Chinwe
Azubuike

Forsaken

To all the infants who were born dead

And are still to be born dead by day and by night,

I bid you well                                                                            

To you all who were slain in the wombs of your mothers

And are still to be slain,

I bid you well

Richard, Obinna, Kwame, Fernando

Menou, Bimpe, Francois, Taki

Yoshida, Fatima, Vicran, Olga, Ama

Abdul, Ekanem, Isaura,Tracy

And you all

Who should have borne this name this day

I bid well

All the children who were exterminated alive,

And all the children who are terminated

Before they are born to live,

I bid you well

In lust you are usually conceived

But sometimes in love as well

Sometimes under duress by undesirable elements,

Who unceremoniously defile your mothers.

Other times you are cut off,

To save the life of that maternal being

Who labours to give you life.

Such is life I suppose

To you children

Who faced these melancholic events

I bid you well

But oh! To you mothers who commit this deliberately,

I pray for you.

And you all who assist in this vicious act

That bleeds the hearts of the gods,

I pray for also…

That the mercy of the gods be shown on you.

How odd a world!

Such a wonder that people wail and weep,

At the grave of an only child

That was ravished from the world by death.

By God, whose property it is.

Yet others do not see the necessity to weep for those infants

Whose lives are unjustly sacrificed.

Blessed is each home

That houses a soul of expiation.

Dear God,

I pray you have mercy on our mortal hearts

For prematurely ending the lives of those you give breath.

To you O children,

I implore your forgiveness on us mortals.

I pray you have mercy on your slayers in court on that day.

I wish you happiness and peace of mind,

Wherever you are rested

And the perpetual light of the Lord

Shine upon you.

Let all who feel this pain with me,

Pray for these little angels

That their embittered hearts find solace

In the presence of the most high.

To you infants

Who miss life this day,

I bid you well.

Ode To A Lover

Hold me captive with those eyes

Deeply set in sockets of love

Caress me with them from crown to heel

And make me fidgety.

Take me in those arms with assuring grips

Lean me against your being solid as a rock

Whisper sweet nothings to my ears

And eliminate my fears.

Kiss me! Oh kiss me

With lips firm and sure

Demanding, subjecting mine to surrender.

Touch me with them upon my breasts

And alternate the rhythm of my breath.

My nipples at attention to the faintest touch

Of your tongue

Run them down my belly knotted in hope

Unto the button above my mound

Brush past the lush carpet

As you descend in your quest

Sending goose pimples all over my being.

Move to the valley flowing with love

And enkindle in it, the fire of your love

Look me in the eyes

And proclaim your lust for me

Run those fingers, finely sculptured up my thighs

And set me ablaze amore

Give me the liberty,

To appraise the beauty of you, my love

Let me touch you,

And adore the works of the creator

Take me, for I am yours and ready

My patience knows no bound

Possess your possession

Yours I am and no other’s.

Take me on the love ride

Slow and steady unto limbo

And make me wish not to return

Make me one with you in this adventure

Quenching my thirst with your juice.

Is love this powerful?

The gods come to my aid!

A spell you must have cast on me

For insatiable I grow of your love day by day

Then the gods bear me witness

For I want to die loving this man.

Your love I cannot vouch for

But your passion I know exists for me

You I will to love on my honour

Till death put asunder.

The gods bear me witness

I want to die loving this man. 

When I Die

When this body becomes wearied and weather-beaten

And life loses its fight for existence

When breath ceases to respire

And Mother Nature takes her course

Bound for the soil and meal for its creatures

As ordained by the all seeing one

I hope this soul finds favour in the presence of the creator

A price to pay for breath utilized,

This I know.

My wages, poor sinning me

But unworthy as I may be

Amongst untainted immortals and the exulted

I wish to be remembered,

By the marks I leave

When I die.

Ada

All over the earth she exists

In every home of the Ibo tribe

And where she is not, she is desired.

The apple of every father’s eye

The pride of every mother

The first daughter.

