Author: Noel Ihebuzor
Development and policy analyst with a strong interest in the arts and inclusive social change.
Dabbles occasionally into poetry and literary criticism!
ChildMother and Wife
By Noel A. Ihebuzor
the child as mother
smothers childhood
the murdered mind weeps
when torture is garbed as culture,
a deadening deaf culture
deaf to pleas and protests
pleas of despair
the despair of the innocent,
thrashing like fish
trapped in a net,
whimpering and weeping
the lonely lament of a lamb,
her neck gripped in the jaws
of a predator, depraved,
blood spurting from ruptured aperture,
victim’s pain and slow death
contrasting with victor’s rapture
the shivering of the struggling lamb
before the slaughterer’s blade,
as dreaded night falls,
in vain searching the dark world
closing in on her for some light
to brighten her bleak plight and
and lift her soul,
finding none
heiress of pain,
fragile limbs grabbed, groped and gripped
by coarse grasping hands,
the repeated shattering pain as tender
flesh is gashed by hard hot flesh,
the happy husband
invades soft developing chambers
savours with selfish relish tender flesh,
matters little
this maturing and developing frame
now numb
matters little childhood
now broken
Matters least innocence stolen
forever lost
as forced intrusions, crude invasions,
desecrate unfolding sacred spaces
the empty victor’s gain,
the victim’s pain, our collective shame
Now she carries a new life in her, her child,
herself a child, drenched in confusion,
12, 13 seasons ago,
she was like this life just beginning to form,
now daughter of pain,
tied down by the glue cobwebs of tradition, vice-like
Is this meet the sacrifice of the innocent?
Is it meet that marriage mars childhood
mangling a girl child’s today and her tomorrow
destroying her innocence
in the season of her youth
making a mother of one
in need of mothering
smothering her hopes, happiness and health,
freezing rich potentials
limiting possibilities from unfolding
all because fevered callous hands,
propped by culture selfishly reach out in greed
to harvest and appropriate fruits,
tender fruits plucked in their bud
to feed coarse souls
in collusion with parents
in search of quick gain
on such emptying and wasting plain
deaf to the cries of pain
of childhood smothered,
of dreams denied
** raw…will refine later – the subject is a delicate and very painful one**
Flying after a Cream Dream
By Susan L. Daniels and Noel A. Ihebuzor
i have flown too
pushing off with one foot
and coasting thermals with hawks
but after i am above trees, dispersing clouds
skipping over jet trails–
never in dreams have i found a way
back to down but opening my eyes
and waking
up, finding it gone
and wishing that magic to
resume spinning silk threads;
tangling delight so lightly
sometimes, you wake up
at the wrong time in a dream,
floating in its amber jet stream,
at a point of its greatest promise
as it danced along its self-willed
and illogical trajectory…
and alas “revus interruptus”
we balance that fine-brushed line
where dream and fantasy kiss
and then in vain you conjure a continuation
by locking down unfurled eyelids,
casting babalawo and ifa beads
only to meet “resumption access denied”
boldly staring at you opaquely
like the negatives of a black and white picture
from behind your tightly shut eyes!
if wishes dance, flashing silver
like a cloud of minnows past catching
that is what these dreams do, fleeting and fleeing.
such wild gifts resist forced forging;
though we beg the bringer,
she swims away with them, arcing
behind our eyes, unwilling.
Unyielding to our anxious silent pleas,
ignoring our favored sketched dream scenes and sets,
our preferred casts, co-stars and shooting locations,
smiling, she denies us our feverish aspirations
to statuses of dream directors and procreators
can she midwife one child over another?
if it is love, or flying we ask for
she will bring us falling dreams
or kissing from mouths that differ from desire;
yes, we thirst, and take both the vinegar and sweet
dropped on our lips,
accepting not what is wanted but what is given
***Talk about spontaneous generation! This started as a response to a “dreams” poem by Susan and bloomed from there. Susan and I (Susan voice is italicized here) cooked this up in between Susan getting ready for a teacher’s conference at her son’s school in New York and I was taking a short break at a workshop in Morogoro, Tanzania.
Love
Noel A. Ihebuzor
Love with that
love that gives
as it lives
Love with that
love that forgives
and reprieves
Love with that
love that conceives
of goodness in fullness
Love with love
that deceives not
but overflows with truth
Love with that
love that believes
breathes and lives
Love with that
love that heaves and
freezes lavas of hate
Love with a love
that dwells in the present
freed from the prison of the past
Love with a love
that flowers our today gaily
and seeds our tomorrow
with fresh dreams
love with a love so full
that it fills our today with songs,
links our present and our past
hollows the past of bitterness
filling the morrow with positivity and possibilities
love with a smile and smile
@naitwt
Four voices singing as one – on a theme of universal relevance on Nigeria’s independence day! Happy to be in this AWESOME QUARTET!
by Boomiebol, David Trudel,Noel Ihebuzor, and Susan Daniels
if hate has a voice
it starts quiet as steam
escaping through cracks in rock
until the hissing amplifies
to volcanic roars
that no words can shout over
or stop.
