Read: Poetry

1| 2 | 3| 4 | 5 | 6

MATTERS NOT
UCHE PETER UMEZ

in memory of Odi

I

matters
not ? decades it might take, the news

will
break with its bitter tang on your tongue:

the
bullet finds in the temple rare release,

the
bullet finds in the heart a deathless song;

pipes
burst, the flesh is charred in fire’s orgasm,

tanks
crush stubborn necks in political ism,

matters
not ? when the news comes to us:

drink,
drink on your whiskey of indifference.

II

the
river bears its silent burden of corpses,

suffers
alone, like us, slave to the memories

dark
and tangled as mangrove roots;

the
hopeless find in the sky no green shoots;

the
future looks like rags on the horizon of life,

when
we burn from the sweep of poverty’s knife;

matters
not ? beauty is mined from the delta,

ugliness
is grafted to its splintered heart, no iota

of
pity is spared for the swelling fright of death

among
my kin while dollars soil your hearth.

III

matters
not ? your eulogist would say we’re beasts:

why
resist this rule of fawning and avarice?

more
gainful to bow than to stand

or
stake one’s blood for an ordinary land;

no,
we can’t be hoaxed by your leaden sermon,

tickled
in the arms of visions teased by the moon;

we
may suffer doubts in the smithy of rising throes,

as
earth lures us with eternal grave repose;

decades
may mark reparation’s birth

as
we enumerate the days with sour teeth;

(yet)
matters not how long ?

my
land steams in mire; she will rise, strong

as
a storm, unbending like the flare

of
oil politics that bodes ash to its slavish heirs.

UCHE PETER UMEZ is the author of the award-winning children’s novella, Sam and the Wallet. He is a fellow of the International Writing Program, U.S.A. and one of the 26 winners of the 2008 Commonwealth Short Story Competition.

BLOODY BEATS
TOBI ASO

From Time’s gallery
We watch
The painful dance
 Of a drunkard
Staggering painfully
 To the staccato
Of Kalashnikovs
 And roaring grenades  
The spill of blood
Boundless tears
And sad ululations
Reinvigorate excited drummers
Incited to war
By tortured memories
Of wooden homes
Covered by thatches
And palm fronds
All gutted by spilling oil fires
Of spit baths
While communal rivers
Reeking with oil
Are fit only for faeces
Of asphyxiating smoke
That takes over the skies
Laying its dark fangs
Upon the young and the old. 
    
What the drunkard drinks
Rumbles and tumbles
Precariously in his belly
And the more he drinks
The louder the beats
Even tears of the kidnapped
Will mingle with the tears
As the drummers seek
To drink equally
From their pots
From which
The drunkard alone
Seeks to drink.

TOBI ASO is an undergraduate student of Law.