Zogie Iyeomoan is one of Africa’s gold-seeds of literature. He majors in poetry, though he has picked laurels (both national and international) in other forms of creative writing.

He spends most of his spare time playing wood-wind musical instruments, drawing and experiencing the bounties of nature, when he is neither writing nor reading. He was recently selected for the prestigious Castello Di Duino international poetry prize.

TONICS OF A MAD MAN

On his head

stood stranded strings of hairs

minced in monochrome hue;

Those stranded hairs are

adjectives of an unkempt life

gazing at the exclamation of vanity

with her neighboring mysteries;

He spoke in mene-tekels;

the mind of the gods

spoke he, to no one in particular;

He smokes words to the air

in sines and tethers

like a baseless old car stereo

playing high-life music in the 60s;

In hysterics, he laughs

as his end notes magnet eerie eyes;

he prides in his product,

feeling fly like a newly unveiled celeb;

Soon, he gets aroused

by ear-teasing sounds

belching from distant local talking-drums;

Like the branches of a palm tree,

he swings his body in all directions,

dancing, dancing, dancing,

till the beats fade out.

Zogie Iyeomoan.