FREE VERSE............
Nnorom Azuonye, NG
 

 

A Voyager's Witness   

"Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history."
 
 —Plato
 

Guardian of my shareable secrets,
my life’s vigilant songbird, sing on,
for when I try, my voice booms off-key,
sing on, but make no dirges
where happy cups overflow. 
Be sure to paint a picture you can defend.
Paint for me, hues inter-run on my palette,
paint no warm colours in drab palaces.
Friend, you sing and paint my days.

For every pass mark on my report card
you buy new dancing shoes,
you buy new beads to rattle on your ankles. 
For every injustice I refuse to see
you remind the undertaker to fetch a mask
without holes for eyes because when I die,
I will begin to rot from the eyes.

Writing you now, I am man blind and deaf
walking a tightrope miles from the ground.
If only I knew the colour of patience, the sound
of understanding, and the strength of impartiality,
I would write a song befitting you—
sacrosanct seedling of the spirit of songs:

Here, an appropriate alliteration of my words.
There, a contrived consonance of sorts.
Prelude to a caesura. Then a line, like foul mouth
faster than money from my wallet at month-end
into another, for that narrative-lifting enjambment,
for whose sake I force this rhyme with enlargement.

Someday I shall stand where men and spirits meet.
I must paint a perfect portrait of you there,
thoughts clanging, like the music of fencing swords;
a man's duel with life finding a release.

A Juror Of My Time  

I dream of greatness at my fondest labour of joy
this weaving of baskets of words and fun.
I wish to weave baskets of eloquent magnificence
legacies to delight hearts of the yet unborn.
In every season I will follow a passion’s purpose,
give it impetus with the nib of my pen,
describing the temperatures of its various colours
and the testimonies of its exhumed sounds.
I wish to seize every clue in life’s lyric prophesies
translating their secret messages for humanity
an impartial juror of my time, I keep a keen eye
on the ever-changing face of our world,
I discover why every new wrinkle appears
and sense of every frown on its brow,
recording its root for posterity, as I must the delight
that spawns even the faintest smile on its lips.
This is the only way I can write my name indelibly
on a rock in the theme park of mankind and never die.

Liberty 

On a platform bench of blue gauze metal
four or so paces behind the yellow lines
separating me from bare death tracks
charged with electric power, I sit
and watch you fearlessly feed at my feet
grey beak picking bits of food
from a mess of sand and dirt
pink feet and tiny black talons puttering
silently on the part-concreted part-asphalted floor
and in the glorious wave of your blue-white tail
and the readiness of your yet-clasped wings
to fly away at the earliest grumbling approach
of a steel and glass python with men sweating
this sweltering day in its segmented gullet
I sense your feeling of total freedom
from the tyranny of labouring to appease
the stomach, buy shoes or clothes and I wonder
‘O that this kind of freedom were possible
for me without first having  to die’. 

return to top of page

 

 

*