Sweetness

She held on to the pillow
like a rebel to his riffle
Her trunk cascade down the giant mattress

Then i stood astride-
rear-ward
Her legs in my grip
like Oshodi's wind barrow

Between us was darkness
the shrill of crickets from the bush across the fence
the frightening staccato of croaking frogs
in the nearby swamp
Darkness fills the rhythm
of my rocking hips
And her groan fills my head
redolent sweetness, imitable fragrance
of desire
awaiting the time-bomb
that must explode in our face
and leave us in solitude
like a spent bullet abandoned in Nkpotukpe
years after Biafra


From my neighbour's Home-theatre
Oyakhilome was screaming Armageddon

Oh God!
Let it explode now
Let it burst my derelict soul!


Henry Ajumeze

From Ghana with Lust

i see her through the key-hole
naked, beautiful-
her fingers caressing the triangle
between her legs
i whimp like a slave!

Now i stand naked in the rain in Ghana
and God's water falls on my head
My eyes shut, sometimes i think of snake
crawling from the roof, hurled from the storm
upon my skin-
But only water passes through the ridge of my anus
tickling my scrotum,
Will history become my semen?
Will i masturbate hatred?
i think of her now through the key-hole
i see her breast, aquiline. Calm


There is a story
in the breath of every pennis
that stands out,
hard, strong, panting like a lizard
oh the readiness of a lion to leap!
Its beyond the dénouement of desire.
Most times its surrealist WAJU
where the lion is caged and become a prisoner,
with no lawyer to growl and bail.


Henry Ajumeze

Okanga

i sit by the wayside
i listen to Okanga
the drum that brings back the dead,
The drum throttles
Apkele klaxons wildly,
like the scream of a mourner.
The wind is a story-teller!

An infant, i toddle in the heritage
of undying chorus
i toddle in that sand
where the stampede must rump
from Idi to Ogboli
i am son of Isu
i embrace all echoes
i clenched my fist to grip Akpele
to play it, hone it
with nostrils ballooning with the forming
of ancient cantus
to empty my lungs to Anioma!
To take from us our resolute songs,
Seized from the wind;
rock it, jazz it, and pour upon you
our libation, our boundless poetry
of imitable piety

Our jazz of war...

Henry Ajumeze

Let them die

I drove through Isu
galloping on potholes, my shock-absorber
wincing like a whore
whose cunt is pricked by a merciless pennis
hurrying for an unyielding orgasm

Past Umejei primary School
by Ashieke market
where Umejei himself now stood, poised with a matchet
gripped with fists of Nweke's clay creation.

The national flag, i recall, at the general assembly
flapping like a child's polythene kite
shredded, tormented by winds
and hoisted on a bruised sun-tanned bamboo
planted near where the band boys stammer
through our National Anthem...

It has been a gradual death, ours
Oh we have continued to die...
A dog grovels over a pendant bone
hung on its neck
A poet writes his own epitaph
And we call him a prophet!
What have we not done to kill ourselves?
A governor-awarding bazaar contracts
to his own company, chaired by his wife
managed by brothers-in-law
where all first families are directors!
So tight we have strung
the hangman's noose, hung on our neck
knotted by our fists...


Let them die
All those who piss into the lake of Atakpo
Let them die all who pillage our treasury
Shameless rats, did we ever ask you
to guard our fish? Incorrigible rigger!
You who sojourn in the gutters
now cruise in the chambers of a moving house!
Npkakala must empty your bowels
You will shit in your pants!

Henry Ajumeze

Life after death

-with you i ask questions of life after death,
i only told you i was going to Cotonou
i told you i will return a week after,
you pleaded for yoghurt and apple-
Not the biscuit-type
which tree stood in front of the broken wall
At Isieke
But that which Eve seduced Adam with...
i still remember you saying:
"be careful, please, my love"

and before i returned, you are gone
If we are as important, we need to know
where death takes our souls to,
If we will meet again
in the bliss of heaven,
not in the maddening crowd of Mile2
It seem now the only memory, refusing to fade
clinging on to me like a question mark
hung on eternal sentence...
i was born April, why will it be a dark month?

is life a promise made a whore
in bed, just before orgasm?
Are we a horde of kikiriri inmates
chained to Becket's theatre?

Could You not have shown me the car crash,
in a cinema of dream
so that I will wake up and cry,
cry again and some more
bid her farewell, oh rose of blues
and write this blossoming epitaph
while she sit beside me, help hone the muses,
recite the dialogue and console me...?

Because those who leave
knows the isthmus of armadegon
like i know the road to Umuidi!

Henry Ajumeze

Anioma Review