CLANGINGS: This is not a poem...!!!!

This is not a note about Ex-Lovers
It is about the stunning unbefriendable women across world
Fenced away by the unseen wings of space

This is not an epistle 
It is about la-di-dahs who in 4745 days of their love lives, 
Never ever bordered to send a love letter 
Or receive a gift of rose either

This is not a poem per se
It is a reminder to not hold back a good thing
Because, you temporarily are just a custodian
Of a heart- a baby’s heart seething 

This is not a battleground
It is the gun-sounds of your heart-shots
Rendering my body into a debris 

This is not about heartaches and breakups
It is trusting my teen daughter to not rely on my opinion
To date a guy I know not from Eve

This is not about stringing words or painting hieroglyph-ed prescriptions
For blind patients
It is about a deaf man blowing a cello to dead men, walking

This is not about uncertainty or errata 
It is about cats caterwauling at the sight 
Of hapless dancing butterflies

This is not about sextractions or macho-quotients
It is about knowing the truth
Tasting the truth, yet testing the truth
In order to believe the lies

This is not a poem
So I need you to stop looking out for tropes
Where there is no imagery or symbols

This is not about dance macabre
It is lilting on a foot and scratching your itch
when all you got is peppered nails of hunger

This again is not about smashing
It is about varying pleasure with pressure 
Twitching and switching tongue-speed,
at mastered angles of attack

This is not about Amnesty or honesty
It is about Travesty 
Of handling hoodlums consent
Of reincarnation with blazing cudgels 

This is not about incarceration 
It is about death coming
Brandishing kisses and saying
In a familiar dreamy voice-
‘I bring you good news from yonder’

This is not a screaming contest
It is a whimpering release
Sliding disbelief into disaffection
And expecting anything short of regrets

This is not about a loveless world 
It is about finding a best friend
And hoping not to be friend-zoned for life

This is not about getting lost in lust 
It is in you looking for me 
And me finding you at the crossroad

This is not about making heaven or love
It is about ascending to the climax of freedom
And resisting return to the waste and chaos of landfills 

This is not about ‘red things’; red chili pepper
Red-lips 
Bloody hot things you dare not sup with your mouth;
It is about the riotous fluxes sieving blazing load-stones

This not about banking on God or 
Maidens seeking sexual deposits
It is about temples where miracles are procured
With banged-mints in the bank of God

This is not about guns 
It is not about school kids
It is not about News men and new lies
It is about unaccounted cadavers whisked off at birth

This is not about emergencies and hospitals
It is about caregivers decapitating invalids
To allow beds for jaundiced parents of haemophilia

This is not about birth marks or stretchmarks
Rather, it is about the stub that registers the sacrifices you’ll never need to make again

This is not about defloration on a tomb-slab
It is about rage tattooed on the inner thighs of 
Forsaken kids.

This is not about Fate or Faith
Neither is it about the gospel
It is about indissoluble lies frothing
In fabricated mouths

This is not a dirge 
Nor is it a requiem in the funeral of a killer
It is about the unshed tears for kids who died kissing bombs in sleep
Guessing they were toys in real life

This is not a preachment about God
It is a soliloquy about demigods selling dogs
To feed their gods of unbelief

This I say is not your everyday verses
Or clichéd words strewn on paper
It is about the wounded lines you hear with
Your eyes
The forked words inveigling your eardrums

This is not about selfishness
It isn’t even about you
It is about the me in you
The you in me
it is about us

© Shittu Fowora 2013

Puff, puff, pass (Spoken Word Poem by Ndukwe Onuoha)

Puff, puff, pass

Puff, puff, pass

Pain don’t last

‘Long as we got this grass

Puff, puff, pass

That’s all I hear

Yo; who’s that shawty

Over there?

My people excel on self-delusion

Puffing on this government-sanctioned infusion

Of misery and pain

Systematic degradation

Political polygamy laced with state oppression.

But that’s alright my friend,

Tonight we puff, puff, pass

Puff, puff, pass

Pain don’t last

‘Long as we got this grass.

Long as we got these lies

While still they ‘off’ our lives

Pain don’t last

‘Long as we got this grass.

My mom swears I was born into a good economy,

My dad says “screw it; the government’s a euphemism for sodomy”

My brother’s too busy working for the white man to pick up his phone

My sister goes “where?” when I ask if she’s coming back home

My cousin’s got a Shengen visa – says he’s going to husle

And back home Alex O’s lost the means to shuffle

‘E go beta’ – this too shall pass

‘Cos pain don’t last

‘Long as we got this grass

Jos is burning – your life’s not worth a penny, so lose it

Kidnapping is brown gold – there’s the fixed deposit account to prove it

The new ‘Joseph’ of our time is an ex-convict come from two years behind bars

But see, pain don’t last, ‘long as we got this grass.

‘Cos we will puff

We will pass

We will passWe will puff

‘Cos pain don’t last, ‘long as we got this grass.

So what if they keep kids off school, and on the streets ‘cos that’s cool?

So what if in the process they all turn to drugs?

Wouldn’t that be the perfect army for politicians in need of warlords?

Look, pain don’t last, ‘long as we got this grass!

So what if our mothers are kept in perpetual poverty?

Let’s keep making more laws that derail our own humanity,

While we allow our lawmakers corner the wealth of our nation

‘Cos pain don’t last, ‘long as we got this grass!

It doesn’t matter if our roads are another name for death traps;

And as long as no one says something, then perhaps

We can all get bye till the sweet bye and bye

‘Cos pain don’t last, ‘long as we got this grass!

So what if every mayhem is termed religious?

We might as well kill each other, for that might make us righteous,

‘Cos we know it’s election season, and the President won’t make a fuss.

Hey, pain don’t last, ‘long as we got this grass!

Anyone can aspire – as long as he has a godfather,

‘Cos they’re having a hard time making the votes of you and I matter,

And they’ll get top honours, even if they don’t pass class.

But pain don’t last, ‘long as we got this grass!

But.

What if we were to have a moment of rare clarity

And our eyes were opened to the grave calamity

Of our leaders’ unabashed vanity

A fostering collective insanity

A nation’s wasted opportunity

Seized by policies of clear-cut ambiguity?

Will we puff, puff, pass

Or will we pass to puff?

Will we ask for more,

Or will we say “enough”?

Will we stand for truth,

Or will we waste our youth?

Will we puff, puff, pass,

Or will we pass to puff?

by Ndukwe Onuoha