Tag: love

Posted in Poetry

Within calling without: A Duet

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

 

By Susan Daniels and Noel Ihebuzor

Susan:
outside my window, tree frogs and crickets
are in full spring shout, like calling to like
until they meet and are silent

Noel:
from within, behind my window,
I hear their calls, calls from within,
coded calls that inspire and stir,
that codes of the seasons unlock and trigger

Susan:
not just yet, because it is too cool
in my valley for them, fireflies
will begin their coded, coordinated sparking
in a language that rivals stars
in their persuasion of each other

Noel:
the sparking fireflies speak in response to a flame that glows within, stoked by embers of a lighting warming and awakening season
they spark-sing songs to like souls, sparks that speak alluringly like star studded invitation cards, the glistening promise of plenty to a journey of sharing and multiplying

Susan:
but how will my call or flicker of false starlight be answered?

Noel:
and as like attracts like,
and every human act is a flicker, a signal
every call too a signal
every silence a message
I sense that you for whom I flicker
will hear me and I your sparking,
that my voice will carry to you even when I speak not
and that I will hear you even in your deepest silence
on the darkest starlit night where fireflies rival stars
and creatures of spring craft their coded colorful creation symphonies

***

This was a spur of the moment thing–we wrote this in less than an hour, my inspirational and creative friend Susan & I…hope you like this one–we certainly did– as we sang it!

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 of love and hope

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

 

by Noel Ihebuzor  

Run your agile fingers gently through the tired strands on my head
Trace your sleek fingers softly across the soft surface of my heart
Move your tendered nails slowly across the tender folds of my soul,
softly stroke and massage the raw furrows of my mass,
run nimbly and softly across this feeble frail frame of mine

Many before you have been here
Many like you, your co-travelers
With their bright commercial smiles, their well tendered fingers,
their soft solid soles and sweet smooth lips have journeyed here,
and have traced patterns of calluses and circles of weeping weal
with the wheels of their fake forced love
on this anxious soft soul trapped in its eternal cycle of hope
this soul, a willing and wide canvas for the etches and sketches
of sojourners with agile fast grabbing fingers,
their sleek tongues and quick feet.

Careful now, my love,
Nwayo, jeje, hankali
careful now that you do not scratch too deeply
Careful now with the tracks,
with the deep, soft, raw and weeping red lines,
Careful with this frame, careful you do not break it
Gently as you speak, spin slowly your seamless tales
slowly softly stroke this heart lest you cause it to break and stroke

and remember to make me no promises
and show me no heights as I am now dizzy of heights
phobic of heights I fall from when smooth sailing parachutes take you away
as you glide gracefully away, leaving me ailing as you sail away
leaving me clutching at memories that run through my numb fingers,

spin me no new tales,
spawn no new hopes,
sell me no more of your new dreams,
dreams you and you co-travelers in and through me
drummed up with your clever eyes wide open
and mine shut in the soporific of all your tall tales

And when you go my love,
my resource excavator,
My gold digger, my strip miner,
when you have taken your fill
leave me gently, leave me carefully,
leave me hopeful not hopeless,
beaten, bitten, bent but not broken,
broke but not broken, used but not useless

Leave no sudden splashes of red and
let no new tell tale weal be your parting stroke
on this soft canvas of my soft soul,
on the drained and draining edifice of my person,
on the now raw and ravaged tottering frame with its red,
weeping and collapsed arteries,

Dying, slowly dying, I who am so anxious to live
I who placed so much hope on you,
Hope as high as the iroko tree
I who welcomed you with a fluttering heart,
with open arms and trembling limbs….
as I did with many others like and before you,
and will do, all in the hope that one day
before I breathe and heave my last
my true love will come through
and liberate me and liberate my potentials
and the plenty in me would then overflow,
and the greatness in me unleashed .

Noel Ihebuzor This is a love poem. It is a song of love and stubborn hope by a country for her sons and daughters who have systematically robbed and looted her with their sweet tongues, their rabid creed and poorly concealed kleptomania, and left her in tatters and tottering…yet she still hopes that one day, she will find true love, liberation and fulfillment. I mention no country and leave my reader to fill in the blank spaces.

Posted in Poetry

A song for friendship

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

 

by Noel Ihebuzor

 

The touch of friendship

is gentle yet solid

Its balm ordinary

yet potent, like those of Gilead

Its soft flame pierces deep

to lighten and brighten

the darkness of our sad moments

its abiding gentle glow

reveals and enkindles torches of love

hope, health and happiness

 

Always present even

when not there

beyond, above and astride

borders, ages, sex and climes

defying latitudes, shrinking longitudes

scaling altitudes

friendship floats like a soft feather

but cuts deep like a sharp knife

enabling and ennobling

those it touches and caresses.

Posted in Poetry

Dreams, desires and departures

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

by Noel Ihebuzor 

I dream in bright colours

of gold, silver, and all the colours of the rainbow

I dream of the fresh scent of the dry earth

in the kiss of the first rains

I dream in colours of children’s  voices

of beautiful music painted in a kaleidoscope of colours

I dream of you

I desire souls that sing with the agility of nimble athletes

of serenades, where lion and goat,

goat and yam commune in bliss

I desired you

I dreamt my desires

and I desired my dreams

Dream and desires met

and as I savoured this meeting

in undreamt melodies

They parted; departed

 

Their meeting was so brief

but their memories are eternity

Is this parting for ever?

Will they never come together again ?

