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!
Posted in Poetry

Circles and cycles

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

Eyes buried deep in hollow round sockets,

the sagging sack of bones speak for bodies

clothed in loose fitting tired plastic skin buckets

drooping like tired jute bags, brown, crumpling floppies

Buttocks shrivelled and feet

swollen ungainly,

dragging weeping frame around in now ending cycles

the circling flies,

whirling after twirling running tummies meet

mums in panic, running around dazed in dizzying circles

holding on to and hoping….

and ignoring hopes now withering

yet stubbornly clutching to withered hopes, wilting and dithering

Close by, on well manicured lawns,

watered tenderly by cycling swinging sprayers,

in circles of overflowing affluence

where grass lawns are fed with grace

from the proceeds of illicit deals and heists of disgrace

Pastors, preachers, prophets, politicians co-habit

preach, pray, praise, and pontificate

in voluminous waffle, clogging spaces with sterile volubility,

consciences clogged,

hard hearts twisted,

greed terraced mindscapes and bodyscapes, carousing

in convoluted cavorting

Waste dances indecent

in the wining and dining,

the wants of the poor swell, ballooning,

knocking over and sweeping away young fragile frames

staggering bodies and souls of children

their mothers whining and wailing,

along to painful grinding end points….

a procession preceded by a small wooden box

announces the end of one cycle,

the prolongation of the circle,

the festering sore enlarges

speaking the language of a cycle of infamy

and a dooming narrowing circle

closing in on the undying hope of mothers with dying children

their throats and lives throttled by the plump hands

of greed, callous, grabbing and choking

Posted in Poetry

A good bye song for Santos

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

Surveying his still and lean frame

I still and steel myself

trying to dam the hot streams seeking release

I lean back in time and spare tear drenched thoughts

to visit with his past before his still present

and survey a future without his comforting presence

The little boy besides me clutches my hands

all grief and bewilderment, suddenly thrust into adulthood yet a child,

struggling to be brave and I too struggle to be brave for him

holding his hands as we both struggle to suffocate the pain that seeks to suffocate us

and my thoughts tumble, my words stumble,

my mind wobbles as do my legs on this walk of farewell

a slow walk of love, honor, respect and remembrance

molten waves of sorrow scorch me as I walk and gaze

As I gaze on him and remember, and recall and re-live….

Santos, Santos the gbogbo di gbogbo

Dimkpa asa, okunrin meta,

“One Naze man at a time”

Okunrin dara, nwoke obioma, ome nwanne….

O very very Santos Achuku

Not you to enjoy the spare rib

when ribs stare at one from withering rib cages

not for you the lean prime cut

when the world bulges in the middle with the

withered frames of lean children,

soon to be cut off in the prime of childhood

lean as thin drying and dying sticks

stick children with sagging skins

which cling like dirty sack cloths to the tiring bones

Oh, Santos , how often did we rage at a deaf drunken and indifferent world

and for you, Santos, action was also soothing

and so, willingly at Lekki, Tere-Ama, okorieukwu and beyond,

he lent his throat to voice their pain

with no thought of gain

save to soften their pain and to soften his too

and soothe the pains of separation he bore

gladly he lent his time, his mind, his voice, his frame

that theirs may grow

that smiles would grace their faces

I sing for you Santos

You who now sing no more

For you Santos who loved life

but for whom songs for others was

vital for the vibrancy of your own songs

and for the voices you missed so

I sing for you Santos

I sing my sorrow and your grief

I sing for those voices,

voices whose touches you missed and still miss

those voices who are unable to sing,

suppressed, silent, sad,

subdued and sullen

I sing for the hard of heart, haters and hatters

hard nuts, twisted and knotted

I sing Santos knowing that that your charity beams on them,

your arms of embrace still open to welcome though you be still

Chi anyi di nma, Uchechi ga eme, Chi anyi ji oke and though some may think it is dark, bright days await you….

Gingerly tenderly, I caress your presents

this endless present,

a past that lives, heaves and breathes

and a future that glows and beckons

The three time frames, yet a continuity, endless

O very Santos, you came, you lived, you loved and you live on

the road you walk is smooth, your path is good, Uzoma

no stomps graze your feet as winged creatures lift you

lead and accompany you to the warm welcome of His bosom and light.

