Home » Poems » Best » Victor Ehikioya-Brown » Best Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poems

Best Poems Written by Victor Ehikioya-Brown

Below are the all-time best Victor Ehikioya-Brown poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Prince Charles

I have read my name on a British novel written by John Doe a few times.
It begins with a crude remark which gives reference to an old friend from Dublin, then on the forth page it reads, like a catechumen phrase: "to be or not to be, that's private."
But this is not a fine way to pronounce a prince,
and again, what is private? Is it the whereabouts
of a jewel or the truth about my father's will which was
written by a gardener or the untitled notes of an eunuch who was
dethroned by a Queen?
If you study carefully you will notice a sentence that resembles
a Shakespeare quote as expressed on the third paragraph of the writer's
epilogue-- stating how unreliable my judgment can be with regards to a lady's
need. He has made a mockery of my name and we-- my father and I, Mr. Wilchoff, the writer's son, my niece, and my unrelated cousins from downtown Alabama do not fancy it.
The epilogue had been read as a preamble speech by the Queen's guard before the novel was parceled to my study. It reads with such clarity and boldness-- "Prince Charles."
It sounded weird, yet familiar. It's familiarity was that of the ending of a moral tale,
a doggerel-- like the struggle of a colored man on an Irish farm or an actor who never got an award for his stunts. I heard the sound in many different voices from the past like a dethroned queen in the Victorian age, and from the future like a critic whose intention is to corrupt my integrity...

She took a glance at me as my fingers fidgets carefully
stating how remarkable the speech and novel was, and
how it mattered to her womanhood.
I was startled at the way she pronounced each word,
how she flaunted her blonde hairs backwards and blinked
her brown eyes as my stupidity unveils.
"You have done a vain thing," I whispered.
I smiled at every opportunity I entertained,
winking my fallen brows and making a grin behind
the wrinkles on my white face. She cheered, and said
to me in absolute sincerity as if she had known no sin:
"to be or not to be, isn't private."

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Men, Do Not Give Up Your Dreams For These Girls, Keep Sleeping

Men, do not give up your dreams for these girls, keep sleeping.

My cousin had read this phrase to me in August, when my wife left me for a harvard graduate that moved in our neighborhood, which is an eyeshot from my aunt's apartment.

Sometimes, I wonder where I stand with these ladies, and their contemporary lifestyle. I soberly, wonder!

Most of them don't understand the essence of having a family or even remember that faithful Sunday, when we, in white suits, perfumed like newly found angels going to heaven, for a wedding that is waiting to crumble if the taxi man comes late.

It was a Monday evening, and I had returned from work early with a bottle of red wine on my left hand and my lazy bag hung around my neck like a two-dollar gold chain.

The killing gossips of a trader's tale in paris, echoing from my neighbors remained the same, even the postman and his moth eaten coif, and Mr. Brown's colored wife who never stops eyeballing me each time I come home with a bottle of red wine.

Wonders will never end, I said. Bringing out the key to my door from my right pocket. Gently waving my head sideways to see if the street thug will show up again.

I had barely undressed my eighty-nine dollar suit, the one my cousin gave me as a wedding gift before Sarah walked in like a lost cat. On her forehead was a mark, a godly mark I thought. But it wrote: "aha!" Like an answer to a riddle only a loser knows. She didn't smile, not even a grin on her lazy cheek.

As I walked close to her, she moved backwards, standing aloof the broken stool she threw at me the last time we talked about having a baby. Her weaved blouse was partly smeared with mud, even her purse, and the stiletto she inherited from my aunt, whose lips never stops gossiping about how favorable she was.

Then like a child whose mouth has been slapped out of his mother's breast, I said, Sarah, what is wrong with you? And how did you end up with a foreign scar on your head? Were you attacked by that old man?

She moved her head sideways, like a dying leaf, and brought out a pen, scribbling a phrase that resembles the one on her forehead. She holstered a dining knife beside her waist as she tries to sit close to the broken stool.

As I reached for her shoulder, she raised her left hand, and said, "Don't even think about it!"
"Your love has made me naked with a blouse, it has stabbed me in the front and riddled my feelings, making me believe that you were reliable and just."

"I have not riddled your feelings, my dear, I have worked for it. And paid two-third of my monthly income and the bonus from the electricity bill to keep your feelings for me: safe, tempered, nurtured and young," I said. Counting what's left in my charcoal-gray purse.

