By Noel Ihebuzor
Souls stuck in a cage,
seething with savage rage, as
hope drifts and minds roast
barren space,
yet lush in crime, grime
running wild
festering red sore
child of need and greed
slowly choking life
Tag: greed
“party activists”
By Noel A. Ihebuzor
Simmering rancour lumbers, raging
opposition mutates to 0-positions,
zero sum games, zeroing and leading
to blame game, verbal joust sodden with vitriol
ugly and promising to balloon to violence
spiralling envy enlarges greenish, swelling,
smelling fevered phlegm
stirs red hate, hot pepper in café latte,
the yellowish-red eye, blood shot,
poisoned, clouding sight,
vision blurred and blinkered
linked to clogged blocked ears
occluding the voice of moderation
ambition binds minds,
asphyxiating the voice of reason that wails
strapping and shackling it
in dark airless dungeons,
the empire of fulminant rage,
where barbed tongues uncoil
splattering venom,
drumming discord deceitful
as envy limbers, driving transient pursuits
smear paints, tar taints, stirs, tears and sears
the other, in forms grotesque,
deforming and defaming
galloping ambitious feet fixed
on a chosen route to attain gain and fame,
ultimate twin goals
and the people, poor souls sandwiched
matter between hammer and anvil
hapless, malleable
caught in hurting, heating up and hitting dispute
and cut to pieces as peace shatters
in the hard, hurtful hands of haters and hatters
**** written after following very ugly exchanges on Twitter on the 14/15 July during and after a guber election. How badly the strident voices of a belligerent few pollute the political space.
A song for Kibera
By Noel Ihebuzor
From their anthills and lairs, nests, cages and hovels, out of these inhuman holes, out of the dark damp cramped cages they call home
They crawl out with subdued rage and hovering hope
At the first suggestion of light
on a new day
on empty bellies and in unwashed bodies,
on cracked tired broken shoes
they stream forth like angry ants in search of little change and
praying for the big change
In this existence denied of meaning, devalued and wasting
As they scurry to places to sell their hands and feet
They leave behind temporarily a jungle maze
full of the living and the heaving
most empty denied living but hollowed souls
sucked into the hole of hell by want and still in want
Late in the evening, they crawl back insatiate to their dark damp cramped holes
To rest fatigued souls and aching soles
Every day repeats this same ritual of pain with no gain
This same cycle and the circle remain unbroken, imprisoning,
crushing and slowly closing in
A vegetating existence has slowly cooked and numbed the soul
Emptying it of meaning and thinning it as the soles of the tired shoes they wear
As poverty flourishes and hope declines, tired souls and worn out soles
Men and women, teens and adults, drifters and hopefuls
They trooped here from now dimly remembered villages,
Their minds and feet seduced by the lure of glory
The haste for gain
Now their souls sad and weary weighed down and confused
Reduced by pain, held by down as if by weights of lead and waste
Rain storms of regret have erased all,
washed away all rainbows from these emptying spirits
regret rears strong, sears and cuts deep like a shearer’s knife
the mud filled streams of poverty wash down and away
clearing and carrying away the struggling and clambering feet and limbs and lives
the slopes are steep and slippery and false
on this faulted journey to the portals of plenty and affluence
the streams become torrents, and the torrents rage and
drag down and away
the storms of ruin gather and billow
dirt, dust, rust and rot mingle
dearth and the death of living
the dance of the death in place of life
like the stagger of the club footed , ungainly, clumsy, ugly and pitiful
help comes on millipede feet, fortune just as fast and hope dies just as slow
poverty walks and stalks in tatters and foul rags
time is also a millipede, hope a stunting dwarf
despair blooms and flourishes widely like wild untamed poisonous mushrooms
announces her presence loudly in the echoing rumbles of empty stomachs
fading hopes, festering wastes, dirty deaths, dirt and garbage
priests and pastors, imams, preachers and prophets
conduct their rich rituals as they dispatch the departed
and console the living with tall tales
Life in the crowded spaces of the living is full of rage, red in the tooth,
Raw, rough, tough
Human waste runs open, in open drains, scattered
Pipes and pumps yawn empty, cheap card board and brown zinc habitations
Sprawl and lean dangerously before habitants who have since stopped to care
The smell of alcohol mixes with the stench of poverty,
mixes with the smell
Of airless spaces with exposed excreta, vomit and waste
In noisy cheap bars, cheap perfumes on easy prostitutes
male and female
Hang heavy suffocating with the damp clammy odour of fear that sits heavily on this place of violence that violates
Scantily clad child mothers parade their wares unheeding before
Progressively inebriated future clients, with dimming eyes and failing judgments
As the venom of booze slowly creeps all over, dulling senses and stirring lust
The flesh trade is fast and flourishes, a lot more than flesh is sold in those short exchanges
Poorly clad children issues of many a trade sit around abandoned,
Strong glue has fried their brains and slowly freezes their lungs
