Homage to Hostages

 

The epidemics have summoned the paramedics,

Fears have given birth to an abundance of tears.

We brace the landscape with our sights set on

The hills coquettish before the rising sun

Where did the eagle go to deny the sky

The splendor of flight and the melody

Of adventure mapping loves apart?

You will visit the silent groves again,

You with the conscience stubborn

Like the fly stalking the cow’s tail.

You will let go your vices

Upon the rain’s arrival,

You with the residues of gods

Your guarded amulets 

Confined to a totem’s fate…

And what shall the deceased say then,

The prayerful whose sorrow once swirled

To paint sidewalks with

The mosaic of their blues?

The epidemics have summoned the paramedics,

Fears have given birth to an abundance of tears.

Let the eagle have the snake for lunch.

The landscape will not be forced to mourn

For a long time!

 

 

By Dike Okoro

Too Soon Gone 

                         --In memory of Phaswane Mpe & Sello Duiker

Fame was your destiny, loyalty

The service fee you paid

For wooing the deaf to listen

To the thunder behind your mask!

Born genius, schooled in public

Education, embraced by the owners

Of our barren farmlands and streets

Once your imagination ran wild

To treat the east and the west

To your vested knowledge

And wisdom gained from

Studying the violence

Of silence and the blues

Of the night’s stars

Were you not another child of the cycle

That took Nortje and Marechera?

Were you not another son of the sun

Too soon gone, like Okigbo and Rabearivelo?

Fame was your destiny, loyalty

The service fee you paid

For wooing the deaf to listen

To the rocks thrown by your ideas

Emerged with flashes, sobbed

By the latent vices of the worlds you captured,

You wept for the stars departed

Before their sparkle were celebrated.

You sang of the dirge forgotten

By the bereaved, portals of antiquity

And raindrops of miscellaneous agendas!

But tonight you sleep well in the vaults of time,

Since we here have betrothed our lives

To measuring our own whys!  

 

 

 

By Dike Okoro

 

Come With Me

 

Come with me to the forest

Where the doves arrest the sun

With adventure  

To appease the verdure 

 

Come with me to the forest

Where the snake hides in the palm tree

And the palm tree climber is cautious 

With every move and the farmer hums

Along, his hoe ever ready to strike

 

Come with me to the forest

Where the pond assures the dry face a wash

And the bush meat acquiesce

Even when wounded and doomed by a trap

And the trap collector is a gay chap with

A heart full of dances

 

Come with me to the forest

Where the villager ploughs to plant

And the trespasser observes the towering iroko

And its host of flighty admirers, while

Fallen fronds rust into soil and the elephant grass

Is fondled by the wind

 

Come with me to the forest

Where we have known the womb

Of our earth is rich, with yam tubers

Adorning the skies, and the parade

Of walking leaves delighting the

Majestic sun

 

  

By Dike Okoro

 

 

Zongo

 

For a good cause he faced the furnace

At Port Harcourt, name extinguished

 

From memory, where mothers shook

Their heads through silence and bit

 

Their fingers. I was here, stuck in traffic

At Chicago’s Kennedy Express Way

 

On that fateful afternoon when word came,

By phone as usual. Gory details, frightening

 

Reality. How they trailed him,

Homebound from a political rally.

 

His car they stopped, made him enter theirs

While they drove to an unknown destination.

 

Gun to head, bottle full of acid placed

In his hand. I know he saw the world’s ugly

 

Face that minute, the wretchedness we decry

Daily, as he drank into his funeral dirge.

 

Then they left him and drove off, mission

Accomplished, their nemesis at the debate

 

Podium turned a casualty of their medium

Of assassination. He got home well all right,

 

Knocked to announce his arrival, but it wasn’t

The kind his softhearted wife expected.

 

Mother and wife crushed to their knees, voices

Soaring, the neighbors to the rescue, but

 

It was too late. He spoke, but all they heard was

The silence uttered by the smoke evicted from his mouth,

 

The aftermath of the executioners’ plot. And that was

The end of Zongo, the firebrand who got his PhD from

 

America’s Ivy classroom only to return to dust 

At the joy of wolves threatened by ideas.

 

 

By Dike Okoro