Agholor Leonard Obiaderi is a High School teacher in Delta State, Nigeria. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in the English Language. An ardent lover of the written word, he considers himself a collector of poetic imagery. He has published a poem in Short Story Library and has poems forth-coming in Barnwood and Mas Tequila Review.
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Five Poems (July 20, 2011. Issue 29.)
Drop Dead
Rather a shooting star
Zapping across anaemic clouds
Than crawl on a wheelchair
To feel the tombstone.
The inscription is sharper
Than the commandments
From the ten mountains.
Before requiem moonlight
The windy flame-out
My fruit drops into a rotten abyss
A dissolution into mist
Like the sun lapping up milky dew.
My children gaggle my name
Their jiggling throats prolong
Footsteps not extinguished
On concrete.
The wheelchair bounding hill-down
Made of crushed athritic bones
Spins silver-grey wheels
Tubes of bladdered incontinence
A life-time of humiliation
Weak limbs dragging the burden.
Grey cells melt and flow
Over the cobweb of years
Bone-marrow like a pipe-bomb
To explode three score and ten
Years. Regret flows over me
Like fresh blood.
Brief is bliss.
Put a spark to my foot
Higher and higher.
Watch my flame
Hug the wind.
Departure
The luggage piled high
In the hall squatted
Like sandbags against the flood
I slipped on dry tears.
Unripe grapes
Sharp against my tongue
Like bitter kisses you gave me
As tokens of love.
Two gold rings and cathedral vows
Witnessed by a solemn congregation.
When your sun divorced my moon.
My boat fought against the waves
As the lunar force thrashed the tide,
The ebb and flow.
I stumbled toward the door
No anchor to hold me back.
Yet, I refused to hurl blame
Across high barricades
When the union became sour .
At breaking ,
Glances cut deep
Sharper than shark- teeth
Or old insults tossed carelessly
Across the marital bed.
Eyes hesitated
To lower the drawbridge.
The still moat mirrored
The passions of nights
Spent inhaling the scent of the moon .
If you don't remember me
The foot-mat will.
Night,
Two stars drifted ,
One south: the other north.
Homeless
The sun's hell cracked
The tarmac on our backs
As we travelled
Spitting tar and gravel
On spines and shoulder blades
Branded by scars.
In the rain
We huddled in doorways.
Teeth chattered
Choked a mouthful of stones.
Chill-bullied,
We tried pick-pocketing sleep.
Homeless,
We colonized City Park
And rent-free alleys
With other ghosts
More deathly pale
Than white-powder syringes
That caused images in the retina
To blur.
Then the towers of bottles
Wrapped in brown paper bags
And the sad agony of a life
Spent gulping cups.
Refugees,
We sold dreams of the seven lean cows
And bought droughts; relics older
Than even the hot desert sand.
Jetsam and float-sam
From the sea, we trampled
Through the surging streets.
Leaving no footprints.
But bumping into monsters
From Hairytannia
We became cold-blooded.
Hunger had made us weightless.
Astronauts must clone our
Lighter- than -air genes.
More than homes,
We lost our souls as foggy breath
Acquired strange identity.
The Ghost of Godot
We travelled lost kingdoms
Territories of ether
Miles of home-sickness.
Apart from footprints outside
The cave, the space yawned.
A picture crouched
Behind our irises.
A bearded man , the wind
Shocked his hair as
White as a lightning flash
The promise of eternal happiness
Put fire to our feet
But fear struck us hard.
What if …?
We dreaded the return trip
Over lands guarded by
The spears of hostile tribes.
But even worse, the vacancy
Of a failed expectation.
What if…?
The journey warned us of visions
That easily dissolved into mist.
We could have retreated
But hopeful futility
Goaded us toward horses of possibility
That and the humiliation
Of a cleft tongue.
A destination of winter.
We shouted,
Roused the cold mountain
Air with strange diphthongs.
The silent echoes
Were a cold welcome.
We sought a bearded face
But found shapeless ghosts
Far weaker than ourselves.
Dusty shoes
Outside an empty cave.
Nothing else.
The Has-been
In search of a sun
With wings
My falcon lay dying.
The ancient Chinese remedy
Of crushed chicken breast-bone
And bile of unicorn
Could not restore the crest.
Yesterday I danced
Without breath or feet
I was water hugging
Its way around rocks.
In the sky, I caught birds
In one swoop
Stealth -dive prey
From camouflage clouds.
Then I fell into a shadow moon
Age and creaking bones
Slowed my dance-steps
Thickened my knees.
In dance, I was caught
Mid-step
(fossilized)
In the poverty of motion.
The light dimmed without warning.
I held the sky in my palm
But perching on craggy rocks
Had blunted my claws,
Cramped my feet.
The feathers drifting down
The hot-cold wind
Wrote a proverb
In the soft sand. |