By Noel Ihebuzor
shy, fierce, deep, intense,
the heart rhythm and reason
defies wisdom’s eyes
Category: Poetry
Fizzy feelings and fuzzy physics: # 5 – Heat
By Noel Ihebuzor and Susan Daniels
Dense with entropy, warm interplay
life’s strumming is thermal,
made in heat and made with heat
beginning in fusion and fission of stars
heat riots everywhere, all ways
stored in bonds and energy fields and folds
Heat, energy, pure warming
source and inspirer of life
your touch sparks us and enflamed, we glow
the slow movement to love is fever, seething
body temperatures rising
(Like cold blooded creatures
Basking on sun teased stone, slowly warming)
and thickening blood like magma;
forest fires on skin
our flowing emotions awakened too;
relationships are about heat energy and transfers
warm glowing when souls converse and caress
when bodies melt, flow and fuse,
the scorching joy song of molten gold passion
yes, the constant shifts within us and without us
in traded heat;
radiations, convections and conductions
we conduct, we conduce the flow
nodding to the first law,
nothing made or lost, only changed
from one form to another
high energy charged points to lower points,
seeking release
we free and burn slowly
and with caution
Rising beyond limits, you transform to scorch,
burn, melt all matter past form and shaping;
shuddering volcanoes, molten heat as rage reigns
everything in its path ashes
and twisted metal;
what took years to frame consumed by flames
and past all salvage
Heat energy change
throwing sparks, breath of Thor,
blazing like thunder, causing conflagrations, blazing and burning
Hot burning scorching when hurt installs hate
and envy, spears, poisoned arrows fly, flames burn down
Better flash fires than maximum entropy;
where, lifeless, immobile
we drift further, with no sparking between us
in slow, heavy heat death;
ice cold and indifferent when separated lovers, love burnt out,
now strangers co-habit the same space
invade their naked bodies and feel nothing,
no warmth, no flow, no energy
save ice particles on bodies seeping from the cracks of frozen hearts
***another in our series from physics, hope you enjoy the warmth of this one! We certainly did! Susan’s voice is italicized, mind is in bold! Enjoy the heat!
Changed signs and times
By Ochi Emma Opara
…the native Doctor’s beads and amulets
have changed hands and name.
the ogene has remained; even as a bell.
that accompanies the new seers
who dread Friday meat.
My nostrils succumb to the stench of incense
moving in studied direction,
like a four way pendulum
chasing the devil away.
Born – again Ebenezer says
it is the sign of the cross,
challenging my ignorance that saw my village cross road –
Mgbabo eje eri aja.
The dancers changed indeed.
Sure they changed,
leaving the music intact.
Eloi, eloi…….
****A poem by my friend & classmate Ochi Emma Opara in response to my poem Ogbanje III
Ogbanje III
By Noel Ihebuzor
Thick as a moonless night,
sticky and debilitatingly damp
was your grip on our minds,
clammy on our thoughts
misty fogged, drugged by mystical myths,
our sights clouded, we saw the horned dog,
eyes red chilli, schools of skull carrying
fish flying and whirling around, transporting
red toothed ageless mermaids sucking young blood
and souls, never questioning
the cry of the night owl calling to mate
made mothers freeze, cowering in fear,
covering the feverish body of
sick children lest the hollow hooting of the owl
their mournful summons siphon their spirits out.
Mothers and fathers shivering,
sweating ignorance thick
on their haunted minds
like tattered wet blankets
New day, new dawn,
the frontiers of your kingdom
roll back by half every quarter
the native doctor’s beads and amulets
now gather damp and dust,
outside, short shallow red earth-covered mounds
sad resting places for souls spirited away
slowly vanishing with the roll of time
new wisdom, knowledge and vision replace
specious séances garbed in obscurity
progress breathes, heaves rolls forward in waves, freeing,
washing away ignorance,
shrinking superstition,
knowledge unrobes untruths and lies,
its piercing rays illuminate the dark kingdoms
where once you roamed and raged
ragging souls and joy with your minions.
