tribalpoetry

Bells Beyond the lab

2010-07-21T03:31:00.001-07:00

It has been three years now since I have been trying to write an anthology centered on the University in which I work, although I am not an academic staff but I am a poet and has authored three books, and contributed to as many anthologies as I can remember. Being in a science university with no creative writing courses does not make it any easier for me; it was extremely difficult to move poetry beyond the laboratory situation in any of the science colleges.

I have spent time in the chemistry laboratory getting familiar with the environment; in the Physic laboratory knowing the properties; the technical and metal work laboratory and I have spoken and interacted with the students and officer personnel on my initiative of bringing creative writings such as poetry and stories into their wads; but the response as always is either slow or not forth coming.
Being a sport enthusiast and a coach gives me some extra time I needed to discuss the idea with some students, these small groups of students who are willing to cooperate with me and with one another can form modules within the science classroom and work together on my ideas.

In the initial stage I wrote some poetry about each student in their respective sports, and showed it to them, the narratives in the poetry was written in such a way as to be descriptive with their personal experience here in the university, trying to instill in each of the students that laboratory implements such as thermometers. I believe that technical language can be rhymed and also can be made into personal stories each semester.

As the basketball coach I have also tried the initiative of assigning students in the same college to play against each other in the sport court. I assign questions or group study projects to them to use in the laboratory areas to research in the web and also give out some initiatives to use in bringing the idea to paper. The response I have gotten is okay, but most of these students seem to prefer writing their sporting experience in either poetry or story form than the laboratory centered creativity I sought. yet I could not help but acknowledge their efforts. There is a kind of beauty in what they write on sport; it rhymes with the idea I sought for the lab, take a look at this poem for example written by Salem Adejumo.

My name is Saleem
And I’m dribbling my way through the court
...five seconds and I position myself
And assume the winning stance
And as always I make the throw
And the ball hovers through the air,
Spiraling and swirling,
Then it hits the rim,
And goes round and round
Like Michael Jackson dancing
Until it finally sinks into the hoop.
Yes! My team wins
And there is a standing ovation
The crowd is cheering and chanting
My name was the whistle
"Lord of the rim!”, “Lord of the rim!"
Saleem, Saleem, Saleem.

Many students like Salem, with special talents in writing, spelling, calculator and computer literacy, Mathematics, logical thinking, and organization if supported will share their expertise with other members of their team/lab colleagues in the process and from there... who knows if there will be a limit to what their writing will achieve for themselves and the university from which they write.

I have spoken with small groups of science students who are graduating next year, trying to stir up their interest in my initiative. I have invited them to the e-library so that together we can research topics of interest in the school library, on their computer, and on the Internet whose access is free in our University.

Many of them have presented their works, though it is not yet in the quality to get out right publication, but there is an observed growth in the number of participants and the language used. Here is a poem by a student in natural science department.

I studied the ocean to its very depth
Observing by routine of learning and recording,
Inquiring and investigating till I reach knowing
Swelling and bulging to bear in the tide
Until I am the ocean, leaping and wide

I have showed this poetry with the permission of the students to teams of other students in other colleges, and have also encouragement others to personally try and make up science unit to create their own poetry. To the students who have attempted to create something out of the lab, this idea is animated as well as productive, and controlled from within their own talent.

The staffs are not left out, there is an observed enthusiasm by their attempt to bring poetry into their lab, below is an attempt by Mr Baba Joshua Olajiire in the Department of Chemical Science, by using the letter “P” as a starting point

Protect the environment
Protect its components
Plant, animal, micro and macro
Protect them
Producers, consumers, decomposers
Protect them; avoid extinction
Profile the forest
Precious are they
Population must be saved
Protect the environment
Protect the environment

Population of lives
Pond Ocean and sea
Planktons, phytoplankton’s, papyrus, fish
Prawns, reptiles, all animals

Protect them, sustain biodiversity
Poachers, be alarmed, be aware, be informed
Prey not on them indiscriminately
Pachyderm, strong and thick skinned
Parakeet, small bird, ostrich
Palm, pins, peas and parsnips
Protect the environment, living and non-living
Protect it, maintain it attributes
Population must be saved
Protect the environment
Protect the environment

Another staff in the College of Food science Mrs., E.O.Oluwatumisile wrote…

FRUITS

Let’s talk about fruits
Apart from the sweetness and beauty
Apart from its appeal and cleanness
Let talk about the wonder of God
For our health and longevity
Through the healing power of fruits

Lets talk abut the richness of carrot
Or the calories in each mango
How about the natural sager in a banana
Let talk about the wonder of God
For our health and longevity
Through the healing power of fruits

I like to see the color so clean
I like to see each so bright
Manifesting the beauty and spotlessness
Of these fruits into my appearance

This initiative of having all this collection into an anthology can prove to us that cooperative education is really working in a science classroom

the JUJU in the Name( Ritual Space)

2009-04-05T03:55:00.000-07:00

the JUJU in the Name( Ritual Space)

Monday, February 16, 2009 at 4:47pm | Edit Note | Delete
please coment and send any editorial input

INTRODUCTION

Introduced to the spirit of the festival
The poet participate joyfully to the initiation
To destroy the fabric of the culture
The foreigner tried to sell him at school

And the probity of rhymes calls him home
To watch his mama hip making a beat
Against the false internationalized perfectionist
That denies his commitment to come home

As the adrenaline flood the pulse
The brain feels the sting of the sounds
The string tighten the heart beat
Seeking his blood that went astray

he became aware of the road not taken,
The part the poet must suffer to take
It is the warrior in him that will decide for him
As the poet fought the conflict of thoughts

The festive scene is precious to him
There is something homecoming in it
Someone asleep in him just awoke
What the new world could never understand

At every scene the spirit wants to embrace him
At every path the spirit wants to be a part of his life
All its sense of mystery screams in his blood
And the drum lines satisfies the craving
And the theme here to him, is “welcome it”

I have seen many strange works, and when I look at mine I see that there is something weird about my write-up, I went through my collection of seven years back and I began to notice what I call the spirit realm has indeed existed in line with my name.