**** This is one of my clumsiest songs. I wrote it in 2009 for my late elder brother and friend, Valentine Uzoma Ihebuzor – ( I called him Santos and still do! ) after we had committed his mortal remains to mother earth in my father’s compound in the village! Santos sleeps right next to his bedroom window and the sands of my village lie gently on him! Today is three years since that committal! Up Santos!

Posted in Uncategorized
Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

This is a beautiful piece – distilled concentrate of sheet beauty!

eulonia's avatareulonia country

when you put trust in
the river good things start
swimming toward your outstretched finger-
ferns reaching digging pulling up
mud by the root. do you know
our names are written
on the tongues of earthworms
kept deep down inside
their cavernous bellies and
in the morning canaries
find themselves unable to speak
for mouths so holy fruit-full of earth?
do you believe me when i say
we must become this breathing
the riverbed we make must be our own
though wrought from the colors
that made us- murky browns blues and pale
woolen soft grays spilling upward
into caves
which are neither cavernous nor dark,
warm small brown furs of rooms
with a few spots to lie down
and rest?

my body is young for love but old
in the wanting
it measures itself by lengths:
blades of grass,
the iridescent trails of decollate
snails and snake skins,
draping…

View original post 63 more words

Posted in Poetry

Haiku on “True”

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

Haiku on True

True speaks not false nor

fake, voice genuine to self and

you, clear, clean and real

 

Opposite of false,

true stands upright, shiny bright

while false falls in slime

 

the false , with time,  drinks

shame;  the true with time flowers

petals blooming proud  

 

Posted in Poetry

Haiku on Love

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

When we love, we roll

wrap and reap, when love goes, we

rip, rant and regret

 

When we love, the sun shines

cool calm blue, humming magic

hearts glow, beings vibrate

 

When love goes, glow fades

blues come, gloom sings, hurting hearts

pull back, pain throbbing

Posted in Poetry

Life as Lived unity

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

Life as lived unity

Life lives, breathes and shimmers as one

straddling frames and fields

defying puny encapsulation and attempts

to frame it in packets and pockets of

disparate silos by all knowing experts of life and knowledge

 

The headache, the heart that hurts

the aching tooth, the limping male

the faulty erection, the cutting tongue,

the poisoned fist, the knowing wink

 

All are biology, theology, psychology and sociology

economics, mathematics and physics

philosophy and politics fused

presenting as one seamless affirmation of being

flowing interlinked and defying our knowledge boundaries and silos

 

In our quest to know,

we now crawl on knowledge frontiers we drew

isolating, magnifying detail and specks

deepening, tunnelling with absorbing fixity

never remembering to put them back again

ignoring organic essentials,

confusing parts for whole, minutiae an obsession

missing thus the deep truth, that life

is about unity, a mosaic bathed in diversity

but blended in wholeness

a wholeness which our un-whole methods

drowned in singular vision make us miss

 

*** This poem celebrates the successful completion of a project with my duet partner, the wonderful multi-talented poet SLD,  where we explored the application of physics to life and living and discovered in the process that subject boundaries were not as rigid as we had imagined. Rather we found a certain fluidity and an epistemic universe without borders! This song is my effort to say that and came to me after I uploaded the last in our series of Fizzy feeloig and fuzzy physics. Enjoy!

Posted in Poetry

Fizzy feelings and Fuzzy physics: # 9 Friction

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel A. Ihebuzor and Susan L. Daniels

In every straight and curving path of life
the interaction of opposites flows, friction,

its opposition
a delicate assurance of traction,
resistance and grip, always present
allows us to stand and move

same resistance slows and stops us
allowing motion, yet retarding it

the rasp of surface against surface,
smooth against rough,  rough to rough,
smooth to smooth; each raises heat,
awakens a force
moved into being by edge scraping  edge

the gliding plane
our movement through air as friction

the soaring heart,
the pounding heart, ventricle and atrium
pumping, pulsating and pushing life blood,
in never stopping motion,
constantly overcoming friction and resistance,

harp strings tremble, plucked and stroked by knowing
fingers, the wailing saxophone,
the streaking trumpet,
the tickling tinkling piano strokes,
slides, glides, and breaks its chords
all raising hammers to strings
and frictioned strings to sound
the whispered violin

all engineered friction fusing with air,
music born of friction, peaks and troughs of sound
throb in our ears

the ship slicing through waves,
opening and parting them in bowed surge
the wetted measured friction
has the waters parting, gushing, rushing round
singing in joyous roars that fill, fulfill, and enflame
basking mermaids slithering and lulling in the waves
of plunging passion

our fingertips, too, on skin, are friction
we call pleasure, touches we arch under
the language of groans and sighs also moaned friction
of heated air rasping vibrating cords
in the throat, just so

and then tensing to yes.