Why ?

perhaps my sins,

perhaps my desires were wrong,

perhaps my dreams were done with eyes open

perhaps it was not your will

 

Beauty does not reside with sinners

pearls do not fit swines, nor furs the wretched …….

perhaps what I now suffer is thus meet –

an expiation for sins committed in the past

but unknown even to me.

Posted in Poetry

Short lived gifts

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

by Noel Ihebuzor
Confess it and it is yours
and like Thomas, he doubted.
but time, loneliness and hunger conspired
and so with breath heavy and hesitant
He did and it was,
and he remembered your promise
anything you ask in my name, I shall give

He held on to your gift
with strong and firm fists
his heart was a rainbow,
his person a song as the days
flew bye, and the stars sang and every rustling leaf
sang to the chorus of his singing soul, “this Ndawi is a forever gift, no one can snatch it from him”

Then the gift slipped through his grasp
Silver through his clenched fists
And his heart leaked red tears
His soul drained, parched
his groan from deep down tore the
Soft curtain of the silence of the night

Should he shout his despair
on the crest of the ZUBA?
Should he mirror the broken spirit
of the savage whose sadness permanently
encrusted on ZUBA Hill incites
the sorrowful and the gay to pity?

And he seeks to soothe his pains with lavish
Portions of potions and balms of forgetting but
remembering becomes more acute the more he gulps and rubs of these

Should he now shout himself hoarse
in rages of hurt and despair?

and in between heaves and deep sobs
he longs for an anaesthesia for this tortured mind
a potion to change this jelly soul to stone
that can feel nothing, and therefore not hurt again
Every night now, he wrestles to release his frame
and his soul from the grips of his overpowering sorrow
mornings in well -rehearsed smiles he repeats
in a hollow and breaking voice
“Thy will be done”
And he breaks as he struggles to manage his pain

Posted in Poetry

A song for onye obi omam

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

 by Noel Ihebuzor

Do you know you touched me when you did not mean to

Did you know you saved me when you were not looking

And because you were not looking

you failed to feel my heart leap at that moment of rescue

missed to see my soul drip with honey, my body come alive

and soft warm flows gently fill me my being

 

Do you know how deeply you touch me with your warm voice,

and how with the slight touch of your hands you speak to my despair

how and so often with your soft touch you stop my hard fall?

Do you know how much you soothe my soul

with your warm voice and the reassuring beams of your smiles?

 

Can I sing what you do ……

When you hear my silent sobs even when you seem not to be listening,

When you feel my unspoken words and decode their deep syntax

When you read my silent lips from across the distances

When with a single glance you read my pain and

with a soft touch share my grief

 

How warm your kind gestures must boom to the deaf woman

When with your soothing and tender touch you speak your care

And stroke her famished spirit and stimulate the eardrums of her soul

And rescue her from the loneliness of silence

 

How colourful and full of bloom your touch must shine to the blind dancer

as she surveys your kind face in the flow of your hands,

when the love in your soul that your touch speaks

fills her mind’s eye with pictures of beauty and bliss

and rescues her from the agonies of the dark,

 

How warm and welcoming your keen eyes must sing to the deaf mute

When they follow and read his every voice and their modulations

and share in the labours of his limping speech

your compassion lends and restores dignity

warm as cover cloth in the harmattan night

 

feel his sweet thank you song

in the moisture that crowds his grateful eyes

in his subdued shy smile which celebrates your attention

 

How you deeply you touch me when you speak my words,

when you speak soft words

and when you lend me your voice and speak for me

and speak for those without voice,

when you listen with care, when you care to listen,

 

 

Do you know how deeply you touch me

when you speak words that only the eyes of the heart can see

the eyes of the heart sees deep and clear

the ears of the heart hear even the softest footfalls of footless spirits….

 

 

Soft words touch hard

Gentle kindness holds fast and bond

Unreflecting and unselfish gestures strike deep

Human warmth oozes solidly

And multiplies, even when we know not

and even when we are not looking

and even when we mean not

 

look over there and see a bridge of rainbows

listen and hear the strains of soothing music

and see the angels dance and sway

 

all because with a gesture, with a thought, with a word

without talking, without thinking

you touch me, you touch others

and you link and connect

and love flows…and grows…and soars

and multiplies …and liberates the soul, the body and the mind

and the echoes of your silent actions sing loud and smell sweet,

rising higher to the clouds

 

did you know you touch me when you did not mean to?

 

Noel Ihebuzor This is a song of gratitude for all those who rescue others from despair, depression, sorrow and gloom by generous acts of acts of love…..often without knowing it.

 

@naitwt

Posted in Poetry

A song for the uncertain

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Noel Ihebuzor 

In search of certainty

do you feel me when you feel me
the way I feel you
like gentle rains on the dry thirsty earth
that sizzles with joy at each drop
and liberates a humming scent
which explodes, expands and then swirls around
everywhere and all over
humming softly like a delicate bouquet of flowers

I feel, I float and fly
when you feel me
you fill my person, body, bones and being
everything, everywhere and all over
when you feel me
and my eyes search your eyes for answers
your bright darting reveal nothing, speak nothing
to quench my thirst to know

whether you feel me like I feel you
when you feel me
Do you fool me or
do I fool myself
like the fisherman casting his nets to catch a full moon
as it floats on the indifferent surface of a lake
like the optimist hurrying back from the village stream
a raffia palm basket filled with water balanced on a wet head

tell me – do you fool me as you feel me
or do I fill a time bound need?