which witch worried men
know suck blood,seeds, teeth red
fear hiding malice
wizards wine and dine
fine wisdom filled, while to stakes
witches wicked go
***still grappling with this haiku art form and still unable to wrap my head around it!
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!
Fizzy Feelings and Fuzzy Physics #2: Inertia – By Noel Ihebuzor and Susan Daniels
We drift in habitual wobbling circles
hobbling like feet poorly cobbled, feeling
neither earth nor one another, stranded
arid motion free stretch of ever elongating slippery
quicksand highway, without grip or traction
Smiles stiff and still
not sparking eyes, sparkleless
exhausted, shambling, soulless routines once so fresh
now stale, sour, and old
constant motion long past dancing
Radius, diameter and circumference in grating logic
circling each other in yawning cycles
We roll unresisting into a heavy, unpiloted slide
remaining in these present states easier
as with each change comes resistance
which must be swept across
or persuaded into action
what is held still craves flow,
though frozen and powerless
to break old bindings
and change direction
We shuffle limp on a limping highway
limp unable to rise nor flow, trudging on a treadmill
threadbare, going nowhere
The mournful sky wraps above and around us
mourning our uninspired mornings
soggy flat in colorless monochrome
borderless without hope, our soulless soles
burdened, weighty and weighed down
at the border of the deadening present and a feared future
Eager to depart, move on and move apart
and resist its own yearning,
and though we have breath and pulse, we lie inert
The half-life of what lived long past
in search of direction,
going nowhere, unable to live
unwilling to leave
Habit a tripwire trapping our feet,
a seething past that teemed,
boiling over, over-run with energy heaves,
now idles
empty of steam and wind
With no wand to wave to will us forward
we live as hollow shells
in endless cycles of repetitions
that weep and
wait for that external force to move us
either backwards or forward,
to push us on or push us over Inertia
**While a pleasure, as always, to write with Noel, I can’t wait to move on to more dynamic physical concepts in this series we are working on
Again, Noel’s voice is not italicized, mine is. (Susan)
****Susan and I explore in this duet a concept in physics that dates back to Newton’s seminal work. Inertia is essentially about the inability of an entity for internally generated change and movement in the absence of external impetus. It is a great joy to feel how in this duet we have been able discover some life and truths about life in Inertia! Always a pleasure to sing with Susan and to feel her voice, soft and delicate, blend with mine, gruff and often strident! (Noel)
Haiku – Ogbanje II
Dead child mum’s heart shreds
her breasts, spirits sore at loss
soul dripping hot tears
Haiku – Ogbanje I
Poor child trapped on trips
without end across the ghost
land of life and death
***The Ogbanje is a spirit child – also known as Abiku
Light points
Two light points
beaming
softly incandescent
mental particles
travelling through ether-cyber
collide, combine,
confluent release stream of glow beacons
to light minds and lighten souls
yes, yes, yes lovingly
light and lightening
cheering and rejoicing
expanding in reciprocal augmentation
to fusion the nucleus of a song
that vibrates in cascading particles
fissions, ever enlarging ripples and waves
that converge
at particular points
***For SLD who challenged me to dabble into physics!
Fizzy Feelings and Fuzzy Physics #1, Waves: A Duet
By Susan Daniels and Noel Ihebuzor
I want to ride this wave
suspended in stroking flow, the way a child
rocks to sleep at night, body remembering
the forward shove, the dragging back
The mind surveys, questions the source
the ends, the purpose and where they end
this timeless travel, unceasing pulling
Constant pushing and tugging
Your mind brushes infinity, reflected
In a wave with no beginning
that never breaks, but meets invisible resistance
and release in reactive crests and peaks;
The raw push forward, still with softness,
Rocking and wrapping everything that swims
within light, inside water, coiled inside sound;
all the patterned peaks and troughs that invite and incite
with throb and force, always present within a wave–
should we resist or should we swim inside its logic
There is a logic to its heaves
the pull of the moon
stirring tides, stirring blood surges and longings
in its genteel stare bewitching
Let it come, let us call it forth–
summon it to strike and shape
the substance of song and sighs;
the drag of magnets siphoning bitterness,
drawing pure substance to pure substance,
energy flowing forward without resistance.
The waves moving, endless motion,
the to and fro of each wave,
each wave inching deeper and closer
moving us and the world with it
If waves are change, let this one birth a tsunami to crush
and carry away the proud
the assured who stand opposed
but a wave that can with tenderness lift up,
splash and cleanse those
who gently cling at her rolling hems, hide their faces
in her soft skirts
Let us then ride and roll on her foaming wings
as the world rolls and spins
and advances in its waves of ether
moving always and the world forward
***Trying a little something different here with Susan, my duet partner, in a series where we explore the possible applications and implications of concepts from physics to life, living and feelings. Susan’svoice is the one italicized, and Mine is the one not. As always, it was a pleasure to co-create with Susan and to blend my voice with hers!
Haiku – Processor
Unformed, yet present in all things
I wait breathless, for a vision with voice
to find, process and liberate me
**** Imitation, they say, is the best form of flattery. This poor attempt at a Haiku (whatever that means) is a response to SLD who attempted to under-emphasize the poet’s role in birthing good poetry!
