Community Poems
Complication
by Fidelis Peter Olowu
The pen we know is mightier than the sword
Yet can someday be subject to the sword
When to the wall the pen pushes the sword
Dwindling and usurping the power of the sword
The pen and the sword at daggers drawn
Fighting dirty daily in the serene lawn
Mutual respect is funeralled from dusk to dawn
As enemies for life they have sworn
......
Trafalgar Square
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
I detest a late appointment, be it love or business,
on the breath of the Trafalgar,
and with Nelson peering down at such looseness
on the revered Square, teeming with man and pigeons.
Imagine being on surveillance from such dizzying height!
Give me a break and come early,
Before Big Ben, the lone cockerel of London,
Crows with that huge metallic tone,
Ushering in dawn and her smiling, smouldering light.
Meet me at the Trafalgar with a bouquet of flowers
......
Night Watch (for Rembrandt)
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
The stars have descended a little lower, to keep us —
My kinsmen and I —company on this night watch
On a newly roused African night.
We filch a little bit of the effulgence of the waking moon,
Reluctant, with the invasion of jealous clouds, their plumes
Fragile with inconsistency.
We rely on the luminescence of each other’s eyes and the trust
In our hearts
Tinder, broken by flying flickers of fireflies,
Shine through the breath of darkness, dis-virgining the chunky yolk
......
The Miners' Psalm
by Darris van-Hoxen
Let it be known:
On this ground, soil beneath our feet,
we stand brightly—
unshaped by mana, unburdened by darkness.
Gavreck speaks, unadorned and unmolded,
no bearer of lowly wreaths,
or one whose legs bent to adversary,
Rather with, rending and sending.
......
Moonlight
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Chakpii!
Wooo! ! !
We have gathered
On grandfather’s stoneseats
After a hurried meal,
This moonlight...
Assemble, children, and hearken
To the tales we know
And heard from
......
Chants for the Masters
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Chants,
voluble. Tremors from footholes of mountains
and green places . . .
From spurts of melodies they come,
chants of our land
chants of our masters
and chants of ceremony
Virgin tempo,
......
Town Crier
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
The African night goes robust with
silence and attentiveness.
Darkness, grave, deep and merciless,
hisses remorselessly but soundlessly.
The moon is on a visit to her grandmother
Fireflies on bulrushes give blinking light, like exhausted
Twinkling stars expelled from heaven.
Post-suppertime, belching stomachs recline on
Whims of a slow-travelling night with faithful
Silhouettes walking ahead of stalking shadows.
......
Rift, and Broken Places
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
This place —cold and famished,
abandoned —
Recalling issues of broken mortars
And mildewed, hinge-leaning pestles . . .
Desiccated and forlorn,
Like a lychgate in a church of battle,
This place reeks of unholiness, with the
Spring of wild, rioting grass, invading
Where we hitherto gathered and sat the
Setting sun out of the wilting clouds.
......
From the Tabloids
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Tabloids of noon and night,
Tickling such tiding’s fancy
Specious and special, its forebodings.
Cusps wilted by rummage-reading and glancing.
It was nighttime and dead dark.
The hurricane lamp chose to be quixotic, and
We read on and on, each time bending the lamp and
Raising high its nictating lone eye shadowed
By smoothed, thin-lined soot.
Its oil was losing patience.
......
Palmlane
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Standing on felled trunks and fallen leaves —
Desolate members of a fractured society —
Palms whose long and winding stretch marks emit
Brotherly sustenance among inherited groves.
Aroma hangs preciously on the unseen rafts of
Grottos of local ambience, opening and unlatching
The shut avenues of myth-making tradition.
I stand among them —these
Sober trunks of fertility, and grand crawling soldiers,
Whose water receptacles provide the gush of tasty
......
