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Best Poems Written by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Below are the all-time best Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Jaywalking

This is when the old and the young,
beasts and confraternal drunks
damn the consequences of death
lying porous on crossroads upon
bifurcated paths, fractured junctions
and ceremonial cul-de-sacs...

The time is immaterial,
so long as the traffic lights — the veggie-green,
the claret, and the urine-amber —choose their slow
blinking and rapid-eyelid movement carefully.
And moon might decide not to power its own light.
Tenebrous tracks then fill our eyes with the age of
sea monsters blinded by charcoal waves.
Need I hail the neon signs of bordellos!
And the city’s restless constellations!
They sparkle with rage and with the brio of rioting stars,
thus adding celestial films to our already overloaded eyes....
But that’s another story.

C’mon... we are no Deer or Asahel descendants!
Closely related to sloths, millipedes and snails,
we drag our feet, which in turn drag the volumes of
stupidity in us, aggravated by drams and midnight parties
held between a flowing weekend and a stagnant Thursday.

Details | Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu Poem

African Rain

It falls with grace.
Metallic bawls hail the strength of zinc roofs.
At the mercy of the thatch,
Drops drip from needle points of skeletal
Palm fronds.
Particles of rain descend on thresholds
Among dewed terrains.
The petrichor befriends the atmosphere,
Caressing limpid warmth with floating cold.
Lightning, a white dancing Anaconda, races with speed,
Filling the tenebrous plains with lights of hope.
Troubled skies ululate through the power of thunder.
I always recline on that liquid voice!
Rainmakers cream their palms
And roast fresh leaves of
Epochal petals
Plucked from somnolent trees.
Bubbles, green and full of life, puke,
Filling up the mouths of burning woods.
Grey darkness suggests the pleasant wars of
May through October,
When distant wayward drops
Trickle before the deafening deluge.
I hail the blandishments of July
For the society of fattened yams and the
Worthy tendrils —festooned confetti of ceremonial
Harvests.
Droughts yawn in vain when the attitude of
Wet seasons befriends the skies,
Yielding fecund grimes that grace the soil.

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Fireworks

They rise and sparkle and crackle,
Shaming the nakedness of the skies
And the city, with one frightful flame of
Youth,
Burning with the zest of
Seasonal lore.
At Christmas, they salute the days
Creamed by snow and sleet,
Thrusting in us the wisdom of
Global ceremonies.
They are the lightning of Yuletide —
Lightning unaccompanied by rain.
Shaped in balls and spears, and lean
Fragments of flagrant colours,
They are armed with their own thunder —
Thunder that speaks volumes and calms the rage in
Frenetic dogs.
They are coloured paints splashed lavishly across the broadest
Canvas ever —black and seamless
We see through their lens, the running dusts
Of sparks,
The dancing circus of sky-circuits
And the happy wars waged on the frontiers
Of seasons.
They strobe around the cold earth.
New Year’s Eve is riddled with conundrums,
Waking sleepy souls to sneeze up details of
A frazzled year.
The heavens are lit up lavishly,
Electrified to stupor,
Reminding us of choirs that chorus to the tunes
Of life everlasting.
Carousels ride through our minds, young now,
Old tomorrow,
With sparks that shine this moment
And dim the next.
Such is life.

Details | Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu Poem

If My Ancestor Boarded The Titanic

If he had boarded the frail proud lady,
My ancestor would have been a hysteric.
It would have been nothing new to him, though —
Boarding such a mighty vessel
With an unsinkable testimonial.
He had been on board Noah’s ark
For more than 40 days and 40 nights —
The first-ever lockdown in the first-ever
Flood pandemic.
He would have consulted an oracle before boarding
Lady Titanic,
To ascertain the position of the sinking stars,
And of course the position of the damned iceberg —
That monstrously frigid, vengeful, whitish monster,
Sitting like a proud humongous harlot on
The wavy vestibule of the docile North Atlantic.
He would have winced loudly from the cruel cold of
A bland and unforgiving April.
The Atlantic would have seemed so small to him,
Having floated on many oceans-in-one during
Uncle Noah’s wayward flood.
Things would have been different.
He would have sent off a dove and a raven
Before The Titanic set sail, to survey the grottos of the Atlantic.
The birds would have returned with news of the ocean,
Bringing tales wrapped in olive leaves, of any old
Scrimmage between the waves
And the iron foot of the jealous iceberg.
That would have been BREAKING NEWS,
Written BOLDLY in RED,
The colour of sea-danger, sea-terror . . . .
Things would have been different!
Perhaps The Titanic would have plied the reverse side of
The Atlantic . . . You know! . . . The less slippery side.


Less frenetic and less troublesome, and with no icebergs,
No matter how frigid the weather, in that flustered April,
Which my ancestor would have primarily called The Fourth Moon.
Yes! . . .
Sailing stealthily behind the Atlantic; the other side of it less travelled,
Cautious of the envy of the destroyer known euphemistically as Iceberg.
True . . . !
Like visiting the moon via the reverse side . . . ! Where the craters are
Perpetually on night shift . . . .
And things would have been different.
Lest I forget: a Greek ancestor would have brewed coffee with seawater.
And if greenish bubbles bobbed about, he would rather have hailed a barque.

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Christmas

Christmas is a long song sung in winter,
An epic poem written with white quill feather pen and
Gold ink, and on clouds of paper,
Beginning from a sneezing December to a
Dizzying twelfth-calendar month,
When snow drizzles gently into the souls of
Those who hearken to the tinkling sound of
The church bell which rings gently with the weight of
The slow-passing season.

