Poetry

Jeanne Menjoulet photo

 

By

Olaposi W Halim

 

 

 

Good Poetry

 

 

What is GOOD POETRY?

 

G-

Glints, on broken glass

Glow the orange sun

Green grass to swallow tendrils

God-and-Nature is good poetry

 

O-

Odes are good poetry, ages

Old-screeching wisdom, songs

Oeuvre of Keatean hale-nights

Openings to Muses’ awakening

 

O-

Or poetry is good when

Others, sipping sour sweetness,

Oddify her analogies, Yeats–

‘Out of sanity, wits of inversions’

 

D-

Dante is good poetry then

Dawn, Inferno a stretchsheet of

Dandelion, bedraggled wings,

Doors to patch-dried streams

 

P-

Poetry is good only if it

Pricks blood from tear ducts

Pains limbed statues

Purge of a vainless vanity

 

O-

Of songs hitting marbles,

Orchestrated baldness,

Orgies breeding dirtwhirls,

Original poetry is conceived

 

E-

Elevated tongue, decoded by

Elites over Aesop’s folkity,

Enigmas, nay, dissilusioned of

Elizabethan speares of shake

 

T-

Thistles and tines may spill a

Trojan’s blood,

To Homer’s veracity, a rebirth:

‘Thebes, rise in your ruins and

Trade history for your poetry’

 

R-

Rust is poetry, saturnic

Rings and Coleridgean suns;

Rising, yet eclipsing ills–let

Reeds disgorge riverettes

 

Y-

Yesteryears Plato, The Ion

Yokes Adeimantus and science

Yonder, nostalgic solitudes:

Yearn for papyri philosophy–

You have not seen

 

GOOD POETRY!

 

 

 

 

The Woman You Cannot See

 

 

A Facebook friend

A lover wrapped with several

Folds of distance

 

She says on the phone,

‘Hello?’

–Dear, you forgot to add ‘Baby. Hello Baby.’

She laughs. A ripple. A ripple of sounds, like the soft purrs of lakes

Sighing in an Ekpoma whirlwind.

 

‘Baby, let me tell you about whirlwinds.’

A sigh. The flat sounds breeze makes trying to forced itself through window hinges.

‘Whirlwinds throw grass and grit into a never-ending circles. Into ripples, stronger than your voice less.

Men pick up corncobs–rotten, carrot-coloured, damp–and keep them.

 

Baby?’

‘I’m here, Baby.’

‘They keep corncobs because they are efficacious. Disease. Evil spirits. Witchcraft.’

She kind of stifles a giggle. Could tell,

From the rustle of winds that

Buzzed–shortly–

In my ears.

‘Baby, you’re a whirlwind!’

 

‘What?!’

I listen. The surprise in her voice

Only ends on those lips:

Calmer monotone, the

Serenade of a shadowy

Lover.

 

‘When will I see you, Baby?

I’m tired of calls and Facebook chats

When shall I see you?’

 

I know she closes an eye, an eye

The shape of egg.

So fragile–

Pupils chocolate-brown,

Shimmering amid

Milks.

 

‘Not now, Baby. Not now.’

‘Why?’

‘You don’t love me.

Don’t argue.

You can’t love without seeing.’

 

I don’t know if she is right. But I spend times imagining her:

a girl with dark-sheen skin,

collarbones jutting–offensively;

Bulging hips, slender waist;

A girl with a face the shade

Of ebony.

‘I love you, Baby.’

 

‘What’s my favourite perf?’

‘Absurd!’

An orangey smell–

No, something on the edge of

Fragrance;

The smells of rosebushes,

Dampened with dense dews.

 

Do you know the colours?

Maroon, the spilling of

Metallised blood?

She laughs,

‘Your imagination thrills me–‘

 

‘But Baby, don’t love me for my

Imagination–

It kills me, faster than

The chokes of your absence.’

 

Your lips must be sweet,

I say to myself.

The tang of plantain-made

Bubble gum?

What lips crescent to form a

Smile, and yet are awash

From whitened-pinkness,

The texture of velvet?

 

Tell me, what love takes

Your marrow and liquidity it,

Brownish-red waters

Too watery to flow?

‘Send me your photo, Baby.

Please.

Don’t deny me this.’

 

‘Then the surprise is smashed.

Baby, never worry.

We’ll soon meet.’

‘We won’t talk after this then.

I want your photo–‘

 

The world soars,

Slightly, then

Suddenly,

My head is spinning.

Don’t send your photo,

Please;

 

I don’t want to lose

The fantasy of

Seeing you.

‘Baby?’

I groan in response.

 

‘I am not who you think I am.

I am–‘

‘Just love me, okay?

Love me,

And you will be whoever

I want you to be.’

 

When the line goes off,

I watch the screen of the phone.

God,

I can see her face etched

On her

Phone Number!

 

 

 

 

 

Olaposi W Halim

Olaposi W. Halim was born on the 28th of April, 1993 in Sapele, Delta State, Nigeria. He is a graduate of English Studies at the College of Education, Igueben, Nigeria. Halim writes poetry and short stories, alongside teaching English Language and Literature.