Tag Archive for: Tuesday Poem

Tuesday Poem by Nma

/in

Take a piece of cloth,
dip it in blackness,
wrap it around the lamp,
watch the light dim and disappear into blackness.
Smile.
Enjoy the darkness of your soul,
let it wrap all around you till you are lost in it.
Blackness. Darkness. Nothingness.

Tuesday Poem by Sheikha A.

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An-Nur Al-Ain: Nakheelun Jameel

When Medina was being blessed like a land that awaits
respite after being trampled on, people stood like nakheels,

backs confident in their verses of loyalty. Shoulders
prostrated like they were the knees for that hour, palms

joined as if in a meeting of destinies. The first call
of obedience is the Azaan. The order that ensues

is the striking of the sun’s light against waning traces
of darkness. We will sing the Sana’a in the early calm,

like the way the Holy One was greeted, by joyous
feet skipping in their sandals that no longer feel the hot

skin of the sand. A caravan was formed:
nakheels, the dutiful, the shaheed, the haters of drum-rolls;

they place their hips on the ground in the way
of pressing their ears to the sounds of fallacy, the trance

of gushing khamar. And like how jamals walk in rows,
nakheels grow close to their brothers. They gather

seeds at the base of their roots, protecting what is
that shall ultimately sprout as what was. Ancestry is

like a battleground where men on opposing ends
stand in eternal waiting, listening to the tambourine

jingle like the dainty waist of a slave. The silent footsteps
of the man, weaving a crowd of men, his light a force

of the star of heaven, born much before the advent
of earth. Holy One, where you stand, jabals convert

to toors; your call awakens extinguished flames,
and riddles the silence with a gap, long just enough

to not be prolonged, short just enough to be conditioned.
This is probably how we learn shukr: an act of continuance,

an act of a mended tasbeeh, an act of an aging nakheel.
The tamars are plucked, ripe/unripe, they know their growth

is under the direct rays of a teaching sun. My hips
are the rose bearing splinters in its stem. I wait

for the sky to turn into a land of crimson grass; the moment
when walls will mean truce; a Single Breath will handle

us like a process of dispersal; we shall find our ordained
ground; we shall peel the shell of our seed; the soil will part;

we shall line in rows; convert to roots; grow until our fronds
can no longer feed the generations lessons of praise;

that will be then; the time of brown hisaans arriving
at our doors, their rikaabs awaiting our grasp, and their backs

of jewelled saddles calling us to sit on our designated throne.
The call will be sacred. The hand on the other side, nurturing.

Tuesday Poem by Remi Olutimayin

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A Poem for Anne

I knew of you first through your first daughter. She spun her love for you with words, human and herculean. She spoke of your resolve not to crumble with her as evidence; lesser women have torn their selves down for less. She thought she was telling me of her mom. I heard in her words, matriarch, a queen dowager who mothers because she must. History doesn’t deserve you because men look for façade and celebrate cunning. When you were at the then Federal Ministry of Education building, opposite Bonny Camp, you met my mother in passing, she met your daughter, and you met me. This is wishful fiction because children are invisible, so adults only remember adults. 

I don’t know. I don’t know. If there was ever anyone I drowned myself in perfumes for, if there was anyone I felt tenderness for despite hard looks and tough words; if there was anyone whose obstinacy tickled me in private to tears… My tears today don’t come with even a giggle; they hide behind a partition of the only son-in-law you had, they snake their way behind the creases of my smile, just beneath the skin. I have no sense of how to love you outside of your children now. I have no burden greater than wondering what could have been. I console my father because he saw in one day what I had heard throughout my courtship. I feel like a crumpled piece of paper that must still be read aloud, creases and all. I see thorns that I once would grasp with decisiveness.

Your fight is over, your smile is frozen, your sense of sensibility is a monument to me. No matter how long or far I drive in life, you’re always a glance at the rearview. I was asked to write for your memorial so I shed my tears here. In these words they cannot see me cry. They cannot see the gossamer of my memories of you and tarnish it with idle opinions of ‘’How a man should mourn’. I have your daughter, but really, she has me. She hurt me with a pleasant memory of the wedding reception you cheered me on as I gyrated to James Brown and other people of your era. The music of your youth remains my private playground I didn’t remember your cries

“Go, Remi! Go, Remi!. ” Until she told me I didn’t remember why my heart hurt, its broken shards cutting into me when I remember you & breathe. Thank you for exquisite pain like this; it is reserved for you and your kind, known only by being known & no other way. You paid your debts. Accounts are settled. We move gracefully, decisively, honestly & strong.

Tuesday Poem by Adamu Usman Garko

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A Kind of Dying

When I said I miss you
I meant the glistening beauty of your face
& the gripping warmth of your embrace
& the brook within your cleavage
from which, I, thirsty,
drink out my misery.

When I said I miss you
I meant your mellifluous voice,
the cadence of your soft words
& the intensity with which you revolt,
hymns of my paradise.

Your silence is a dark hole
into which I am swallowed whole.

When I said I miss you
I meant the dark mist of your irises
in them, stars that tickle my belly butterflies.
I meant your suppleness,
the ripe roundness of your cheeks.

I miss the way you trample on my heart
& make it skip a beat.
I miss how my blood clots,
how my lymph boils &
my breath becomes steam,
wafting with your fragrance.

