Best Benin Poems

A mass of grey and rusted silver strewn
By the sky god from sifted appurtenances.
Preserve of ancients jousting with modernity,
Behind edifice a disperse of brimming slums
With piles, heaps of filth, debris, decay and stench;
Congestion and the jostle for ends and gains.

Benin endowed with neo wiles obviating...

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Ivory gleams like moonlight carved into memory—
the face of Idia, Iyoba, Queen Mother of Benin,
whose spirit breathes through the silence of exile.

In 1897, they came with fire and iron,
tore open the palace of the Oba,
looted not only gold and bronze,
but the heartbeat of a people.
And...

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Pro Patria Mori

Missouri volunteers bit bullets, watched
as Santa Ana's baggage washed
their brazen hair, hip deep
in the Rio Grande.
The ancient river moved across the land
Like slow drool down a leather cheek.

Bang! Paul Bunyan's balls
rolled down the Great Divide, rattled
across the porcelain sea.
Oh, the girls!
Hair hot and...

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