roses of a moment,
we want to beautify their lives

with the colour of dawn,
we want for them, a restoration of light.

Soonest

///////////////////////////////////

The Rose

I wanted a Rose

That precious gift

That sent butterflies flying from the tummy's pit

Rising till they squeezed the heart

And made lashes drip

Yes I yearned for a Rose

Significant

Precious

And pleasing

But as I looked around

I felt my heart being squeezed

Tiny drops fell from my lashes

My tummy tightened up

But it was from pain

Like teardrops in the rain

Hiding in plain sight

I could perceive it

The emptiness

Unpleasantness

Ugliness

No longer will I search or yearn.

It was now my turn

I decided then

To be a Rose.

Erhio

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My Thorns

I was told the earth has edges

A side squared 

with teeth jabbing at all comers

Another angled

a cliff that puts you on your toes

A third rounded

a merry go round

a waste

Then the blocked

no root, no road

You are edged into a balance

a bed full of roses and thorns

I was not told that thorns birth roses

Thrust on all sides

I learnt to tend my thorns with child-like love

It is the good that buds my rose

In my thorns I bear my roses 

tender and refreshing.

Chris N. John

////////////////////////////////////////////

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A WHIM

And she loved him with all her heart

More than a woman should love a man

He was her knight in shining armor

He was the very air that she breathed

She practiced smiling for him

In her sleep and while she is awake

He was the sun that shined in her midnight

Tall, dark, handsome and had a smile

That could make the sun shy

Then he broke her

And broke her heart

Now love seeps from the cracks

It was just a whim a thoughtless escape

Made him leave a Queen for a slave

Made him leave a soulmate for a “sell-mate”

Now the innocence is lost

Her smiles now are cold

The fire that lit up her soul is dead

She now loves by rote

What a whim can do to love

I think she still remembers

But like a soon to be forgotten dream

Like embers thought to light a fire but couldn’t

Once in a while with one or two

The spark of true love knocks

But then the doors have been shut tight

The ember stirs but his face still haunts her

She has no love to give

She just has a life to live

What a whim can do to true love

Chisom

///////////////////////////////

Roses Have Thorns

I remember those carefree days

We played under moonlit nights

Looking at the full moon and wandering

Why the mother is always there watching her child

When the full moon returns

The little stars sang songs

We little children heard

The little wind people danced in the air

As we filled our lungs with their merchandise

The world was slow

We couldn’t wait to get older

To do adult stuff

To become like our heroes and idols

Surely we grew older

And traded the child in and upgraded

The new version came with its challenges

The new app hardly supported the old one

We were taught and we discovered

And tasted the world

As children we were like roses in full bloom

The love most had was pure

As we grew older with zest for love

We grabbed the stem

Some did without caution

Underneath the beautiful leaves

We learnt some bittersweet lessons

And we are still learning

Ifeanyi Okwosha

//////////////////////////

THE MIRAGE

I shall tell you a story

Laden with no gory

I shall tell you about Nkem

Who held a rose with Obim.

In the twilight of a darling dawn

When many a giant weren’t born

There was a winsome goddess

Whose beauty, I bore witness.

Obim was the hunter

And Nkem, his sensual banter

Both desired a Rose

And the thorn, they did froze.

The ancient drums throbbed

While nocturnal bodies rubbed

Then he made a wooing plea

Down down the udara tree.

You see, in the days of yore

Men were prudent to the core

To bend the waist of a bride

You must humble your pride.

He cupped her face at last

And reached her waist so fast

With tingling sensation

That did her a veneration.

Her virgin skin shook him high

Possession he did think nigh

For in her stood an anatomy

Eager to position in lithotomy.

“Love is a mystery

No one claims mastery

Abuse is second to misery”

So says a pupil in nursery.

Alas! The gods were on prowl

With a dancing evil owl

The ekwe went aloud

And udu was very proud.

The owl whispered their name

Its voice doesn’t echo in vain

For a harbinger of doom it is

When a man’s life basks with ease.

Gbam! The cloud went mad

The ominous grasses were sad

As Obim was dancing surugede

The dance of the spirits, igede!

Aww! He felt like urinating

A feeling of tension-relieving

Just then and then

Came a hungry hen!

Neither a fool

It was scavenging for food

And from sleep, jostled Obim to life

It was a dream of rosy strife!

 Ikechukwu Ogbu

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POETRY READING (‘LOVE CHORDS AND DISCORDS’) By Lampe Omoyele

TUG OF LOVE

The heart hears the distant chime

Of love,

And drum beats of joyous clime;

The head hears the strains,

Looks back

And crouches in restraint.

Head and heart

In a tug of war:

To love on the hill,

Or under the bushel?

SCARS

I tripped, eyes open and sixth sense awake

Into the pit of an amour

Without protective armour,

And crawled out structured

With multiple fractures.

I loved clear as crystal,

Straight as an arrow,

But my lover was bent like a boomerang,

The offspring of an escapade

Of a chameleon and sphinx.

I was soft as sheep’s wool

And supple as water

Because my lover told tales

Of treading tortuous love trails.

