Orukoro Dancer

 “Child, weep not

Mother will be fine”

Still Tonye’s voice went out

Surpassingthe rolling drums

To win mother’s attention,

Her hands stretched forth

Forcing body through dense crowd

To mar mother’s drunken steps,

She, solitary Lass, soaked with her tears,

Weaved a cry:

“Mother! Mother!

What have they done to you mother!?

It’s me your daughter!

Come!Come homeward!”

But all were health tips for pigs.

Dancer, canoe to the unseen paddler

Dancer, slave to the spiritual native banter

Feet, chalk-patterned by her painter

Body, clad with white and red George-wrapper,

Dancedforward, danced backward,

Danced drummers-ward, danced viewers-ward,

Danced, Shell to her marine partner

Dancedshe, beats after beats,songs after songs,

Swung,palm leaves at wind’s gate.

Ah! Severalfresh eggs went lost to her belly.

Then I replaced the soil on my soles with another

Weaving pity in my heart

Pity for viewers, lostin spirit’s huddle

Spirits who seek for more canoes to paddle.

By Fubaraibi Anari Benstowe

Note:

Orukoro dancers are women who dance to certain drumbeats under the influence of a marine spirit, at these times, songs and drums are played by members of their Orukoro society. Viewers usually come out in their numbers to witness the dance-steps.The word Orukoro means the coming down of a deity, In this case it is usually the marine deity that possesses a person.

The Orukoro societiesare worshippers of marine deities in many Ijaw communities in Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers States of Nigeria.

the taste of our names

regardless of what the sun’s puissant ray
may tell you of the taste of my flesh,
i am not an emissary who curbs war
and revolts with waves of abandon, bartering
my blackness for packs of bribes
that comes in prayers & eulogies of twelve religions.

rather, i am the name of a man battered
by the harsh whispers of spite, by an eloquence
of lawyers whose tongues are mapped
by geographies of success, globes shaped
like adam’s apple (literally).

i am the ash on sidi bouzid, searching
for the arabic nomenclature for scream, the
tiny providence on the lips of tunisians
that will just say bouazizi.

i am the drowned ghosts of refugees, the
one-minute silences invented by daughters
who only hear about their fathers on confessions
by pirates smooching wooden crosses.
I am the soft natter of juveniles,
the erratic swirl of chibok’s gospels, riding
on the scent of betrayal from judas’ kiss.
 
i do not have the algorithms to night’s tempest shades,
millenniums crumbling into fragments of decay.
but, this is how i thwart pain, by recounting
the jaded edges of our ancestry with songs,
unmaking chaos.

immigrant

home.

i have always beaten my skin for you. dug my bones

for the fatness of foxes. but what do i get

from you? deprivation.

a thin solace—

too small to make a room for my house.

it is true you cannot boast of renewal. no.

not

until you are able to wear your country in

every place without shame.

my country is disabled.

mother reads my poems. she says. i am a

perpetual purpose.

obsessed. too obsessed with renewal.

maybe she is right. like importunity— i have over-worn like tide.

will the coast give way? beforei return to myself.

i am in a bus. faces. abidjan.

patriotic. &french.

laughter too. they like my english. not my skin.

they laugh. & needles. my body bleeds. a lass smells

my country from my hair. she touches it like rabies.

i crawl into my skin. anger seethes beneath.

it is in my language. i cannot tell it. they will laugh

more.

ca va ici. i de

scend.

their laughter pushes me down. like

they are not black too.

i am angry that my country pushes me here. i am angry

thati cannot wear my country with pride—

that my country is disabled. i am angry that

i am another boy. away from home.

Ayoola Goodness

A soul with no hair!
There in the emptiness…!
There i left my soul with its shirt!
There i left the flame of my own dreams,together
With the embers of love
There,where my youth faded away
There in the smell of withered roses
among sprouts that are dead before they are born
amid the vehemence of youth
There,where the eyes have anothere function
There wherethe heart is driving like a mad
There where the braids of hairless soul are woven
and my man’s hair is uncombed…!

OUR FAIRY-TALE

Scintillating sensations of black morsels coated white
Rained on us from the golden garden assembled above.

Our fairy-tale,
A massive merriment in mournful moment,
Form days past to present days taken aback,
Beyond the boundary where they took the torque.

These celebrated clichés.
Chose to look and not see,
As rhythm of starvation swept though this sphere.
Many jiggling and swaying,
With eyes drenched with salty rain.
And more,readily enrobed
To jiggle and sway harder and tougher.

They listen with their lips not lobes,
As echoes of sorrow rushed through the canal of the listening lump,
For a romance with the heart of many.
More heart, waiting to be wooed,
Sorrow, a polygamous soul-mate.

They festival with pretence,
Even when the soil had changed robe
And sparked in red.
The atmosphere changed aroma,
Stained with the scent of the red stream,
Flowing through the veins of many.

They prepare for another season of sharing
To conquer at the altar of thumbs,
Having grace the land with hunger and thirst.

BIO

Paul Abiola Oku-ola is a Nigerian Engineer turned writer.

