Tag: culture

Posted in Poetry

Song of a Child Bride – a duet

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Susan L. Daniels and Noel A. Ihebuzor

I am a girl.
Eleven years ago
I came too early for you,
but I was yours
as nothing else was,
and I grew under love
brighter than the sun.
I am still growing.  I am green
& unripe fruit, unready

I am a girl,
I long to play, feel
and unfurl.  I run after butterflies
I wave after birds in flight
I dwell in innocence
I harvest smiles and stars in all I see

I am a child
my eyes carry hope.
I feel.  I dream past this body
and carry in these bones
a life that hums promise
and walks joy

I am a girl,
body, soul and spirit,
and human
not a piece of flesh
not an object for peace
not an object to be priced

I am a girl,
though lately this body bleeds
and these breasts can make milk
I am too young for this business of women
my hips are too narrow to balance a child,
too slender to push one out;
my mind too new to mother another
and I will break beneath a man’s need
my young body if forced to yield will only hurt,
weep in pain and shame

I am a child,
I long for safe spaces
to draw and discover my dreams,
to live them, and to sing, joyful
as I discover the marvels of the world,
my world expanding

I am a child.
I dream of books I have not read
and the only seed I am fit to hold now
are those of the mind, scattered to work deep;
not the body choked with seeds of a man
I must accept but carry in fear and bitterness.
Death will bloom inside my body, not life
if I am planted now

I am child,
not a wife
marriage at my age will drown me
twist my bones
pierce my body
and break my spirit

Mother, father
I am your child.
Your flesh made and fed me;
to send me to a husband
is to send me to a slaughterhouse
where the floor is stained
with the blood of so many cattle
listen to my words, words
eyes speak but mouth cannot;
words my body shouts in trembling
your eyes can hear if they open.
I beg you to answer past my fear
and shield me with your arms

Father and mother
ignore the clutter of culture
spare your daughter this chain of torture
Ignore the clatter of the appeal of gain,
remember our  bond of blood
before you cause me pain,
before your decisions tear and shatter my developing body
and eventually spill this innocent blood

 

Intro to this duet by Susan  on her blog – >

**You guys had to know this was coming, right?  Noel (regular text) and I (italicized) have created this duet, using the voice of a child.  Though it was, as always, a pleasure to weave lines with Noel, the subject is not one that leads to much joy…no matter how talented your duet partner is.

****Let me only add to this intro that Susan’s talent is infectious, and that it has been my luck to be so infected by it! 🙂 

http://susandanielseden.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/duet-for-the-girl-child/#comment-12719

Posted in Poetry

ChildMother and Wife

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

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**

Posted in Poetry

Urban Jungle Blues – A Duet

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

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!

Posted in Poetry

Wrestling with one’s chi – a duet

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor and Susan Daniels

my chi is a muse, impish
invisible fellow lurking
behind my ears and my tongue
whispering when I am not ready
sauntering away when I am

mine whispers words in woven gold flights
spiraling from blood to my ears
as my eyes open; dream-writing, I call it
and the words melt in daylight like mist
before I have reached for my pen

quicksilver, erratic
unpredictable, nagging like a stubborn dream
on those days when fresh minty words stream
down my running fingers
and then only to turn off the faucet
when incipient joy in showering in the deluge
of singing is huge

they gift us in fragments, suggestions.
if they gave us the keyed music
of the harp strung underneath particles
always vibrating, could our ears
hold the whole song?

then those days when in mischief
it fills me with words in riot
words that rage at thought
thoughts that resist rhythm
lines that refuse order, grating
words, thoughts in drunken stagger
limping clubfoot, clumsy clod

those words that sound like beginning poetry
that go nowhere, or spiral into nonsense:
pretending I am a tree/transmission shock
jamming the frequency/my head
is a crowded place to peek into.  hum the words
my personal goddess, and I will follow
blindly, my pen scribbling your joke
and this poet the butt of it

the seasons come and go
leaves sprout, bloom and drop
but my chi remains unchanging
driving, firing, inspiring and
sometimes tiring and
despairing me

ridden and driven by laughing children
impossible to catch, and should we try?
no, better to sound the songs
of invisible fingers strumming heartstrings
like mandolins that sometimes fall flat
for their amusement

my chi and I are Siamese twins
linked at the junction of mind, soul and heart
chasing our wants amidst chi’s obdurate wonts

yes, linked and bound, but not by a short thread
she tugs me awake, jumping rope
with the cord that feeds us both, but I cannot
wake her, cannot call her to me–no, I am her dog
leashed by that link,
sometimes running at the snap of a finger
begging for strokes and scraps

chi, your hands will not choke my throat when I proclaim
your wandering and meandering ways
twins are equals, social and spiritual
I resist bullies, and I call you that not
but can the palm no matter how large blot out the rays of the moon
my truths about you stand erect, an iroko for all to see
and despite your sobering entreaties,
these truths I cannot not hide nor suppress