the pleasure of the plough plunging deep,
digging deep into gripping soil
gratefully opening up to tilling, for seeds of life
to be planted, so that in season, a rich harvest would birth

and how our voices rejoice, secret yielded as fruit
the shared complicity in
friction and pulling,
plowing, plunging and planting

the stone grinder, the blunt edge,
engage in perfect frictional resistance,
sharpening, short lived stars shooting and flying dazzle,
heat rising to combustion points,
sparks flying with each roll, the spinning grind

the resistance of the pool
the waiting surface tension
the perfect contours of its ribbed surface
 pierced by the perfect dive,
the ripples and return heave of frictional resistance
the suckling suctioning into parted spaces, bubbling,
warming and enfolding heat, in the cool dive defeating friction, thawing,
how resistance melts down
into dissolving softness,
like a warm bread knife,
pressed deep into yielding butter,
soon bathed in golden cream….

the touch as fingers run through skin tense,
the kissing caress, lips slowly rubbing singing skin
bodies locking, unlocking, interlocking,
passions painted in colors of friendly wrestlers
locked in a tussle of mutual entanglement and enlargement,

grasping, clutching, gripping
skins toned, glistening, unchaining and liberating
expanding voices, accelerating motions of
perpetual ebbs and flows, surges and suctions
hurrying to a waiting harbor, destroying energy in liberating bliss

and incomprehensible scribbles
on the resisting vibrating surface of the bewitched air

all need your collaboration
demanding energy to overcome
though energy would be felt,
drowned in flowing pleasures

without friction there can be no pleasure
stuttered, stalled, sullen and static
journeys without boundaries

life a languid limp limbo
resistance and restrainer
you increase work and heat
liberating positive energy in seasons of amity
but when time and pride corrode the good
and anomie sets in
and thorn weeds sprout and spike in polluted hearts
painful friction, spawn and install in stubborn hearts
spout-spawning spiraling masses of negative energy,
spurning joy, acerbic simmer, toxic swelters, choking
as corrosive friction multiplies and you deepen your roots
the good begins to dissolve, the ugly enlarges

our edges dry and wear down;
stripped tongues heavy and cracked like warped wood,
hearts unmoved,
and our communications collapse

as enlarging frictions fetters and freezes the feet of amity
to resist and retard the swelling of heart
and bodies that once vibrated and throbbed as one 

***And here we are, at our last piece in the fizzy feelings/fuzzy physics series and Susan and I close it here with a flourish.  The theme friction is one that lends itself to diverse explorations and exploitations and we have not stinted in any way here in these :) and we hope you will like what we have tried to make of it!

Thanks again to Susan, my partner in poetry and co-creator, for challenge, co-inspiration and for such gorgeous use of the language!

Posted in Poetry

Close encounters with education of the bad type

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

A song on bad education

Anxious open minds, eyes ablaze and shining

all gaiety and laughter at entry

to an environment, structured, neat, calibrated and ordered

 

most exit, heads crammed with knowledge, morose, twinkle gone

minds closed, vision dimmed , imagination dulled and diluted

 

a perceived empty vessel, trapped

and held hostage in an unequal dialogue

with a pedagogue

who suffers no dialogue

outside the book log

austere professional who decants chunks of assured unquestionable knowledge

in unmeasured torrents to be imbibed and returned

 

the death of the imagination in minds once so active

learning to learning suspended, dangling knowledge

with no anchor nor roots

dampening spirits, sad, sore and dour

the emergence of one dimensional thinking

fostered by methods that shackle rather than free the mind

 

and a mind that was once so free to roam

and loved to run, roll and tumble

 now stalls, staggers in tatters, strutless

and a  flicker that was lit at birth,

slowly dims, dims and dies…..