Chaos! Herdsmen attack Imo, Enugu still bleeding – Poets react with condolences

BUY AND SELL @ marttle.com

The recent attacks by alleged Fulani herdsmen across the country, calls for great attention.

Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast tends to be coming to an end gradually, yet the people still feel insecure. There are so many issues that remains unresolved.

Poems in this third edition of the Nigerian poets react series hit on the violence that is taking over especially within the southeast and south-south, other poems touch many other subjects for which urgent attention needs to be drawn.

Centenary Condolences

 Condolences my country, Condolences.

A hundred tears for your hacked men and women,

Another hundred for your youths

Whose blood colour your streets

Crimson at your centenary anniversary,

 

A hundred more tears for your leader

Who goofs an ill-planned strumming,

While your underbelly burns.

Condolences, Nigeria.

 

A thousand tears for your daughters,

never to return whole;

or sane

 

A hundred tears for dusk time games

Never again to be enjoyed

After the dance into captivity

 

Two-Three-Four nameless

The value, not the sequence,

Two-Three-Four, faceless

The value, not the country code

Condolences.

A hundred salutes for the country

That once was…

A dream merger of unfamiliar neighbours

Whose values straddle this funeral pyre,

 

Ahmed. Katung. Dooshima

… Condolences

For the hand which stretched too eager for blood

But never to mend this broken fence

 

Segun. Dike. Osahon.

… Condolences

For tears, dried too soon on sore cheeks

And a heart, scabbed raw

While revenge festers mad in the

Implacable half of a yellow sun

 

Effiom. Wanemi. Itohan.

… Condolences

For the black pearls they ripped from your belly

And left you hungry in the midst of plenty

…Condolences

 

The funeral procession is ablaze

With flares of despair

Where will you run to?

How long can you hide?

 

Can you douse these flames with

The waters of ethnic diversity?

Home remains a distant yeaning for the exile

Yet this bird too must perch after flight,

Will this fallow land ever recover from these ashes?

 

Condolences Nigeria,

Condolences!

 

Naming Names

Adam loves Steve. Abominable,

Now to shame that which we have now named

Did their abominable act spark

Off fires that razed hundreds of homes in Baga,

Jos, Damaturu, others…?

Their fall may shut the gates of heaven to them

but did it also shut the hearts of them

who oil the machine of this war,

this forsaken haram of choice?

does the merger of two positive currents

change the cost of garri or kerosene?

 

Hidden demons abound, yet we speak of morality’s worth

and pretend we have not worn this fabric thin,

soiled with the varied colours of our greed and lusts.

Sarah kissed Eve; and liked it

their loss, not mine

Are they adult and consenting?

does their immorality raise the incidence of heteros*xual r*pe?

do they increase the number of elite prostitutes

available for our legislating thieves and execu-thieves?

Fuel for our stoves, a forgotten agenda

In the rise of this propaganda

 

Need we point fingers at those

who would rather a Shettima marry eleven year old Fatima,

to the honour of their glorified god of pedoph*lia?

A ring on her finger would morph her into a woman

Yet two grown women cannot in their personal sins indulge,

lest the threat of a 14 years in gaol

Need we name the Alhajis who harvest pleasures

from Dan-daudas, and yet keep wives to cover this secret?

 

I shan’t be the one to cast this stone,

but let he who dares claim sainthood,

if his veins, run red like the blood of thousands shed in the north,

and the hundreds whose blood was made to irrigate the land

vengeance for cows in the southeast and middle-belt,

let he who none of his kin or friend is qu*er;

let him lead the stone casting,

for I am but an imperfect human, seeking fairness

and a chance to free myself from ineffable demons

Iquo DianaAbasi Eke writes prose, poetry and scripts for radio and screen. She often performs her poems with a touch of culture-rich Ibibio folklore.

Her first collection of poems, Symphony of Becoming, was shortlisted for the NLNG Nigeria prize for literature, and the ANA poetry prize; both in 2013.