If hate had a pen,
its ink would surge, overrun and melt pen and nib,
its acid sap sipping
into sweaty palms
corroding and melting sinews
and twisted tortured phalanges
if hate has eyes
they would see nothing
pale & staring
corneas scarred white
from heat
If Hate was a lighthouse
Its foghorn would be discordant
And it would get stuck like some faulty car alarm
Going off for hours
Its light would cease to work in winter storms
But the electricians won’t find the problem
Hate is always getting short
If hate had wings
It would fly
Wings spread wide
Carried swiftly by the wind
Blowing back and forth
View original post 46 more words
Theology, Biblical Archeology, Philosophy and Poetry all in One. A great poem written in response to recent findings claiming to challenge Christ’s celibacy!
there is a gospel of mary
on a fifth-century papyrus
that is not canon
& an infancy gospel of thomas
where the child Jesus
rolled 12 sparrows from clay & spit.
they flew away, singing. not everything old
is true, & not everything true
is comfortable. or relevant. or gospel,
even if that word is in the title
glyphed in aramaic or greek
we who sing through mouths
lit holy know salvation does not fly
with a tale of 12 sparrows
or a celibate Christ, or a married one;
but the divine breathing, bridging & dying
a way for us to God through flesh
& sacrifice. a scrap of papyrus
does not change the Christ i know
who walked through death.
the cross & the tomb are empty.
thomas the doubter
put his hands inside that body
before he believed.
it is not what is known
but what is risked that saves
without touching
we…
View original post 28 more words
Talk of trade offs!
Haiku – the paradox of knowledge
By Noel A Ihebuzor
ignorance softer
on probing human minds than
mild uncertainty
minds searching answers
encounter further questions
causing yet more thirst
***Haiku written in response to a great post by Susan Daniels. I then added another verse!
Beautiful poetry by Susan. A must read! Prompted this clumsy reaction – your song, Susan
floats softly like feather strokes
flashing like the dazzle of white teeth
on darkened Serre gums
how such tender caresss words still cut
like a sharp serrated knife,
piercing deep, stroking and stoking
is the paradox of a song
that blows, glows, warms and melts
all at once, four as once
if i could stretch my spirit
to where you are, i would haunt you
through the door we call dreaming
but it is difficult to spin a strand of self
that far, so instead i will call you here
sculpted of shadow where i want skin
sometimes distance is distance
& sometimes longing feels a little bit like loss.
perhaps we will dream an us together,
want drawn by want to a place where desire
is answered by touch, tangible
& real as the weight of your mouth moving over mine,
the heat of your breathing.
Urban Jungle Blues – A Duet
By Noel A. Ihebuzor and Susan L. Daniels
Another wandering day finds worn out minds
worrying on a wavering road wound tightly around anxious
feet lost and soles tired, tiring,
endless stomping, souls emptying, core eroding
trapped penniless in hard bone want
rides and crosses opulence heaving full breasted
never meeting anywhere or nowhere, desert islands, different
indifference, whether in narrow winding slums spawning hovels, grime, crime and anomie or in suffocating metallic structures that pierce the sky
seated on wide arteries on gridlocked checker boards
where automobiles choke the lungs with fumes of affluence,
Here, this city no longer smells of steel galvanizing
but oats baking into cereal O’s, and the main street
pedestrian mall frames four tracks for trains that do nothing
but run from the banks to the university
in a 30-year straight line, all the stores closed
except pharmacies, pawn shops, Chinese take-out,
stores that sell bright synthetic shoes for drag queens and prostitutes
or lottery tickets, cigarettes, and beer
The city sprawls, growls, as grim faces with automated smiles
and ATM voices greet and grit set teeth
co-travellers on the subway, rush without seeing, not feeling
and when seeing move on before sunshine thaws well frozen
protector shields of indifference and anonymity
to open a space now dreaded in this place where we pace
in a metal jungle of tubular bars, well rehearsed smiles,
a maze that breathes fear
behind stale glass windows or airless hovels
that color eyes and imprison minds
and minds stagnate in the stupor of sterile promises
that become hazier as mind become heavier, and stubborn dreams
slowly tip to cheap end points, needles, skins, threads and ropes
This is my downtown, my city of brown and black faces
strangled by surrounding white arms, where all the jobs grow
past the bus lines and reverse commutes from suburb to suburb;
but still in this heart blocked by abandoned factories
rises an energy. Students fill the coffeehouses and jazz clubs,
wrapped in black, borrowed sophistication after a night
in the theatre district or gallery parties, and warehouses shift to lofts
and still more galleries, pop-up shows mushrooming between the cracks of sidewalks
like brilliant intoxicating fungi
as street festivals paint the air
with basil and cinnamon, mixing with those oats
urban centres call
sell hopes that reach for a sky
darkened by hard hearts
those sidewalks
littered landscaping
of trash cans never emptied
dreams full of promise
so emptying
***Susan and I explore the challenges of urban life in this duet. Though our backgrounds are different, our duet brings out some of the universal features of life in an urban setting – hence, the title, Urban Jungle Blues. As always, this was fun! Susan’s voice is in italics, Mine is in regular type. Kindly let us know what you think of the duet!
Reflections 