After my first book the music of the mind, I begin to pay attention to it, and wondered why my Christian family shunned it and me, I saw that there is something frightening about the writings, talking about my initiation in poetic form…the development of the book was hard on me- I mean the practice of men welcoming their own feared inner realm and nurturing it, I have been wondering about it and it made me more thoughtful as I read along,

The works were collected in my village where I live happily and free like the old Negro spiritual we see in movie and with his obsession with oral tribal warfare, the poetry were fascinating, within the realm I got the works from, today I feel I can see the spirit walking the pages, I have noticed in the review of the book by fellow authors, the new energy in the responses like the spirit in the prose, they comes to me like the ritual space, the festivity is still alive

I have heard about the significance of my name, a lot from literature and fables, many of them are false and some need critics, the knowledge of it falsehood move me to the direction of my village ,a place were my lineage originated, my journey has reached its dept now that it cannot be ignored in my poetry, made me so angry at many people who deny theirs, my rage has been increasing steadily till the dark side of me is clear

This write-up is the dark side…beware…

The darkness came because the poet is angry, because of the devaluation of his name within his culture, his genetic inheritance contributed to such obsession with the name, like the entire black race, the culture and their environment also has a claim to the temper of this warrior

Who is the poet…

I am the poet and I understand that no culture has the quality that can remain stable for decades, that my name cannot last that long, but I believe it can be long-lasting through arts and literature when they are stored in stories as in myth and legends,

That is what I try to do in my write-up, a collection that amount to the reservoir were I keep alive new ways of responding to foreign invasions that I can adopt when the unconventional way wears out… I call myself the juju man.

Can you as a Christian or a civilised person call your self a juju man?

I think some other local poets like myself probably have the need to express their cultural heritage, but the wording “juju” is always attributed to many of their African lineage, it keynoted a sign of inferior religion that many commentators sees as evil and dirty, it may be true in certain ways, but it is not different from the factors of life where the good and the bad co-existed

In my studies I could visit the juju ceremonies, I have memorised the acts and I have tried to find the words to express them in the poetry I write, five years now as I read the edited works, it is like reading poetry for the first time, the collection rekindle the image of innocence as the victim of circumstances branded on us by the foreign culture, that tempers with our local values

I am trying to use this poetry collection as perceived through the lineage of a poet, I want you to see the great re-birth from a son whose circle has been ancestral, whose name is attributed to the wording of the juju lineage. Try to explore the theme in the topics, try to read through the lines and see the words that have intrigued poets and writers all over the centuries. Read the totems of worship, the fact in the story with the words used to describe them and see how they fit into the lineage you have always known existed but have never seen

Do not run away from this poetry
Do not close the pages or skip the lines
Do not panic at the phrase, “juju”
Thought your fantasies moves toward the devil act,
Juju is something of ceremonies and culture than evil

Am not saying its spiritual work is clean
Nor am I saying it is otherwise
But when man goes out to dine with gods
It is something of life that calls a bond

Unlike the church that need the tamed
Here a man is free in domestication
To walk in the wood and learn a craft
Hand or mind through the lineage line

You must remember the ancient world
Does not consider the arts as evil
The wordless tension between opposites
Teach us to tell true stories and chants

Do not run away from this poetry
Let is initiate you into my realm
The instigation will help you
Not to shudder at my words
The good side won’t do it for you
Because all these personal fantasy are true
Welcome nene…welcome odede… welcome

"How I went in search of the native woman…."

I was with my pad and pen
When I heard the roosters crowing
close somewhere in my barnyard,
And the portraits on my consciousnesses
Remained within me, undistorted.
Creeping close till it merges into one
Moving like Siamese engaging in sex.
And with each crow…
I heard ebony lips in answer
coming with the dialect of tribes I know
with the buzz and yammer I know.
Take me! The voices said" take me!
Take the black nomadic women-

Today I can picture each belly budge
As the fullness of each breast bumped my arms
Thrusting at me such hard brown midriff,
as inks that puts words in my manuscripts.

Today I can picture each rhythmic sway
with lines reacting to the kinsman scorn
Who said my colour was against such erotic filth
That were the revelation of my poetic prowess

Today I encircle each vast native hip
essaying apiece the portrait in my perception
The tempter voice in my line of print
Recreates bodies I know of a all the women
controlling my thoughtful penmanship

Now it is always like this whenever I heard
Of roosters crowing in the village yard
With memories of the portrait of the women
remaining within me, undistorted
Creeping close till it merges into one
edited like the transsexuals play

How I went in search of my ancestral heritage…

In search of my ancestral heritage
I was drawn to my mind
There I see within the stillness
At the greatest of all beauty
On the art born within,
The limitless boundaries to all I can do
To celebrate the festivity of my clan