Alas, I was a fool

And made an error of commission,

For my lover stabbed me in the heart

Giving verve to a waterfall of emotion

My sores are like pebbles on a beach,

But the most jarring tear

Is that in my darkest hour

I feel I should now love with restraint

In the face of human constraints;

But the sun always appears from the clouds

And I refuse to allow

Scars of a fractured love affair

Uglify the beauty of love;

So I shall not cease to love;

Because to love is to live.

IFEWA

I

Ifewa

Was the still-born child

Of a flowery friendship,

Fated to faint...

Born to die.

II

Yes,

Ifewa was a still-born babe,

But she was a beautiful foetus

Nurtured by natural nursing instincts.

III

Ifewa died with a whimper,

Choked by the scalding cold constricted air

Of her maternal passage into the world’s fair.

IV

Ifewa died before living.

She was dead whilst alive,

Yet lives though dead,

Because Ifewa was

A fruit of fate,

A song of grace,

A life of love.

V

At times

My heart wishes

Ifewa was a repentant ‘abiku’,

To be born afresh

Never again to die…

But my head advises

It is better that Ifewa

Remains in the realm of spirits…

The spirit of dreams…

The dreams of hearts…

The hearts that hurt.

VI

Ifewa

My child and essence,

Verse of a broken symphony,

I miss you.

I long to hold you in my arms again,

Dance to the rhythm of your song

And sing unending lullabies in your ears.

Ifewa my unfading melody,

I miss you.

VII

Though the music is fractured, 

The melody lingers on...

Melody such as Ifewa’s song never ends,

It resonates across the ages,

Bringing joy to all who hear and sing the song.

THE DAWN OF LOVE

Ever seen the splendour of sunrise at dawn,

The grandeur of a regal rainbow gracing a glad sky?

Ever felt the freshness of early morning dew,

The uniqueness of a virgin reawakening?

Ever heard the sweet songs of chorusing birds

Heralding the birth of an infant day?

Ever thought to trap in your heart

The photons of a radiant new dawn?

This is our dawn, the dawn of shared love;

Like the melody of birds at dawn,

The beats of my heart

Resonate to the enthralling song that is you;

A song fresh as morning dew.

May our love rise

As sunrise towards noon

Under a serene sky,

For love is beautiful…

Like a rainbow;

The spice,

The essence of life.

SUNSET OF LOVE AT DAWN

I

Like sunrise at dawn,

Love had risen.

It coloured our lives

Like the royal rainbow

Clad in its coat of colours,

Gracing the serene sky.

Love lifted our hearts

Like the joy of birds singing in a new day.

Love was fresh, sweet as morning dew.

Love was beautiful, inspiring…

Like radiant sunrise at dawn.

It was the dawn of love, our shared dawn of love,

Our dawn of shared love.

II

But now, whilst yet still dawn,

the sun has been eclipsed,

it shines happily no more,

it ascends towards noon no more.

The rainbow fades, humbled,

Stripped naked of its beauty.

The birds lose their voice

Croaking dirges for dying love.

The sky becomes mournful,

Clouded with tears.

Love becomes stale

Like yesterday’s left-over.

Love has become hurt

To hide under a dark shade.

The radiance of love is dimmed

By human eclipses tinted dark with ironies.

Sunrise has become sunset;

Dawn has aged prematurely to dusk.

The spice, the essence has lost its flavour.

The dawn of love has raced

To the sunset of love;

Love’s sun has set at dawn.

III

Although love’s sun has set at dawn,

It shall surely rise again,

Because the radiant strength of love,

Sun-like, cannot ever, be forever eclipsed.

The regal rainbow shall reign again

Over a splendid serene sky.

The birds shall sing spirited songs

For a new awakening.

Love shall be fresh and sweet as morning dew.

Love shall ascend in a crescendo towards an acme.

So I shall not grieve long;

I shall not hide my heart under a dark cloak;

Love shall not be dimmed by a partial eclipse;

The spice, the essence of life shall regain its flavour;

The sun shall rise at night;

Love shall shine through today’s grey clouds;

Love shall rise again, now.

BROKEN LAMENTATION

I still can’t believe it,

That you’ve gone;

That you’ve left me in the cold.

Our relationship had just begun

And it had soaring promise

Of joyful bliss; 

We were together too shortly.

When we just started out,

I hoped to make our relationship

Better than my last one

Which lasted only

Four rotations of the earth.

I told myself to make this one

Last at least twice as long.

But see, we had barely started our honeymoon

When you deserted me in the dry desert.

Who is going to comfort me now?

Who shall pacify my stomach when it is angry?

Who shall rest my legs when they are fatigued,

When you, on whom my expectations lay

Have left me so suddenly

Without warning, without thought,

Leaving me so alone and insecure.

Leave the best for last, they say….

See what the last has done today.

The irony of it all

Is that you always carried on your mind

The ocular features of your hero Ramat,

And like him, you’ve scat

Just when you were needed most.

My heart bleeds.

What hurts me sore

Is that you may be flirting

With another person who does not deserve you.

I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t….

I just can’t believe

That you could do this to me,

You,

My dear

Twenty naira note.