When I said I miss you
I meant all memories have been
woven into a skein of longings,
frayed at the edges.

When I said I miss you
I meant I miss living
because living without you is
a kind of dying.

Tuesday Poem by Som Adedayor

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voyage
—for Tèmi

tonight, the moon longs for shadows,
let us offer ours; let us offer our ears
to the angel strumming the lyre;

the sea thirst for lovers
let us fill her shores with our tongues.
the womb of the earth
do not tame blossoming flowers.

then why don’t we lend voices
to the hymn sprouting from our lips?

cuddles are roadmaps to the stream
that gently flows in the hearts of lovers.

Tuesday Poem by Yemi Obabire

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Have you eaten? 

360 minutes ago, 

we talked. 

1 hour spent, debriefing

every slithery second since

our last phone call. 

360 minutes later, 

another phone call. 

These seconds have been quiet

All 21,605 of them

“Have you eaten?” 

You ask, puncturing the silence. 

We both know the answer

Hundred kilometers away, 

You’re speeding down the highway

to my ventricles. 

Tuesday Poem by Carl Terver

/in

all the birds that gathered round the solar system of your eyes

all the birds that gathered round the solar system of your eyes

(where my telescope lingered)

are no longer in orbit. 

they’ve died from the pressure of living for light years. 

I am not in need of an astrologist’s toolkit

to date their demise,

I want the feel of your face pillowed in my arm,

I want to snatch the moon

running away from the Milky Way

& place it between our faces.

Zipporah, I want to pick the leaf–twitter 

of those birds fallen to the ground

& make a nest from them

In the solar system of eye–trees 

Tuesday Poem by David Ishaya Osu

/in

    LANGUAGES

    ordinary bottles no one said anything i will paint my box and be happy                a spreadsheet of lovers we broke eggs we ate eggs the life next door                 was made up give glasses time to see you drift away from why i write                    because i can’t stop sleeping

    i don’t want to be like my father he told no secrets like mum over cakes                she gave me her yellow wrap and a song and all the time for peaches all                doors lead into emptiness a finger or two or endless tingles or unloving                     clothes we had to get togeth’

        dreams don’t err nor this bod                            ask the sea for new carols not me or your old bedroom did not have every                thing you wanted holes in poetry and you dug them and said prussian blue                needs three hands in a picture belonging to everyone returning to flowers

        this is for you and shadows                            we don’t know yet a bouquet falls anytime you touch the centre twice or                 wait for the clock has no power in this house only wet papers matter to no                one fixed the table till we got tired we sang and lifted our shirts to the sun

Tuesday Poem by Jekwu Ozoemene

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The Used Tire Necklace

I happened upon the savaged body
Ravaged with stones, sticks, kicks and blows
Eyes bloody dimmed puddles of acute throes

With each blow, his arms and legs twitch
In response the cosmos screams;
‘I am someone’s father’
‘I am a hungry brother’
‘I am the death of what is left of us’
‘I am because I know I am’

‘I am not a thief’ he barely squeaks
Amidst the mocking baying of the frenzied hounds
‘Kill the pig!’ they howl
Cut his throat! Bash him in! Drink his blood’

Right on cue, cell-phones emerge
I-reporting
Costly status devices of the judge and the judged
A grime recording of the assize of the dying

Suddenly, to their horror, he launches from his rumps
A cornered wildcat, snarling savagely
(The beast in him challenging the beast in them)
A last-ditch dash across the busy road
Aiming for a maze of side streets, a possible labyrinth to home

The crowd heaves in pursuit
Demented creatures dancing and singing;

Catch am, catch am! Thief, thief, thief!
Catch am, catch am! Rogue, rogue, rogue!
Catch am, catch am! Robber, robber!
Catch am
Pull am
Get am
Keep am
Ole…

Target acquired
Missiles launched
Bull’s-eyes announced by new splotches of bright crimson
The soon to be dead body totters briefly in a drunken bop
Cranium kisses the tarmac with a sickening thud
Motionless, he lies splayed
And I, helpless
Wish that the nightmarish sounds of the demented beast
No longer reach him, no longer touch him

Wey the petrol? Somebody whispers as if in a trance
(The voice so full of pride in his contribution to the dance)
Around his neck the necklace goes
Matchsticks! Lighter! Dementia roars!
Let him burn quickly, after all we aren’t savages someone howls…
His eyes flicker open, beholds the tire and sees his death
I weep as he shrugs of the wreath with his last breath
Again they beat him with sticks and stones
Again the garland returns to his prostrate neck

A splash of petrol, a sprout of fire
All that is left is the last wail of defiance
Then silence

Broken only by the sizzling of burning flesh
No more words, no more movements
Just the cackling flames
Then a forlorn voice asks
Wetin de man do sef?

Tuesday Poem by Ruth Zakari

/in

Hurricane on the sky

Afro-thick clouds rally

Past the pink, orange canvas

Over wispy heads


A mule hangs in the air

Listening to the birds

Zigzag over everything

The sun steadies its head

For a final game

Soon, it loses its ring to gravity

Stripped, the yellow ball falls


A crane perches high off the ground

Reaching the last bit of light

But losing… losing fast

Its hook pose

Ready for what the night may bring

Colour fades to a deep blue sea

I lose my shadow to the warmth

Of headlamps racing after the sun