DEAD SUN

 

There are tears for the brook from which I draw

waters of identity, sounds of my tongue

and the story of my name.

 

I mourn the land of light plunged into darkness

before the first gasp of my third birthday

condemning me to three decades of fugitive life -

even in the bowels of the whale

that crushed and swallowed my homeland,

entombed its banner of The Rising Sun.

 

I move forward but get nowhere. Attempts

to heal knock toes on stumbling rocks.

Even my Northern sojourn along dusty streets

of Kaduna and Kano, butchering sites

of children of the light, tell of my fretting feet

urged on by hope that out of the ashes of war

unity may sprout. Even this sojourn of reconciliation

is determined by a flight through a crack in the wall

of another slaughtering saga as zealous knives

slashed in defence of gods and mowed down

my brothers like weeds that defiled the gardens

of hallowed grounds.

 

This is still our story! Time has failed to heal

wounds inflicted by pictures of spattered flesh

that grinned at us from bloodied mantelpieces.

We have yet to learn to sleep, daily reliving     

mighty explosions and their afterglow

frozen in malignant memories.

 

These are cocktails of misery for me in limbo,

my bleeding heels wounded by time, unsure

that I have reason enough to love that whale

in whose intestine I grope, in the dark,

desperately gasping for air.

 

 

Nnorom Azuonye

Anerley, UK 2003

'Dead Sun' was first published in Orbis (UK) #130, Autumn 2004

 

  

 

BONIFACE OLUAKA

 

I

 

It was only primary school P.E.

not the Olympics, and off

my mark, like a weighted bullet

cheered on by classmates,

you cut off the air supply

of my sprinting ambitions.

 

At fifty meters I regard with envy

rippling backs of my co-runners.

 

The tongue of your whip licks

hard across my back:

Ta wai! Ta wai! Ta wai! Ta wai!

 

Tears wash my face as blood sips

through my vest and I crash -

knees on the wet grass

of the untracked field, visited

by mixed sounds of horror

and mocking laughter

of my classmates.

 

 

II

 

Boniface, I am thirty-six now

but I hold the pain you caused me

twenty-seven years ago

like a perverse treasure in the vault

of my heart and I detest you.

 

One funny thing,

do you know that when I heard

you had lost your mind,

and was in some kind of home,

I did not feel sorry for you?

 

I have just learnt

that you found your mind again,

therefore one fine day

you may read this poem

and you will see that nobody

ever forgets an evil form master.

 

Nnorom Azuonye

Anerley, UK 2002

 

 

 

INVITATION

 

Walk with me towards a new sunshine

if your adolescent castles that stood

fine in romantic dreams like mine

have dissolved on the tongue

of furious unkind waves licking

the beach of life's wet lips.

 

Come in your workclothes to rebuild

castles with bricks of wrestled obstacles

cemented with the dung of experience

ornamented bloodied jewels of hope

even as we plan a special day;

of skewered juicy meats and of choice

wines in expensive crystals.

 

Don?t be afraid to win to this time.

I am not afraid anymore,

now that I have found a way

to plan my life and live my plan.

 

Nnorom Azuonye

Hertfordshire UK 2003

 

 

 

UNRESTRICTED ACCESS

 

Show me firewood from a log that cannot be hewn.

Show me benefit in the impossible.

 

I don't spit in the eye art's noble prince,

but if it feathers your critical life's hat, sew

a badge of southward thumbs across my words,

entomb yourself in crypts of stylemasters.

 

The incomprehensible can be colourful,

thrown for love at local jams or festivals,

a sea of perplexed crystals blankly blink.

If you don't get me, would you listen keener?

Or would you rather spare a moment

for my burden, this brick, my brick,

one usual word by one everyday idea,

to the building site of time's history tower?

 

I surrender everything to time,

the revealer, the healer and the judge.

 

When she sits in judgment against me,

would she blame me for walking light,

my notes unburied in concrete slabs?

 

Today, I indulge myself a delusion; in time's

harvest eve I shall reap kindness and healing,

if she makes just one of my bricks luminous

beacon of eternal truth.

 

I prostrate before truth,

the liberator, the jailer, and the hangman.

 

May truth be told when my days stop breathing.

If it proves my one thought, belief, or fear

made life better for somebody, or somebody

better for life, because I was not lost in

a firework of fancy and unfathomable clues,

that will be my crown of vindication.

 

Nnorom Azuonye