SCENT OF A WOMAN

dreched
In fragrance of her sprout smiles
pouring forth, pouring forth
drenched
in mine and in time
she looks as a sight
mirroring
a new world

her sun surrounds me
invading
my tent

that I do not need more
salvation
I have found a religion in her eyes

link:
Twitter: @felzzygreen
Facebook.com/felix.o.sylvanus

Standing at the horizons gazing at her flora and fauna.
We see Nigeria, emerging from beyond the various shades of colours,
We see Nigeria soaked in the lovely aroma of cooking dishes
Beautiful in her wrap, encircling her abundant children, we see Nigeria.
We see Nigeria serving both as their jury and defendant.
With hearts thumping and beating to the thuds on the pitch
We see Nigeria as she plays to the delightful roar of the crowd.
We see her materialize in the sight of her unbiased spectators.
Uniting a nation when the trembling net receives her goal.
We see Nigeria entrenched in brotherhood and friendship.
Watching from a distance,
We see Nigeria, her myth shaping her history.
We see Nigeria, baring her toothless gum, with promises of a better tomorrow.
We see Nigeria, laughter, her only cure for a grieving yesterday.
While she fascinates over the imagination of a glorious future.
We see Nigeria celebrating her greener country sides
Lost in the Mirage of an identity,
We see Nigeria brandishing both past and future heroes,
Like a tree without its roots,
We see Nigeria struggling to remember her ancient landmarks.
We see Nigeria find her way back to glory!

BIOGRAPHY

Okeme James Jerome is a native of Okpe Kingdom of Delta State. He was

born February 18 in Warri, Delta State, Nigeria. He is currently
studying Geology in Delta State University, Abraka. He developed
interest and started writing Poetry in the year 2011. He also writes
prose. He loves writing, computing, exploring and travelling. He’s a
success in progress.

WHO’LL TEACH ME POETRY?

For ages

my weary eyes have watched Sages mount stages

lit up dull faces

freed others from mind cages

and touched lives in different places

with lines from their pondering pages;

But who’ll teach me poetry?

Their powerful punchy puns are so full of actions

Giving me an unequal and attracting reaction unlike Newton’s law,

it gives new things to ponder upon till I begin to wonder

Who’ll will teach me this poetry.

How they do it I do not know

They’ll tell you how trees waved and danced at a passing wind

Which made the cloud sad and heavy

That it began to weep upon a broken land.

In utmost perplexity, my ability to replay how they play with words

Is a reality of complexity in simplicity.

“A good bard is one who hates to love what is bad”.

How well they take pleasure in the pain of a person

Who has no one to teach him poetry.

Day after day, I hear of mystical mysteries

Of how their pens bled to the death of a man who bled to death

In the hands of death who came to earth in form of another man.

They fought back, spilling the blood of their pens for spilled blood.

It was war for war as they punctured silence with the nib.

They say poetry is life

A part of nature, a path to happiness.

That’s why their rhymes flow like the Rivers

Soar high like the eagle and roar like the Lion.

They’ll spice up words with aroma ascending like sweet smelling savor

That’s why I can’t wait

for who’ll teach me poetry.

They say it’s art

An act of painting pictures with words

Which soothens the heart like an alluring cologne with delightful impact;

But it’ll be an act of injustice

If there’s no one to teach me this poetry.

Like Torn Kites In An Hurricane

 I cannot speak because my mouth is a grave – ‘Departure’  -Romeo Oriogun

Out of the depth my cry, give ear and hearken– ‘The Passage’, Christopher Okigbo

Am here and there, like torn kites in an hurricane,

lift these broken cupids- the memories

of an ephemeral love- off my eyes

and teach me how to be here again.

wake the bones the quills of your departure scythed to shingles

and grinded thoroughly to dusts by those memories of rose-budding and ritzy plastic asps

touch my heart, lift the phoenix that keep memories and caligraph

in the nucleus of my heart the ways to let go and find love again.

Lift these fingers of song that buried the soporific egret I had been

before the shredding of the sky

Hold my mind away from wandering to the lawns and boulders

on which we had supine and rolled fancying the hovering

clouds, heart frisking heart.

Malandra ! Take me back; pick me away from the lonely

road in this tainted rose-quartz dotting my heart .

Malandra! am gone old with white turfs on my scalp still

counting the days of love , death, kisses , romance

and beads that carried your waist to

the full moon-

teach me the rhymes of living ,

the song of resuscitation, the dance of reawakening- teach

me how to see you in the eyes of another maiden fair as Malandra ,

slim, quaint Easter Angel. Teach me to love again- that

love isn’t what takes us away but keeps us,

that love isn’t a parazonium that parts the tongue and hide in its belly

burial grounds defaced by the anguish of burning relatives-

lift away pains of memory- zap the outlines of

death pouring and drenching me

with  fluids and grimes of  catacombs –

lift the graveyard am becoming and stick in abyss

the twirling mourners roaming my street,

once golden, now jagged, tainted by footprints of

howling ghosts and reeks with the corpse of

the angel cartooning lullabies on heaven’s gate.

XENOPHOBIA

I’m not what you think

Though, I’m not perfect

See me as your brother

Life’s too sacred to shed,

See the streets all dented

And stinks,of decomposing bodies,

The gutters’re inundated with bloods,and the owls and vultures’re busy feasting a banqueting.

Come let us reason together

Brothers, let’s be civil here

Stretch out your arm, take mine

Give me a hug and kiss,

We’re beautiful together Sisters,

Let love reign supreme.

Blood is thicker than water

Live and let’s live

Two wrongs doesn’t make righteousness, we’re the world

And may the soul of Madiba rest

In peace…

I came here…

Because I’m in love with Jo’burg

And love is universal!

Shealt your swords

Shealt your fears

I am not a foe!

But let love reign supreme.