HERE IS WATER by ‘Gbenga Adeoba

HERE IS WATER by ‘Gbenga Adeoba

by | Apr 6, 2020 | POEMS

HERE IS WATER

by ‘Gbenga Adeoba

(After Kechi Nomu’s Your Old Bones are Seeking Wooden Crosses)

At the waterside in Boyo, the 
rituals of movement intensify at dusk. 

The pull of tides reinvents the shore 
into a space for things intimate and lost. 

You could find trinket boxes or a girl’s 
plastic doll in that rubble. Baby shoes, too.

The tiny things are heavier—even songbirds.
I am thinking these tunes being telegraphed 

into the dark, fretting the waters, 
are a tribute to the lives of drowned men.  

I sit by the water, knowing how 
sounds could alter the shape of an expanse. 

The boys who walk the boundaries now,
in search of collectibles, bear on their bodies 

a history threaded to this river. 
One wades inward: water around his body; 

water, a different texture, in his eyes. 
He pulls two of his friends along,

past the quay where the barges 
and their fathers’ canoes used to lay. 

Here is water, he says.
Here is memory shifting in its form,

 bearing things heavy and lost. My father 
and yours, here now and gone like the tides.

HERE IS WATER

by 'Gbenga Adeoba | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

‘Gbenga Adeoba is from Nigeria. “Here is Water” is the title poem of his chapbook included in APBF’s New-generation African Poets Series.

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS by Jide Badmus

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS by Jide Badmus

by | Mar 30, 2020 | POEMS

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS

by Jide Badmus

On the surface you are weak &
Your smiles are a broken stream
But nightmares could not break your sleep.

You hang your fears
Like jackets in closets
& bury sullen memories
In unmarked graves. 

You carry your flaws like a flag,
Showing off scars, like medals.
You wear the seasons—
Face of haze, beards of rain—
& bear tales of sprouting shoots, fallen leaves…

You are chronicles of wailing winds,
Diary of grieving waterfalls—
A chameleon of time. 

You are an emblem of strength—a tide,
Anthology of falls & flights…relentless!

 

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS

by Jide Badmus | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jide Badmus is an electrical engineer, a poet inspired by beauty and destruction; he believes that things in ruins were once beautiful. He is the author of There is a Storm in my Head, Scripture, and Paper Planes in the Rain; curator of Vowels Under Duress; Coffee; and Today, I Choose Joy anthologies.
Badmus explores themes around sensuality and healing. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria. You can reach him on twitter @bardmus, IG @instajhide
WHAT IS YOUR BODY by Onyekwelu Chiwenite

WHAT IS YOUR BODY by Onyekwelu Chiwenite

by | Feb 4, 2020 | POEMS

WHAT IS YOUR BODY

by Onyekwelu Chiwenite Kingsley

 

Shortlist (Top Six) of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

And he throws my body open, the way you
move into a river
when someone is drowning. And my body
is a dark room filled
with rotten birds that spit blood through their
wings.

He says I want to love you.
He says why won’t you let me love you?

But there is something rising into my tongue,
it tastes like fire,
it tastes like knife blades slitting my skin into
halves. And in my
body it’s drizzling I can’t find my voice.

He says you have to understand.
He says you have to let me in.

And my body bursts apart the way a river
flows out of your
mouth, the way a song drowns inside your
throat. It’s bleeding
and soft and filled with pain.

He says what is wrong with you?
He says lie down let me love you.

When your body is a pathway, you build walls
inside it to obstruct
the steps of sleepwalking men. But what is
your body when it is a country?

What is your body when he spreads you out
like a map to
claim a whole nation for himself?

WHAT IS YOUR BODY

by Onyekwelu Chiwenite | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Onyekwelu Chiwenite Kingsley is a Nigerian essayist, poet and storyteller. He studies pharmacy at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. He holds a certificate in essay writing from Lifesaver Essays, Oakland, California. He was the 2nd prize winner of the Newman Writing Contest, 2017. In 2019, he made the top-100 poem list for Nigerian Students’ Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the Kreative Diadem Annual Writing Contest. Chiwenite was recently shortlisted for Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prize 2020.

REMEMBER US by Chibueze Obunadike

REMEMBER US by Chibueze Obunadike

by | Feb 4, 2020 | POEMS

REMEMBER US

by Chibueze Obunadike

Shortlist (Top Six) of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

“Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us” — Sappho

 

a drunk man walks into a room and hits his lover till she begins to look

like all the love that has left him.

somewhere in the rotten underbelly of this city, a man is forcing himself

into the body of an under aged girl and claiming that

she looks like his wife’s ghost.

 

my father takes his wrist and cuts it open with his teeth

until all the memories escape and the floor is again red with him.

we begin again, and it’s the same old story. 

the villain. the world falling apart. the hero only trying to do 

good and ending up as the very thing he wanted to destroy. 

the villain and the hero and how they are 

us. all of us.

 

i am tired of writing the scenes where we save the day.

where we make it back alive again. 

where we come back and act like the blood on our hands

isn’t even our own.

humanity is blood and only blood. i told you this the first day we met.

i also told you i loved you.

 

and how that too, is bloodshed. only of the heart.

i took you to my mother’s garden in the backyard and showed you the roses.

how they bleed red and bloom through it. i still remember how the light flickered 

in your eyes as you said how much you loved them.

how in that moment i wanted to be nothing but a rose, not minding the blood,

my heart in your hands.