I see whiteness in every song, with so much redness;
Regal and romantic; flagrantly friendly.
Oh, how pure!
Oh, how sweet!
Well, that’s Christmas.
It lights up the courage in us to think right and assume
Merriment in the warmness of some frozen hearts.
It’s the best time of the year.
I swear to this because I am a child of Christmas.
It’s a time of fog and dew and sleet that rebaptise us.
Let’s not forget the slanting rain whose liquid kisses us.
And white Christmas of snow-carpeted lands and seas.
There’s no other time or season like it.

So full of gentleness and love,
Christmas causes hearts to race s-l-o-w-l-y,
As the year races on to breast the tape of seasons.

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Early One October Morning

The smell of humidor
Charmed the old house and
Frightened me as I ascended the
Narrow stairwell that gentle
October morning.
The song of autumn was playing
Low, and with astute grace.
Silent, the royal smell wafted between Cuba
And Denmark,
Across fat rank grass of fecund roots.
I snuffled through fogs of earliness,
Webbed by clamping cold.
Cigars without smoke took over from the
Humidor and hugged my lungs.

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London

London,
a great house standing by
a long water,
bathed by a golden sun
behind the closed doors
of the eastern clouds
that send stuttering rains
even on the hearth of summer
to salute all that pass
the kennels of the
city once they have legitimate
travel passes that will elevate
them high enough to see
the Big Ben -
a timely invention
chiming and tolling,
to remind us of our
immigrating hearts.

Details | Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu Poem

Ode to a Journalist

You made up your mind to view the world
With different eyes —eyes recessed, eyes inundated with lustre,
Straining to catch every flight of the dancing seasons that hurled
            Man and beast beyond frontiers with baluster.
You are the town-crier of our time, delivering messages printed on banners
            That hail the energy of the heated earth.
What a voice you possess! So smooth and euphonious, it rings loud and clear
With the gumption of a king’s augurer, leaving behind manners
That haunt us pleasantly with bliss and mirth,
            Suggesting frantically the suavity of a seer
          
Journalism has come to judgement, fragmented by words and the eloquence
            Of time and grace. Are you not equal to the task?
The world admits you certainly are! And with supreme relevance
Your disciples are many, Dear one, flaunting the task
Of imitation — they litter the world like tiny red beads flung and scattered
Beyond boundaries stretching from sea to coast
You are a lover of words, speaking with valour even on the arcades
            Of fright, charming viewers with the powers of gathered
Attention when rainy nights and dewy mornings boast  
            Loudly of integrated existence of cascades

An anointed raconteur you are, reeling off tale after tale
By moonlight of cosseted playgrounds
I assume you frequented gatherings, prelapsarian, on a scale
            So great that the sage spoke on select backgrounds
How do you do it?
            Do you burn candles with scented tallow, and without
Need of a flint —thus reluming primitively dark alleyways?
You are the light that shines on tenebrous path and grit,
Revealing fey monsters responsible for the drought
            That burned the pennants of truth posted on archways.
          

I never before knew an institution of mass communication
            Until the bright age of running news crowned your labours
By way of a universally attended coronation
            The world attributes to you the favours
Of heavens and caverns of Eudemons.
            Arise, Dear One, arise and claim your special flair,
Make noise with the reeds of the Nile and dance gracefully
            As you dine on stewed cinnamons
Rest assured you’re deeply blessed, Dear one with a dare;
            I assure you mightily, speaking faithfully.

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Gone Are the Days

I look back to the halcyon days
When Mrs Johnson,
A comely widow, ran fruitful
Errands for the new railway, and for
Our undeveloped district.
A frail, little maid in green cardigan
And sable wool hat for new mourners,
She read the New Testament
With zest, from Matthew to Revelation.
And she battled with the stress of inheritance
At the foot of her husband’s death in a
Civil war.
Her only son had died in civil stress. . .

Before then,
She was a merry image of festal seasons,
Full of godly gap-toothed mirth.

Her inheritance, from the ceremony of death,
Were mere effigies
With hearts of calumny —like cruel
Neighbours who gossip from dawn
To dusk, speaking no iota of truth in
January, nor bearing good witness in
December.

Among them?
Divorces, viragoes, astute harlots, and
Celebrated proprietors of bordellos.

Mrs Johnson laments the presence
Of a blinding yellow equatorial sun.
Says she, ”Misery in equator courses
Across the waist of here;
Stress and agony have built adobes
Among us,
And the Harmattan has departed with her
Cold . . .”

In the pall of this agony,
Snakes!

Now, shadows of floods rise high,
Like the tsunamis of restless Asia,
The height of disconsolate mountains.

Grey elephants trumpet in trepidation
Sallow, ululating leopards break the skins of
Their drums while summoning their kinsmen
For a hurried parley before the sun sinks . . .

Poor Mrs Johnson is in the midst of it all —
Like an eye in its own storm!

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Summer Nights

I recount the nights of faint, distant glows —
the dimmed party lights of summer —
of silenced streaks of fleeing light, tassels of clouds
adorned in fleeting whites,
on the broad balcony of the west, when the
incidents on the large vestibule of the sun sum up
their lives and times on seasons’ palimpsests.
The wild party closes by the stretch of the twenty-first hour.
Darkness, frightened, creeps in with the stealth of a departing thief,
the coyness and diffidence of an undocumented harlot.
Twilight aids the shut eyes of young irreverent bats;
drunk with summer's furiously spouting liquors,
like the denizens of an unclothed city, they fly low,
with gambolling wings, propelled by unseen strands of evening gales,
shadowing briefly the glints of pimping stars eager to witness the next day’s
orgy.