Poetry

By

Celestine Chimummunefenwuanya

Crushers’ Trilling Growls

The crushers’ trilling growls;

Crackling gripes in start of squat trail to life

Squeaky bellyaches, midway

trilling growls, lastly

Herald of the sun

Blighting the thick elm leaves to flaps

Making our soft scalps defenceless

Conjurer of dusts painting the skies

Smearing on our tawny arms

Rashes we scratch till blood shoots like

Shattered rocks of spring.

Evo girls abhor your endless barks

Thieves of sweet dreams

Draftsmen of tears and curses

Polluter of sweet eddies

Murderers of petals

Dryers of pods

Crushers of ivory flowers we pluck to remember

Dead parents

Swift to born us in this stone mine of hunger

Rape

Tears

Slaps

Swift to die from the disease of your dusts’

Pulmonary cramps

The crushers’ trilling growls the girls hate you.

You’ve awoken us this morning again

Stealing our sweet sleeps of sweet dreams

Here we squat for your growls and dusts again.

What is Poetry?

I was sleeping when Birija the sibling of Burata entered my room yesterday.

He tugged at my knotty dreadlock.

He did not touch the acoustic gulter

Of a strained musketeer, perhaps he wasn’t Aware it leaned on the wall above his head Brimmed by hassles and puzzles of seen and unseen world.

I woke up smiling and ransacking the bed sheets for my pen and notebook.

I did not notice him, all my eyes saw was the carmine vista of carmine elks and ermines with colorful furs I had been watching in an interrupted dream.

I saw him when he said he’s with my pen and notebook. I ordered him to hand them to me. He flashed a megawatt smile not needed by a poet having hunches twirling in his mind and asked ‘what did you need them for?’

A poet need not be in a dale of dialogue, when scenes to be recaptured arrived, I snubbed him and ordered once more for my pen and notebook.

After a half of a full minute when the muse seemed to digress to the terra it came from he asked again ‘what did you need them for?’

I hissed before saying ‘for poetry, for a poem that hunts me now, for the recollection of sweet dreams….’

He asked again ‘what is poetry?’

In time like this, to a poet this boy is an Intruder. This boy is a bulwark and a hill on The path, unlike a poet I held my spirit close to my body. He cares to learn let me oblige and teach him. At least a poet teaches.

My boy, poetry is Fear

Poetry is Pain

Poetry is Dream

Poetry is Vision

Poetry is Allusion

Poetry is Puzzle

Poetry is Burden

Poetry is Success

Poetry is Failure

Poetry is Sadness

Poetry is Happiness

Poetry is Horror

Poetry is Joy

Poetry is Tranquility

A poet writes to savage the mind from bursting. Boy hand them to me if you will not watch this brain to splay like beads on you.

The boy was silent. He said nothing. A minute later he let out a long breath and handed them to me.

Celestine Chimummunefenwuanya  

Celestine Chimummunefenwuanya, a Nigerian young veteran Photographer, songwriter, organist, poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and lover of birds and wild animals. A Chelsea fan that enjoys table tennis, football, basketball and frequently romps through woods for scenic animalistic displays. He visits a Nigerian stone mine from which he derives heart-ripping hunches and vibes. African stone mine workers travail in felters of pains and emotional conudrums and he catalogues these in photo-images and as graphically as possible in a new novel ‘Five Fingers’ he currently works on. He’d be happy to share it with an experienced publisher that cares.