Studying forms focusing within me
My concentration attenuated the village
Like a native drum beating at my temple
it trapped the patterns of the esan dirge

seeking a dance on human history
with motif back on the ancestral acts
I seek to detect the nene echoes
Lines of the nativity in the culture
using my pen to imitated the castanet
of esan serenade within the village square

How I went in search of my ancestral tribe…"

Inspired by legends of the Esan tribe
To the gods of the Esan tribe
I offered blood sacrifice on an Esan shrine
To make the Esan tribe my tribe

Bound and somnolent endurance screamed
In studying the art of the Esan tribe
To make me the act of the tribal village
Before I touch the cowries
these forbidden things of the tribe

Because my lineage were of the kings
It was my art that I acted upon
till elders bruised my feet on the tribal stone
and I was crowned the Onojie
By king makers in an Esan village

I write and edit in respect of them
And speak the truth of legend of the tribe
To appease the temper of the gods of the tribe
Least they strike the poet on the tribe
Before he get the press
For lies against the Esan culture

"How I went in search of the ancestral hunter…"

At night I choose a clearing
And traced a circle around it
And build a fire within it fold
As I chant incarnations
To appease the gods of the night
And let the juju grove

My thought comes in throbs of drum
As I lay on the earth
and the distance footstep
Echoes from travelled past
Beats like my impatient pulse
As I sleep and yet not sleep

I lived with the eyes of the night
Where it glows beyond the trees
and the fireflies' around the silent forest
with the flames through the cracking coal
Gives a glow to the moonless night
And makes my manic so real

I sleep within the ring
And nothing dare disturb me
Nor the smallest working ant
Or the biggest of all beasts
Dare to pass the police line
As I try to make my art into act

"How I went in search of the slave route…………….

Somewhere I heard a villager cry
in dialect like signs buried deep in dreams
and within, the words more ours came back to me
hunting savage lines against my memory
rhymes of black hands and feet and faces
The act of the unforgiving slaves
Recreated anew within me

My pen;
Responding to the fury in my mind
Like a blade of grass bending to the wind
My language as always was theirs
Their pain in my print was mine
I wrote as if it was a second tongue
because my rage has captured my poems utterly

As I write the pencil inflict deep sore
being wounded I edit this poetry
Gnawing away at these foreign vocabularies
And give my village grammar upper pages
in dialect like signs buried deep in dreams

"What I saw in the Shrine of my village…."

Empty cocoa pods on a shrine
Mashed and blackened with sooth
Used to invoke the gods
As the juju man recite incantations
To god of the green
For the pacification of new harvest

a shell of an African native turtle
Preserve the heritage in the shrine
Painted with mud polish
In the characteristic of modern time
To make it all seem real

there is only one cup for the priest
Made of calabash with lineage prints
and the seven cowries within its bowel
Is like opening an imaginary book
To study prints that lay within

the spear has bone for blade
Adorned with streak of red
Is like being enclosed in a space
Knowing that you were being protected
By ancestors you couldn't see

The oracle on a shrine
Is for a god designed atheist
Sustaining a miracle of self belief
With an oath of abracadabra
Like this poetic lines

Snake fags adorned on the wall
Has its charm with a serpent hiss
and the three pairs in each circle
Believed to bring good luck
To these evil to the bone

inertial mask and dogwood
With dead things on the shrine
To breathe life into dead space
For the Resurrection of the dead
That is dead to the church

I like the insect pinned on walls
though not really a native craft
But the art of our ancestress
whose the tribal passion inspired me
as part of the totem of worship

the was a skull of a vulture
To listen to the voice within
As I call on you with a pagan tongue
Here I invoke the spirit

A mirror on a shrine
That shows things that were not in front of it
Was as real as it seems
In the word of the lie

White native chalk on a shrine
got from the blood red hills
Use to trace pattern
Of friends or foes

A gong on a shrine
The language the god knew
As the testicle beat the dirge
The sound inspired me

"How I found the oracle………."

Haunting the music of the mind
Looking through the peephole for fresh insight
I dreamed of a different word to change my world
Rooted in the genes of a true Esan son

As I tiptoed through the part my fathers once trodden
To invoke the past that haunts my dreams
The spirit moves me to my native tribe
To essay my find
among the people of my birth

A man I was the color of night
As I go at the drift of my dream
and after so many search…
Suddenly it comes to me

Like a dog the has just caught sight of game
I look up at the moment I heard it
Looking sideways, yet while facing forward,
The sound came again and again

Softly with a fuller harmony
Slowly that the notes were hardly audible
And yet I heard it again and again
Delicate nuance in a native duet
Moving through the dense cloud of my memory –

onojie, onojie, onojie
I caught only words and phrases
In form of things

suddenly like a lonely adieu
I recognize the music
Always different from the drumming
Hammering away at my temple

And yet I knew
As I scratch my balls
With the vestige of a native intuition
The sudden knowledge grew
Like living in a trance, like coming home,
Home to a place you have always known
But have never been
(Though you were born there)

as I heard the voices
And the accompanying drums
The rumble of thump at a diminishing tune
Conveyed everything to me
Miracle of my own first perceiving
From this section of my village
Joined me now in celebration
and breathe the tip of our reality
In the poetry I write

THE STUDY OF MY NAME

“One writes out of one thing only…one own experience, the only really concern of the artist is to recreate out of the disorder of life, that order which is …art” James Baldwin

I am “omosun” Yes I am, that is what I discover, poem after poem, story after story, the author in his own drama… I was moved with the insightfulness of my own message, discovering myself in every step, it is happening now as I write about me…the “omosun” I knew, the son of juju pot.

I am “omosun’ when I think about it I just get really immersed in it, ironically it was the meaning of the name that gave me the serious interest I had with the African literature

The son of juju… Sometimes I could just get lost in thought, and a whole picture will come to me, a whole poetry, it frighten me sometimes, looking at my finished works, asking myself if they were mine, yet the answer is there, my hands wrote them, I am not the voice, it was the spirit, it is, yes it was the spirit within Omosun

Imagining the scenes surrounding tribal name is like a painters act, like poetry… once you get the ingredient down you work on them, you can change the word but never the spirit

The study of me, though imbued with religion themes expresses my own personal faith and opinions about my lineage, the fascination of the unknown that has been a part of my life ever since I learned the meaning on my name, ”omosun”

Wish I with the name could only waltz
With the study of more skulls than men
Then the later generation will have a name
A dynasty formed by this poetic myth
The words could consolidate the travelled realm
Its factors, faction and fact that whispers by
As our bodies merge with our heart as one
Through birth, death and ancestral arts

PRIDE IN MY NAME
My name gave me a hold to what the world has lost, a possession that could make me a god, the “omosun” that is true to the juju deity, I claimed it because I alone have it to share, with the spirit possessions still intact, as I try to recapture its power through my poetry.

Believe me, the incarnations I study could work on me as I write, till I am no longer who I thought I was, and the spiritual values in its institution will no longer be confined to the village shrine…I pray it will creep over the globe through the work of my hands

My name could give me the power to persuade my brothers home to the village, because the voice is in me, it has sharpened my poetic talent through the thunder of the ‘omo’ (omo derived from the first three letters of my surname mean Son in my native Esan)- and the hunger of the Osun (Osun the last four letters of my name means shrine or juju). I am either from the shrine or juju.

So today as an African poet I am proud to say…I am “omosun” I give what I have to give, a creation of gods as it has been at its prime, prints from a mind that knew such facts writes about the drama of possession when the son was once as one with the gods

The view of the modern mind is that the name has to die as they trample upon its value and power derived from the racial and cosmic past, I laugh to think of it, because they were wrong, the spirit has never been killed, it will lie low for a while, and them it will come again from its source, it will grow in us and nurture us, feed upon our mind and body when all hope is lost.

Slave Story: unedited reasonable lies

2009-04-05T03:46:00.000-07:00

Slave Story: unedited reasonable lies

Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 4:05pm | Edit Note | Delete

I have walked the roads less travelled by truth and on each path I quote lies in what I wrote as I try to make myself believe that the slave story is what I held against the missionaries who were stressing man’s submission to humiliations like us of old, people do read me and they do believe my lies with all its reason, lies about being angry against these missionaries when in truth I ate from the missionary table, in Esanland I lied that they…the missionary coming to visit are conditioning my kins to accept their chains as the story said… while in truth I asked myself what could it have been with out the white man coming, and the more I lied the more something in my poetry made me into each stroke of an axe on oak…the kin who sold of his brother though the old badagry route

…when I wrote about slaves in a ship from the slavery stories I read at school, I lied that I have felt it in my clan, knowing I have never been whipped, or felt the power of the radiated pain in my words as the reader,

when at times I could lie about being that cry of a mule I felt it too, in the field the slaves becomes the mule, and the mule becomes the liar, till the poet know not which, I have never written any fulfilment a slave felt, all is pain and whip and pain,

…and I lied when folks ask who I am to my poetry-
with words that quotes that I am the crack of a whip, the hiss as the whip hit on each flesh, I said I am it, but in truth I think it was what claimed the savage in out lineage

once assuming that I can be everything in the past I wanted to study, to try and feel what I read the slaves felt, I decided to work and work and in the farm I write and write, said I am the past but I know am not the past, I lied to myself because I am a poet who creates, and haven created the reasonable lies, the lies becomes my reasoning.

Yesterday some young Nigerians writers came up to me and ask to be part of my creation, they wanted to act the cotton field as in my poetry or the sugar plantation where papa slaved, said they love my lies that are reasonable, they wanted to be able to acclaim the Alleluia exclaim by freedman without feeling them, and be able to see a slave who dived overboard to swim back ashore, and learn the course and the chart of the Mississippi river that wallows through the lying pages

Many of these Nigerian poets does not like the use the word “nigger” in the stanza, so they ask of what my wording nigger-creates, can it bring the past by recalling the nigger-past?, When in the modern world we prefer word-blacks

I said the “nigger” wordings are like the effort by the bridle of a mule hauling the nigger “pen”, or an extra push on papa ox to till a soil for new harvest, or bring revival for the soul like the massa of the overseer and that I prefer the nigger to the word “black” I said for reasonable doubt, I said because I have suffered as them, though in my quotes I saw the lies…I have never swam in all one's overall and find out how it feels in the nigger pen, I have never dived into a world of letters and fished out the secrets of the deep plantation pit, all I did was to stand in front of a mirror and see myself a slave, I try to make these act my arts and make the spirit live-

I have never switched of the air-condition and feel the heat of the hold or to take off my sanders and walk bare foot in the village wood, I have never tried to make these act my act and make the spirit live- I just live the art in my imagination

I know that till I do that; words are just words to me, till I do that my act is just an act, not act but art like a white with a mic calling himself a black African, but I needed to lie that I have done and seen,
.
At times I accepted my lies like a whining conscience and allows the shackled voices to creeps at me…toward a dark and frightening periphery' and within I was able to see things I never thought I could see…the lies has reasoning within the hypocrisy that hid the black race,

