Lamentations by Funmilayo Omoniyi

Lamentations

Honesty is an essential quality 

But oh, what a rare commodity

In my community!

Violence, I'm told, is vice,

But it is as common as rice

In my community!

Wisdom is for the don,

But every dunce,

Lays claim to it

In my community!

Our value system,

Has gone topsy-turvy,

The good is seen as bad

And the bad, good

In my community!

The foolish is wise,

And the wise, foolish.

The honest is poor

And the poor, dishonest

In my community!

Funmilayo Omoniyi was a principal in one of the secondary schools I'm Lagos, Nigeria. She has a Master's Degree in Education. Her teaching subjects are English and French languages. She loves children and she is concerned about the deplorable moral tone of the younger generation.

The Cry Of Orgasm by Esiaba Irobi

The Cry Of Orgasm

She was a Mauritius woman
who sold spicy grocery at Leeds
open market and spoke demotic English
even on the phone that evening
she told me to come over for a chat.
I won't tell you exactly where but
just know it was somewhere in Headingly.

The lights were on to show me the window
of her house and her door. On all fours,
furs erect, like a Yorkshire cat starved
of pudding for two years, I crept in.
The door purred, closed quietly
so as not to wake the neighbours.

She said her husband had a timetable
for beating her, so they were now separated.
We watched Ruby Wax on the coloured 
TV for three minutes then went upstairs,
her blue sleeping gown spiralling behind her
like my lust. Up there, in that grey bedroom,

It was sweet, it was swell, it was juicy;
la cr�me de la cr�me, her olive thighs
squeezing honey on my ever-green cucumber
and, inch-by-inch, devouring it, enjoying it,
relishing it. Dear Reader, I won't tell you a lie,
it was sweet, I lay there, on my back, furs erect,
pawing the air, a lucky cat dissolving in ecstasy,
crystals of sugar forming in my mouth, my brain,

my heart. But just as the tremors were coming,
the tremors of our earthquake, memories
of her husband rippled through her mind, and,
suddenly, like an olive leaf, she wilted.
Instead of a cry of orgasm, she swallowed
and sighed; her eyes scanning the room and 
windows  with fear. The fear got into me too
as she climbed off like a disheartened jockey
who had failed to win the prize at the races

While I lay there, an empty saddle, with no foot
In the stirrup and no kick at the side to spur me on.
Since that day, the condom of our love
Has been broken. And now when I go to the market
I avoid her stall of spices and go to another
Laden with peaches and fresh strawberries
All of which are red and also very sweet.


� 2002 Esiaba Irobi

Esiaba Irobi - a poet, playwright, actor and scholar was born in the Republic of Biafra on October 1, 1960, and lived in in exile in Nigeria, Britain, United States and Germany where he passed away on May 3, 2010. He studied at the Universities of Nigeria, Sheffield and Leeds, and held a B.A. in English/Drama, M.A. Comparative Literature, M.A. Film/Theatre, and PhD in Theatre Studies. In 1992 his play, Cemetery Road won the prestigious World Drama Trust Award. His books include Nwokedi, The Colour of Rusting Gold, Cotyledons, Hangmen Also Die, and Why I don't Like Philip Larkin and Other Poems. He leaves behind a wife, Uloaku and a son, Nnamdi.

Arboreal by Esiaba Irobi

Arboreal

(for Obi Maduakor)

 

                                                Master,

It is only the pigeon who has left the loft

and journeyed forth and has been brained

and bloodied in wing, beak and claw, who

returns to recite anew the myth of the land

 

I am winging homewards now.

 

The homing pigeon is winging homewards

now. I am nosing homewards now.

Wending southwards towards the equator.

From the North! But the landscape

has changed.  The pools of water have dried up.

 

And from these heights, even when

I bank low like a jetfighting plane

scraping the leaves on the tree tops

avoiding the jagged edges of the mountain tops

I cannot tell the landmarks anymore.

I cannot see the milestones anymore.

Cannot see the tarmac or the anthills.

 

The trees we planted, the branches

wherein we nested to be nearer to the sun

have been caterpillared; bulldozed

by the beasts, trodden under by the cloven hooves

of donkeys and camels and lame horses…

 

Once more I have to live in a church,

under the ceiling of an undertaker.

Once more I have to live in the village council hall

Under the roof of a thief and sorcerer

Where are the landmarks, the crossroads,

Where we used to wing rightwards

To the farms to share the final cornseeds

From the harvest with ants and weaverbirds.

 

Where are the little pools of water

In whose liquid mirrors we could see ourselves

In flight, diving homewards with glee

Feeling the strength in numbers, undaunted

By the smoke and cannon balls they are firing

Near the village square to celebrate the death

Of a thief who was christened and crowned a chief.