The Elders of this Land by Oyin Oludipe

 After Wole Soyinka’s ‘The Children of this Land’

The elders of this land are bowed

Their gazes sit on mines in place of hills,

Earth to breed the marsh from dust

Sensuous froth trailed by foul tongues

Their bristly groves are riddles for faith

 

The elders of this land are swift,

But only deviously so. They clap gourds on conquest

But—know—the barrel it was that sealed

Rock seams their offspring saw to sprout.

Once, it was oath for their harvest

But their wagging skulls are devout

To a black storm sky, to a pull of droughts

 

The elders of this land raise the proudest walls

On mourner lands, dissect hearts to bear

Eye-woe waters. Their songs are scab

For bile whose virulence has shot

Through tart lips to the passing of purity.

But sweet memories hang dead. Their ghosts

Are dormant kernels and grounded lives

 

These are the treasures of the misplaced,

The fresh and brisk severed. Greybeard dethrones

Agile brood. The elders of this land

Are gourmets in coal seas, all turncoats

And n*de masks – the crust of their returning.

Their shadows are ghoul for the lost child,

Cold horizon for a distant grief, and hope.

A worn breed will crown our race –

 

Where the morrow is lost, guest

To echoes from far crowded shores, parader

In lone universe fabricated by hungry minds,

Where the morrow is hidden courage, ancient

Leap, vied by fears of chronic present

 

But the elders of this land round the gulf

As undertakers. The spires of their compassion

Rain flames on hearths once dance grooves,

And limbs of birth. The elders of this land

Are carved as gods, their antimonies bash

All cautions of the past… A horde

Surges through their vision, but douses the air

With one bold warrant:

These are heirs to the rust!

READ ALSO: Outrageous! What 7 men did to one woman will make you cry – Nigerian poets react (photos)

Nigerian poet, playwright, and essayist; Oyin Oludipe is the Nonfiction Editor of EXPOUND, a magazine of arts and aesthetics. In 2015, he was nominated by the Nigerian Writers Awards (NWA) as Young Writer of the Year.

Cavity

My nose can read the sorrow of your testicles

Although we stand apart watching distances

The smell of desire is arranged in your pupils.

I think of the many contradictions of loving

Its several faces of presenting affection in spaces

The humour of lurching and searching

Until it weakens the voice into imperfection

And strengthens that which cannot be shown

(At least, in the early instances of confessions,

You only shiver to the cold of tenderness)

This is why it amazes me when you watch me

That your eyes tell the story of occupying places

I do not know where to go with such knowledge

I whom you see only wish to travel forward

But in matters of such as you bring to me

And with our time gathering fame

As one which has life turned on its

head

Love is a pluralisation of the social media

It is available for download and upload

So then it is alright to write that which is pop:

Logged between the control of simple clicks

As a browser to the many instances of dreaming:

I dream of arranging stars with Adonis annua

I dream of planting sunset with scents of a kiss

I dream of fishing for hearts in your open eyes

The truth is: I dream of too many rubbish.

Now, should you want me to go back to reality

Like you will find in the world where

Every heart has multiple empty rooms

I can tell you, we would in few years

Find no way to accommodate the space.

Chevron Oil facility blown up by militants in Delta state.

 The Rap*d

(for the Niger Delta, Nigeria)

This discharge; is it oil or blood?

or conscience pricking v*lvas

into piles of mangrove guilt?

This discharge;

consuming hymens of v*rgin skies;

enraging, flaring splintered hopes.

This discharge,

from a fluid-less pen

is: oil or blood?

Releasing hate into sacred vulvas,

ruffian thrusts divest v*rgins of honour;

leaving strife-seeds on endowed-wombs.

Is it oil or blood that strained the foetus

from the wombaborting oracular

births, with cordless umbilical?

These days,

aged vulvas live in fear of perverts,

weakened thighs plead change from

violent thrusts on impotent will.

Vulvas with many-name contagions;

breed fear of unreached org*sm.

Smelly privates lack confidentiality,

they are a meal-time discourse.

These once-v*rgin thighs: over-r*ped

Plead for menopause…

*

Why does ambition in the

South-Southi go South-South?

Is it because they are in the South?

or because their vulva is looking south,

promises are heading south,

all is going down, getting drowned.