At times I keep trying to negotiate a truce as internal monologues insist on venting themselves out into words telling me exactly what I needed to write, I knew that the voices is baiting me, and I don't just let it do it
I actually seems to like it
as it calls me all the names in 'black'.
Forcing me into an edge of a dark vortex of rage
to which I am constantly withdrawn
as I get the press
With my lies;

Black apple it calls me
Black sheep it calls me
Black this black that
Black 'bad-bad-bad-bad'

I try to stench my fear in my poetry
By exploiting my own 'niggerness'
telling myself it was only a phrase
As I play dumb jokes on my 'BLACKNESS'
yet each time when my anger came out in my poems
each time the voice worked on me
the words seems to grope for me,
at the image of me…
at the mercy of a 'shackled voice'…
beyond the 'Mississippi' river

I must confess that I write of the slaves
A people I do not know
Because I am a writer
And I needed to write
And as each occasion dictates
The black history month’s bacons
With polished penmanship
smeared up with the blood
of slaves I said I really do know

but I have to ask constantly
in Africa where I find the great romanticism
And with the power of the pen
I have to ask of why
each turkey came shaking the backside
to applaud the stick I gave the white

and because I can write
the words creeps at me
nigger words through the track of my mind,
like ancient words cut long ago
before the Whitman comes...

as the scars scream out
I lied in my muse-
And as you read my work
It became the truth

such was the story
I have learned to lie about
With quotes putting me up among legends
born long centuries ago before me

END

Today I saw a tribal kid…
With a beggars bowl…
in an intimate palm,
as he looked up to me
I begged him to be
the field and toil of men

because he have got the smell
of a Negro toil…
flooring the privy,
something like a pig pen
after a day work in the farm

I wished him to dress like
the identity of the past
by the reason of our existence
so its authenticity and usefulness
in the lineage of history
will be reborn
in the poetry I write

In my fantasy toward the waters
Of acts the pen recreates
…the smell as the current directing my thoughts
or of the dead afloat toward a shore-
the storm attacking the ship
the human-driftwood in the water-
the secret of the sea passage
the slave deep in the ship hold
and the motion of the sea

these are what he was to me and could be
to my writings-
like the wreck on the ocean floor
or the squall in all it fury and storm
like the sea that lives throb and breath

Believe me as I recreate the scene
I see him in the slave story-
Because I am a poet whose lies can calm the savage in the penmanship

AM NOW A DAD

2009-03-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

Got A son

Africa: Rhythm of Memorial (introduction poem)

2008-01-04T02:00:00.000-08:00

The chilling truth that people under the control of cult leaders are capable of the most horrible atrocities imaginable can not be overemphasised… so the best solution is that we writers have to educate them, for in such education we promote peace

We need to do this for African freedom and liberty.

Let us reveal the religious and ethnic leaders who promote a culture of absolute obedience, separation from the “other”, and embrace violence, let us look for them and warn the authorities in such a region of what may happen when such leaders are bought

This Kenya crisis is not the first, our continent is unjustly victimized even today
Because of the loyalty of these leaders

Priestly craft against our culture
All natives lost to papal claims
The ideal freedom dearer than the blood
Of brothers condemned to a cruel death

What agitate us to throw stones?
What hate roam confined within?
That restless spirit wanting to be freed
And rampage within the African coast

Slave to oppression we moan about it
Cried to slavish and religious superstitions
Till the charms of hate release
The struggle of the degrading claims

2008-01-01T23:51:00.000-08:00

In Conflict writing…They came in landing

2007-08-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

In Conflict writing…They came in landing

I can’t explain the exact difference
between memory and recollection
both to my poetry
are like analyzing
…a dream
In Conflict writing…
They came in landing
craft
and airplanes
and helicopters
and the breath were
the hot steam of war
sigh a murmur
from the congregated dead
ziz-zaged as the arrangement of this poem
I recreate
A land of racial ghost
and ethnic fear
Moss grow of the dead
as carpet on the trunk of trees,
and on a new page
a fresh grave lay beneath
dripping branches
underneath each story
I recollect of politicians
…the
Phantom turning to the amazing heat of flames
when they encounter resistance
from the poor
and the hungry
memory of the militants
recollection of religion
politics
area boys
genocide! Genocide! genocide
recollection
and if a native was to see it
recollection of elders
…them as they corrupt the nation
the native was shot
or killed by accidental discharge
faith in Nigeria and Africa are broken
Bodies are broken
Branches of culture were searing,
thorn and thrown
I recollect a little blood
were bone poked through flesh
Talks about the genocidal child
In Lagos street
Interred, the corpse were lain flat
In the north as in Somalia
The hillside grave drained
Our literary voices
Till rigor mortis set in
On Association of Nigerian Authors
We write with the biggest pay
Because
…for us the darkness is not a curse
The unborn child is corrupt
Me; tribalpoetry is also first a sham
The thankless occupation
That will kill me eventually

Topic…Herbed Education for Sustainable Development

2007-02-26T06:46:00.000-08:00

By Sylvester Oseremen Omosun
Planning Officer; Bells University of Technology, Ota
www.Bellsuniversity.org
www.myspace.com/africantribalpoetry
08052130879

“I have traced all things from the start with accuracy that you may know fully the certainty of the things”
Luke 1- 3, 4, Isaiah 35- 5, 6.