Looked up to with respect

Precious as gold

Valued like diamond

Cherished like treasure.

A female! We may lament,

But an epitome of pride.

In the African heritage,

In the Ibo culture.

Addressed with a variety of names

Adanna

Adaaku

Adaeze

Adanma

Adaure

Adaugo

Adaora

Appearance matters not to her

Beautiful or not she is greatly admired.

Tall or short, she stands elegant.

Maybe small, but mighty

Due respect is accorded her.

In a family chagrined with chaos and anarchy,

When all effort to make peace seems futile,

She is sought.

Whether across the seas or in the neighbourhood,

Her presence is hurriedly summoned.

A female warrior!

A commander of respect!

When she speaks amongst her kinsmen,

All is quiet as her voice is heard

And her words of wisdom sink in.

An instrument of peace, to warring parents

And guardian, to erring brethrens

Her words, usually final

She who bears the burden of her siblings

And carries a load often too heavy for her shoulders.

Ever smiling in her sufferings,

And always open armed to her brethrens.

Always the part, if not full bearer of the family’s brunt

Yet on her wedding day, all benefit from her bounty.

At the death of a father, she is expected

Even when a son exists.

At the death of a mother, ayayah!!! The more interesting

Her presence is demanded at all cost.

No burial takes place except she is seen.

What a wonder!

All is suspended until she arrives and plays her part.

A fascinating scene to be witnessed by alien tribes.

A female! We may lament again.

Yes! A female child

But none measures up to her.

I tell you,

An Ada without these marks is no Ada at all

And should be ashamed of herself.

To you parents who do not value her,

Shame on you!

And you brethrens, who do not know her worth,

Turn a new leaf!

For no other is like her

None is like her, in your life.

Why? O Val

That your virtuous immortal celebration

Should be viciously celebrated by mortals

That this day, revered for kindness, love and joy

Should be tainted with infidelity, deceit and sadness

Why? O Valentine

Should men become philanderers overnight

And infidel spouses?

Engage in unlawful rendezvous with concubines

In the pretext of “being rooted in the line of duty”

All in your name?

Why? O Valentine

Should lovers seize this day

To seek new love

To quench their lustful desires

With new found loves?

Leaving old loves “history”

All in your name?

Why? O Valentine

Should daughters of Eve use this day

To covet all bounties that can be acquired

By tagging LOVE for sale

All in your name?

This day O Valentine

That should be filled with happiness,

Kindness unto strangers,

Joy unto the needy,

Budding love strengthened amore by lovers,

Vowed love toned up by spouses,

Doted love reassured by parents to children.

 Yet the reverse seems to be.

All loose on morals,

Uncaring of the consequences.

“I love you” fills the air this day,

“It’s over,” claims the morrow.

A love savoured in lust today,

Has broken a waiting heart somewhere.

O Valentine

Did you live your tenure this way on earth?

Surely your legend portrays not

These immorals that I see

Adultery, Infidelity, Incest

Has usurped your reign.

A lover has grown a false tongue

And betrayed a faithful love.

A spouse, an infidel,

And broken a thriving home.

This day of humanity, love

Genuine love o Valentine,

Now polluted with these

To kill your honour.

“Love is in the air” is always the slogan.

Yet if men were gods,

To see the vices,

That lay beneath this virtue.

Why? O Valentine

Should your feast

Spring forth melancholy

This day of merriment?

Why? O Valentine

MY BLACK SUPERMAN

There is not a day that passes

That I do not think of him.

That stranger that walked into my life

Twelve fortnights ago

It almost seems like yesterday.

Tall he stands like an Iroko

Shielding me with his physique

Like the umbrella in the rain.

Ebony casted,

The trademark of Africa.

Big!, strong!!, powerfully male!!!

His stance like a warrior’s

A perfect work of the gods.

His embrace envelopes me.

His eyes deeply set

Send me into a trance

When they behold mine.

His deep baritone voice

Sends tingling sensations

Over my body

With his utterances.

His touch ignites my being

Like a dormant volcano

Ready to erupt

I’m on fire!

His kiss demanding total surrender

Carries me away

Like the waves of the ocean.

His love, always with certain strokes

Takes me to that height

I never want to climb down from.

He may not be prince charming

But my breath catches

Whenever I behold him.

He may not possess all the wealth of the earth,

But I am content

With his mite.

His charisma, a cause of envy

To my counterparts.

He rejuvenated my scornful days of love

And made me love again.

He brought to light, a hidden gift

I never knew I possessed.

He brightens my gloomy days

And turns my sad moments to laughter

With his carefree attitude to life.

He douses my fears and anxiety

With his ever ready words and smiles

Always reminding me

There’s a reason to live.

He is never ashamed

To proclaim my praise to the world

Nor confess my beauty

To my face.

Oh! Who can parade a man

Such as mine?

Ifunanyam!

Obim!

Oyoyom!

None compares to him.

I cast my will back to yesterday

And realize that our meeting

Was not accidental.

But rather conditioned by fate.

And I thank God

He’s a part of me.

And though our tomorrow

Remains unknown,

I hope he remains

My one and only

And God damn who says

It isn’t him.

A special place in my heart

He occupies.

God bless the day I found him.

The apple of my eyes.

My hero.

My black knight in shining Armour.

My black superman.   

Dark Thursday

Forsake not O Lord

Forsake not I implore

For your servant, the gifted with the pen,

Has gone gaga I fear.

For fear of failing in duties he decided to carry out justice

And slay that precious gift you gave him…Life!

He lamented gibberishly and bemoaned his fate

As if in a trance, to all and yet none

In secret he was beseeched and dampened with tears

By the fair daughter of Eve

But on a heart stone cold her pleas were shattered.

In the open he was implored

By she and the world that cared

But this time, it brewed a storm.

Trashing and opposing like a wild beast,

He poured out his misery in torrents

Minding not whatever blocked his path.

And for fear of aborting his plans, threatened a duel.

Not even a thousand army could pin him down.

And like one being chased by hounds of hell,

Bolted from the clutches of intruders into darkness

That fateful Thursday.

A lapse in time…

Tension…

Disaster…Rearing its head.

Fear of the unknown, reaching a crescendo!

Until the descent of Eve herself to appeal and appease

Proved magic to pacify his rage and quieten the storm.

Yet the day is gone and tomorrow knows not its harvest.

So goes the fate of our beloved,

A victim of fear.

Forsake not O Lord,

Forsake him not I implore.

Your servant,

The gifted one with the pen.

The Grim Reaper                                                      

For centuries come and gone

You have been.

Season upon season

Your name fades not

An ill wind, beseeched not to be blown.

You raid, ruin and ravish as you roam.

Fatal rover!

You come like the rogue at dusk to claim unjustly

At times like the sower to harvest in multitude

Whichever way you descend,                                                                            

Your rash decision leaves a mark never to be forgotten.

Yet evasive you remain.

The Grim Reaper

Your lust for life cottons our minds

None can stop the headlong fury of your speed

Possessor of another’s possession

The Grim Reaper

You cloud a sunny day

Begrudge a happy mood

You water bright eyes,

Elegies are your merry tunes

You cut down flowering hope

Ferry-loss dreams in transit

Separation is your quest

Sorrow your logo

Yet to think you are the handmade of God

The Grim Reaper

A curse on mortals

To fulfill the wish of immortals

Yet leaving creations in a fit of pique

Against the creator

Always happy to efface with zeal

Never remorsed for the vacuum you create

The Grim Reaper

You respect not,

Babe, youth nor aged

Colour or race not your friend.

You tire not in your duty, spreading your reign

The Grim Reaper

If only you come in human skin,

Surely the best warrior would defeat you

But as long as you breathe,

For these attributes you share

Deprivation

Extinction

Adieu

Tears

Heartache

You will never be praised.

Cursed be your name

The Grim Reaper

The Persecutors

Arise!

You daughters of Eve

To the agonies of your counterparts

Mothers of children

Daughters of parents

Sisters of brethrens

Wives of husbands

Arise to the agonies of your kind

Loose from the fears hounding you

From the grips of our oppressors

Them that pose as our people

Canopied by their caucus to wield their powers on us

Them that call themselves “In-Laws”

From the high classed to the peasants of our heritage,

They operate.

They assemble at their hand made courts,

A rendezvous of biased juries

To pronounce the verdict “guilty” as they are wont to.

At the death of our husbands

They brand us murderers

Even when nature took its course

At the death of a mother -in-law

We are penalized

‘For incompetence!!!’ they would chant

Brandished as “malicious nannies”

Nannies?

To infants or whom we often wonder

Charging us on counts of preposterous deeds

Fabricating tales in shameless hatred

In the guise of custom and culture.

Another art of tradition.

Tradition?

Did the gods ordain unjust persecution?

Amadioha strike them dead!!!

Tradition that frustrates a grieving widow?

That persecutes an innocent wife?

Tradition that cages us in the course of marriage?

Tradition that turns deaf ears to our pleas

When we find our voices?

We freeborn of our mothers?

Arise! You daughters of Eve

Arise I say

Enough to suppression, subjection and subjugation

Enough we say!!!

We are wives

Not slaves.

Asanma

She comes as the morning rising,

Fairer than the daughters of Eve

Her eyes like a dove’s, glittering with love.

Her glance like the dawn and takes you with her eyelids.

Her hair like the finest of silk scented with lavender.

Her teeth like little drops of snow,

Set in lips of scarlet that holds you captive when she speaks.

Grace is poured unto those luscious lips

The gods have blessed forever.

The taste of her tongue, like milk and honey

Her breath, the fragrance of fresh apricot

With a kiss as sweet as the best wine,

Leaving you intoxicated.

Her cheeks, tender as a baby’s, glowing behind your veil

Her neck gracefully set like a diadem, round and smooth.

Her breasts like bunches of grapes satisfy you at all times.

Her navel, like a round goblet, filled with wine

On a belly as flat as the heaven’s floor,

Running down a valley of fountain

Where you want to swim to oblivion.

Swinging hips on a pear shaped waist

That leaves your loins filled with loathsome passion

Passion as strong as death itself.

Her thighs, finely curved like the work of a sculptor

Her feet, beautiful in sandals

As though abhor the floor as she dances

Her stature, graceful as a palm tree.

Beautiful and bright

Dazzling as the sun

Even the kings are in awe of her beauty.

Her closeness leaves a foolish sense of pleasure,

You are ravished with her love- yet she, you can never have.

For like a thief in the night,

She vanishes out of your life in the morning.

And there she remains, a plague on your mind forever

To hunt you in your dreams.

But why should you be so obsessed with a strange woman?

Hiding on your mind

Ever on your mind

Gone forever.

EVERYONE

 Sweet awaiting

More enticing than Aphrodite

Stronger to resist

Than a lover.

The power of this pleasure filled temptress

Is exalted.

Fools the senses

Cajoling even the most reserved

Suggests unchaste playfulness

Demanding surrender.

Savoured or devoured

One weakens under its rousing charm.

To attempt it is to desire it

To taste it is to become gluttonous.

Addictive!

Blood stirring!

Sinfully degrading!

None escapes its grasp.

Its bowl of pleasure

Satisfies a budding crave.

What promises to satiate the flesh more?

What is more delightful than love?

Onwu Di

 She dies and…

‘Oh! Take heart’

‘May God comfort you’

‘It’s one of those things’

He dies and it’s…

‘Aahh!!!’ ‘She has done her worst!’

‘Ajoo Nwanyi!’

‘Amuusu!’

On sick bed,

On wheels,

Beneath the sea,

In the air,

‘She was the cause!!!’

They always say.

The other people lament

‘What rubbish!’

‘Such injustice!!’

But to deaf ears they fall.

They come in troops

Lazy bones in disguise

To reap where they sowed not in the name of kinship.

Day by day they saunter in, to cast your lot

And at times, battle over the remnants

Like vultures to the carcass.

Di,

Stand up!

Get up from your eternal slumber and show us your slayer

For your home is falling apart.

Your kinsmen have ravaged your house.

Your wife has become a barbarian

Made to drink the juice of your corpse

Stripped of her beauty by her skinned head

Ruffled and tossed like a culprit.

They have sentenced her to a dozen months imprisonment

In the confines of your ancestral home.

They gave her white this time to cover her nakedness.

A change from the black that used to be the uniform

And until she completes her days,

The light of the sun she dares not see again

Nor witness the joys of the world.

And when that happens,

A second wife we fear she may become.

The other people lament again,

‘What rubbish!’

‘Such injustice!!’

Yet to deaf ears they still fall.

Your children, we know not their fate

Chased away from your cocoon

Scattered like sheep

Destitute we fear they shall become.

Di,

If you do not arise and prove the innocence of your wife,

Then your home we fear,

Is doomed forever.

Forlorn Feeling

My love,

I long to be in your arms once again

To feel your body upon mine

Heart to heart

Touch for touch.

The road is rough

Time gaining pace ahead of us

Leaving no room for our love

This I know.

We may carve out love nests in nooks and crannies

Console ourselves with adventurous lustful escapades

To satisfy our desire

This I know too.

But nothing compares to being alone with you.

Away from wandering and asking eyes of the earth.

Alone in our little world of bliss and fantasy

Skin to skin,

Heartbeat to heartbeat.

To lay in your arms and listen to your voice

To capture and behold your gaze

To feel and taste your lips upon mine

To touch and adore your being.

To know that amongst your bevy of beauties

There still exists in your heart

A place not void of love for me.

To be assured once again that my love is worthy

For this feeling of uncertainty grips me by the day.

I long to be in your arms once again my love.

I pine for it

I yearn for it

And when it becomes a bleakly hope,

I pray for it.

It never ceases to cross my mind.

Time will wait not for us this I know

But my love,

If not to beget all these but just lay in your arms

And find comfort in your words,

If only to reassure this fragile heart

That beats in forlorn hope….

I long to be in your arms once again. 

Unbreakable Bond

Seated mutely under the swaying fronds of the coconut tree,

She stares as usual into nothingness in an ecstatic trance.

The bundle in her arms, wrapped in dirty wool,

Suckled to her mammary gland

A maternal figure endowed with features

Accorded a woman by Mother Nature

Hairs in disarray,

On a beautiful face of shinny ebony skin

Carelessly spotted with grease and sooth.

Draped in rags, exposing bits of supple flesh

Supposedly, clothing to cover her nakedness

Surrounded by bags of cellophane and debris

Often acquired by her North, South, East and West

Of daily wanderings.

A sight often repelling and repulsive, when viewed from afar

An unlucky victim of a diseased mind

To this however she takes no cognizance

Her focus of attention, the baby cocooned in her arms

Daily in her debilitating state, she nurtures it

Strapped to her back with a wrapper during her “open” house chores.

Held close to her heart in moments of solemn silence

Against all odds of nature, she performs her motherly rites

She covers it from sudden soaks of the rumbling storm,

Shields it from spiteful smiles of the scorching sun.

Guards it from the straying steps of man and beast,

A bundle she could pawn with her life

She at times abandons it at her feet,

In moments of soliloquy

Leaves it wailing to the wind, as she tends to her own needs

But bares her teeth in defense to meddling hands of alien aid 

A pose of jeopardy to a premature being we ponder

Mother and child, thriving in a vulnerable vicinity

Oblivious of the world around them

A wonder that such love,

Practiced from the rich to the peasant mother,

Exists in the heart of a deranged one

A mind-bending phenomenon, stupefying our sane senses

A fascinating gift from the gods

An unbreakable bond of immeasurable quality

Incomparable to booties of her fancy

Indeed, a fascinating gift from the gods.