Night Opens My Mind
Night opens my mind
like a window
hinged on broken frames
And these hues
of memories, clatter past
like a storm
that slits the mind
*
i walked into her room
nondescript, littered with
relics of yesterday
askew with utensils of laughter
i walked through
the uncultured rafia
of wigs lying on the rug,
bottle of perfume
comb
unbound hand-outs
ear-rings
broken strings of waist-beads
*
i flip through the pictures
And behold, again
the smile that stretches
across her face
to the brink of eternity
*
tableaux of myriad silhouettes
on the pages
the album opens
like a cascade of jeans
And veils of pink
*
Songs came at me
in gusts full of dreams
And the past stood
in the ante-chamber of my hearts
threateningly
*
like the volcano, avalanche of volcanoes
erupting, detonating the shock
that exploded my soul
that Wednesday night
*
i stood livid
in the cross-road
of metaphors, i became one
with songs…
***************
My Anioma
I plunged headlong
into the depth of your soul,
i crossed the canal over to your heart
i bleed, I crawled to your hearth
*
You are the sea
the river
the flooding catalogue of ebbs
the foxtrot of head-tilting reeds
bathing tadpole in the pool
of rippling lake of Atapko
*
The Niger that caress
the dipping paddles,
frogs croaking in the dawn
like the mermaid’s hallelujah
*
Tomorrow is election
we must run, to the east of your feathers.
Because Arewa is armed to the teeth
Egbesu sings the war-song
And OPC slings the bow like kiriji
and prowl in the shackles of Mushin
i run to you, my Anioma
And you pleat your wings wide
Where i hide under the soft feathers
And listen to your cackling chirrup.
***************
I Will Remember You
When nights unfold dreams before me
pictures flash past the wakefulness of my days,
reel past my noon with long and dark shadows
nightmarish shadows that silhouette across the soul
*
i will remember you
*
Let your ghost come to me
wake me from this stream of
arduous sleep, this pain, this grief
that disfigures the soul
*
i will remember you
clad in jeans
that stretch the curves of your waist
with hues subtler than poetry’s
strands of your hair
cascade down like mermaid’s
it echoes the pulse of my heartbeat,
the tonality of my laughter
in the bed-room
when your kisses smack of soda-water
*
i battle with my offspring, shamefacedly
over the springs of your soul
welling across the river-bed
of your succulent tomorrow
*
i hold you
till laughter broke the dam of my
dream
into the tropical face of the sun
*
i hold you
till the moon stabs me
with her crescent full of blood
unsheathe in the scabbard of
a scarlet cloud
i hold you, still
in the deep of my purgatory.
***************
Poems (c) Henry Ajumeze