By
Noel A. Ihebuzor
Achilles rode headlong into
headlong battle,
riding in a cranky chariot of straw and smoke
vision dim and dimming,
still he charged into the fray,
in loosening losing circles
against imagined enemies
And in the ever widening void of his mind
he battled them all,
he disgraced them all,
he speared them all
with his blunt sword
soaked in the iron oxide
that dripped from him,
he spared none
He staked all,
the impostors, the stateless, stake-less stakeholders,
pretenders, false claimants, heritage grabbers,
ingrates and gate crashers,
the uncultured, the crude,
their women, his “claimed wenches”
Their battered remains,
he drags in rags round his city walls
a conjecture and structure,
spawns of a fertile but fetid imagination,
where truth is tried, tied down, tortured
and twisted tall tales are told and sold
The blue sheen of the filling up moon,
Blending with a seething red and
a sickening dull green,
swirling and swelling within him
fill his mind, dulling and lulling his thoughts
The battle words he froths now,
the battle incantations he speaks
are all whisperings from what he hears
the moon speak to his dangling mind
the enemies he sees outside are from within him
sad but gleeful denizens of the forest and bush
he carries in his darkening soul, demons –
a thousand and one of them
who prey on, void in and void his mind
and put his own heel in his mouth
Reflections 