Ofuma Agali – Page 7 – The Poetry Marathon

Ofuma Agali
Ofuma Agali

Ofuma writes poetry and fiction as his current genres of interest. His works have appeared several art pages of newspapers in Nigeria, such as The Guardian, The Vanguard, National Mirror, and The Post Express Literary Supplement. Outside Nigeria, his works have appeared in Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Praxis Journal of Gender & Cultural Critiques, The Kalahari Review, The Purposeful Mayonnaise, among others. Five of his poems have also been published in anthologies (including The Poetry Marathon Anthology). He received an Honourable Mention at the 2001 MUSON Poetry Competition, and has written a collection of poems as well as two unpublished collections of short stories. He is currently working on a third collection of short stories and a second collection of poems. While making attempts at residency writing, he emerged a Finalist of the 2019 New Orleans Writers Residency Program. Ofuma lives in Lagos, Nigeria where he has been a journalist as well as a communications practitioner. He had also been editor of two national specialised magazines. He has been involved in many writing projects he is open to proofreading, editing, and ghostwriting gigs.

Killing Two Birds with One Stone (Hour 9)

Pandemic times arrived like a thief at night.

It stole and stole and stole from us.

Now that I can remember grandma’s voice

saying, no pain no gain,

I wonder what one can gain from a thief such as this pandemic.

So I count my losses, pitch my tent with the hard lessons;

I count my gains, my gains are not on the fatal statistics.

I will step forward and backward,

cast wary looks to the left and to the right,

and then cross that lane with vest,

as i kill two birds with one stone.

Written from Hour 9 text prompt.

Trudging On (Hour 6)

Calm settles upon us,

and the shrill of the night is

heard on both hemispheres.

In these four extant corners of convergence,

the earth, the wind, the fires, and the waters

melt into our virtual migrations.

Even as cardinal points make synaptic sketches,

with desert storms and monsoon winds in fierce clashes,

the centre still remains where we all belong.

We will trudge on,

through mist and fog, dust and dew,

under clear and cloudy skies.

From my differential desk of divergent words,

a periscope captures the fleeting motion

of us all, in this global feast of virtual migration.

Written from a combination of the two parts of Hour 6 text prompt.

Dear Cyril Konwa Uwaonyeche (Hour 5)

Dear Papa, it’s been fifteen years, all wrapped up.

entering this moment, all unwrapped.

Anticipations cling to me as I salute,

running deep like still waters.

Consternation still pays me visits, like yesterday,

yoked into depths of apprehension, by your absence,

reeled off balance through years of regurgitating your words,

irked that you left an elastic vacuum, unfilled,

longing for the bridges you built, the art that feeds my consternations.

Keystrokes will not reproduce your early morning songs.

On many moon nights of loose meditations,

not when the echoes of your voice still fill the void you left,

willful missiles made attempts, but failed to dispel those supersonic echoes.

And so we sing on, as your presence lingers.

Unparalleled is the worth of the substance of your

wisdom, down the ages, spreading through generations,

as your roots sprout multiple pyramids

on the land and seas of many nations.

Numinous supplements of counsel refine us like gold;

yours will remain valuable memories of sublimity, in

enchanted fields of your selfless manifestations,

cultivated through the sweat of aptness and the toil of love.

History continues to smile at your inputs,

entrenched in long halls of honour.

Although our tears of your absence still flows into your earthenware pot,

great is the gain of reaping the seeds you sowed.

Although the pain often deletes large chunks of our time,

love and laughter and life exude from your tomb

in that hallowed image of forever that you left behind.

Hour 5 text prompt played a small role in this acrostic dirge for my father who died fifteen years ago.

The Map of Peace (Hour 3)

They seek to destroy our map of peace,

to shatter the piece of the map we always knew.

They seek to employ the architects of silence,

to mute our tongues and drain our ink wells.

They seek to blur the sight of the map,

to irrigate its roots with termites of destruction.

The questions are running agog,

as we have not been bred in pots of hypocrisy,

and trees remain rooted generations before they go away.

We will paint in the colours of glittering melodies.

Our peace will not become a shattered piece.

In the basket of many eggs,

a few bad eggs will not foul up our air for too long.

We will paint in the colours of glittering melodies.

As this map of peace will stand, in one piece,

rioting memories will paint in the colours of glittering melodies.

Written from Hour 3 text prompt.

All Things Unseen (Hour 2)

They have been my greatest friends lately,

all of them unseen.

Yet they keep me company in these times that I can see.