This write-up is part of a resourceful research undertaken during my annual leave from work, between September 11th to October 9th 2006, the topic seeks to clarify the use of Medicinal Plants in relation to Sustainable Development, and why I think the strategy employed by saint Benedictine Monastery to the indigenes of Esanland [The venue researched were the towns around the Saint Benedict Monastery at Ewu-Esan in Edo Central Senatorial District] should be incorporated into the Nigeria education system in lieu with the aim of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, with special appraisal on Fr Anselm Adodo; coordinator of PAX herbal clinic and research laboratories.
“The aim of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development is to promote and improve the integration of education for sustainable development into the educational strategies and action plans at all levels and sectors of education in all countries.”
The decade running from 2005 to 2014 was declared by The United Nations as “the decade of Education for Sustainable Development.” According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
Below I will try to explain how with the aid of a monastery herbal garden, a monk has affirmed with UNESCO key themes in education for sustainable development in Nigeria, which are:
1. Overcoming Poverty through herbal medicine,
2. Health Promotion,
3. Environmental Conservation and Protection,
4. Rural Transformation: Education for Rural People ,
5. Understanding and Peace,
6. Sustainable Production and Consumption ,
7. Cultural Diversity and,
8. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
Plants are the ideal educational tools for the natural habitat attributed to Africa, and I believe that the study of the various African plants can be used in virtually every subject across the sustainable development initiative as well as the University curriculum if accredited. I also believe that the fate of the world’s environment will depend to a great extent on the actions and decisions of plants conservation for the said development strategy, my belief planted this article
· Environmental Conservation and Protection,
During a two week period of researching some of the herbs gardens with the priest who is currently pursuing two doctoral degree programmes in sociology and history of medicine, I observed how some youthful workers between the ages of 16 and 21 worked to conserve one of the monastery gardens, fencing of the adjourning passages with new flowerbeds; containing mostly special species of herbal and drought resistant shrubs.
Observing the workers, a bible passages came into the field of reasoning {Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Gen 1:11-12}
The Monastic herbal garden caters for over 10,000 people in the last six month, Direct contact with such natural surroundings is new to many of the visitors, and responses show that it is a very enjoyable experience for all these people, because many of the people who take part in the monastery awareness seminar, as well as these coming in search of healing are from urban areas and have had little or no contact with the natural world as quoted in the passage above, and often it greatly enriches the overall value of the education they receive. That is what it did to me; the reason this research ended up being a lot of fun
I believe that combining environmental conservation with youth employment is an essential step to sustainable education initiatives lacking in many higher institutions and religion today, the employment program whereby the youth are recruited into the monastery ground provides a structured learning environment where participants developed basic job readiness skills while receiving mentoring for future prospect
How does the PAX Herbal Research Laboratories conserve and protect the Environment for sustainable development in Edo Central Senatorial District?
According to Fr. Ikeke, PhD, a catholic priest, who is the director of the Justice, Development, and Peace Commission of the diocese of Warri.

What is sustainability? What is its relevance to the herbal question? The question of sustainable development gained prominence in the late 1980s. It was promoted by The World Commission on Environment and Development. The World Commission says Promoting development and protecting the environment should not be separated. They are one integral whole. In the official website of UNESCO, it is affirmed that:
This new paradigm of sustainable development establishes linkages across poverty alleviation, human rights, peace and security, cultural diversity, bio-diversity, food security, clean water and sanitation, renewable energy, preservation of the environment and the sustainable use of natural resources. This view of sustainable development seeks to ensure a better quality of life for everyone now and for the generations to come.
The phrase “preservation of the environment and the sustainable use of natural resources” are of great interest to us here. The forests, plants, animals, and other natural things which herbal practitioners gather their herbs and materials are part of natural resources or the natural world. They need to be used in a sustainable manner. They should not be depleted. The benefits in the natural world are destined not only for our own good but the good of future generations and other biotic life flourishing. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches on the integrity and respect for all creation as follows:
(2415) The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity. Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man's dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.
Such conservative strategy is a crucial aspect of the works done in saint Benedictine, it open our eyes to the importance of plants in our everyday lives while enriching our learning experiences, such a study if addressed in the educational sector will inspire an appreciative and understanding of nature in today’s people
The goal behind setting up many of the herbal gardens in the districts is to conserve those species found infrequently in the wild. The resolute tending of herbs will be useful to the entire community as and when any need arises
Such courses were plants are being conserved sustainable are being studied in countries like china and India, the study of herbology is an example, Nigeria can take a green leaf from them, a designed learning strategy to make erudition of plants interesting, where students learn how plants can be used for food, medicine and shelter. And thereby provides information not only on the plants themselves, but also on the culture and history of the people involved in the usage of such medicinal plants
{Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so. Genesis 1:29-30}
the program employed by the Pax researchers for the conservation of medicinal plants gardens supports education initiatives noted all over the united Nation initiative for African society and highlights the importance of the local environment in conservation.
Here the community get the training from the monastery, a training by a qualified horticulturist teach them basic usage on their locally available herbs/plants right from nursery, conservation, practical identification to preparation
I agree whole heartedly with to Fr. Ikeke when he said that… Many people, even educators, are unaware of this decade of education for sustainable development. Because of this, the benefits of the decade cannot be fully distilled to the grassroots and daily life. It should be noted that the United Nations decade of education for sustainable development is not simply meant for educators or educational institutions in the real sense. We know that education should be a task for all social agents including religious bodies and indigenous institutions like the herbal medical institutions. In the light of the United Nations decade of education for sustainable development, no human subject or issues should be discussed without reference to the decade. Every purpose of the United Nations is to make life on earth better in a healthy planet. Today we live in a global planet and we are cosmopolitan or global citizens. The issues that affect the global world should not escape our frame of reference. A global issue that has implications for every locality is the issue of developing a sustainable society.
Researching the monastery garden has heighten awareness of the need for conservation and herbal education to the local communities, working in a research based university has given me the platform for air my views
The rarest essence from the monastery
Come streaming down from Esanland
The mandrakes yield their fragrances
Re-awaken in me -the healing faith
“We need to promote the scientific exploration of Africa flora and fauna for the benefit of our people,” Governor Igbinedion on the Commissioning of the herbal clinic

