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
Category: Poetry
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
if distances were not as long as dark, lonely nights: a duet
By Susan Daniels and Noel Ihebuzor
Noel: If distances were not as long as dark lonely nights
Susan: The callous earth sees to it
that even our nights and days
oppose one another;
but, let us ignore laws of geography and physics
for this moment, and meet.
Noel: If feet could leap distances
ferried and nourished by fertile faith
if minds could travel long distances to their longings
Susan: Then I would fly to you, heedless of gravity, and mocking it;
the sky, neither night or day where we would answer each other
would blush, rivaling the colors of dawn, or of sunset, at our defiance
of the order of things, our audacity.
Noel: If mind, soul and body could paddle silvery
in soft warm lagoons
in canoes invisible to the uninitiated
Susan: Only light the way for us to find each other
Noel: If the journey of exploration
was a journey into the deep self
one of discovery and recovery
Susan: We would range farther
than the resonance of dream language,
sparks dancing past matter,
to a place where twin flames
recognize one other
and blend.
Noel: Would these harsh beginnings
not signal new becomings
and perfection end points
if only we
you and I could kill present addiction
to birth a future full that whispers and beckons
if, if you could, if we could
Susan: We would,
and in our waking walk together
generate something live
from these whispered ifs;
a pale hope, and fragile
unfurls into full-blown being;
yes, hope can dream and bring forth joy
as it breaks and buries bitterness.
Noel: If we could reach within ,
to find that lock to unlock a door
that holds us prisoners,
bound and shackled,
then we would unlock us
this us that currently
glides and drifts, inviting,
suggesting
Susan: Only unchain us,
that we might taste
even a tenth of what tempts us
into crossing these lines
of time, of space,
of who we are now
and who we could become.
***All I am going to say about this is wow, we did good duet, Susan! Can’t think of anything else to add that wasn’t said above – well except, powerful!
A Song for Mother and child – on MMR & CMR!
At term, he took Ugonma in,
the taxi had rattled, creaked, bounced
and chugged on the dirt road, all the way
to the maternity
A midwife, looking fazed in her faded uniform
walked Ugonma
feet and lips swollen,
screaming in pain, water breaking,
into the labour room
every dragging step slow,
laboured and painful
A wait long and weighty like eternity,
and then a delivery attendant,
her face the picture of nonchalance,
eventually shuffled out of the labour room
to thrust roughly into his trembling hands
a list of items required
for the delivery.
The Okada rider, his machine idling,
spotted Obi as he hurried out from the maternity
signing and screaming
“chemist shop”, yes, “chemist”
the rider on sensing his desperation
doubled his fare, cursing the country,
swerving and swearing as he rode.
.
Places and people flew by and past on that mad rush
to the chemist shop, an airless suffocating place
running over in dirt and disorder
where a a dishevelled male plied a messy trade.
Items purchased,
Obi rushed back to the maternity,
straining his ears, lips moving in silent prayers
his hands trembling,
items handed over with haste
the attendant checking with indifference and
troubling sluggishness, and then shuffling back
into the delivery room with the items.
Obi waited outside, counting the minutes,
the seconds as long as hours and twice as slow ,
his heart pounding,
fatherhood within reach at last ,
after seven heavy years of wearying waiting
Totally immersed in imagining what must be going on inside,
waiting for the beautiful moment, oblivious to everything else
vaguely aware of when his mother and Ugonma’s mum arrived
and how they both laughed at his fretting and fidgeting
assuring him that all will be well
saying that “God never sleeps”
He saw the midwife as she came out,
her apron all blood and stains
saw her signal the two women to follow her
and now alone, he dreaded his loneliness
soon he thought he heard a wail
that came from the soul, the wail of one broken
They brought the baby to show him,
looking so small, fragile and delicate
and when he asked after Ugonma
Her mum, her voice brave, but broken by pain
yet tinged with pride said
“Ugonma has left this world, “uwa nsi”, she spat out
“a woman at last,
to the shame of those gossiping tongues
who had chattered that she was a “male””
God gives and God takes, she said
and when Obi said “why, Ogom nwanyi, why”, she replied
“a man can never wrestle with his god, his personal chi
nor challenge the decision of God”
His groan was deep and heart rending
his voice saying slowly, chilled numb
“This death cannot be a decision of God,
we wrong God when we blame Him for our failures
as humans”
“Chim, sudden total darkness has fallen on my life at high noon,
a driving torrential downpour has caught me in the middle of nowhere,
blinding me, my path has now become a thicket of dense inpenetrable prickly shrubs”
he cried and sang, inconsolable, lost and broken
His mum laid her hands on him and said slowly
“a woman who can do this,
who can abandon a new born at the moment of birth
must be an “Ogbanje””
and his look of pain, rage and disgust froze her.
He called the baby Chiwetalu (Brought by God)
and at night when Chiwetalu screamed from hunger
when Chiwetalu cried,
troubled by gripe and colic from formula milk
his heart bled, he cried and held her
and rememered Ugonma and still asked her why
even though his age mates had warned him not to,
had advised him to reject any advances from her
if she walked into his dreams from the land of dead
They had advised him to wear two tight underwears to bed
as she may return to seduce him
and then tear off his manhood
since they all knew how much she loved him in life.