I have no proverbs to suggest urgency
better than these; but yes, let us call out
trickery for what it is, and play each other
without binding, in a dance
instead of a chase, so we both smile in victory;
not a rout but a tie, in a game well-played by both

but though I rage, I fear that in the end
you and I shall meet at the junction of road
where compromise and conciliation habit
productive, just like I wish for us
for you need me and I need you
and the world would be poorer if our voices died
or we choked each other in moments
of well deserved rage and resentment

***This was great FUN!  Our two chis (Susan’s and mine) were at their best today in terms inspiring and sustaining inspiration. That is the only way to explain the fact that this duet took less than 90 minutes from conception to finish. Persons familiar with Igbo cosmology (I am igbo) will recall that one’s chi represents a personal god who is seen as playing a determining role in that individual’s life chances, creativity inclusive. One’s chi can thus then gift an individual with beautiful poetry/songs.  Presented in this way, one can read the chi as a muse!  Sometimes, the chi can also be stubborn and block creativity – here we find an igbo explanation for the western concept of a writer’s block!! As in all our duets, Susan is italicized, I am bolded.***

Posted in Poetry

Ogbanje III

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

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.

Posted in Poetry

A song on impotent promises – for the rain doctor

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

 by Noel Ihebuzor

 

The rain doctor shelters under the leaking roof

away from the taunts of the raging rains

 

The rain washes his impotent incantations

together with the tears of shame that trickle down his cheeks

 

He looks up to the heavy skies

and rains sterile chants up to them

as the dark bellies of the of the pregnant sky rumble

and open to unleash volleys and rushes of rain

 

the rain doctor incants as he prances,

He mumbles as his teeth chatter in the drenching driving rain

His frail frame trembles with each rumble of the pregnant sky,

with each gross peal of laughter of the insolent sky

with each flash of lighting

 

The disobedient rains have undone the rain doctor

 

His client swells with despair,

roves, raves, rages, trembles and mumbles

drenched in a mixture of sweat and rain

He apologises to his guests

 approaches the rain doctor

with clenched fists and death in his eyes

The rain doctor backs away,

still searching his armory

for the appropriate herbs, chant and gesture

to control or appease the raging elements

 

Once reassured guests now huddle together tightly packed,

jam packed like generous hampers,

like passengers in Oshodi-bound molues

squeezing into every little corner and

spilling out and over into the veranda

where bold and exploratory pools from the rain slip in gently, and

gradually inch onto and edge onto poor toes, to un-shoed feet,

forcing these to inch backwards

 

Crowded and cramped in their places of shelter

Tempers shorten, hisses begin and lengthen

And soon the protests, the jostles as

perfumes contend in conflict,

as sweating sets in, slowly but steadily,

as make-ups begin their break-ups,

tempers grow shorter as the down pour lengthens

 

The empty canopies are now peopled by enlarging pools

The band leader and his troupe seek refuge in one canopy

Bravely holding down the tarpaulins

to protect their instruments …

not knowing who to blame

the rain or the rain doctor

and his failed assurances

 

All available eyes search for the rain doctor

Eyes have become pointed barbed arrows

sharp daggers and deep cutting swords

the rain doctor seeing these

and reading their unspoken intentions,

backs away, out of his sheltering leaking roof

backs away and away into the driving arms

of the tropical torrential rain

 

 

Frustration hangs heavy as a wetness on a drenched hen

threatening to run over as the huge pools on some of the canopies

The rain doctor secretly prays for the rains to stop

or for the earth to open and receive him.

 

 

Images now invade his now tortured mind….

Discordant, strident, fluid….

  

The boastful male of acclaimed virility, the long concealed and denied empty bags

husband of many wives and father of many

now finds himself in a harem

and nothing stirs, bags empty, no quiver

he shivers with shame

secrets on impotence are best traded in private markets

as subdued whispers, not in public spaces

 

The skies are now open, that which was hid is now open,

The revelation flies from mouth to ear, from ear to mouth,

willing lips and agile tongues twist, turn

and embellish that which is now revealed

 

The rain doctor sees these images,

In vain he struggles to shelter from the streams of truth,

but the rains drench him and reveal his impotence and he stands,

staggered, dazed and impotent to stop this revelation

of his powerlessness, his irrelevance and the many years

of his fake and sterile promises

 

Posted in Poetry

Duet #2: Thoughts on Dinner – By Noel Ihebuzor and Susan L. Daniels

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Noel:
the thought of what to eat is as important as how and where to eat

Susan:
Yes, what can we feed on to justify
a meeting between 2 continents,
tectonic plates that do not overlap;
separated by oceanic crust

this food must be elemental & necessary as air;
and where and how will arise from the answer

Noel:
Do we stuff ourselves or should we feel ourselves to a place where we can fill ourselves with us

to this place where fresh palmwine, the nectar of the gods foams and froths and speaks to our dry throats

