PHANTOM
LOVER
All the light I cannot see
Is dead in you
Because you have no light
All that’s within is a dark hollow
void
You are dark
Your tongue is forked
And when you open your mouth
You spit Poison
The poison you have fed me
copiously
So that I may lie pliant before your
throne of deceit or bow in acknowledgment of your sick mind
You are a disease that crawls inside
the heart
Especially hearts that beat in pure
steady overflowing beauty
You corrode like water on metal
On the surface you lie
Still like there’s nothing beneath
you
Your eyes are warm enough to pass across
sincerity
But you lie in the web of your lies
and lie
You are drowning in a sea of lies
and
You want to drag me down with you
You were undoing the thread
A long unwinding thread of connected
threads
That would lead me right back to
you
I wanted to cut those threads
So I lay with you so I could find
where the thread began
Alas I could not find the first lie
Because your path is not
lighted
I cannot see my way back to me
But
I’ll find it
For
I am a child of Light
You saw the light in me and vowed to
snuff it out
But you forgot that where there is
light
Darkness cannot win
Shame on you
For trying
Bending to your will was easy
Because you have a gift
A gift of persuasion
A gift you should use for
blessings
Now you have gone to wake up the
curses in Pandora’s box
Even you cannot remember when you
started to wake up the dead
Because you lie
And your memory does not serve you
well
I am standing on a hill
And looking towards that place
Where my Help comes
My Help is shining all the Light
that I can see on me
So that my path will be lit and your
lies will wither
Your lies will burn in the intensity
of the light shone on them
They cannot live
You made mockery of love
You pretended to know love
You said love,
The type you peddle
Is unconditional
You lie
Nobody is able to love like
that
‘Cause if you knew love
Then you would know that love
Does not lie
Love is light
And light illuminates and keeps you
warm
Especially in the cold brutal
presence of the world
When you open your mouth
Do you not see the serpent descend
?
If you do not know what you have
sown
Let me tell you
You have planted a seed of deception
And it has grown seven times seven
times seven
Now you have a farm
And you will reap a harvest
Your harvest will be plentiful
Nature is perfect and does not lie
Your lies will make a way for you
now
But when it matters the wilderness
will not budge
You cannot pass through except you
face your lies and
Amen
Get away from me
You vermin
I feel sorry for you
Get help
You need help
His Help
Cause when your head touched the
ground five times in twenty four hours
You forgot to ask for help
Or perhaps when you are muttering
In that tongue
You are asking for forgiveness
I do not know
I know nothing
Because you are a phantom
Phantom lover
Soul less liar
When I am done purging myself of all
the poison you fed me
I’ll be whole again
But you ?
Kemibon
////////////////////////////////////////
MY
TREASURE
The first day I knew you,
I came as an unknown quest.
The first day I knew you,
You were in between life and death.
The first day I knew you,
You made some humans sound meaningful to me.
The first day I knew you,
You made me know what life is!
You are,
The first and strong foundation of my life.
You are,
The mountain I climbed that never let me down.
You are,
The sun that shines on my day.
Yes, you are my treasure,
You are my mother!
Dhikirullahi,
Olayiwolah, Tatanbara.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////
TO
THOSE WHO ARE CURIOUS
What afflicts a man is not a weakness, but a disability.
He has broken his own limbs
of courage, truth and discipline
and delved into the pit of deceit and ruin.
What afflicts a man is not the devil,
but his will.
He has made the decision
to choose pain,
rather than peace and prosperity.
What afflicts a man is not a woman's fury,
but his curse.
Wherever he goes,
he carries the burden of a thousand curses,
stripped of his humanity he doesn't feel.
What afflicts a man is not poverty,
but his ego.
He feels the need to prove his manhood
to everyone,
but his empty true self.
What afflicts a man is not his secrets,
but his ineptitude to focus on what is important in life.
He ignores his God, family, work
even friends,
and trifles with irrelevant relations.
What afflicts a man is not patriarchy,
but a trademark of ignorance.
Yet he moves around
adept with his longing
for a more compassionate and functional society.
What afflicts a man is not his inability to manage power,
but his unacceptable of the concepts of time and space.
He crushes himself
and many as he carries on,
to dust.
What afflicts a man is not his lack of expression,
but his self pity.
And so he continues to prove his masculinity
to the world,
by force.
Abiola Bonuola
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
NOTHING
Tell me,
What is the essence of love that cannot be consummated?
What,
is the worth of a couple of mansions to a dying baron?
Nothing!
I tell you,
Nothing will make the impoverished cower before a plate of
virus,
He will lick it, like flames will do to flying termites rubbed
in oil,
And death will cry at the loss, because he had Nothing to lose
I can’t breathe
Unmask me I want to live again
Nothing is worthy in this new normal
Life is a rip off once again
Nothing is the answer to everything.
Lolade Oye
/////////////////////////////////////////////
Dewdrop
After science became history and innocence became myth;
we began to seek the Latin names of flowers,
we asked why the only concern of a song’s aesthetics is its
cadence.
That night the cricket killed itself inside me, and I became my
other self,
chief war correspondent for my body, bitter critic of my own
mind.