In Obi’s mother’s village,
an unmarried teenage girl had lost her baby
to fever and diarrhoea
one month after delivery,
a girl lost, Nwadiuto
who had now lost virtually everything
– her baby
– her innocence in a moment of madness,
– her schooling as she was expelled from school
once her pregnancy was noticed
– and the support of parents
who had thrown her out for disgracing them.
Her mother’s village proved to be her sanctuary
there they welcomed her, kind aunts helped her
manage her shame and the pains of pregnancy
Her mother frequently visited her there
whenever she thought her dad was not looking
(her tough and puritan dad saw all,
looked the other way, said nothing,
but silently thanked God that she did)
Now her chest full of grief and still sore from her loss
her breasts full, swollen and tender,
her life emptied of meaning and attachment
she agreed to nurse and breast feed Chiwetalu,
this life so fragile, so trusting
The hungry ruby lips needed some coaching and guiding
flesh and rubber feel and smell differently
but soon the hungry lips tugged and sucked at nipples
engorged, tender, touching her,
awakening her and flooding
her with images of her own child
who now sleeps forever
and Nwadiuto cries for him,
for a father he never knew and would never know
a man whose heat she had felt
but not his love nor his affection
regretting their brief interaction,
rushed and unfulfilling for her
She laments this and her loss
laments her parents
who further lost her
when they threw her out
when she felt most lost and needed them most
and occasionally when Chiwetalu cried from hunger
she would also think of his mother
that the hungry earth had claimed and swallowed
And from a distance,
heart still broken, but filled with gratitude to Nwadiuto,
Obi watches these two lives and surveys his
united by loss, by losses that could have been avoided
And he ponders how one life had in coming
taken another life,
how another young life had flown
emptied the life of a teenage mum
but leaving her full sorrow and milk
how that milk now bonded
two lives and a third
and His tears never cease to flow
from a mixture of missing, thanking and wishing.
*****First raw and rough cut of a song that invaded me in its inchoate form, begging to trapped on paper. MMR and IMR are my targets here – and I now agree that overt didactism ruins creative writing. This shambolic song is one good example. OK, I pack it here for now and will come back to retouch it later, hopefully. Noel
When the keyboard stammers – a poem on slips and errors
Keyboard sudden sodden with stammer,
sodden fingers leaking, pressure and pleasure on fingers,
hydaulics, control valves and bubbling words and thoughts,
energy, all tumbling, fluid dynamics and sublimal flows stabilising
internal riots, ordered entropy
a benign judas like affliction announcing good standing
so when next the keyboard stammers,
say no buts, not butts, not misskates, not errors
but errands from within butting into and jotting out
to the without, shy
******A poem by Susan, a wonderful poet and my duet partner, on slips and errors when we engage others through the medium of the keyboard prompted this poem, a poem that is more of an incoherent stammer than a statement or a theory of slips – As we all know, Freud has the last word on that topic! Susan, this song is for you!
A song for the hanged
by Noel Ihebuzor
After and before the next hanging
The prospect of imminent hanging leaves no space for any hanging thoughts in the mind of the to be hanged
The rope swings in slow narrowing tiring circles
Stretched taut
under the weight of the stretched and twisted neck
The empty body dangles and swings,
emptied of dreams and desires,
Voided of life
an inert piece dangles at the end of the rope,
in tortured peace
silent and silenced, limp and swaying
The peace of the hanged,
all flesh and bones but no spirit
The peace in this place of reward and retribution
is broken by the oozing damp smell of fear
from the hanged in the last moments of surrender
and the stench of human waste
from the enlarging dark stain
In far away places,
the assured nods of the righteous mighty
celebrate the hanging justice
limping on a club-foot
Justice looks down at the hanging body,
dismissive, conscience assured,
any hanging doubt white washed
the broken body now forever blind to human justice,
its spirit now free surveys the hangman, the jury
the just and the strong, the clever and learned,
cocooned in their certainties
in an arena peopled by uncertainties
equations, assumptions, hazy and fuzzy
The bold gold pens in the heavily ringed hands
of the wigged and the learned indifferent
sketch clever curvy lines, circles and boxes
on the ever shifting fine sands of justice
in widening loops and areas
that will soon box in and entangle the feet of former allies
soon to be declared guilty
and soon to be consigned to the waiting rope,
soon the winds will wipe away the fine sketches in the sand
whilst an indifferent world looks on
Soon another old alliance will be dissolved,
a former thug is judged expendable
buried crimes exhumed with care,
entangling evidence amassed,
misdeeds recalled and retold in minutiae..
and another guilty is hurried away
to an encounter with ropes that stretch
and to the final stretcher
before, after and beyond the last,
the first and the next hanging,
let no tears be shed for the hanged,
the twisted neck
nor for the hanging world, justice stretched
rather let the ears of the world
be flooded with the song of blind bats and deaf owls
Reflections 