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The Hate Artist
NIRAN OKEWOLE
studied medicine at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He won the
MUSON Festival Poetry Prize in 2002 and 2003. His poems have appeared
in Mindfire Review, ANA Review and Africanwriters.com.
His collection of poems, Logarhythms, was published
in 2005 by Khalam Editions. |
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In the death camps there is
a failed landscape
Artist with a meinkampf, brushstroke moustache
Mounting a collage of bones and hair on a canvas
Of Aryan pride.
His reincarnation in Alabama,
Worshipper of a black cross, cross upside down,
Cross burning, burning
He loves the texture of grief, like velvet,
Loves the feel of passion in heat
Waves, shock waves, the erotic melody of a
Bomb blast in Ulster or Beslan, shattering
Glass and crunching steel, the counterpoint.
Today he sculpts wood, leaving splinters in the eye
Of his imago, the other subculture.
He loves to sculpt the lean, lanky Tutsi frame,
Does Darfur bronze casts on the side.
(Nothing like molten ore for
drawing deathscapes on the skin.)
Brush strokes on tarmac, he paints with bombs,
Smouldering pastel, the soothsayer’s recompense,
Like de Chirico, wrought iron sticking out
Like ribs on the kerb, it could be blood or ketchup.
At a council flat in Leeds, munching a sandwich,
Plotting the mother of all intrigues, hate is the juice
That trickles down the chin when he
Chews on a red apple,
Libido rising at the thought of the crowd on the
Madrid metro, a baseball field in Nevada,
A market in Damascus, cinema house in Mogadishu.
Or Wimbledon. Or Kigali. Or Freetown.
Comments? |
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