A song of love and hope

by Noel Ihebuzor  

Run your agile fingers gently through the tired strands on my head
Trace your sleek fingers softly across the soft surface of my heart
Move your tendered nails slowly across the tender folds of my soul,
softly stroke and massage the raw furrows of my mass,
run nimbly and softly across this feeble frail frame of mine

Many before you have been here
Many like you, your co-travelers
With their bright commercial smiles, their well tendered fingers,
their soft solid soles and sweet smooth lips have journeyed here,
and have traced patterns of calluses and circles of weeping weal
with the wheels of their fake forced love
on this anxious soft soul trapped in its eternal cycle of hope
this soul, a willing and wide canvas for the etches and sketches
of sojourners with agile fast grabbing fingers,
their sleek tongues and quick feet.

Careful now, my love,
Nwayo, jeje, hankali
careful now that you do not scratch too deeply
Careful now with the tracks,
with the deep, soft, raw and weeping red lines,
Careful with this frame, careful you do not break it
Gently as you speak, spin slowly your seamless tales
slowly softly stroke this heart lest you cause it to break and stroke

and remember to make me no promises
and show me no heights as I am now dizzy of heights
phobic of heights I fall from when smooth sailing parachutes take you away
as you glide gracefully away, leaving me ailing as you sail away
leaving me clutching at memories that run through my numb fingers,

spin me no new tales,
spawn no new hopes,
sell me no more of your new dreams,
dreams you and you co-travelers in and through me
drummed up with your clever eyes wide open
and mine shut in the soporific of all your tall tales

And when you go my love,
my resource excavator,
My gold digger, my strip miner,
when you have taken your fill
leave me gently, leave me carefully,
leave me hopeful not hopeless,
beaten, bitten, bent but not broken,
broke but not broken, used but not useless

Leave no sudden splashes of red and
let no new tell tale weal be your parting stroke
on this soft canvas of my soft soul,
on the drained and draining edifice of my person,
on the now raw and ravaged tottering frame with its red,
weeping and collapsed arteries,

Dying, slowly dying, I who am so anxious to live
I who placed so much hope on you,
Hope as high as the iroko tree
I who welcomed you with a fluttering heart,
with open arms and trembling limbs….
as I did with many others like and before you,
and will do, all in the hope that one day
before I breathe and heave my last
my true love will come through
and liberate me and liberate my potentials
and the plenty in me would then overflow,
and the greatness in me unleashed .

Noel Ihebuzor This is a love poem. It is a song of love and stubborn hope by a country for her sons and daughters who have systematically robbed and looted her with their sweet tongues, their rabid creed and poorly concealed kleptomania, and left her in tatters and tottering…yet she still hopes that one day, she will find true love, liberation and fulfillment. I mention no country and leave my reader to fill in the blank spaces.