I have got a few cents left, do you need them? I added.

She stood up and walked close to the TV set, intentionally making a noise with her high-hilled shoe. And picked the photo album I made for her in valentine, the hand-less wrist watch, and my 1989 cotton sweater that always sleeps on the couch close to the door.

As she opened the door, she said, so calmly, like she had not sinned her entire life, "I am going to the naval officer that has promised to pay eleven and a half percent of his income to keep my feelings safe and sexy."

The clock ticked fairly beside my bed, like a drunk whose thoughts gently beats the Nunc Dimittis; even as the sun rose, giving notice to my yellow curtain and the shrubs at my window, and the careless radio from Mr. Brown's apartment.

A bang at the door rattled me,
Then I realized I had woken up late for work

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Yesterday I Cried

Congolese Dreams:

Yesterday, I cried.

Yesterday, I cried for the lies I told.
I cried for the pain I caused my mother and her nursing hands.
I cried like a child left to wander in silence--to take up strange thoughts as my brown body grows old.
Yesterday, I cried.
I cried like a widower whose pleas disturbs the peace of his neighbors.
I cannot remember what made me hurry into my room, sat on my poorly dressed bed, untied my shoes and wept. But on the corner of my eyes, angry tears rolled down.
Tears of longing-- from waiting for what will never be.
Tears that came from the fear that romanced the ideas that thronged my mind.

Yesterday, I cried.
I cried for you, my mother and my sister.
I cried for the suffering my sister endured
I cried for her broken heart and the desire my ignorance killed.
I cried for the woman that got me a child,
I cried for the pains she felt and my insecurity
I cried for her youthful desire and the trust she had for me
I cried because she showed me love but I was absent
Yesterday, I cried till my lips became loosed.

Yesterday, I cried.
I cried for a future I might not see
I cried for peace and a home away from shame.
I cried for the days I was ignored,
I cried for the years I was forgotten.
I cried for my mother.
I cried because she had not known my child, let alone her name which resembles hers in spelling
I cried for the forty years I spent trying to find a home within the rims of my broken history.
Yesterday, I cried.
For my child and my dear wife
Like a village man.

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Slave Girl

Slave Girl
by Victor Ehikioya

I have left the gong,
The drum...
And those sticks that strike
The dead log,
To my mates, who yet, tarry
At the square with amulets
Flung around their necks.
My soles ache from trekking,
And my waist, too weak to
Jerk,
To the erroneous sounds of
Tumid timber.
Mama sees not these things
For I too foretell the seer's
Prank.
The letters on the gate,
Scare my thought.
It seeks refuge from
Swollen speeches
Bamboos and knives--
Belligerent folks.
I am the lad with a
Tattooed tooth,
Woven on the left breast.
The child with a soneri
Made to nimble on bare feet
As the tambor swells with
Rage;
To somersault and swirl,
Like the Eagle, with
Unintended misfortunes.
But now, I see their faces,
Gaunt!
Blurred with hate,
A smug with no smile.
They sit and scorn
Mimicking my rhythm,
And the runes from my
Charcoal-gray Mother.
The tin gods bear my step
Witness,
And my sniveling, the fools
That clamp my feet to Metals.
I am the gray child,
The voice beneath the sea
The monster in the man.
These things they fear,
For now the mountain,
Has fallen in the lake.

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Don'T You Wonder Sometimes

Don't you wonder, sometimes, why the clouds never grow old.
And why we, like road signs, gaze at this miracle without giving notice to time and how long nature has been.
I do not know if there are black men or colored virgins in the sky, but sometimes, i imagine how sincere it will be to have them, so high above our worldly eyes--sending us rain and ice from a saddened cloud.

Today, it didn't rain. Well, it hasn't for three seasons.
It only gave a sign in December when my mother ran out of her shrine with white marks on her brown skull and lazy breast--praying, ramming her feet on the sod, till the old beads on her thin neck falls on loneliness.

I wonder why I am still a black man; why my skin is yet, darker than the lies I have told. And why we naively gather around burning coals to watch the stars as they let out glistened sparks, so gently, that it resembles the touch of ice on a bruised lips.

