Details |
Nwafor Oji Awala Poem
It's gilded in bright colours
Like a peacock butterfly;
It sparkles in splendour
Like a diamond in the sun;
When it rests, it rests
In confined dank darkness,
In a bowel of nightmare
With what remains of a king:
a diet for forbidden creatures.
Now to what gain or profit
Are the swellings of ego
Which defined and measured
His reign of majesty?
Copyright © Nwafor Oji Awala | Year Posted 2024
|
Details |
Nwafor Oji Awala Poem
I am the ghost of your journey,
Failures of your past,
I am a shadow of you,
Made of cockroaches of the night ,
I am a video on silence,
Of the uglies in your closet.
Can one run away from his bowels?
Today was the tomorrow that has come
Embrace me and in silence
Follow your light
For a smooth journey
To tomorrow.
Copyright © Nwafor Oji Awala | Year Posted 2024
|
Details |
Nwafor Oji Awala Poem
We go and come
We come again and go again
...a ring
Like water that ascends
...to return as rain
...to smoke up again...
A circle
An order
My ancestors are back
Staring into my soul
Through the eyeballs
Of my children.
Copyright © Nwafor Oji Awala | Year Posted 2024
|
Details |
Nwafor Oji Awala Poem
Change vomited dark entrails
Of the bald vulture on my clan;
We were buried,
One after the other,
In the belly of the village stream,
And pulled out
Almost immediately
To choruses that had no place
When waist dance shared peace
From the full moon;
We have brayed and prayed
In the names of strange ancestors
Printed in a book of curses, blessings,
And chronicles of their blessed exodus
But we have been sinking
Down the understream
Among the half dead and the forgotten;
We reek of bile throws
From a turn in history
When our men were led from line
By yellow ants
Thus change has treated
MY clan this badly.
Copyright © Nwafor Oji Awala | Year Posted 2024
|
Details |
Nwafor Oji Awala Poem
Vibrations burst in my muscles
Like warring armies of
Water and wave that
Surge to electrify a city--
I want to leap on the red hill
At the village arena
Like a mighty leopard
And pounce on a willing opponent,
Throw him in the dust
To proclaim a sounding victory
But there is no red hill
At the village arena anymore
Wrestling is no longer
A dear spot among my clansmen
Gold, diamond and rubies
Have lost their shine in the dust.
Copyright © Nwafor Oji Awala | Year Posted 2024
|
Details |
Nwafor Oji Awala Poem
We
Emerge
Through
The innards
Of drenched
Scarlet, with
A piercing cry
Of an afflicted
Crow, away
From clan,
Rising slowly,
A flaming ember,
Over the fingers
Of trees
We grow,
We plough
And web next
To kill and take
With gluttony
Of the hyena
For food, love
And wealth
But all
Too soon
To retire
As sinking
Red ball
Behind
The
Fingers
Of
Trees
Copyright © Nwafor Oji Awala | Year Posted 2024
|
Details |
Nwafor Oji Awala Poem
Fire is a spirit,
crackling vibrations,
sirring catalyst;
force and energy
of the midday sun.
I raced over
mountains, caressed
hairs of strong
forests and rolled
over balling rivers.
But this dour
fluorescence Is a
used canister
rusting to dust
where doting memories
of the midday sun
lazy along the silver
line into the
grove of silence.
Copyright © Nwafor Oji Awala | Year Posted 2024
|