As new knowledge uncovers why children die
that for which we blame the gods recedes
memories of starless bleak nights and deadening days
when the dreams of mothers and fathers
were drained by truncated childhood
are now distant
wailings of childhood ended too early
by frequent returns to spirit-land recede,
the suckling mother is now gay
suckled by the sound of happy progressing infancy,
bonding and binding to a child who stays
Victory, we rejoice and regale,
cakes and candles
celebrate another passing year
spiced with prayers
for many more to come
But let us beware,
one victory signals another battle
new Ogbanjes could be spawned in the emerging
sterile and suffocating space
where politicians with sterile policies
men and women caged by greed
minds manacled and shackled by corruption
the grabbing hand, ending up throttling life
sucking it and snuffing it out
in resources siphoned and stolen
our red eyes survey the empty and emptying clinics
the dying and decaying social provisions
the death of vision, and we weep
beware also of kindred new spirits that end childhood
lurking in sprouting new religions that reinvent
the power of witches and wizards
selling smoke, suspicion, and superstition
to unsuspecting slumbering followers,
shallow bewitched, emasculated by fear, minds entrapped
The bank accounts of preachers, politicians, and public servants swell
as ranks of new ogbanjes now begin to emerge,
crowded into ever-increasing shallow graves,
and the soul-draining groans of parents in pain.
Duet Defined
Amicabe duel
of giving and taking
lines, ideas, voices
colliding and colluding,
sometime skipping along gaily
sometime contrasting, sometime complementing
always enriching,
wafting and walzing with mounting additionality,
perfuming the sky with rhythm!
Fizzy Feelings and Fuzzy Physics #4: Motion II
By Susan Daniels and Noel Ihebuzor
All life is motion compelled to move;
you and I, we must move too
even in apparent stillness
our atoms vibrate
past vision and all senses, rearranging with
the simple harmonic motion of elements,
the inner rotation of the subatomic
like mirrored, miniature solar systems
the shift of season into season,
the pulls tides answer, and strokes of waves
all singing life
every motion has brought us
closer to this motion today
where we move in unison
your voice in mine and
mine in yours
your tongue vibrates, feels
and feeds my throat motion;
fluttering, trembling, all kinetic and stirring
and we move, the rhythm of us a motion
born of force and attraction
by polarities that pull
create this swirl, tremulous gyrations, vibrating, oscillating
where merging in vertical and horizontal flows
we reach forward and beyond
with hastening speed
and now, with vectors charting
direction, force and magnitude
this joined velocity singing and ringing
still accelerating, celebrating
the influx and efflux of creativity,
its season of release
** Our second duet on Motion! Susan and I hope you will enjoy reading this duet as much as we did writing it. Susan is italicized and Noel is bolded.
Fizzy Feelings and Fuzzy Physics #3: Motion (1) – By Noel Ihebuzor and Susan Daniels
Three balls dancing in space
in place lace us to the larger cosmic circles
of perpetual motion
The blue pearl spins on its toes
in never stopping rolls like a top
held in space in distant but constant hug
by the sun radiating
surges of magnetic and force fields
Locked in predictable patterns
but always surprising us;
the times of sunset known
but not its colors,
the exact flush and spectrum flash of sky
as the axis spins and shifts it to night colors
Rotating and revolving
centrifugal and centripetal discourses
neatly balanced as ordained though slightly inching
imperceptible
Our mother an eye, soft and smiling
a constant blue gaze unblinking,
but kind, a glowing awareness
logical in her turning;
her light beguiles and seduces
in its soft sparkling
as the moon, her hills, and blue seas
use their pulls in equations
to twirl, whirl, and swirl
Caressing and awakening the sleeping ocean
stirring, causes waves, tides, and surges
three balls hanging apart in space, moving
yet linked by invisible forces flowing from them
and causing motions and emotions to rise and ebb
And you and I, also
feel the pull, the irresistible forces
that draw our blood beneath skin,
that grasp our hands to lift and turn us
so we also spin and dance like these,
hoping that our weaker movement too
will birth waves
and pools
***Once again I thoroughly enjoyed braiding lines and interlacing voices with my duet partner, Susan, whose beautiful voice shines here and who succeeds to breathe life and plenty of movement into a difficult topics in physics – motion! Susan’s voice in italics and mine in bold!
Haiku on witches and wizards
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!
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
Reflections 