Poetry

By

Celestine Chimummunefenwuanya

 

 

Are You Justifiable?

 

 

 

                                     I

 

If laughter would clutch the steps of death

And the water linking our sinking frames would

Flow without asunder

Then I would have to laugh once again

To what matters

And to things with little matters that hardly mattered.

 

                                   II

 

If because these filigreed rays of the weeping sun

Would sink in a moment and the blanket of tar would cover the globe

I weep and feel the weight of sordidness

Do you blame me?

And if you do

Are you justifiable?

 

                                III

 

If because these sharp faces that capered and gamboled about these boulevards

And subways would droop and shrivel at a point

And time would revolve to the season of failed harvest,

of fading flowers, of old, of falling petals,

And dissolving elliptical ovals of the waking king lotus

I scourge my little daughters for making noise, and their noise is a boisterous laughter

Will you judge me?

And if you do

Are you justifiable?

Fie fie! Let me a lonely room to leave solemn to a fading globe

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mother’s hut

 

 

America ,

Let your chalets gleam

In the sun like the opal rings

 

America,

Amid the silver foliages let your terraced houses curl into the azure skies.

 

America,

Let your row houses

Bow on the tiles of emeralds,

On the landscapes of gold And sappires.

 

I come from a place, Africa,

And deep down in the heart Of Africa crouched the small Tached hut of my mother.

 

America,

My brothers tasted your Curried chickens and Pizza-Mayoinesse and forgot my Mother’s hut in the dale of Scorpions and thirsty lizards, And the drumming emus Inhabit my mother’s hut

 

America,

I’d go home and meet my Mother’s hut. The babbling Brooks of mawing llamas and the chattering magpies stayed in the rear of my Mother’s hut. They give my Joy.

Inside my mother’s hut were Old ragged mats, dusty Spoons, dead luna moths adhered to the silver-webs, the floor of stench and of Gravels and a broken roof

 

But America,

My mother’s little hut

Is healthier than those prize Mansions in Ohio and Mississipi, and the New Orleans.

 

Am going home,

I must come home to the Heart of Africa, where Freedom lives without price And touch my mother’ hut.

 

My brothers are anathema

They relished the juices of The strange land’s Strawberries and Blackberries

And abandoned the milks of The trees of cashew-nuts and Overriped African papaya That stand Before my Mothers hut,

Her barns were dirty and They never cleaned it. They left it a reek to the strange land because, mother, the Ivory of beauty carved out of A balmy black woman of Africa died because her children loathed her for being a black woman, and owning a small hut in the heart of Africa.

 

America,

Am not my brothers, your spell I heaved and throw up, my mother’s hut is greater than your edifices and happily am leaving you to build my mother’s hut; A rag your mansions are compared to my mother’s dirty little hut.

 

Shame to you brothers who Loved America than Africa, Your home land;

The Americans laughed at you, for Americans loved Americans because they were Americans and wished to be Americans again and again.

 

They laugh at you cos you’re Africans and were ashamed of coming to Africa, because you wished you weren’t Africans than the Americans

Fie fie!, shame on you Brothers.

 

America, I love you, but I go home to touch and build my mother’s hut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brothers Of The Street

 

 

Brothers of the evening Street

 

The bell is tolling upon the Catedral walls

The sacred bell has chimed Again and again, conjouring The strained tripatity; The Body the soul and the spirit

 

To come home from the wild Hunts for livelihood and Acceptance.

Come away quickly from Those bogs,

 

That damp dark street and Attend to the beckonings of Your wooden cabins Underneath those bridges of Forlorn and cruel wasps, and Change into a fairer Garment,

Come very quickly, less staying long the foes of the crumpled dregs grant you the mob of a wanderer captured in the midnight.

 

Though your pains for survival squaked louder than the bellowing stags, yet the maker of this crust hold for you a reserve at the end of that vague tunnel

So, brothers of the street hid and hid to the fruity clarion call.

 

Hid to the tingling chimes of The catedral bells. Ours is a Noble birth, a great people Of high heritage you are

Hid to the chiming bell of The tinted catedral for Therein sprouts to life the Essence of living

 

Therein we send our Supplications of survival to The Bema throne of the supernatural.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very Soon

 

 

Its drizzling

Thump! Thump! Thump!

 

On the yellow cashew fruits;

On their ashen bean-shaped nuts.

 

Its raining

Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

 

On the domestic comely trees

On the wafting trails hanging green oranges

 

Soon, very soon, the earth

Would be calm with snows

 

Then and by the mist would come with the sun and the earth crust would grow in gold once more.

And the rain would stop to sing in the window lourvers of the skies that hold the eyes from the view of the sacred divinity in the sacred immaculate heaven

 

Relax, very soon the rain of today would stop tommorrow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painted River

 

 

When my heels were soft

And they were the feathers of the silent nightingales

 

When my lips were tameless

And trilled like a maze of raccoons

 

When my eyes were the flesh of the strawberries

And my voice was fruity and shameless

 

You, the river of the ancient

My mother relished with songs,

 

Burned like ounces of opals…

Glistened like ivories, shimmered like the elephants’ tusks

 

Your bank has the bays of chrysantimums, a row of indigo thymes, your surface was the dolts of the lotus plates

The glory of the supernatural entete dwelled in a crystal-clear riverbed…

 

I picked crooked shrimpers in your sandbars, where the oysters blow their horns at the howling herons,

I drank from you with my fingers

 

You were so pure I saw a hysterical fleet of the school of whittin traversed your depth like the troubadour

Coughing okapis, barking ostriches, screaming peafowls, whistling tapirs, grunting  vervets, warbling  wrens, maoning yaks and the chirping puffins suck from your edible waters….

 

Your frame was great and blue

You are never desolate in the morning without a crowd of heads drinking and fetching from you..

 

But now, when my heels were hard as the pyramid

And my eyes stronger than the eagles eggs

 

When I became old from a fruitless journey because the home could not contain me.

I see your waters gathered like a pool of blood, red and a crimson flood

 

With dead frogs and dead lotus buds sailing to and fro..The sandbars that fetched me herons and shrimpers and oysters sunk deep in the heart of blood, today you were desolate with pungency

And mother told me tearfully the warriors of attritions slaughtered the city’s valiant men into you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.