When A Dream Lingers Too Long - Poems by Toni Kan Onwordi
- By Toni Kan Onwordi
- Published May 5, 2007
- Poems
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Toni Kan Onwordi
Toni Kan Onwordi holds both a B.A. and M.A. English (Literature) degrees from the Universities of Jos and Lagos. His works have been published widely in the Art pages of prominent Nigerian newspapers and his poems have appeared in the anthology 25 New Nigerian Poets edited by Toyin Adewale. He has also had short stories published in anthologies like We-Men, Little Drops (1) and Diamond and Ashes. An award winning poet, essayist and short story writer, his awards have taken him to Scotland and Switzerland. Toni Kan is currently working on a novel, Secrets of the Untold.
View all Entries by Toni Kan OnwordiShe's Young And Sweet
She's young and sweet
And clad in soft silk
I shoot her looks of steel
And watch her nipples explode
Then I smile and look away
A Prayer For A Good Death
Dear Lord, I offer
This prayer for a good death
May I never fall from a Molue on a Monday morning
And may I never know the hard bite of asphalt
On my bare skin
May the road and its ogres never
Bare their fangs when I tread its pathways
Secrets have sprouted tendrils
And like the spider's feet they spin
A web of fear around my mind
I stutter, I flutter, I flicker like a candle
In the cold embrace of the wind
I find empty solace in silence
In the cloying warmth of the womb
The unborn child suckles silence
Weaving toneless ditties
From the sad monodies of nascent dreams
Why are we born? Why do we die?
Hard questions that crack the teeth
Hard questions that eclipse answers
Drowning them in penumbra of their beginnings
So, I circle the pregnant gloom
I reach a febrile finger into its depths
I finger its rancid entrails
Exciting worms and maggots
I feel the osmosis, the kinesis
The end of life's ultimate synthesis
Now, I ask,
Where shall I wash up?
In the belly of a fish?
A new age Jonah
Fleeing the sad Nineveh of his own mind?
Where shall I wash up?
So, I offer this prayer, dear Lord
On this morning of death and renewal
Having tasted joy and supped on tears
And having seen that man fall and die
I, who, have known love and heartache
Sweet passion and its after-glow
I beg of thee, Sweet Lord.
May I not lose my head in the urgent dialogue of tar and tyres
Earth, Wind and Fire
(For Yewande )
You are the ground beneath my feet
The clump that earth's my rootless passions
You ground me, you root me
You are the fertile patch
I take root, I bud, I blossom
You are the howling wind
Fierce and wild and roaring
You are the soft whisper
Angling for my yearning ears
The gentle breeze caressing
My field of swaying tassels
You are the rage curled up
In the womb of a spark
The fiery tongue scorching
The ears of my longing
You are the fever, the heat
Locked in my eager loins
You are my earth, wind and fire!