Poetry

Sylvain Liechti/UN photo

 

By

Tonney Ibe

 

 

 

The Lost Ones

 

 

Seven billion souls

Walk this earth

Of snakes and snails.

A soul must walk,

Limp-legged, proudly;

Wistfully, disinterestedly;

It must travel

-No birth a berth!

From gravitation

To levitation,

The epic image of God

Attains to relevance.

Every spirit on the greens,

Is a billion beautiful

Possibilities: Laughter

Like lilies leaving love

Laced on paths yet not

Encountered to flower

Fated coincidences,

Hate to devour

In the hour.

But life’s not all veggies!

There are seasons:

A bleeding, a healing;

A leaking, a sealing;

A bursting, containing;

A shedding and growing;

An Ebbing and flowing:

An infinite seeking

-The unconscious yearning,

From tailspin to spin

A bluesy ball in covert orbit.

The last of the lost is unseen;

The loss of the last is unseen,

Of the seven billion souls

Who walk the earth,

The lost ones are blessed!

 

 

 

 

Depression

 

 

Living,

A morsel a day,

On a filthy shred of elan,

The self dredges

Into

Nonexistence.

 

Shivering in the heat,

Amaranthine,

The mind is feverish

From shadows;

Mere shadows of matter

Affronting the center.

 

Pitfalls, a dime a dozen,

Impress proud silhouettes

Everywhere,

Anywhere the neck turns.

Pressure suffused

By expectations

Tie a fancy noose

For which the hangman

Seems now a well-wisher.

 

Will it end soon, or until

God appears in the middle realm

Shaking the head in disgust?

 

The sum of a frame burked

Is to find peace somehow

Beyond the sharpest knife,

And the swiftest poison,

Contemplating reincarnation.

 

A nightmare of a life

Lived,

Wraith of a man

Drifting

On the tide of foul devices.

Depression, darkness, and doom

Take aim,

They fire!;

If the man finds dharma

Between trauma and relief,

He has become destiny

 

 

 

 

Pastime

 

 

Walking on hot coals

Is a pastime

For a polygamous giant.

Something

That children should know,

Bunch of know-it-alls

None the wiser,

She farts molten magma

A few times every season;

Upon center stage.

 

The music of the smoke

Is to choke,

Choke,

And choke some more

On hot coal,

And quench the parched throat

With impatient lava.

 

What’s the difference

Between a giant and a beast?

The answer

Is to make merry in pain:

To feign a complaint.

When the future is a broken bridge

At the darkest dusk,

To cross becomes the cross

Which sheer willpower

To Golgotha

Must hurl.

 

Who shall die first

In this city of death,

This city of the dead,

Polis, or necropolis?!

Having died the tenth time,

Dying is the desire to live:

To live again

On the anachronism of green grass,

Or yarn a jack of green and white,

– A shot straight to the skull –

To wrap a willing sarcophagus.

 

Never again,

To walk on hot coals,

Living being a pastime.

 

 

 

 

 

Tonney Ibe

My name is Tonney Ibe, a Nigerian poet residing in in the city of Lagos, the most commercial city in Africa. My debut collection of poems, Bizarre Cantillations: seeking redemption, is set to be published on online bookstores like Amazon, Okadabook, Spillwords, et cetera.

In 2015, two of my poems, Psychal Waterloo, and Zainab, were featured in two American anthologies (Tomb of words, and The Iranian Sun) alongside several kindred spirit poets from around the world. A few of my poems have been published on blogs and online magazines like Tushstories, Dami Ajayi, etc, and several more having being accepted are yet to be published in other journals and magazines.

A conscious student of life, it is my belief that the being comes before the person,therefore in all accounts I consider myself first a human being before, a poet/writeror anything else. This is the nadir of my muse.