There's nothing left to say, than to wait, till our fate becomes even with nature's wonder. I know this will never happen!
But you have to try, my mother said.
As she continues to hit her weary feet on the motionless fabric of earth, making sure her senses are planted like white grains in the sod.
It doesn't really matter what she does; time will never grow old and die, nor the sky depart from the clouds. And man will never cease to dwell in oblivion.

If I narrate my written thoughts to you, and tell you the dreams I have seen when time wombed the sun to bring forth the moon, you will know that we are like rats in a maze. A maze so long, tiring and tragic; like the beginning of a new track as the first ends.
Sometimes, I wonder if my needs will ever come to reality; not to be stolen by a dark-skinned being with a shadow-like tail, called jealousy.

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Life Is Short Art Is Long

When you learn how to paint you envision a world void of
choice, then like time you give life to the future--creating a garden
where the thoughts of a man dwell in oblivion.

I have learned how to be a good storyteller--to narrate to unseen ears 
the miracles that existed before life was brought out of earth.
But this life does not give me credence for my simplicity neither does 
it embrace my feelings when my soul seeks a home from fear.

When I told the truth in August: about a Zulu king in heaven, about
the voices that hid themselves beneath the sod, about time and the 
sincerity on a seer's tongue--I was romanced with fear, for I thought 
death would come like unwanted sleep.

But I have done well. I have made anew the things that matter most 
to existence: the complexity of time--which is to rationalize confusion;
and the believe that life is fiction--and most importantly to stay at 
home.

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

A Shadow

Congolese Dreams: From A Shadow


At the bank of a river stood a shadow, 
it had walked thirty and four miles from 
a wooden hut like a broken ant dragging an 
injured worm to an ant hill. 
On its left, a coconut tree stood pregnant, 
whose canopy has been tempted by the wind 
to make a shade...
-- 
"but what can a shadow do for a shadow?"

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Nativity

I have come again, your highness, 
Yes, I have come. Falling at your feet at your feet like a discarded gown whose beauty has found no place in a maiden's eyes. 
Here, with this aging desire, I pledge my commitment to you-- even as these colored moon befriends my innocence,

Let me dance with your feet before these stars become jealous and the wind begin to cry; let me hold hands with your thoughts and walk you through my secrets as though you can't see the light. 

Oh, I wish I was the beauty in your mind that will give notice of my presence, and how I have longed for your godly hands to rest on my brown skull

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Paterson

Paterson, 

Inside a bus a man sees his thoughts sitting and standing. 
His thoughts alight and scatter -- like a drop of rain on a sediment. 
He sees the regularly furnished houses, the trimmed trees, 
and the loud gossips from beggars across the street through 
the pale window.

In altum, he wonders how such semblance compliments himself: 
a man sitting beside a pool with a tobacco between his lips, 
a lady's smile after her lover's kiss, a neighbor waiting for the 
postman, and the poor lad on a  swing -- how beautiful can silence be? 
But home is where my thoughts would go when hunger becomes a muse 
-- to linger around the backyard playing cheese, or pin-pong or 
entertain a gossip on my grandma's bed. 

...if not, watch how 
sadly these leaves 
falls on loneliness.

Details | Victor Ehikioya-Brown Poem

Apocryphal

I give my life to the wind; to
the fossils, the spirit, and the earth.
I leave my thoughts to the termites that
linger beneath the sod, to the falcon in the
firmament, and to the animals that mate on
our planet floor.
To my mother: a word and a prayer.
I sew my being to her cosmos.
I am the planet, the weed, the bird, the
antelope, and the babe begotten by
Mother Nature.
To nature: I speak from naked thoughts — with
a primal mind and a void conscience.  With
bare feet I tread — without cause or reason.
For loneliness is futile when corn sprout and
birds wait for harvest.
The harvest is within: like tubers within the
earth, like the mammoth decayed within the
grave, like my heart shelved within my ribs.
I leave the rib, the garment, and my lance to
the vultures and the sparrows of the Amazon.
To the crowd: I commit a dirge.
I take the hymn, the flute, and the lyric from
dead men, from monsters, from skirmished souls and
demigods raving in isolation.
To the bird, I commit a song; the seer, a
revelation; to the eagle, the eyes of an owl, the
Iguana, talons, and to my unborn child, a crown.
To this voice, I write an echo; the heavens, I
weave wonder; the gods, I commune with
contrite words.
And to poetry, I leave my soul.