Their dreams go South-South

anger goes South-South

thoughts drift South-South

against renewal and contemplation.

Is it this oil or blood

that makes desires head South-South?

*

Here.

Deformed skills and tired anger,

molest dominant wills,

time speaks against the call of the oracle.

Why is MOSOPii – soppy?

Is it this oil: this blood

that has leeched its peak?

What is MENDiii – mending?

Is it this oil: this blood

that has bleached its own?

Is it the plea to head South-South

and meet patriots of better times only,

Those leeches

those boil companies,

those diseased, whose partner

ship, steers our blood to riot

those who steered Boroiv, Wiwav to no return.

Those woes

who sucked our rivers dry.

See what we have become

children from the same vulva,

see what we have become

see marsh, see river,

apart aloof

the river shies from the marsh

like they share no watery relations.

It’s time this oil be their blood;

and turn against them.

The sword disregards the smith in battle,

this blood will oil their joy to ache.

This oil will be their blood,

this blood is oil.

Those Rap*sts,

this birth will turn against them.

If you rig a c*ndom to prevent procreation,

I shall burst its tip and yet make babies.

Rap*st

if you do not copulate for affection,

you reciprocate past affliction.

This oil is blood,

this oil

this blood

will flow as it should flow.

This vulva must drip fresh blood,

our menopausal dream shall ovulate,

it shall menstruate;

not-clotted blood, blackened shame

sign of early aging and destitution.

This meddle in affairs on arrears

this oil

this blood

this what?

this confusion of signs and times…

This discharge of rot

that persists.

This seething anger has spilled

on our farms of hope,

in our streams of strength.

The untimely thrust in underage vulvas,

deflowered our ancestral affinity,

killing posterity and famished wills.

Now,

the r*ped vulva pleads for menopause,

overs*xed vulvas beg for a s*x-change,

against violence, your thrust on their impotent will.

i Description of a region of the south of Nigeria

ii Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP)

iii MEND: Moement for the Emancipation of the Niger-Delta

iv BORO: Nigerian, Niger-Delta activist

v WIWA: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian, Niger-Delta activist and leader of MOSOP, hanged on General Sani Abacha’s orders in 1995 with eight other activists.

READ ALSO: Amazing! Corpses speak, we can’t keep the dead quiet – Nigerian poets react (photos)

Internally Displaced Persons (exiles in their fatherland)

Jumoke Verissimo is a Nigerian poet and writer based in Lagos. She has read her work across Nigeria and internationally. She is the author of the award-winning ‘I am memory’ (Dada Books, 2008) and ‘The Birth of illusion’ (Fullpoint, 2015). Her poems have been published in several anthologies, including the ‘Livre d’or de Struga’ (Poetes du monde, sous le patronage de l’UNESCO) and ‘Migrations’ (Afro-Italian, ed. Wole Soyinka). Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Chinese, French, Spanish, Arabic, Macedonian, Mongolese, Norwegian and Japanese. She is a recipient of the Chinua Achebe Centre Fellowship

Rivers of Baga

when the rivers break loose

and their wildness climbs its acme,

blood pervades

bodies, souls and routes

my thoughts climb mountain of despair

with sharp claws of pain and grief

and become a dripping blood

along a path in Baga

my eyes wander for a

spot on the belly of earth

not riddled by the measle

of fallen bodies

in tortured shades

through the glittering passage of arms

but

my feet cry for the dead dreams

they collide with

families wear the powder

of forsaken ashes,

left to be washed away

by the helpful tides of wind

i do not write to mourn you

as i do not weep to mourn you

i write to echo your cries, Baga

your lament is the ink of my pen

its blood, red:

the weeping of nib on the paper

of lost lives

that the hyenas be mourned

as you have mourned their

conscience

with your last gasps

that this nightmare may heed the whips

of our pens

and flee to the encompassing embrace

of history

Hauwa is a young Nigerian poet whose works have appeared on Brittlepaper, Praxis online magazine and The Kalahari Review. She is studying a course in Law in Bayero University Kano, and is irredeemably in love with John Green.

0naze

Share: