Blessing Omeiza Ojo – Page 2 – 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.

What I Cannot See

A school of angels heralding the new creations,

singing hallelujah to the truthfulness of prophecies.

Earlier, I watched a boy roping his body

with a living snake. Another’s hand snaking

the fur of a lion, unharmed.

Imagine the unimaginable:

see a snake in your pocket.

In place of the sachet of water

you once hawked is a clan of scorpions.

Among what was written, nothing will sting

and flesh would be disgusting

to those who once eat them.

Imagine a world without meat _

say beef. pork. kpomo.

Before this poem become a man, I’ve spent

a whole day walking forestlands for something wild

to scare me. Yesterday, it was the sea I dived into.

If I had died, this poem wouldn’t be written.

This poem: a library of imaginations to be sent to God

to show him how much I want Eden again.

And the Children would Sing

I was thinking of the rainbow children added

to the old earth when the moon shines on them

somewhere under the citrus tree, singing of joy.

They sing in a way similar to the old earth,

when with a broken identity they chose to celebrate

the privilege of witnessing the fulfillment of prophecies.

Watching them teaches me the art of forgetfulness.

How not holding unto the past is a blessing.

And I learnt a new thing: sometimes, we are all it takes

for what was written to be fulfilled.

Death Watches the Deads Grieving

I was still mourning my mother when death visited again.

He wanted to make my grief into a sentence, complex

for me, a lover of simple words.

Ugly man –

It is proper for an ugly man to have a beautiful heart.

In a dungeon of tears, you will see me bare,

with deads like me, still wearing a skin, sharing my grief.

Same spot. Check back tomorrow,

I swear, you’ll see me learning an elegy to sing for your end.

Brethren, grief not with me anymore.

Do not make this ugly man laugh at you yet.

He’s watching, not knowing he’s a citizen of a gone world.

Watch God kills him like he did to his prophets.

Play Acting Messiah’s Death

It’s difficult to be the Messiah,

play-acting his death on a torture stake.

Times like this teach us

what death means,

remind us how a man, sinless,

was beating from neighbouring streets

down to Golgotha.

A cup of grief is always as heavy as grief.

It was written that he wanted the cup

to be him, the Passover lamb.

Nahar’ Girl

There are towers in the other side of the world.

The mortals over there – how did they cross

this sea of wilderness?

While I am wondering if I have to swim, you’re in it

already, proving your resistance to water.

It is computer age – a boy now knows

more than a bean cake.

I know Eden when I see one.

Daughter of Zion, it was here your mother

drown her past – river of the unnamed.

Swim – swim to where dreams grow

without fear of fate.

By the written words, nothing shall stop you.

I am not saying you can’t miss your way.

To get lost is to learn the way.

Wait for me at the other end

because I am a mere mortal – dust –

a handiwork work – of a porter.

A Call

I had only imagined a world where everything is born

with a wing, rainbow touching it’s feathers

and every song is sang in the voice of a happy bird.

Grief these days is fire burning a wet field.

That the world in my poem is perfect doesn’t

make me the word, a god pronounced by God.

How everything came to be remain a mystery to me.

A masquerade unveils his mask before me

and I am still having difficulty recognising him

as my ancestor. This is where I first decode the lies

in the tale my grandpa told me.

Unlike the ones passed down to me, what was written

pushes me closer to truth about the miracle of growth.

I grow faith in my dream first, like the root of a tree

in Lebanon. And I am wanting water in reality.

I do not know if going back to sleep would quench

this fire on my tongue. But I sure know there’s a guttural voice calling for to sleep.

Seeing God through a Brother

Everyone has a name for hunger in his mother’s tongue.

My Asian friend asked me in a chat what it’s called.

I typed ‘ebi.’ He sent a voice note and distorted

the pronunciation to mean vomit.

It was normal for the belly to reject a meal. Not anymore.

The once filled library in my home town cries of hunger.

I realized my stomach’s mouth is becoming

wide and I give it to a seamstress to stitch it

into the pocket size of a beggar.

Every expression could be art but not a poem.

In a poem, not all expressions are poetic.

It is poetic to say I begged a bird for a grain

and staked my future, not birthright.

What is birthright if the holder’s body no longer holds air?

I understand when people do not speak of empty stomachs

because it was written: man must live not by food alone.

Today, must be fed to see beyond.

It is normal these days to look at a brother

and see a god_who is also a provider.

Telling me what you think of Walking a Crampy Road

Telling me what you think of Walking a Cranny Roa

You said it is sometimes the crawling of a snail

on the wall. Other times, it is a bird ceasing to fly

in the midst of thorns but footing along them.

See, we are close enough to fulfillment these days

than prophecy. I am not perfect _ what I called

a stone throw could have been christened Methuselah.

Like a harvested tuber, I’ve tried to wash sands

off my body for God to see my heart.

It is not overrighteousness to want God to see you.

Before now, in the small room grief shared with me,

I’ve called for a sign and got a miracle.

This is to say God doesn’t have to be a bird,

travel through thick clouds to settle me. My grief and anxiety.

I have lost much love loved ones than sweat.

Telling me about what you think of the crampy road

is enough to say you, like me, are anxious.

If there’s a thread-like road, I wouldn’t mind offering

my body to be stretched, the size of human hair.

It’s not like I Love to fall Sick,

But that’s what imperfection gives me.
And lately, the weather has been unfair to me
than the mosquitoes in my room.
Shocking, how my body rejects what it once accepted.
This I called a reminder that I am still here,
in the old world, that this poem is a paradise,
this paradise is an imagined world in my poem,
and I live here in, that this poem is a therapy.
A wall gecko climbed my father’s hut more than
the number of falls recorded.
The truth is: for as needful as prayer is to survival,
doggedness is another quality God searches for
in his creations. Did I tell you
that for as long as this poem continues,
I’ll continue to imagine. Imagine that I find a time capsule in the backyard of my new home, I’d remember that it was written
that no resident will confess of sickness.

Smoke Reminds my Little Brother of our Old Home

(a poem ending with lines from “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

How I managed the sight of smoke
from my mother’s kitchen and not remember
that I once lived in a home fire burns everything
that has a body, I do not know.
My little brother remembers still that there was
a scar behind his back, something he got
from a blind bullet during the war that claimed
our land and wipe us from the history book.
The smoke on the mountain behind our tabernacle
draws the portrait of his memory on the sky.
Yes, he remembers the fire and the embers of a city.
How do I tell him we’re the fulfilment of what’s written?
That every gathered cloud would rain water through
heaven’s eyes and not fire or bomb or bullet?
I understand there’s still a dent of black
on his rainbowed heart, but every traces
of grief has gone with the old earth.
So we’d beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past.

« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next »