Poetry

Reuters photo

 

By

Eddie Awusi

 

 

 

110 Dashing Dapchi Virgin Damsels

 

 

For the spoils of innocence they strive.

For the rape and ruin of morals they strive.

Insatiable pedophiles,

Honking unquenchable lewdness,

Ripping bare the great tree of morality:

School childrens’ panties soiled,

In unholy carnal knowledge.

Adults’ phalanges, thrust into kiddies’ crevices:

110 dashing Dapchi virgin damsels,

Taken through rolling hills and ordeals,

10 times Israelites journey,

Through underground routes of forest thickets,

Gracing lewd sexual appetites,

In distant hideouts,

On the ruins of glory –

Irate molestation.

 

 

 

 

If Your Nation Is A Sinking Boat

 

 

If your nation is a sinking boat,

Do not dismiss her as a failure,

Packing your bags and baggage,

Ditching her for another’s glory.

Be within her fold, and plan for a rescue,

Take upon yourself, duties of chivalry.

Nurture her for a better berthing,

In nation building.

Be her life jacket.

Else, you become a nonentity,

In another man’s land.

 

 

 

 

Pleading Mercy At The Gate Of Hell

 

 

Where can we find our rest

When all we can lay our wary bodies on

Are pools of blood;

Bones of butchered compatriots;

And shattered memories

Of our loved ones

Pleading mercy at the gate of hell

 

Where can we find our rest

Amidst this hilarious honing and honking

Of dreadful wagons of war

The beaten, are looking for energy to breathe

Vanquishing soft targets

The vanquisher, aim only with mechanical rhetoric

 

Where can we find our rest

When memories of torture, brute force

And blind bravery, winks and stares at us

 

So we find our rest

In the fat bulging belly of the earth

6 feet below, in confines of graves and caskets

 

 

 

 

I Flap My Hurt Like Broken Wings

 

 

Plant me

Among the wonders of the world

Nourished and Flourishing

On this beleaguered southern soil

With my roots scattered

On this warri culture.

 

Emevor is my window,

So I peep into the world

Building me up

Like a towering bonfire.

I flap my hurt

Like broken wings

In the sky.

 

Reach I the firmaments

I shall not kneel

Like those twin skyscrapers

Bending droopingly

In obeisance

To the powers of this age.

 

 

 

 

I Come A New Species Of Thunder

 

 

I come in the agony of a squeaking tree

Sleepwalker rainfall hallucinating

Angered shrubs running titbit protests

Over hiccups of coughing thunderstorms

I come in the anklets of bossy winds

Kaftan white on catalogue of drooling moon

I come in the raining of bullets

17 venom of death shot into the heart of a school

I come a new species of thunder

Safeguarding and protecting

I, like a baby thunder, I growl through

A toddler, immersing myself

In prescriptive sunshine

 

 

 

 

Forbid My Sunrise On A Foreign Sky

 

 

I stand on this other side of justice

A refugee; a piper; a homeless boy, a castaway

A Wagner fixing wishes on Arabian grounds

Disgruntled breeze usurps the arena

Depraved laws strutting with tenacity of prayers

Forbid my sunrise on a foreign sky

I court the nights with a feverish feat

Marching with the resolution of a chivalric knight

Denouncing my ordeals with a Protestant’s

Quizzical zeal

I am a victim here

 

 

 

 

Itabosuwa

 

 

She was my warrior queen,

Princess of my past world.

Naive was her royal reign.

Armed with an eye on the world.

Walking through tepid grassland

Of spears, toil, buried breath and aged gossip –

Dismantling a garrison of

Tuareg foot marching fighters.

Her temper was ancient goose,

In a flash of lightning.

Tending love with great value,

Anguish called her, home.

Within a heart that vibrated in its casement.

I recognise her from the past,

From the foot of creation.

527 years gone and counting,

In a countryside Egypt.

But I died in her hands, Itabosuwa.

My blood dribbled and stirred,

From her immaculate white frock,

Leaving a cesspool of anguish,

In her widowing youthful heart.

My love for her was a road,

With an abrupt dead end.

This underage princess from antiquity,

Now relive her past glory, differently.

All forgotten in a macabre,

In a modern breathless tale of love.

She takes her place,

Beside my merchant self:

A modern Nigerian,

Not knowing the story of our ancient love.

 

 

 

 

When A Man Dies

 

 

When a man dies,

Let him become a star,

Lest, he roams in his void.

His Sapphire soul,

Let it brew ageless fire,

Brightly cliffed and shinning,

On the roof of the sky.

Let him burn scythes,

And high volume of larvae,

In his twilight zone.

Though he ceases to live,

Yet, let him exist,

Illuminating the universe,

With agility and gait.

 

 

 

 

I Surrender

 

 

I surrender to earth;

I surrender to the sky –

Vocal shotguns in hands,

Shot up in defiant submission.

 

I surrender to the seas;

I surrender to the firmaments;

I surrender to life;

I surrender to death;

I surrender to the world under.

 

I surrender to my innate yearning,

Bathing in the fragments of my passion.

I weave my days into accolades,

Waiting on a speechless thunderstorm.

 

I surrender to bliss;

I surrender to pain;

I surrender to my distorted infancy:

Evoking a childhood, I never had.

 

 

 

 

This Is How The Earth Cries

 

 

This is how the earth cries.

Grisly heaving supine breath.

Scolding humanity with catalogue of disasters.

Vomiting roots in gilded squabbles.

Jamming alloys in pensive mood.

Stunting roses on senile soils.

Throttling avidly with a thrusting air.

Erupting volcanoes on frenetic days.

Handing dust to haywire winds.

Earth, humming in a witling quake.

Hurricanes sweeping with devious hands.

Coughing water against hyacinth times.

This is how the earth cries.

 

 

 

 

 

Eddie Awusi

Eddie Awusi is a Nigerian writer of Isoko extraction. He graduated from the prestigious Delta state university, Abraka in 2007, where, he got a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Literature. He believes in the universality of Arts and global citizenship of the creative and Imaginative artist.