Sometimes, I feel them crank away with joy

in sweet noisy bantering.

Sometimes, I see them stretch their hands

for handshakes in the grinding.

Sometimes, they smile, wink, and laugh hard at me.

In a mix of comfort and some little hurting,

they have been the best friends I know.

All these things I see,

…all of them unseen.

Hope, faith, care, and love…

I see them all,

…all of them unseen.

Tenacity, belief, and assurances…

I see them all,

…all of them unseen.

My new unseen friends,

I see them all.

Written from Hour 2 text prompt, using “The Joy of Unseen Things” as jumping off point.

Conferences and Confluence (Hour 1)

Pains perch on parallel buds around us,

intersecting like painting gone wrong;

but they will flee, they will flee.

They may as well continue to nibble at us,

they will be doing so only to mock themselves;

for dawn will always come,

stretching from the opaque into the transparent,

mending the fences of reality.

For Se:

The dark days never got through your doorsteps,

for your words wear a silk gown of bravery,

sweeping your floor clean,

as all sides of near-death receded

far and far away from your glow.

Silk and floor and life,

all sparkle;

breathing in whole-life,

deep and long,

in the sparkle.

iii

For Ingrid:

Those days of pain drowned

in the ocean of your love for nature.

Those images of the seas and the skies and the landscape,

they amplify the light your being feeds from.

Your external eyes are pretty, they already defeated the set back;

your inner eyes are bright, full of light,

full of life

For Caitlin:

Your inner strength is a moving mountain.

Light waves of agony do not prevail against mountains of life.

We will mock those pains and all its associated distractions.

Light waves of agony do not prevail against the laughters

that feed from your strength.

For Anjana:

That quarantine scare was a mere hoot

in the broken trunk of the scary trumpet.

The glow of your home is strong against the ills

of uncertainties flying like kites above us.

It is pretty clear we are not at its end.

It is pretty unclear we are in its middle.

Yet we live strong, ahead of the evening victories.

And your shout of relief sent a healing balm

across the conferences.

For Mildred:

The chaos grew, swollen like the discarded dead.

Howl for the chaos;

I know, I know.

Howl…

If you are hanging in there, you are hanging well;

for dawn will always come.

vii

For Tanya:

How can pain not be scared

of the one who overcame it

over and over again?

You know your story, your story knows you.

Victory found you, got stuck with you.

Hold that grip, all the aces embrace you.

Victory will always find you,

even as gratitude dances for your living.

viii

For Jacob:

Great seeds sprout in silence.

They tower up high once above the surface.

With many fruits to spread around the globe,

yours is the manifestation of great harvests.

Many yet to come;

we will mock those pains, they cannot prevail.

ix:

For Tobe:

In a time of revisiting sorrows,

you savour the refreshing flow of the Vermont wind,

basking in the renewing words of converging poetry.

with chocolates drumming the echoes of time,

healing memories down the lane;

healing us all.

For Richard:

Seventieth is an upper landmark of life,

and there will be more decades of the line drawn with cheer.

In these conferences of poetry,

poems write us, you say.

As your words jet its healing all around us,

we await your twelve new surprises,

like a dozen denizens of poetic paradise.

For us all:

Your voices are embraced with warmth when you speak.

Your silences are heard from across the horizons when you are mute.

All of us, as we chase essences in shapes and sizes,

we unite in these conferences, flowing into a confluence,

as we swim in the vast waters of unending renewal.

xii:

I sip from this cup of overflowing muses,

in these conferences,

converging into a confluence of communions.

All of the pains can nibble again.

They will be doing so only to mock themselves,

for dawn will always come.

Dawn will always come,

stretching from the opaque into the transparent,

mending the fences of reality.

Written from Hour 1 text prompt.

Hello, Poets; It’s Less Than Two Hours To Go…

Hi everyone,

It’s me again, Ofuma Agali.

I was here last year for the Full Marathon, but I signed off after Half. And that too was pretty rewarding.

I had since gone ahead to plug myself back into the world of poetry. Prior to the 2020 Poetry Marathon, I had a published collection of poems, with the last poem in the collection written around 2008 and one last embellished one around 2014. And then, I had gone almost blank with creative writing, what with the other kinds of professional writing that was taking all of my time. When I came out of that lacuna, fiction came calling; poetry became hard, and the Poetry Half Marathon helped.

This year, I am here again. I wish to do the Full. And to finish it. And I really want to do this, despite several odds.

See you all soon and best wishes to you all.