The politician
By
Noel Ihebuzor
The voice of the politician
is the same color
as that of the chameleon,
a voice the color of which
blends with wherever and every where
binds the unwary
blinds truths
his voice, his color and the likes of him
are the same as those of the environment
always changing, never constant, flowing like a river
slippery, his rolling tongue seeks to seduce,
confuse, deceive and ensnare,
The leopard free rides the plains
in zebra stripes
the hawk sings in the soft voice
of the dove, predation perfecting
preying on innocence and trust
The stench of his urine
stains the perfumed air of innocence
the stink of his empty words
mirrors the rot within
reflects the same emptiness
that fills his soul and being
the hollow nothingness of his person
Under size and over size
Size matters,
big good, bigger better
and this hunch back mind frame
begotten of the cult of quantity
slowly overruns and over turns sense
the ramparts of value breached
size soon deforms, corrupts
Our world staggers,
drunk, awash with situations
Teary, tearing and tiring
where the over size bank account nourishes
the under size conscience,
shrinking and wilting
values lost, morals flown, soul in slow decay
nearby, the lad with the over sized chest,
six packs and biceps in riot
muscle bound, more bran bland
brain draining blank
Size defines all, limits him,
The lure and the law of the raw,
Brute force supreme
the beauty in the simple lost
in simple equations of the big
with good, more with best
his undersize emotions
seek solace but suffocate
In the heaving over scented bosom of the lass
mammary implant oversize,
her ever enlarging wardrobe
celebrating waste,
happily co-habiting with her shrivelling soul
the well glossy manicured nails
contrast with the growing dirt
and darkening gloom within
that houses a withering mind,
and a soul that festers
In wide and poorly lit corridors
politicians jostle around
with their over -size vocabulary
their obese ambitions and hypertrophied egos
undeterred by their under size self-knowledge
atrophied and stunted consciences
feed and are fed upon by that hunger
that always eats up the entrails,
never abating, the spiritual bankruptcy
despite fat bank accounts
the social void, the empty vision
the oedema of the malnourished conscience
condemned to always seep of a sop,
that creates more thirst,
forces more drinking to forever drink and know no satiation
and drunk and drowned in that soggy sop that empties
and drowns the voice of reason and compassion
slowly making a victim of the misguided assumed victor
while the sad world rolls on
the loud voice of size
drowns the persistent appeals of sense,
of quality and eternal values
**** I wrote this song some time back as I worried over the situation in my country where greed and materialism had almost succeeded in snuffing out all sane values.
A song for IDPs
A song for IDPs
(For BOSSASO and other IDPs)
Hope lies here poorly shriveled and shriveling,
withered and withering
once high hopes now desiccated dry
the hot tropical sun sits on the dying camp
oppressive and roasting, quickening rot,
a constant rain of dry dust flows
roams freely in this place of captivity
slowly drying and dimming the voices of the trapped dying living
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
No water runs here as life slowly runs out
no food grows here, despair bounds and grows,
this place of rock and stones arid
by a sea that rolls, simmers and boils
This place bursting at its seam with suffering in the sweltering
scorching suffocating heat
betrays the jungle in the hearts of men and women
for there is no logic to this place, no sense it
Good sense departed so many moons ago
care and compassion suffocated and hope now orphaned
The animal in us runs raw, ragged, ranting and dimming all sanity,
rages, savages, pillages in a sad presage of the triumph of the beast
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
Mothers and females, forlorn drag around their feeble frames
full of fear in this fiery place, haunted by fear
humiliated by hunger, haunted by anxiety
sagging flesh sits ugly awkward on tired bones
violated mothers their pride sold to nourish those they once suckled
suffer the chuckle and derision of their temporarily satiated invaders,
armed predators chuckle as victims hide their shame
and their pain in sphinx-like empty stares
hoping against hope that they caught nothing else
in the unequal exchange
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
Fathers and sons sit around sullen
avoiding each others’ gaze
hiding their fear and shame and hate
wedded to woes and wants
souls trapped, feeling man-less and impotent,
empty yet full and over running with rage
in this cauldron, hatred and anger cook, slowly, simmering
raw rage grows and fills every crevice
in bitter emptied dried out souls
Outside and beyond, the voices of good intentions, of
actors and reactors, benefactors and beneficiaries mesh
while the victims die in large numbers
their groans and hisses drone on
and are drowned by distance
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
The shrivelling thinning hair on the enlarged heads of children,
Fontanels fallen in
sad sullen eyes, empty sucked into large sinking sockets,
wrinkling, flaking aging skins, bursting balloon bellies
enlarged heads sit ugly on tiny martian-like necks
frames as if of new born lambs adorn once chubby children, all
announcing ungainly early return trips and escape from this place
where fear is fertile
Flies buzz around, settling on the yellowish phlegm that ooze from nostrils
drawn by the foul stench and litter of littered humanity
of wasting and decaying humanity
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
Hope runs dry in these running noses,
in running temperatures and running stomachs
and soon the earth will take into its already distended bowels
these ungainly sacrifices and the earth is desecrated.
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
Or do we simply continue to stare
***** I wrote this poem when I worked in Somalia somne seven years ago and after visiting IDP camps in Bosasso in Puntland, NE somalia and in Hargeisa. This particular sad song was triggered by the human misery I saw in those camps as we struggled to bring help and hope to victims of human folly! I saw the same misery in eastern DRC when I worked there! Noel
