The Poetry Marathon

These words are not yours

‘I am not a fighter’ Brigitte Poirson

Mother, these are not your utterances.
You do not talk to me without light in your voice,
without adding a pinch of hope on my tongue.

You would tell me to hang on, on days
when the wind breaks off chains,
seeking to devour bodies prone to surrender

to darkness, to nightmares and to death.

There’s a way a possessed sea rages:
my mother’s demons have resurrected,
perhaps with more entourage.

And this is why my heart bleeds before you
to show you how far you’ve wandered
from your body, believe me, mother.

You taught me to walk the world
with songs as lamps around my head,
hunting my grief as game in the forest,

and not to surrender to torments.

Scream

When the heaven is too dark
to behold the reflection of its beauty,
moon and stars are called to lighten
the world, as song would, on gloomy days.

Depression is another name for mortals.
It’s just that when it calls,
we do not answer at once –
it could be my turn tomorrow.

The last time I bore grief,
I disobeyed my aunt asking me
to lower my voice, as if she loved
to see me blend with the night.

I am not saying she’s a devil.
But there are ways demons hunt you
and everyone around you wants you silent.

Do not be a hush sea in times like these.
My voice is always yours to lend:
seek for additional voices, and scream.

Sing it Aloud

Not that facebook messenger failed me.
I was just too scared to be reminded the sting
of failing is a nightmare in the world of an orphan.
My culture says it’s a taboo to heap weighty messages
in the mouth of a servant, to say their importance.

Your messenger says life keeps breaking you
as if testing your tensile strength.
At first, it was a beast demolishing your garage.
Then, a storm breezed in, tearing apart
into shreds the name you built for decades.
I wanted to hear you speak these things to me –
these things seeking for asylum in your body.

I remember my sentence to perpetual joy
after I murdered my demons and drank their blood.
What’s a messenger that I cannot choke with my fingers?
I thrust my thumb. There were screeches.
My voice finds its way in, asking you to sing songs
of healing aloud with me, and to conceive joyful songs.

An eaglet learns to fly alone in the midst of a tempest:
my mother died without teaching me a song.
So, you understand why I love to invite strangers
to sing aloud rather than to serve them amala and ewedu.

And most times, I lead. Heck! My voice is seraphic.
Do not be lost; the world is too large to sojourn.
Sing aloud, first, your woes. Repeat. Repeat.
Then sing of hope, blessings and amen. Louder.

*amala & and ewedu: Yoruba (Nigeria) traditional meal

I am still here

Because you are here too
as a map for a lost child searching
for his mother on Earth’s mouth.

Because I compose songs from things
marked as food for fire, as elements
too weak to survive the blacksmith’s furnace.

Because we agreed not to light out at once –
there are so many who’d look to us for rays
when darkness chokes their world.

Because I do not endure in silence.
I scream loud enough to quake grief
with songs whose lyrics only me understand.

Because I sing the name of my demons
aloud, to my moulder, to you, to friends.
And I sing of me as a bird of colourful feathers.

Walking Ashore

Darkness, like Armageddon,
does not announce its birth.
You begin to see walls crumbling on you.
And there you are, swimming to nowhere
after being broken by nightmares.
Because every sound is a constellation
of scourges on your existence.
There’s something persuading you
to leave this place of woes:
ten thousand woes after an amen of blessing.
Is home not a haven of peace?
You remember we are parts of the same fig,
and stayed to feel the touch of winter with me.
You would call God if you knew him,
as you would a beggar roaming the streets,
as if he was the one in need of you.
I learnt there is an answer to prayers
even in God’s silence. You did not agree.
I do not blame you for saying the brick
life confines you is too large for one.
It is because you’ve forgotten you are broken,
perhaps, a bit – there are too many of you
to sing songs of hope until the stormy sea
parts for you to walk ashore
without your worries.

Here is Song

In the thickness of grief, like clouds,
I found a song whose rhythm is like an icing to a cloud.
There are more, sharing your space with you.
But first, empty your body of pain, open it
into a room of playful things.
Become like a kid entering its toy park,
like a masquerade dancing in the village square,
like the earth welcoming the remains of mortality.

It has been here, a song.
But blindness pangs the eyes:
grief won’t allow you to sight beautiful things –
it knows you won’t die more than you’ve been killed.
A taste of this song would heal you into a divinity.

On occasions, my body slips into darkness.
I feel there should be songs to encrypt fear
into the body of what hunts me, a demon
whose home is the carcass of night,
calling our names – me, you
and even others unknown to us,
those whose vulnerability bar is always bloody.

There is song everywhere, in every thing,
even the sadness solitude gives you
hides millions of joyful songs in its feathers.
Here is how to make the song into a soother:
Listen – listen to things around you:
poems, birds, nature, chirping,
the clattering of spoon and dish,
and echo these words as chorus:
hope, healing, resurrection and blessings.