Poetry

UN photo

 

By

Bernard Ollo

 

 

 

Weapons of Warfare

 

 

The last shall be first, the first shall be last

The Bible

 

Fight does not bring brothers together.

Sips of alcohol is the only survival for some,

I follow narrow routes

But they open me up to oceans

Of boys and girls and salvation and peace,

I love streetlights which show cars

And people home in the dark at night,

Your suffering you have picked in goldmines,

Not everything that glitters is gold and

Darkness is carrying my head. And why

Does it feels like I am drowning?

 

The holes of your browning bra is your

Sadness, others don’t have one.

 

Some days I feel like giving up, all helps

Take legs and turn into ghosts,

I stay in my room, hating everybody

And refusing to come out;

I close myself in the well of deep sadness

And drink the urine of dissatisfaction, that

Also is a way of surviving.

Some other days I walk

Into the happiest waves of the sea stretching

Into land,

I am swallowed in the sugar of excitement,

These days nothing holds you

Like when you say I am not dying,

And encouragement clothes your weak

Heart. You move on. You are not the

Only one.

 

How we survive is love.

 

 

 

 

 

Chameleon

 

 

I

 

My fingers when they touch your neck

Give you shelter,

Our bodies when we hug

Break into cities

Or love does not accept masks

And shadows

Or your best is what you have given me

Or tension runs after you

When I call your name,

Honey and true orgasm

Hide in few places,

Rain wets sheep

Dashing into shades we saw the other day

And we were giggling,

And the season of oven is what is new now

In most marriages.

 

 

II

 

The world leads all of us into the house

Of thorns, it is how you react to it that

Matters.

Thousands of slaves are being treated badly

In the modern world, without chains

Holding their necks,

Shackles on their wrists

Or ankles or locks in their tongues.

 

 

III

 

The colleges of love will never let us go,

Who graduates from them?

The lie of the ages is

Humans have no hope,

We are windows of better days,

Immigrants want another tomorrow

In a boat (most times these boats keel)

Asking the sea the way to

Greener pastures,

We are not lost buses

And we will not die,

We are fighters,

We cannot be broken

By the storms of life,

My straw of hope is the air

I breathe and I believe,

And even the sky is flogged with cracks

And it is contemplating falling,

When I see the mosque of fear

I will take the other way round.

 

 

IV

 

Even though my hands touch your breasts

They say they are not going to do anything.

 

 

V

 

A big oval ball emerges on your belly

When you carry a baby,

Sometimes all the world

Is turning in your eyes.

There are men, nations, prostitutes,

Despots, poets, preachers, healers,

Feminists, gays and lesbians and singers

In sperms.

We are a new nation

Full of love, no envy, no hate.

Our lives are clocks, ticking away

And we will vanish as a mist.

 

 

VI

 

We are clocks, ticking away.

My hands they contain fire,

When they touch you

They set fire in you, and tie

Your body with my body this one last time.

 

 

 

 

 

Bernard Ollo

Bernard Ollo is a short story writer and poet living in Nigeria. His short fiction and poems have been published on Dwartsonline, Allpoetry and forthcoming in The Nigerian Writer (TNW). He studies English at the Benue State University.