They observe, hear, see, soak in and absorb all the rituals of pain, shame, want, cruelty and neglect
The streams of life that waters the living flow away and distant
rough and raging torrents of mud dredges rush openly and scar this place of want
rich in misery, eroding living and corroding the soul
And the place goes on
one big dance of opposites
full but empty
alive but dying
urban yet a jungle
more animals and less human
all ready to pounce
They trooped here in droves in search of hope
hopelessness and dope now bind many
in their rage the gun and knife now become a few
and for many the rope calls and ultimately unbinds……
let the sky open like my eyes and see
may the sky unblock her ears to the cries of pain and shame
heaven, reach out and wipe away their sighs, their pain
as they hover stunned by the lies of smooth tongues
sky loosen their bonds
bind those who tie up others with their inaction and truthful lies
heaven, unbind these bound tongues, bind those of the binders and wasters
heaven, open a window for these trapped souls
so that sun may shine
sky, open your sides and send showers of calm, of hope
of renewal, to reborn, recreate
let your waters of life wash away the gloom and doom, loosen their grips and unbind
the victims, wash away greed, remove need
let the seeds of hope flourish, hope and possibilities as twins and triplets
let new habitations spring up, homes for humans and hearths for hearts
women and children will be fine
and songs and dances may explode in every throat richly
and tired feet may again dance in nimble and rediscovered elegance of souls filled and fired by fine wine
**** I visited Kibera, Nairobi for the first time in 2004 and returned there on a number of occasions. The intense poverty there never ceased to shock me…and this song of despair and hope, written in 2004 was one of my responses to the strong emotions Kibera stirred up in me.
Conoco
By Noel Ihebuzor
The small aircraft drifted down the scantily clad almost naked desert skies
The noise of engines banging at our aching eyes
It bumped as the hot desert winds punched and pushed its under belly
And then a thud and furious rush as we hit the stone and dust infested dirt strip of a run way
Stones and rocks and pebbles and dust rose and flew
as if in protest behind us as we taxied
and then the aircraft came to rest on this harsh, hard and sullen sterile desert
located in the middle of nowhere
Six four wheel drives stood at odds with the desert terrain….
and soon we commenced the drive to nearest town from Conoco, Garowe
Driving into town in an assorted and mixed convoy of aid workers, armed guards and security personnel
We passed malnourished shrubs
valiantly brandishing their thorny bristles
and sharp ends and keeping away sheep, goats and camel predators
in this intriguing fight for life in this arid,
thirsty, empty and sterile place where much life has flown
We passed a young shepherd boy angrily checking and herding his stubborn flock
brandishing a stick and controlling sheep, camels and restless goats.
We drove along a dirt road carved on the dry desert land
A road framed in a sterile, yawning and gaping desperate desert
We drove on a flat terrain cooked and roasted slowly by a heartless sun
Past waterless heaps of sand and stones, and dunes
In this place that screamed want and waste.
Soon we came across a fallen camel in its final sleep
its huge carcass still as it lay where it had fallen in its last and lost struggle
for life in this place of death
Its still and silent form still sang its last heroic but futile fight for life
As its parched throat, empty stomach and weakened body eventually emptied her body
and it yielded up its soul to the empty desert sky.
Even from the distance of time and space, I felt I sensed her last tear of pain and shame
as the harsh dry desert slowly and inexorably desiccated her body, spirit and soul.
The sun with the passage of time had roasted her flesh,
the harsh storms, the night winds, the eternally shifting sharp sands, stones,
the smaller inhabitants of this stony place,
all of these had stripped her flesh almost bare
baring her huge bones and her huge rib cage
leaving her white bones standing there,
exposed, whitened and bleached by the sun, by the stars
Two hundred metres further down the road as we hurried to Garowe,
we passed yet another whitened and whitening carcass,
still in death, arresting and strident by its presence and size….
and yet another, a kilometer further
Who will shed a tear for these fallen camels, who but their bereaved owners?
who will weep for the fallen ships of the desert,
drowned in heaps of hot and harsh desert sands?
Will any one remember them as they sleep in this empty space,
as they lie still and stilled in this place of want and waste?
Who will wail for these lost souls
when the ears of men and women have become deaf and numb
by the din of greed, stunted by the seduction of ambition
their consciences stiffened by the creed of greed, grab and material incontinence?
Who will bury these white bones whose presence troubles me so?
who will remove them from the eyes of my heart?
who will bury these huge white bones and many other white bones of waste and want that lie scattered in empty spaces and places?
The carcasses of waste and destruction sleep cheap in this place as in many others
where the creed is greed, greed the creed and thus fecund in death, stones and sterility.
