A lost country
Imagine that Giant,
fruitless expanse,
a country yet was.
hetero-pastiches. places and names
singing absence as a current hymn.
flat note. dead rhythm!
the poet makes gains of lost things,
but I paint a lost country,
reframe it as if that would unclasp death,
as if the breath will come moist still.
loss is present,
but not only in flesh – it is the absence of life,
knowing that what even lives,
is dead already. dead rhyme!
but loss is the end of this death
so that my country yet lives –
in the post-present…
———
Bleak Laughter
I seek no laughter under a tree,
neither do I dream of the passing wind
baring its teeth in laughter,
feet
higher or
levelled,
sometimes like the frazzled earth,
brim with things that burst with salt & sorrow
perching on the dusty pouches and glasses –
stilts of common heads,
necking against dreams
wastes of time and tide:
cellophane
cigarette
liquor
light;
all far removed from
scents, sand, bats,
lies enveloped or wrapped
in the colours of dodgy dawn,
of taints & tact,
as the singular
structure of chaos,
yet the bleak laughter is:
the fleeting, harrying wind,
not the green earth,
sired in an orchestra of nature,
birdsongs unrehearsed…
———
Praise for men who want godly obeisance
We look southward to imaginary gods – simpletons of dust. We need salvation from the salty river of doubt:
clear waters give us feet to walk the land – kill the place of dryness and fetch the life of annelids.
rummage the belly of the earth in search of a bird’s larynx hidden in god’s feet – we look southward, returning to the foothills of the morning we left.
now, let’s give the dust to man of dust – who says he’s god. give it the steely laughter of November’s harmattan, and pour the urine of earthworms as rites of his passage.
———
Poetry © Ndubuisi Martins
Image by Cdd20 from Pixabay