Unrequited Love

Odinsoeruaka
Destroy me with love
Suck away the juice of my life
Drain me of every fluid of emotion
And discard me, bedraggled
Like a fowl drenched
In an angry rain

Odinsoeruaka
Kill me; yes go ahead
And quench this fire
That flames, wrecking
The foundation of my being
Save me the trauma…this agony

Visit me with a murderous love
But when I’m conveniently dead;
If the post-mortem says
‘Unrequited passion’
Bury me, the carcass of a dead love
In the grave-yard of hope

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The Date

Even when they had sewn up the deed,
the discarded hand-gloves of the surgeons
still lie about in testament.

Even the disquieting sounds
of the Executioner’s iron boots
shall in time re-echo
the other side of forced silences.

Even their gate of power,
as pig-headed as a stubborn anus,
cannot eternally hold back flatulence.

And we wait, patiently, upon
the conscience of time,
the superintendent of all truths,
to pronounce judgement
on the plunderers of our heritage

————————–

Unsympathetic Tenant

He taunts me
First with a twitch
Then a subtle tug
At what I think
Are my intestines
And from within he rumbles
Convulsing in laughter
Jeering, mocking…
Hurting my pride

I squeeze my face
Casting embarrassed glances
Like Judas at the last supper
Again, my tormentor racks
I grind my teeth
Like a goat on a stake
‘Men don’t cry’
I tell myself
‘Men don’t cry’
And a tear drops

This my tormentor-
Unsympathetic bully
Blurs the sight
And makes the ear hear
Sounds so sadly strange
He mocks the nostrils
Tickling them with the aroma
Of imaginary delicacy
And causes a pang-
Pain in the abdomen

I cringe
And he laughs
Hunger laughs
Weirdly, at me
My feeble bravado
My vulnerable humanity
He laughs at me – ‘LANDLORD”

————————–

A Cripple To A Snake

Pretty shining snake
Down the garden lake

You look like a rope
Wriggling down the slope

As you crawl and glide
To your hole to hide

Stop awhile I pray
Muse at me today

And hang your head to sway
The drunken-master way

But, by God! do not strike
For we are both alike

Condemned by crippled fate
To this our limbless state

————————–

Little Part of Me

On this threshold of aborted dreams,
I sing this dirge.
The splattering syllables
Of a constricted heart.

The rhythm is soulful
And the lines without rhymes
As I move behind this procession
To a fraction of my burial.

This little part of me,
Being laid in an infant grave
Amidst solemn whimpering,
I clothe in this sacrifice of words,
I rock with this glorious lullaby
To an early eternal sleep.
Good night!

————————–

(c) Chidozie Chukwubuike