Chiaroscuro of a Falling Eagle.
Painting from the Art Institute of Chicago on Unsplash.
…for the victims of my country — past, present & future.
Stroke by stroke, the canvas comes to life.
The Eagle free-falls, untethered, from the sky.
This is metaphor for my country
plum
me
ting
a hundred feet down every four to eight years as its
leaders grow their paunches. For every embezzled fund, there
is a child who goes unfed, there is a mother whose breasts,
out of malnourishment, fail to lactate.
Sketch her on a visit to the hospital with big wards & no doctors.
Sketch her baby— all bone & sheer will —
raising his limbs to heaven as if to say ‘Take me, take me.’
Do not turn away now.
In the belly of the eagle, cast their despair in feldgrau & heliotrope-grey.
Emphasize the scrawny limbs in taupe.
Cross-hatch the background to reveal the Grim Reaper embracing them.
In this country, even death is kinder.
Now paint the newscaster as she reports: snake swallows thirty-six million naira.
Monkey carts away with seventy million.
This is no metaphor. Go on. Make space for a diorama.
Title the scene election season.
Exhibit Yelwata — children scrub blood streaks off walls of brick huts.
A father leaves his family & returns as an obituary.
Taper all that red oil with emulsion.
Exhibit Obajana — a passenger clutches his rosary
& gestures the sign of the cross as armed bandits emerge from the thicket.
Exhibit Okoritak.
Exhibit Owo.
Exhibit Banga.
There is no place for white in here.
Wherever the brush touches, it starts to weep magenta.
Etch epitaphs into the bloody mess.
Nema Stephen, 4. Chidiogo Nwani, 11. Edet Eyo, 20.
What I mean to say is my country is a crimson garden
of souls cut down before their blossoming.
Now, I dare you to stare into the eyes of the eagle,
free fall
ing from all that anemia, & call it beauty.
Art by Mitul Grover on Unsplash.
All the Memory is Black and Black.
The cartographer turns the globe
on its head & what you have is a
bending man, hands tied
behind his back. The horn, also
the tip of a pleading finger.
When the deed was not enough, a wanderlust captured the explorer’s heart, & then a
hunger to take, no questions, no repercussion.
Now the land is festooned with severed limbs that once tapped Congo rubber.
A fallen Hero whispers his muffled
tale to the safari. & the scorched earth is reaping more bodies.
A Benin bronze statue is nowhere near home.
& we do not read this. We read of
Columbus’s conquest with pride
& bow to the King & Queen.
We punish the utterance of our ancestral tongues. We tread on our forefathers’
graves forgetting they fell for us to stand.
When we start to remember,
the black memory ricocheting
from weatherbeaten tombstones
we’re told the past is past
& the present is
for forgiving.
Art from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa on Unsplash.
Greenland.
What they want you to see
are the threadbare huts
roofs ruffled by the wind
& ripped to pieces
is the dry community tap
with its last drop of water &
the earth ridden with deep
cracks of drought
are the locust-infested fields
is the maimed elephant limbs
tusks raised to heaven &
a mother who will feast on her babe &
partition its spoils for the living
is the snake with a fortune in its mouth
& the armed soldiers on patrol
reaping heads at will &
a body splintered in the air
blood splattered on the earth
land of people doomed
to wither to bone to morph to dust
but look again & see the light
brightest on this side of earth
how the sun loves to kiss leaves
while the rainbows arc in the sky
look at the sky mapped with stars
enough for young dreamers
& the land blossoming forever green
corn silk billowing in the breeze
look & you will see for every
bruised, there are two blessed
& know this is the truth.
Art from Europeana on Unsplash.
…A Rhapsody of Simple Harvests.
Crest to caudal, I have searched myself for the origin of this evil.
Hell, grazed the skin off my flesh,
Plucked out bloody sinews,
polished the bone
gouged out the windows of my soul & placed them in a marrow,
Yet the genesis of my agony eludes me.
My friend, in this purgatory of solitude,
I have screamed into the swallowing void
hovering by for the wisdom of this discovery & it whispers a tale of
broken tongues.
I have sojourned in this land far too long, where these moth-eaten feet curse the ground on which
they tread & where
a horde of locusts has taken a liking to my bloated phalanges.
Now won’t you kiss me, moonshine, in all your anxious glory &
pour into this failing body the miracle of a tapering day?
O Desert sands of a thousand seasons, if you’ve ever heard of justice, blossom into a bouquet of
flowers at the slightest touch of my feet.
It wouldn’t hurt to break into oasis wherever I lay.
Bluest sky, haven’t you watched me long enough to leak water & wash my body?
Southern wind, you speak of time like a brother I’ve always had
You tell me the mountain is my destiny.
Fact is, I have never wished to be the mountain,
That snowcapped wonder chiseled by wind, by storm, by avalanche, & splitting
wherever the earth quakes.
Neither do I wish to be diamond, emotion-stripped, weatherbeaten & hard pressed.
Let me simply be
Like a miracle whose name it already knows
Like a thoughtless beauty on the canvas of creation
Like…
Art by Nicola POWYS on Unsplash.
On Rejection.
I garnish this poem with
wasabi & garlic sauce
to coat my tongue before rejection
because this time tomorrow,
the emails will serve me
an assorted menu of Carolina reapers
All innocent first paragraphs, then
unfortunately.
A fatal gripe in the stomach
as I chew on this five-star delicacy.
Years & years of feasting on this peppered
cactus dish of failure I’ll be prepared, won’t I?
Prepared like a sugar glider
on its journey back to spread palms before
the hawk’s talons.
No, this won’t be some Shakespearean tragedy.
I’ll stick out my tongue —
naked, puckered & scarred —
& swallow,
lips pursed &
red hot.
