Blessing Omeiza Ojo – The Poetry Marathon

Blessing Omeiza Ojo
Blessing Omeiza Ojo

Blessing Omeiza Ojo is a Nigerian poet and teacher. He has edited and co-edited many anthologies. His works have been published or forthcoming in Split Lip Magazine, Roughcut Press, Lunaris Review, Last Girls Club, Artmosterrific, Trampoline and elsewhere. His poem, “Everything Around Us Sings” was selected for publication at the Castello di Duino 2021 International Poetry and Theatre Competition. In 2020, Omeiza was named the Arts Lounge’s Literature Teacher of the Year. He was a shortlist of Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize 2020, semi-finalist for Jack Grapes Poetry Prize 2020, and the winner, 9th Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize (Ambassador Special Prize). He is currently a creative writing instructor at Jewel Model Secondary School, Abuja, where he has coached winners of national and international writing prizes.

Aliens in Nightmare

Too much strength for them, those monsters.

I am too little to be broken into shards.

I’m in the kitchen, sharpening the knife

meant for vegetables and fish,

in preparation for what could be my last attempt

to stay alive if not properly handled.

As much as I love hard copies, I won’t hold

a poetry book. Both hands would be occupied.

I’ll go for the neck, left hand around the neck,

then the right holding the knife to the neck

And before the count of one, one of us must be down.

Imagine it’s me, I must slit the throat, blood dripping

down the neck. No! Don’t think of a reversed occurrence.

Have you seen a mythical monster before?

In your dream like my first after my mother’s demise?

Tell me about your long night, of screams and sweat.

Your Mother didn’t tell you

The beautiful side of the herders and their wives.

She remembers to tell you they ruined a country

because her heart still bleed for her lover

and grief won’t depart from her until she invokes

what was written by the prophets in a poem like this.

Did I tell you that I am a lover of cheese

and Fulani are the maker of sumptuous ones?

I am sorry your father didn’t return from the farm.

Truth has an unpleasant taste but I must feed you this:

not all herders kill and not all killers are herders.

To the farm, let us go! What was written

about wolves

and sheep dwelling together could fulfill in us, too.

And when this system crashes like a pillar of salt,

behold your father coming out of sheol.

Not a Failure

Mortals are good readers of grief.

In a nameless city, there’s a claim

mortals do not know how to read things

written, and poems scribbled – a light

for their pathway into Eden, the new one.

How else does a man prophesy blindness

to his eyes but by feigning it?

In same city, a man as old as a country

says he doesn’t think God exist.

How would I talk him into believing

the written word? This is not a failure!

This man whose heart is a rusty cell

wouldn’t allow himself to be imprisoned.

Even in Paradise, I remember

When the bandits left Sambisa,

they left a sign for us to remember

that they were here longer than

we had thought. Even in Eden,

it is difficult to forget that the jacket

my little brother was obsessed with,

was the sign left for our kingdom.

In this poem, I am invisible to the eyes

because something tells me they aren’t gone

really. In the old world, I imagined

severally, how city should be a name for havens

and a country to be heaven for God.

I hope this poem too isn’t an imagination,

a sequel to what was written

about a burning home of a people _

a lover of God and holy writings

whose faith were made of straws and rafters

something too weak to walk ethnicity away.

An Ode to Holy Writings

When a man wakes with the yearning

of a lad for breast milk, he sucks

whatever looks like a nipple.

This is not me even though

this poems says I’m hungry

for holy writings, for solid food.

Lead not to my abode, the clergy

who wouldn’t read from the scripture.

My dog hasn’t eaten flesh in a while.

My mouth is blessed with high spirit.

If you ever read about the man declared

happy for counting the scribbled letters,

you’d understand when I said I am

a citrus tree at the riverbank.

Night of a Deadly Howl

It was written that night would grow teeth

unfriendly to mortals and suck their blood.

What would be left the prophet calls dust.

I read: when it touches the ground, it’d blend with it.

What is memory if not a symphony of circumspect?

I cut the page of the scripture where it was written,

and fisted it in my left palm for reminder sake.

Tobi said he did so. But he didn’t survive his last walk.

Nights are dangerous these days than den of lions.

I’ve lost more than a friend to the night I can’t query.

Is it the kind of night you want me to walk?

Needless to write about sightless shrapnel

that hit Tomi on a broad daylight.

Imagine what the night here holds for a bird

(not owl) walking the night of shades like ghost.

A Broad Mixture of Words

wasn’t a burden transcribed for us.

Most times, it’s not weight that sink a ship.

I know you do not like reading what was scribbled

for us. I think you knew more children that I know.

The cold is not leaving us soon. It has learnt doggedness from the sons of Israel.

Sit them down beside the burning flame

Be still and listen to them as you would, God,

speaking to you from the holy of most holies.

I am afraid you’re walking the broad way.

I still haven’t judge neither would I ever.

How displeasing it is to walk a cramp road.

My ear stools excess word of God _

can there ever be a party of spirit outflow?

I want to say no written word is irrelevant.

As important as air to the body, so are they.

In my home where fire burns everything alive,

we depend on words to live a life life denied us.

Welcome those who do not welcome us.

And because I have a haunting image of you as a rebel,

I am recommending plenty of what was written.

People like Judas

(a poem including a line by Neil Gaiman)

“One of you will betray me,” Messiah said.

He’s right. Books were safer than other people anyway.

Sometimes, it’s what Judas did to his master

that makes me wallow in solitude instead of walking

a lonely bridge with a friend on nights.

Lately, I’ve stopped thinking about extreme grief

stemming from the plant men stalked into me.

Truth be told, I trimmed myself not to grow as thorns.

A brother betrays his tribe and I watch you sigh.

I, too, grow weary when anyone wash his fear in the stream

that passes through every pores in my body.

Often, I imagine the look on the Messiah’s face

after the third cock crow, the sadness that enclose

his heart like clouds on God. Perhaps, I should

speak less about the ancient betrayal accounts.

Recently, a murders his mother and seals his father’s lips

with a coin. A father lullaby his little daughter to sleep

and lit her into a country. See, it’s not bad to reiterate

the truth once told: betrayal begins with what looks like love.

Forgive me if you say you love and I do not respond.

Nobody likes to be Chained

I swear, what was written tastes better than apple

served by the hands of a lover.

I know men who mistook their stupidity for cleverness.

I am against nothing but a man who doesn’t feel

the end of this poem as the end of a system.

I am not a prophet of doom but this earth is a dying man.

What to save from it is Himalayan.

To be brief say: self and others.

And to pronounce a word, alphabets must be kissing –

You’d first save yourself to be eligible to save others.

We are pacing, leaving what was written behind

for dance on the alter of guilt. Years from now,

a rat might eat the pages of prophecy and be fulfilled.

Will it be honey for my people to perish because what

they call wisdom is the spirit behind a bird’s mocking song?

When I wished I had said yes

After my mother left, I forgot the written things,

that part that speaks to me became obsolete.

There was a spirit breaking the pod of a kolanut.

Forgive me, dear Lord for this confession.

I was a mere boy, in the middle of a dark night,

gifted a box of grief. I did not want to share.

I wanted pain to end with me in the grave

but my grandma wouldn’t allow me go alone.

Picture a school of graves in my family yard.

I rose the sun in my mouth and embalm it.

You won’t see me gnashing my teeth before her

or in the presence a man who was also a dry bush

because grief is fire_ it burns wild with air.

If I had said yes when I wanted to, who knows

something written would have found fulfilment

in my passing. Perhaps, it wouldn’t.

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