Yahoo! Mail - tribalpoetry@yahoo.com

2007-02-09T01:52:00.001-08:00

Yahoo! Mail - tribalpoetry@yahoo.com

2006-07-05T01:43:00.000-07:00

today all the oratory nodded into me
are yearning to narrate their stories
the call and response form in African oral narratives
to help those of us who were shy speaking in public

it happens during prayers
it happens during ceremony
whose idea promotes group participation,
every word following gestured display

Most of the poetry collection is touching
and emotionally it shows natural nuances
or the other from the proverb recited
love in the choruses which everybody joined
including my grand mum with her loss gums

what I learned I dreamingly acted true
something we pray and sing along to
This first education I got to be a poet
good public speaker before schooling

my muse usually picks the story teller
in my local language for the week at random
a rebirth without losing touch with tradition
uh how the children love it when I recited

once I told a slave story of two children
But a critic spied and called me a racist
making gathering itself impossible
my confidence fell with names of the village chief

Do listen to your elders and to you parents I said
and told them; the village kids a tale
of some clan who refuse to listen
and how they were lost and stolen
to make a free state against their will

and I fought back with my juju poetry
knowing we must not bid bye to this art
or our children will take refuge in TV
rebirth of shyness and the idiot box

In primary school in the late 1980's
my teacher introduced story telling
but her mind was a colonized blank
learning nothing but published arts

My best moments as a child were samakaland
Something mama gives as we roasts yam
That it is what I hoped to give back
when the sung, chant, proverbs follows the art
display that transcend the communicative functions of language

how I love that scenery strengthening social cohesion
far from assuring to the status of writing art
how I love to read my own works
Urdeen tribal poetry at its best

The poet, under whatever name, always stands for the same thing—imagination. And imagination in its highest form gives him the power, as it were, of assuming the consciousness of whatever he speaks about, whether man or beast, or rock or tree,

Behind the cattle kraal

2006-05-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

Behind the cattle kraal
Against the velvet black of her skin
The moon illuminated light
A dim glow like a beacon in the night
Her breast on my palm did lay
Surprisingly heavy in such a slim figure
And the scent of opening flowers
Competed with the odor of her virgin flesh

harvest for mama

2006-05-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

For my dream…
The summer heat of the day
Was for my mother
The filthy gnat -mad field
Was for my mother
The bone-cracking labor of the woods
Was for my mother
The life of shelling corns
Was for my mother
Romping deep in decaying slims
Was for my mother
The work of the mill
Was for my mother
The weight of grains
Was for my mother
The sweat and stink of the field
Was for my mother
The cruel hiss of the whip
Was for my mother
The groan of the dying
Was for my mother
The roar of the Mississippi
Was for my mother
The burden of chains
Was for my mother
The farm of grain
Was for my mother
The stench of the field
Was for my mother
The yelling note of the overseer
Was for my mother
No never again
Will I be the slave
Because of my mother

the overture of an Esan son

2006-05-30T06:32:00.001-07:00

The shade of desire is evident
When you watch eyes following
Water pouts wetting the blouse
Of an Edo maiden in the river road

The poet in love knows these best
Lift her bodily within this script
And praise her for my manhood stance
As an outlet of mans savage quest

These poems whispered the tempters rite
At a time when sexual desire followed me
Something the bible called bloom of youth
Like anger in silence translated by the body
When the lines of arches were at their peak

11
The picture in an artistic abandons
Conditioned by the gazelle neck
On her head it swings and sway
A stance of many dances

The scenes that tasked much attention
Like the wrapper around her flank
Unpadded feet on the dust they trod
Echoes the overture of an Esan son

111

the delicate flanks shows elastic in pants
The daring eyes flaunts the police line
Such contemplation papa warned me about
Trying to restrain me with a muscular thigh

The red lip gauge fanning the flame
Like squashed roses red as wine
A pout of blood colored my mind
As a savior died for this sinner in me
Tempting me through the erotic faith

The water pot goes in and out with me
Walking by the stream or the water ways
Or by the narrow streamlet were the land
Were green or by the creek were the hills were steep
Like my shadow it traced a part of me
A life destined on the African woman

2006-05-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

a plea for SUDAN to writers

2006-05-04T05:21:00.000-07:00

Theme in a dominion of pure opposition
Horrific scenes with no chance of peace
like them my childhood involved neglect
My puberty entailed poverty disputation
My adulthood was rooted in Niger delta
with all this in mind you assumed right
It was no wonder I knew what I write
Am not in Sudan but have burnt candles
Chalks on a slate to tell of poetic treasons
By reducing them to abstractions and wiles
The yelling, the screaming, it never did cease
My vocation has turned it to self-mutilation.
In an attempt to release inner frustration
Seeking a "Sudanese Poems" and stories
Something more important that rhymes
above the mistake of looking in the mirror
ignorant if we think we could never be in that place
the CNN talk about Theme of underdevelopment
To wash their hands of the “sudden death”

