Is this a One-Night Stand?
It’s evening yet the cold
has frozen my blanket.
It’s evening yet and your adamantine
mouth has gone to the silence market.
It’s evening yet, and I’m yet to get a YES.
Is this a one-night stand?
Are we just strangers caught
in-between empty bunks and full libidos?
Strangers who trusted the power
holders not to shed light on the
darkest of their passion as they thrust in dark?
Are we just young boys who a fourteen
yearlong chain cannot drain the blood
off their hard life; young boys who think
with the heart below their torso and not the one above ii?
Tell me we are not.
Tell me there’re many more nights.
Nights you’ll be free to moan
Nights when no one will cast the stones
Nights there’ll be no stones
Nights you’ll moan my name and say, YES.
Here, There’s No God
On the altar of poetry
There’s no God
For he’s proud only
He who has not written
And submitted.
Rejection comes in batches
Spreading like incense in your mails
Pungent … and purging
To show that once again
Your sacrifice has been found wanting.
Back you go
Picking forth verses from your counter panes
Drumming rhythms on your table
Fighting with anything white
Painting them black and blue.
With the next rejection humility comes
For the blank page fears no God
And punctures every ego
And with the next patience comes
More refinements
More improvements
More perfection
__That’s always in process;
For on this altar
There’s no perfection
On this altar
There’s no God
But on this altar
There’re always sacrifices.
Cry, Nigeria, Cry
Cry, Nigeria, cry.
Cry me another Niger
Let the Benue banks overflow
And deep into the villages run.
Let the gravediggers rejoice
For their shovels bend not;
The hard soil now blown
By the heads of the young is
Cooked tender by their hot blood.
Cry, Nigeria, cry
Cry for your white sheet is now crimson
Your leaf yellow and crumpled
Your tenedrers weak and humbled.
Let your wails be heard across Mother Africa
Let Father Universe his weak teeth gnash
For you kill those who save you
And saves those who kill you
__ A pro-lifer that aborts her future.
Cry, Nigeria, cry
Cry me another Niger
Let the Benue banks overflow
And deep into the villages run.
Ugochukwu Anadị is a reader who sometimes writes, especially when there’s need to stabilize his sanity. He’s a student of the University of Nigeria and has been published in Nantygreens Magazine, The Shallow Tales Review, The Woven Poetry, amongst others. His short stories and essays have also been anthologized.
