Obemata

Obemata is a businessman living in the UK. His poems have been published in Blackbiro, Sentinel online - and print version, Guardian newspapers (Lagos), Witness (Anthology of poems; Serengeti Press, Canada, 2004) and Liberty Magazine (Lagos) among others.

a kind of silence

(for Osamuyi, in memoriam)

at first they took him bound at the ankles and wrists,
then they placed a duct tape across his mouth,
but he kept on pleading his innocence,
then they plucked out his eyes,
he kept on seeing somehow,
then they sliced his ears,
he kept on hearing,
then they cut up his wrists,
he kept a hold with fettered tourniquets,
then they broke his ankles,
he kept a foothold on life,
then, then, then they stuffed wool into his nose,
spread a pall over him,

as he lay dying,
they barked:

muy senor mio,
you have the right to remain silent.

Brighton

brighton ascends,
then descends the hills
as the sun and the sea
converge on us.
there, where the sun stretches out in our eyes,
the sky lies as an illusion of water,
un-quenching thirsts.

brighton is a goddess, a mermaid,
posing on stones, doting on the sea.
she poses, she bends by the water,
she bends for our eyes,
she cheeses up,
she smiles at our camera lenses time and again
in a passionate way of cheesing and smiling.

as brighton descends slowly
around the curves of Manor hills,
the sun lies open in our eyes,
the sea staying out long,
stays fresher, much longer
around the feet of men
and mermen about her.

The poet fled

the poet that tells our every secret
and the shaman that foretells the future
are they here?
the child that cries in the night of a cot
and the mother that knows no sleep
are they here too?

i asked.

on the night of our joys, men
that wore beards of tall grass
that bore prayerbooks and torches
torched our homes.
in the morning of our sadness,
they knelt on the ruins and prayed.

on the night of his joy, they dragged the poet
to immortal deaths. nine times he died nine times
he lived. on the night of his sadness,
he picked up his ninth life,
he took his walking stick and walked
the night to a far but never distant city.

on her child’s death,
the mother took her own life.

i too died.

a voice answered.