They Call Me A Poet
(For Akin and Ogaga)

They call me a poet.
A poet, a maker
Like God, I exhale things into being
I am the alpha, the omega
The el shaddai of my verses.
I pluck virgin lines
From nascent stanzas
And sprinkle them with life.
We are a sad people, we poets
Silence cradles us.
Loneliness befriends us
And often we sit, sore and sorry
Alone with our vagabond thoughts
We drink, we smoke, we fuck!
Oh yes, we do.
Life is a path littered with thorns
Ah, how we've worn them thin!
Our prints have scarred the earth
Marked its face like acid bites.
Life is a forest overgrown with secrets
And intrepid hunters, we voyage
Into its depths, seeking, searching
For wild game
Poets are a sorry lot
We know pain, we know aches
We know hunger and thirst
We love with a passion
And hate with a fever
Life is amazed at us:
Megalomaniacs
Chasing fame
And Fellowships
Wishing upon the stars
Dripping lines a-flame
With pain and passion
Lust and forbidden longings
 
ii
The year is burning out
Like the wick in my lamp
I watch it flicker and die
And shed a solid tear
Frozen by the chill in my soul
Here where I lie
An impotent word
Marooned in a stutter
For I've learnt that words are not swords
They don't cut or bite or break bones
So, poets like you and I
Lie lonely and sad
In dank dungeons
Wrought out of stones
And our desperate fears
Missing mothers and lovers
And willing words into action
 
iii
Poets are mad spiders
Crazed by the logic of our webs
We fall to our deaths cackling as we go.
We are insane bards
Retelling the world
Flitting between the now
And the here - after
We are Kurumi's termites
We dwell underground
In Pluto's Cave
And like Pan we create chaos
Weaving mayhem out of the seared
Looms of boredom.
 
iv
The poet is the prince of solitude
A voyager into the dark
Where secrets cluster in hives
Buzzing like mad bees
Light blights us, blinds us
So we grope in the dark
Ravaging words
Parting their naked thighs
To seek selfish pleasures
And ancient seeds of hope and renewal
 
 
When A Dream Lingers Too Long

When a dream lingers too long
On the threshold of becoming
It sires a nightmare
Taking our nights hostage
Like Carrion-crows flapping black wings over the dead
Life is a blossoming flower
Pluck it fresh when its scent lingers
Find your joy before it withers
And bless the moment for its gift
The gift of light and laughter
Of sunshine and infinite joy
Bless the quivering moment for its gift
Before it settles on the dunghill of memory
Where painful nostalgia holds us hostage
Pottering like a thief in the dark
Quarters of the mind
Seeking that which has ceased to be
That which eludes, evades, dallies
Finding anchor in the nether-parts
Where Kurumi's termites burrow
Seeking the secrets of victory
And I have sought you with a fever
Braving ill will and danger
Steeling my heart with seared hope
As I set out for the under-world
And in this search I have known
Fear and rage; pain and loss
I have known nights darker than the first
Nights of the earth's beginning
When the moon was a mere speck
And the stars not yet born
Nights when the heart bled
From the dumb blows of fate
Nights when I stumbled along strange paths
Seeking after you like a flame
Tormented by the wind
At the mouth of the tunnel
And full of mad exploits I crawled close
And closer yet, until I learnt
That deep in the arithmetic of greatness
Lies the indices of failure
But I have dreamt it too long
And dark wings flapping
I cower in fear.