Petals & Buds

Listen with me -
To broad laughter of petals -
And stifling grunts of hesitant buds
O taste with me -
The wine-song of coy petals:
I’m the bee’s seductive drone atop shy buds…
The winged worry of wooing minstrels has
Awakened the pores of my prescient pollen
And I sing
Tongue-loosed in Time’s ear -

Amid this ringing gorge
Of merry bards;

My song is -
The effervescent grin
Of the sunflower -

Grind me on the whetstone of Time -
Let my dust filter through Time’s fingers
And tug at the shirtsleeves of your mind

O come with me -
To the unchained laughter
Of Kwaa-Falls:
Timeless invocation
In ceaseless monotone.

I am the missing lobe of the kolanut -
The surreal splendor of roost-bound sun -
Awaken the buds of my lyrical erection
And unscrew the cork on my silence

Ode to the Vampire god

Ode to the Vampire god

By James Eze

From five decades of convenient sleep
They stir awake with a new song;
Vendors of new truths –
To lend grace to defaced history

It is once again the harmattan of fate:
When faith froths with hate
To slake the bitter thirst
Of a vampire god

Bus-loads of headless bodies
Crawled in cold convoy across Benue-bridge,
To strangling wails of aged mothers,
Widowed virgins and calloused orphans

They claim that history was on recess
When pristine hate bled Jos to death -
When Maitetsine’s blood-minstrels
Sowed darkness at mid-day

High on the opium of faith
Misplaced angst induce cries
Of dispossessed placenta and angry household gods Mourning the loss of supplicants.

We have seen it all before.
We shall see it over again -
Minstrels of misbegotten faith
Ride oligarchic silence to Kaduna’s killing fields

O the stifled yawn of calloused orphans
… Wilting tendrils –
…Widowed silences -
Douse this flame of misbegotten faith.
With the incandescent innocence
Of a child’s first smile