 

There are no more streams I hear

To drink from after the feast of grubs

And worms. The earth has crusted over

They tell me, and the sunbaked mud

Speaks like a traitor eager to trap my claws

In its fissures concealing the dirt, if I land.

 

There is, as I understand it now,

No rest for the wicked in this country

And its polluted provinces. So I am turning back

To where I came from, North, to find a nest

Somewhere on the sixth floor of a building

Along Broadway in New York City,

And wait till it is safe to travel South again.

 

Master, I am winging Northwards now!

But I shall return. Yes I will return

When the nsa-nsa smiles again and the cockerel

Begins to crow at dawn again. Meanwhile,

I nest here sharpening my tool in this workshed

You helped build, knowing, like all exiles, that:

 

It is only the pigeon who has left the loft

and journeyed forth, and has been brained,

And bloodied in wing, beak and claw,

Who returns, to recite anew the myth of the land.

 

Esiaba Irobi - a poet, playwright, actor and scholar was born in the Republic of Biafra on October 1, 1960, and lived in in exile in Nigeria, Britain, United States and Germany where he passed away on May 3, 2010. He studied at the Universities of Nigeria, Sheffield and Leeds, and held a B.A. in English/Drama, M.A. Comparative Literature, M.A. Film/Theatre, and PhD in Theatre Studies. In 1992 his play, Cemetery Road won the prestigious World Drama Trust Award. His books include Nwokedi, The Colour of Rusting Gold, Cotyledons, Hangmen Also Die, and Why I don't Like Philip Larkin and Other Poems. He leaves behind a wife, Uloaku and a son, Nnamdi.

Laura by Esiaba Irobi

Laura
(For Laura Posta) 
 

May the future forgive me, Laura,

for what happened to our love.

 

I am holding its bleeding carcass

in my hands as I intone this elegy

 

in an evening of rotting rose petals

and dead flowers. Like the drystalks

 

of the 'Orphan's hair', that rare plant

whose leaves you plucked and gave

 

to me on the banks of the Danube. I have

preserved, in the vase of my memory,

 

the stanzas of the love songs you taught me

in Budapest, on the banks of the Danube.

 

Tavaszi szel vizet araszt, Viragom viragom

Minden madar farsat valaszt, Viragom viragom...

 

Forgive me, Laura. My Hungarian love, forgive me,

you who could speak the five languages of love

fluently, forgive me. It was my fault. The phone

calls I never made. The cards I should have sent.

Letters I did not reply in time. The silences. How sad.

How very sad. How still sad after all these moons

and the eclipse of the sun we swore would never set.

 

O! if only I could reverse the rotation of this confused

universe or rewind the video tape of our love, erase

the tracks of my betrayal, and replay, as I keep

replaying, again and again, the track, "Laura"

by Charlie Parker on this CD I bought in that cinema

shop in Budapest on that night we missed the film

and dined instead in that fake Indian restaurant

on what street now, perhaps we could,

like deciduous trees, begin again:

 

Hat en immar kit valasszak, Viragom viragom

Te engemet en tegedet, Viragom viragom

 

But it is too late now. Too too late. As you wrote in

your final card, 'The Titanic has sunk!' and forever.

 

Forgive me, Laura. Someday I will learn to love

with the steadfastness of the stone, not the wind.

Forgive me.

 

Esiaba Irobi - a poet, playwright, actor and scholar was born in the Republic of Biafra on October 1, 1960, and lived in in exile in Nigeria, Britain, United States and Germany where he passed away on May 3, 2010. He studied at the Universities of Nigeria, Sheffield and Leeds, and held a B.A. in English/Drama, M.A. Comparative Literature, M.A. Film/Theatre, and PhD in Theatre Studies. In 1992 his play, Cemetery Road won the prestigious World Drama Trust Award. His books include Nwokedi, The Colour of Rusting Gold, Cotyledons, Hangmen Also Die, and Why I don't Like Philip Larkin and Other Poems. He leaves behind a wife, Uloaku and a son, Nnamdi.

Where Is Our Government? by Niyi Osundare

(From a survivor of the Abuja-Kaduna Train bomb; Mon., March 28, 2022)

Too many ills do a nation kill  

     Ills just as many as the corpses

That clutter every gutter

     Of our callously mis-governed country

 

The roads are slaughter slabs

     The rails only take us on terminal journeys

Every coach is a waiting coffin

     The nation’s graveyards puke from unspeakable excess

 

“Bandits”, “terrorists”: a tardy government

     Plays name-games while criminals 

Rampage without restraint

     Different name, same Nemesis

 

What do you call a nation

     Where food is scarce

And peace is scarcer; where 

     Life sells at a thousand for one kobo?

 

Bandits raid the homestead

     Bandits raid the streets

Bandits raid the schools

     Bandits raid the temples

 

Bandits rack army barracks

     Bandits pummel police stations. . . .

Our government fled long ago

     Without leaving a forwarding address

Niyi Osundare

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.