 

this is how the story goes:

we meet years later, in a bookstore, or a coffee shop, or on a street out in the 

middle of nowhere, i don’t know, 

and i tell you i love you. i tell you i never stopped.

your eyes are still and bloodless. you nod yes but you don’t say a thing.

somewhere, a boy is holding his father’s gun to his head and trying to outrun 

his ghosts. he comes close, but doesn’t die. doesn’t die at all.

 have you learnt nothing yet? the story is coming to a close

we were just kids. we didn’t mean to fall in love.

we certainly didn’t mean for all this blood.

 

i take your hands in mine and tell you i love you. you nod yes but you don’t say a thing.

 

REMEMBER US

by Chibueze Obunadike | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chibueze Obunadike is a young Nigerian writer and poet who is still learning all the ways life has to break him. His work focuses on the search for self and the fragile nature of human identity amongst other things. He has often been described as a love poet even though he does not know what that means. His poems are published in the Best New African Poets 2018 Anthology and won the 2018 UBA Africa Day Poetry Contest. He was also the joint first recipient of The Singing Bullet scholarship award 2019. He resides in Enugu, Nigeria, and you can find him wandering the lamplit streets at night, laughing.

HOW LAST TUESDAY BECAME BLACK TUESDAY by Praise Osawaru

HOW LAST TUESDAY BECAME BLACK TUESDAY by Praise Osawaru

by | Feb 4, 2020 | POEMS

HOW LAST TUESDAY BECAME BLACK TUESDAY

by Praise Osawaru

Shortlist (Top Six) of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

last Tuesday began with showers of sunlight/the kind that melts your spoonful of ice cream/before it arrives at the doorstep of your mouth/the weather report read: sunny with a chance of stark happiness/& so i blindly believed/the thirty minutes ride to school felt like two decades/spent watching the trees’ leaves flutter in the wind/the birds chase after themselves in the sky/& Asa’s There’s Fire On The Mountain swim in the atmosphere/a grey cloud—blend of white & black—hovered above the school premises/but i recalled: sunny with a chance of…../so i walked in, clutching my bag tightly/seconds turned into hours & classes flowed/steadily & almost undying like a waterfall/by the time the school bell rung, it sent a shockwave of happiness/that slithered throughout the school/& doors fell like dominoes, one by one/(the governor’s wife was to pass in front of our school that day)/about a minute after the stroked string of the day’s end/sirens stamped its feet onto the atmosphere as black tinted-window cars/arranged in front of the dispersing students/a gang of students surfaced from the corner of my eye/their hands smooching placards in the air which read/give us light! give us water!/and then men in black uniforms stormed down from a vehicle/with their hands caressing the butts of their AK-47’s/back away! one yelled at them dancing his gun across their faces/silence played as slow as possible & its tune flowed throughout the school/everyone’s gaze was held hostage by the placarded students/who stood their ground/give us…./attack!/poh poh poh…/I heard a violent ringing in my head/the crowd scattered like sand or ashes/whichever slow-motions/as the uniformed men/played a different tune with their guns, shattering everyone/the next day, the news read/governor’s wife escapes attack from varsity hostel students/i reclined on the bed, with the hollow in my stomach teasing me/attack!

 

HOW LAST TUESDAY BECAME BLACK TUESDAY

by Praise Osawaru | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Praise Osawaru, also known as Wordsmithpraise, is a Nigerian writer, poet, content developer & entrepreneur-in-training. His writings are influenced by his consciousness of mental health, his personal experiences & the desire to heal through words. His works have appeared in Black Youth, Nantygreens, SprinNG & Writers Space Africa. Praise was a finalist in the Clash Of Pen Poetry Contest 2019. He was also longlisted for African Writers Award 2019 & shortlisted for The Zi Prize 2019. His poem, ‘How Last Tuesday Became Black Tuesday’ won Honorable Mention in Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest 2019. He is liberal, & enjoys reading books, listening to good music & binge-watching series on Netflix when he isn’t over-worrying about University life. Say hello on Instagram/Twitter: @wordsmithpraise

FALLING WATERS by Lade Falobi

FALLING WATERS by Lade Falobi

by | Dec 21, 2019 | CONTESTS, POEMS

FALLING WATERS

by Lade Falobi

Falling Waters – Second Runner-up of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

My mother says when it rains and one needs to pee/one does not need to find a toilet.
I cry in the rain so she doesn’t see.
The rain pouring from my eyes is heavier than the one pouring from the sky.
I hardly ever feel the one from the sky
 
Think of water racing so fast through a hose that it bursts it open all over.
Think of the heavy slaps of water in a waterfall as it hits the floor.
Sometimes my tears are the storm.
I like storms.
 
Now think of water traveling down the window of a moving car, a child enthralled by the movement and tracing dreams in the mist behind the window.
Think of a tap that does not quite shut completely, tiny drops of water falling from its mouth.
Sometimes my tears are the quiet drizzle.
I do not like drizzles.

 

Imagine pointing the barrel of a gun at your head.

Imagine your shaky hands, too scared to die but too scared to live.

Imagine deciding to pull the trigger because it is easier to die than it is to live.

Imagine the dead silence after.

Not the quiet silence of death. The quiet silence of failing even in this.

An empty gun never fires

and you have been shooting blanks.

 

Today                    we live

FALLING WATERS

by Lade Falobi | POEMS

Pin It on Pinterest