Susan:
Here, I speak of earth & water

& tangible things

you whisper a banquet made for gods, of souls, of soil, of fruits
never imagined

from the tree we plant together;
this meal can only be by us, for us, and of us

Noel:
Come away to this place where the gentle moon wraps the winking stars in the soft velvety mantle of its embrace, embellishing them in generous streams of silver rays
bathing us in its glow,
where we shall float weightless buoyed by the lightness of our kindled kindred spirits,
come to this dinner, the rolling boundless ocean shall be our table, spread out before us, linking us, seamless, rippling like us, full – the waves shall sing and dance for us and with and by us, and drown out the tiring world in its loud songs of approval as it laps and rolls for us and with us

Susan:
To meet you there, I will leap over the dateline,
like a child jumping rope, or skipping a chip of shale
across the Caribbean;

I will dream this tonight & wrap us in those rays
that I will braid into one light, rays that now touch our faces
a day apart, on different sides of the earth

Noel:
Let us go hand in hand to this banquet of sharing, of caring across the oceans, bridging distances, the oceans roaring in raucous laughter below us,
the star filled night bathed in the soft beams of the approving moon looking on, let us go to this banquet
where anxious hands trace fine circles that mean nothing and yet are full of meanings, that say nothing yet say everything

Susan:
You will not have to teach me this language;
I am a woman who knows full well the words you would trace,
the worlds I would sketch: a silence
that sings twinned in our blood

*** This is my second duet with a great lady, Susan – onye obi omam ! It was an honor and joy to sing and alternate my verses with those of  this great lady and poetess whose poetic voice radiates such originality, charm, soul and elan. A poetic conversation with her fills you with such intense satisfaction and takes you to another level – this was and is my experience as we exchanged verses across the broad oceans on cyberwaves.  Incidentally, this second duet between Susan and myself was inspired by her beautiful and well crafted poem  “What’s for Dinner”   –  so in many ways, this poem is actually a plaigiarism of Susan’s original creativity! My debt to Susan is therefore immense!

Posted in Poetry

A song for the false prophetess

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

 The Alija dancers are now at the foot

of the altar of the swift tongued priestess

and the voice of the flutist

has ascended to the top of the iroko tree

and rustles the leaves there

and on the ground feet move

as the ekwe invites the ogene, embraces it  

their throats and voices now interlaced

in rhythmic throbbings 

 

The dark eyed priestess

circles of white chalk

around her eyes and ears,

lips coated in dark paint

running down her nose

walks in with slow footed sorrow, regal like

slowed down by heavy copper bangles on her feet

sagged by the séances and sciences of her vision

 

captive ears, shivering bodies, trembling souls

cower as private and divine wisdom are dispensed

in incantations channeled by invisible forces, the prophetess

a shaking medium spewing revelations

all specious knowledge, empty chants and blank visions,

the vision of bats…..

 

She was not there at the sacrifice of the innocents

nor at the forced departure of mothers in youth

but now she claims she saw them all, 

before they happened, before they were  planned

but she did nothing about them

told no one

 

she sees tomorrow only

after they are come and gone

and though she lives among the living

her loyalties are with the dead.

Posted in Poetry

A song of rejoicing and hope – celebrating the demise of FGM

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

 

Noel Ihebuzor

No more shall a million songs be dimmed

and muffled by the shutters of tradition,

no more shall we remain silent

before the stunting of the living

to humor the dead

 

no longer shall we remain mute 

in drunk like obedience

to hollow and hollowing echoes from the past  

before the snuffing out

of ten thousand and one voices,

 

no longer remain silent accomplices

when rich possibilities are denied

in deadening numbing initiations,

where blind tradition visits violence

on the present, 

dulls, dumbs, blunts

and limits it 

no more be partakers of a tragedy.

 

 

For is it not tragedy

when the crusted boney hands of the past

trap and choke the present

and deny its petals and potentials

from unfurling and feeling?

 

We sing the voice of hope,

we sing a new dawn,

our voices affirm the present

unbind it from the rusty manacles of practices

that hurt, humiliate and harm,

our voices tear down blinding practices

as we shake ourselves free

from the shackles and tyranny of  some past imperfect

 

we sing, lips full, voices now vibrant

rejoicing the beauty of petals that will bloom,

the radiance of the bud of the flower

that embraces the open skies

free to feel, unfurl, unfold as endowed

 

“tragedy is defeated,

the present lives and heaves

rescued at last from the choking grip

of an ossified past

the present celebrates the joy of living

the future unchained”

 

 

Our daughters’ voices take up our cue

and sing your demise,

their full voices and lips

announce and chant your death,

chanting it to the four winds

on the four market days

in the gentle glow

and soft smile of each passing moon, happy

the stars winking, decorating the skies above

with a thousand sparkling flowers

 

our daughter dance,

they dance in agile steps,

limbs and life freed

of the weights of your deadening

heavy lead bangles,

they leap and prance as the melodies

from  their full lips and uncut voices explore,

explode with joy, celebrate

and drown the pains we felt”