There are few battles a mother must fight for her son,
but you delve headlong into them all; play lover, play priestess
at the altar,
knife in hand ready to slaughter every doubt as a burnt
offering.
Bleeding is a lesson
but men do not learn early in life;
so sometimes you make a cradle of thorns,
or have the boy dig through the rubbles of an uprising.
I am a prime number caught in the fire between P & NP,
solving for the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow.
I know the cost for order to flow; the river pays its tithe to
the sea.
But when you ask me to join you in the rediscovery of distant
places,
I fear if the sun will not die again, I fear the moon will eat
our dreams for lunch.
I say the shadows keep gathering to brood on the egg of
happiness,
but you ask me, what need does the donkey have for the sympathy
of camels?
My volley child is hungry; you reveal there is protein in the bones
of the rainbow,
you say we will buy nourishing fantasies with silver in the
silence of this night;
I want to hold on to your promise, for your eyes reveal that the
dewdrop will sate the fern’s thirst,
after words have lost their teeth in the land of drought.
SOONEST
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
MY FOSTER-FATHER' STADDLE
My foster-father is a man of proper standing.
He held a place of prominence before man
And the tradition passed down to him
By the gods of the land
To his father's father.
His staddle suffered
A drought in the hands
Of his, not chosen but the heir apparent.
So much so that a visit
To father' staddle leaves a scar in the heart.
He was right.
He saw the demise
Of the sun before the twilight.
If only I had the wise answers
To his posers before his night fell.
"How do I deny my son
the inheritance that is rightfully his,
even though that will be his doom
and that of the family's tradition?"
"How can I save tradition
by going against tradition?"
-Amami
H.
///////////////////////////////////////////////
BABYSITTING
The last time I was at
my aunt's was hell on earth.
Before that were
animal spirits
which linger
by my stomach
and ears alike. The art
and act of
babysitting made
me rethink the idea
of marital life.
"Hi! I am Mayor Naisse, do
accept my handshake, no
milkshakes."
(s)he left my
soul
hanging
by the doorbell
swinging
on the hair gel
and my validation
on the palms of non-deserving
entities.
Olaitan
Humble
////////////////////////////////////////
THE BURDEN
IS WITHIN
The love of
hate is a burden
Keeping the
cycle of revenge alive
Crimson with
rage
The senses
redouble efforts
Only the
sweetest way is satisfying
All good
burnt to ashes
Like
bushfire consumes the healthiest of trees
We will not
forgive this or that
Opportunities
are ever present to water and nourish it
Like
sentinels they guard the door
Along the
way more is added
Like an iron
suit it is heavy
Do not let
it go
An argument
between ego and conscience
So we swim
on in the ocean of life
With this
iron suit
The heaviest
burdens are not the ones we see
They are
within
The weight
of the oceans and the deserts are like a feather
When
compared to the burden within
Ifeanyi
Okwosha
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
THE
HIDDEN ROOM.
Every
one has a secret locked away
With
the door painted to match the wall
And
an ornament placed at the right spot
Just
in case wandering eyes
Wonder
why
You
erase all connecting dots
Yet
often times someone still pries
Taking
you to that forbidden place
Near
the wall
Your memory is triggered
You
see flashes knocking
Reminders
trying to barge in
Your
heart races into uncertainty
Then
erupts a fountain of cold sweat
Your
intestines start a fight
You
feel dizzy
You
search frantically around the floor
Hoping
there's no broken glass
No
patch on the grass
No
forgotten clue
Your
eyes find the ornament
And
you point out it's best features
It
works
Great
distraction
The
moment passes
The
seal is still unbroken
You
mentally buy extra keys
This
time you lock the house
No
one must find the wall
No
one must find that door
No
one
No
one at all.
You
lift your burden
Grit
your teeth
Turn
the extra key
And
smile to safety.
Far
away from memory lane
Far
away from that special place
The
room that holds it all
That
hidden door
Erhio
///////////////////////////////////////
A MERCY- TONI MORRISON
Don't be afraid
Who is responsible?
Can you read?
Their smell belies their beauty
A praying savage,
they called her
I fear pathless nights
We are baptized
We can have happiness when this
life is done
I like talk
Slowly a little talk is in my
mouth
and not on stone.
They made up laws, encouraging
cruelty in exchange for common cause, if not common virtue.
It was theirs
It belonged, it all belonged
to the natives
But they took it!
He was a small man; contradictory:
aged and ageless, deferential and
mocking, white hair black face.
When he decided to kill the trees
and replace them with a profane
monument to himself, he was cheerful every waking moment
Killing trees in that number, without
asking their permission, of course, his efforts would stir up malfortune.
He mystified Lina
All 'Europes' did.
Once they terrified her
Then they rescued her
Now they simply puzzled her.
Sorrow was easy harvest
'Europe's'- on the one hand
they would torch your home
On the other they would feed,
nurse and bless you
Best to judge them one at a time,
proof being that one at least could become your friend.
You have to find, in other words,
a way to be in the world
Fire- cleansing somehow
and scandalous in beauty!
Patience- the life blood of
farming.
