Poetry Of The Beginning And End – Poems By Umar Abubakar Sidi

IT’S MONDAY NOON…

And the poet wanders

In the world of thoughts

Piercing

Like the spears

Of a juicy song

Dazzling

Like the stars

When the night is set

Enchanting

Like the rose

Sparkling in your eyes

Revealing

Like the sun

About to set at dusk

But blind, yes blind

Like me, lost in you

…our love swaggers

In the ring of words

I COULD NOT GIVE YOU A LOVELY KISS

(For Ismail B. Garba’s ‘FOUR POEMS FOR CHARLES SIMIC’)

As you

Twist

Turn

Twirl

Wiggle

Wriggle

Waggle

And moan lyrically

In response

To the softness of my caress

I see that:

Your rhymes

Are static

Your rhythm;

Loosed

Your cadence;

Broken

And

You have no title and such

I could not give you a lovely kiss

POETRY OF THE BEGINNING AND END

As singing sounds

Race through the future

In a blaze of light

With the Piercing rhythm

Of a perfected past

And

Flying stands of words

Quiver into the web

Without the gems of the living plasm

And without the perfect rose

I wonder and ponder why

The poet seeks the muse

And the muse seeks the poet

In the poetry of the beginning

SILENCE

Silence

Silence

Followed by:

A long heightened hollowed horror full protracted period of wait

Silence

Again silence

Then: A RANCOUS THUNDER!!!

As renditions exploded

In  the  Goitre of the  Griot

SORCERY

When the smoke of a greater darkness

Surges to engulf your mystic chains

And you invoke the oracle for a cure

It will chant a verse or two for you

From the poem of the shrine

…at the end of every poem

there is a horn and a star

but the end of this poem

will mark the

beginning to the end of poems

with stars and horns at their  beginning and end

thus, an end to the beginning of unusual poems

with neither end nor beginning

to stars and horns at their beginning or end…

And when you reach here

Grow pebbles on your face

For that is the beginning of a spell

Cast on you at the end

SONG OF THE SPHERES

(for Christopher Okigbo)

Ecstatic cries echo

In The tube of the ears of the earth

And awoke this naked madness in me

Whispers of the winds and waves

And sent me swimming

In the silence of the songs of the spheres

When you led me to the spring

Believing me a bard

Prince of the words of the world

And fed me sounds

In saucer strings

Spears of the light of the skies

You took me to the spring

Believing me a bard

Pierceness of the poetry of the beginning

The maddened sounds thunder

As they strike me

Pulsates of the poetry of the end

I ‘LL BE YOUR MOON

At morning I’ll be your dawn

At forenoon I’ll be your sun

Your chirping birds and swaying trees at evening

And

When the sun falls into the depth of dusk

And wingless steam of heat drizzles

When chirping birds retire to their resting nests

And swaying trees freeze

When staggering stars swim in slumbering circles

And a blinding darkness covers the earth

I’ll be your moon,

Yes, I’ll be your moon