The silenced souls and the fixed white bones speak loudly to me
bring moisture to my tired eyes
their awkward and precocious eternal sleeps gnaw
raw and savagely at the edges of my fragile conscience
and thaw tears frozen in the back of my skull.
They remind me of the dimming and dimmed voices of the weak
The hardly heard and often drowned voices of the frail and feeble
And the eternally ignored gestures of children and women struggling for life and air and some place in the light of life.
In their grotesque sleep of life and death, I see also the early sleep of children,
the pains and tears of harmless children who are harmed by the harshness of the strong
the agonies and empty deaths of all children who fall to the whims of the wicked
And the wicked who stand on the graves of the fallen
The sleeping camels conjure in my mind
future spectacles of soon to be enacted sleeps of the innocent
who will lie still in this place and other places of sand and stone,
Their souls parched, their spirits broken, their weak limbs crushed,
their paltry belongings looted as they scamper and scatter
and stoop and cower in polythene and card board hovels on the first stage of their journey to eternal
but early sleep
as silenced, they return to their silent creator
their frail frames framed in shallow and unmarked graves
****Written in Garowe in 2005 when I did humanitarain work in Puntland, Somalia
Circles and cycles
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
Dry taps
By
Noel Ihebuzor
Dry taps flood my eyes raw and red with tears
the running noses of malnourished children dry me up
slowly eat me up
Nothing runs now
nothing grows now any more
save the swollen stomachs
severe acutely malnourished children, SAMs
Nothing else but the growing numbers of kids carrying these ugly loads
of shame, nothing else but these
and the swelling bank accounts of officials and politicians
persons of shrinking consciences, stunted morals
afflicted of severe affective deficits – SAD
Ugonma has died of thirst in a land endowed with springs,
Echidiime of hunger in a land over-running and endowed with plenty
in a land increasingly overcrowded by uncaring and indifferent adults
adults with blinkers and going bunkers
adults with contracted souls and empty minds
is there any wonder why the taps continue to run dry
and I continue to cry for my hopes betrayed and
lament dreams and inheritances sold for a cheap porridge?
lean years
the lean year now grow long
the lean years now swell
fat years now a memory, fading and withering
withering as children, fading as hope
whilst rage roars and soars
and fat indifferent officials and politicians gorge themselves silly
in fits akin to cannibal rage and infantile obsession
A song for short cuts and wrong choices
by Noel Ihebuzor Sunday, 19 September 2010 at 00:40
Lost in our greed and lust
we took the short cut and the road was longer
in our rush, in our grabbing rush, in our haste
we grabbed and broke the needle of the compass
and now turn round in endless circles and squares,
moving but getting nowhere and lost
and we missed the matter and still do.
Where the matter lies is where the truth lies,
the truth of a people lost in time, with lots of lust but lost in values
The root of the problem was the problem of roots
suspended roots, shifting roots,
dangling and swinging in the wind,
floating and drifting along in
and with the stream of convenience, like
an anchorless dream, like a malaria-ed dream
At the breaking of the road
we had a choice to turn to the truth,
to return to it and to begin again
to dig to where the matter lies or to lie
we chose to let the matter lie, to lullaby the truth to sleep
to finally lie finally,
hoping to suffocate the truth in the rich folds of our plunder
with the huge pillow cases of our loot
we urged the truth to die
and thus stilled and dulled the voices within us
we bent our tongues
and bartered our already battered and sad souls.
The road we walk
It appeared shorter, smoother and surer,
Easier, beckoning, enticing
but once our seduced feet
Set off on it
The road became long and longer
and our enlarging lust glued our feet to it
and we got stuck and sucked in
The ephemeral glitter, the vanishing flashing lights
left us lost, clutching our harvest of cheap gains
and dense chaff
eternal virtues abandoned
redeeming values jettisoned
Our lust locked us in, stills locks us in
and still locks us out
of our possibilities
and we walk and trudge along in loose losing circles,
muscles aching, limbs limp, souls sore
minds racked and feverish
our days now empty, our nights long and limp
A constant rush of rash
dull but disturbing lights invade our nights
stagger into our sweat filled dreams
these dreams filled with uneven riots and battles
In which demons and angels contend
For our souls and our wayward soles
mornings are stale and dark like the days
We trudge on
in ever widening circles and sterile cycles
in our fatigued state, we clump and stomp,
our alluring Journey’s end
now hazy, dim and receding…..
Outcomes from our feverish indecent haste of the past
now visit our present,
ghosts from our past,
they clamp our limbs like dead lead
And us, miserable us,
still blind, obdurate as if cursed
very reluctant to return
to the basics
to start anew
rather preferring to sift
the blowing and bellowing winds
for a harvest of fresh fish
Reflections 