Adrift on a rising wave
not made of sea
or silver hum of distant bees
nor wind
or leaves on waving trees
not earth not sky
nor singing birds
but movement made of living words
that float and curl
and dart and hide
strange fish to catch on a poets tide

The ballad of Nalum by Johnson Oyeniran



Under a Sakura tree on a warm and pleasant day,
Sat a battle hardened soldier, trying to stay awake.

''Arise, you must stay vigilant'' muttered the combatant,
''Or youll suffer the same fate as private Melicent.''

But her eyes grew weary then she fell into a deep sleep,
Before the enemy quietly slipped into their keep.

They were bested by ruthless devils more savage than beast,
All the while the sleeping soldier slumbered against a tree.

Luckily for her, she was mistaken for a body,
So they left her be and continued with their killing spree.

Time passed since the enemy took the army by surprise,
They outnumbered them nine to two and left not one alive.

When the enemy were done having the time of their lives,
They merrily marched home with plunder and kukri knives.

In the midst of her fallen comrades, the soldier woke up,
In a state of shock at what she had just seen, she choked up.

''This isnt a prank nor am i dreaming'' wailed the soldier,
''My...brothers and sisters in arms are six feet under!''

''Before long, their mangled corpses will be food for scavengers,
Then nature will bury whats left of these warriors.''

Alone and orderless, the soldier randomly went west,
A tragic choice she would ultimately come to regret.

Now up ahead, roughly half a kilometer away,
Was the entire enemy, camping beside a great lake.

''This can not be happening'', whispered the protagonist,
''How did I end up near the camp of these terrorist?!''

But before she could try to sneak away, she got captured,
Embarrassed by her mistake, the soldier felt so awkward.

After hours of abuse, she was brought before their leader,
He demanded to know how she survived their massacre.

However, the female soldier preferred to stay silent,
Which caused the commander to get extremely violent.

He ordered his guard to pluck out one of her amber eyes,
And use an urumi to render asunder her thighs.

She was no stranger to torture and refused make a sound,
Though she was covered in a pool of her blood in the ground.

Her hands were bound in bronze chains by the commanders order,
But little did he know he had made a deadly error.

Whilst a male guard lead her to a human sized cage at night
She slipped out her chains once she saw he was preoccupied.

Immediately, she wrapped her chains around the guards neck,
Fueled by rage, she choked him with her might till he dropped dead.

Nearby was a deep hole she used to conceal the dead guard,
But first, she took his uniform and cut off his male part.

Later, she blended in with her enemy in disguise,
Her plan was to destroy them all with a fatal device.

Now in an empty tent, she performed a ritual,
Her special blood was needed to make her wish possible.

Soon after,12 ghostly heads hovered out of her symbol,
They were ancient wish granters who were all ethereal.

''Your request?'' asked the 12 heads floating in the air,
''Fashion me a bomb'', begged the female soldier in despair.

''As you wish'', answered the 12 heads she summoned from heaven,
''With this, Ill avenge them'', declared the servicewoman.

Just then, word had quickly spread that the soldier had escaped,
So the enemy searched high and low for her in great haste.

Suddenly, they were bewitched by the soldier's melody,
One by one, they mindlessly marched to her tent, slowly.

Out stepped the female soldier standing firm and unafraid,
Wrapped around her body, was the bomb the 12 heads had made.

At the cost of her life, she ignited her lethal bomb,
And at last, the whole enemy both small and great, was gone.

Nalum, Nalum the brave and mighty female warrior!
May your story live on within my poem forever!

If I wanted to take a little time,
If I wanted to share my inner mind,
If someone said it had to rhyme,
I got no time for that ****…

Paint for me, in your chosen words,
The lines are branches; the letters, birds.
Sing to me songs sublime; absurd,
Just don’t tell me it has to rhyme…

Settle the bitter, ancient scores,
Make the audience seek for more,
Make the shoes I stand in yours,
Do not make me repeat myself…

Write me a letter, I long to hear,
Your poet’s voice in my mental ear,
Till the world does shed a collective tear,

I think I’ve made myself perfectly-  uh…

Clear.

What is poetry
Is that even a question
Poetry!
Marvellous words design in lines
Transform into verses
It gave birth to sonnet
It comes in lyric
Of beautiful rhyme
Serving as rhythm in melody

Poetry, as old as man
Formed  from the Mediaeval times
Down Neoclassical
My dear, it's Romance
Coming from Elizabethan era
Formed a modern movement
Something so beautiful
Beautiful to a fault, it's called poetry

Ask my fathers what poetry means.
To Thomas Watts it's a way of love
Butter Yaests  paths way for activism
Grace gives strength to recommendation
Ojiade fights corruption
Pope graces  Cesar
Osadibe makes appeal
And it a way of life in lines

What is poetry, you ask?
It is a way of redemption
Scribbled down, it's description
A map of direction
Given as recommendation
To a vast way of calculation

Ask a chemist, and he says what on earth is not chemistry
A physician says life is based on assumption
Psychology say man is nature
ichthyologists sees the beautiful aquaculture
A teacher sees the best methodology
Historian gives tells great mythology
Which gives ride to sociology
Yet poetry is nature.  

Bellah

My love is the shape of canine teeth and claw marks
I leave around your neck,
the way I leave poems decaying in an unforgiving landfill —
the gods have turned away in disgust
as I sit and lick, like a rabid dog,
the maggots chipping away from the inside —
the entrails of my grief, all pulled out without mercy,
without a deathbed confession,
without a god to listen.
I long for something else to unfold;
something sacred and beautiful
when you turn my body inside out, but lo.
This is as deep and far as we go.
Tell me, I beseech, does my filth look better inside out,
uncovered, on display,
penetrating your very skin?
Take what you need, love, they are all yours —
my sins, my wounds, my impiety
in exchange for your darkened heart — I’ll spit it out
and swallow it back
down to my underbelly where no one can ever take it —
not you, not the gods, not their fallen, forsaken angels.

Forgive me — forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
Forgive my unforgiving hands, forgive my unforgiving poems
if our sick, twisted, defilement is all they ever know.

Such a classic mortal blunder to lay
my spine as it erodes, graceless, inelegant
on Galatea’s cold, ivory arms;
such delicate carvings can never be human, look human,
feel human under my lonesome bones.

I long to see you flinch and break
into fine, liquid, rain of dust blinding me,
covering the walls of this room
in a blameless shade of white: a new asylum ward
for my kind of insanity,
you say.
It envelopes like light around my awe
and my forlorn limbs,
tangled with Galatea’s unmoving ones.
I look for comfort within brittle carcasses
scraped of everything they could ever give.

The quiet persists eerily.
But here, Pygmalion’s gifts remain untainted:
the apex of auger shells, the beak of a songbird
the blunted ceriths, the rusty chisels
all impaling my spinal bones.
Yet the sculptor’s kisses, long erased,
the careful carvings, long defaced,
long reduced into a Grecian ruin.
I bury my body on your arms yet they find no rest
against the ghostly pleas of mammalian tusks.

How many for your fingers?
How many for your hair?


Tell me, Galatea, were you carved to bear the weight of
all the sea salt I swallowed as I drowned?
Soften under my meandering thoughts; I long
to see you flinch and break — like all the dead elephants —
any reminder that you yield pliantly to the voice
of the love goddess, that you were once turned human.
Break now, your solid arms, under my own collapse
over the sea foam caught on fire.

I am no longer bending and weeping to pick myself up.
Here it all goes down and ends:
my bones,
and yours,
burning,
snapping.
Nothing —
nothing less glorious will last after us.

— Fray Narte