The Blacksmith- he brought one
girl to womanhood and saved the life of another
Sorrow- Jabez
Pride- makes you think that you
need no one but yourself; but yourselves; like gods unbeholden to nothing
except your own creations.
Pride- it usually goes before a
fall!
Lina- she spoke to the trees,
telling them of their belonging and of her exile
Reason in moments of crisis is
rare.
We never shape the world she says.
The world shapes us
For Florens the Blacksmith is her
shaper. He is her world. For her it is done and there is no choice to be made
It is embarrassing to mention
personal sorrow in prayer or to be other than stalwart in grief or even
to let God know that she was less
than thankful for His watchcare.
The Mistress Rebekah believed
that.
A most pernicious doctrine
Where did she learn that?
My northern star, he called her.
My star, she called him
They settled into the long
learning
of one another; preferences,
habits, altered, acquired. Disagreement without bile; trust and that wordless
conversation that years of companionship rest on.
Marriage!
Need is not the reason
What is, pray?
What a man leaves behind
is what a man is.
A man is only his reputation,
not his resources!
Job- he lay wracked with pain and
in moral despair: they told him
about themselves and when he felt even worse, he got an answer from God saying,
who on Earth do you think you are? Question me? Let me give you a hint of who I
am and what I know. For a moment Job must have longed for the self-interest
musings of humans as vulnerable and misguided as he was. But a peek into divine
knowledge was less important than gaining, at last,
the Lord's attention. That's all
Job wanted. Not proof of His existence as he never questioned that. Nor proof
of His power as everyone accepted that. He simply wanted to catch His eye. To
be recognized , not as worthy or worthless, but to be noticed as a life form by
the one who made and unmade. Not a bargain; merely a glow of the miraculous.
But then Job was a man.
Invisibility was tolerable to men. What complaint would a female Job dare to
put forth?
Enjoy solitude without prelude.
Natives and Africans had access
to grace but not to heaven- the
Anabaptists of the day believed this!
My next sleeping is deep!
Bird talk is everyplace
This be the death we come
here to die
Silence is long and then they
talk.
I am not afraid of anything now.
MLK Jr said that too.
The sun's going leaves darkness
behind and the dark is me. Is we.
Is my home.
She the Mistress had no one, but
the one she was whispering to. The one she thanked for the saving grace He had
shown her in getting her off the bed of sickness amongst other things.
I was sorrow
Sorrowful
Jabez
The wanderer about whom people
wondered
Now I am Complete- my proper,
chosen name
I had you
I named you!
With you my body is safe
is pleasure is belonging
I can never not have you have me.
I am a slave because
I was made one
No. You have become one.
Your head is empty and your
body is wild.
I am adoring you.
Even in that you are a slave
No. You alone own me.
Own yourself.
You are nothing but wilderness
No constraints
No mind
As I live and breathe, you have
become a slave by choice.
She paid them
And by that raised their work from
duty to dedication, from pity to profit.
Her loyalty was not submission.
It was a sign of her own self
worth-
a sort of keeping one's word.
Honour, perhaps.
The unblinking eye, smoke grey,
were not blank, but waiting.
She was Sorrow, now she is
Complete.
Her privacy protected her.
Florens- an easy to spot
combination of defenselessness, eagerness to please and most of all, a
willingness to blame herself for the meanness of others.
Rape bait, but more.
Not on this showing.
Now unrapable!!!
Anyone limited to walking everywhere
never seemed to get anywhere. He wanted a horse.
They once thought they were a kind
of family- they had carved companionship out of isolation.
They were wrong and they needed
more than courage to put it together.
Mistress Rebekah is cured
but not well
Her heart is infidel
All smiles have gone
Her eyes are nowhere
and have no inside
Her dress is dark and quiet
She prays much
She makes us sleep in the cold.
Her church going alters her but I
don't believe they tell her to behave they way.
These rules are her own and she is
not the same.
It is the withering that enslaves
and opens the door for what is
wild.
There was no protection
He believed we would love God more
if we knew the letters to read by.
I don't know that. What I know is
there is magic in learning.
There is no protection.
To be female in this place is to
be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever
below.
So to Barbados where I found
relief in the clean air and standing up straight under a sky the colour of
home. After my time in the hold of
a slave ship.
It was there I learned how I was
not
a person from my country, nor from
my families. I was 'negrita'.
Everything. Language, dress, gods, dance,
habits, decoration, song- all
of it cooked together in the
colour
of my skin. So it was as a black
that
I was purchased.
There is no protection.
But there is difference.
To this one you were a human child
and not pieces of eight
I knelt before him
Hoping for a miracle
He said yes.
It was not a miracle.
Bestowed by God.
It was a mercy.
Offered by a human.
I stayed on my knees.
I stayed in the dust.
The dust where my heart will
remain each night and every day, until you understand what I know and long to
tell you:
To be given Dominion over another
is a hard thing.
To wrest Dominion over another is
a wrong thing.
To give Dominion of yourself to
another is a wicked thing.
Oh Florens.
My love.
Hear your Mother!
FOUND BY OAE
ANDREW WHYTE