Please do not turn from the grave
And from the mound beside it
The smell of damp earth and rotten matter
Calling to mind, creatures once flesh
Please do not turn from the grave
Of corpse descending on the uncaring earth
And the cemetery of mourners
Exploding over headstones
Please do not turn from the grave
From the sod beneath
Of beetles, worms and little things
Bedding with these of whom we cry

Please comment at
www.tribalpoetry.blogspot.com

Thanks
Urdeen Sylvester
Administrative officer
Bells university of technology
Ogun State
Nigeria
08052130879

2006-01-31T01:30:00.000-08:00

Hut and Skins

I have none but hut and skins
and the usual junks my people have
yet I am a king in my own realm again
within the endless plains
in my poetry lies my profiles
contentment in gutter education
carving out my manuscript
and claim my own kind tribes of men,
men fitted with strong sinew
bones larger harder like stumps
conditioned by years of conquered illness
heat from the field and dry winds
mild wandering fashion of savage old
to eat what only the rain and sun could give
clothed here in my manuscript
as I study the African literature

the pain within the poetry

2006-01-31T01:27:00.000-08:00

the savagery of a clan
acts out the scene of affront
and a "bush" man's altitude
made the president true,

the scene of battlement
found forms in a tribal mind
and a wounded world sinks
into a blank empty page.

THE AFRICAN SOUL

2006-01-31T01:25:00.000-08:00

THE AFRICAN SOUL

Afield the echoes scream,
Deep within the alluvian of the African soul
Squat and croaking in my conciousness
things about arts found only in dreams
trying to access my share
of the brotherhood questions
that pain has sought to kill

the black man curriculumn
teaching me about thyself...
nourished anew along the Niger plains
under the skin of a native beat
as I study the African literature

Since the anger within me is urgent

2006-01-31T01:22:00.000-08:00

Since the anger within me is urgent
I drove an endless terror upon my readers
Screamed out my a trumpet in dialect
Against the murderous attackers who beleaguered the city

With the battle cry into the crowd I trod
Letting the bloody tears fall down on me
A manuscript to make up the point of conflict
And in a rages to haul it away

Dragging the dead through the carnage
The corpse of these who have fallen
Coming together in bitter collision
pictured home the blooded spoils.

Echoes of the Gulf (Conscience of War)

2006-01-31T01:17:00.000-08:00

"An Arab land once a pilgrim part

A Muslim pride now a picture of ruin

Natives acting out what happened to them

Death by the hundreds blood bath in the street

Enslaved as a nation now without a crown-"

squeezing through the crowd of mourners

Trying to find an opening close to the havoc

Relatives and friends trying to restrain me

Eye telling me what I expected to see-

I resisted and they gave way as I approached

Bowing slowly backing away giving me space,

Standing over a carcass making the sign of the cross-

A mother cries out in the street looking at a son she loved

shattered arms and bodies in tartar

suicide bombers terrorist claims-

family homes looks like a funeral parlor

The dead! Yes I have seen it all before

Yes I have watched them before on TV

Burying folks em-mass like 'Rwandan genocide' attack-

Once upon a time in Africa.

Folks couldn't stop crying, hanky in all hands

In contract with the clothing, all in black

Who should it be, that brought up my kin's

Who should it be, that makes mama and papa cry-

A kin run up to me, into my open arms crying

The condolence keep pouring in wordily oration

The stench of the dead of roses and incense

Of my own apprehension setting in

As I go on and on the distance seemed everlasting

Like watching a movie in TV coming out in motion-

A widow bend nearly double with grief

Not yet thirty by the look of her

And by God! A kid straddled on her back

A baby who will never see or call papa-

I can smell an undertaker embalming fluid

He used to preserve the dead, as I walk the street

The pall bearers who brought the coffins

Looks like crows waiting for a carcass

The hundred of candles around the main

The smell of burning tallow

Killing me along with the thought of a dead-

The priest solemn alone with no alter boys

Swinging the censor around the coffin

Clouds of frankincense wafted toward us

And I like all Catholics made the sign of the cross

To a virgin whose son the Arabs hated-

And at the gulf of death here I come at least

And every form jumped right at me

There is no mistaken it

the pictures in my line of sight

The corpses look at me accusing me-

And then I woke up out of my own sweat

Back home safe and well

But the nightmare I know will continue

The spirit of the dead will always be in my conscience-

The only solitude will be to write about it

It is a writers craft to tell from art

Bringing the wounded world into our rooms

And invoke the conscience of the nations in time of war.

"Within the gulf the valley of death

Into an art so pure in truth

I wrote of what o poet saw

reenacting classic battles like on TV

A carnage so complete.

Amen to the freedom fighters

Alleluia -alleluia''

PART TWO

'here a soldier lend a voice'
With pride I enlisted with the army

Thought I was all like in the movie

With haircuts and orderliness

And a change away from civilian clothes-

Like barking dogs with human faces

They gave orders herding us like cattle

Sent to my battalion to battle a nation

Coz once a soldier you own yourself no more-

With such bitterness I thought about home

Folks uneasy about shielding a deserter

Cradled in the noise of their barking

The trail was hot in the Arab land-

Obscenely desperate for the enemy flesh

Never having enough men in my rifle sight

Into the carnage of the gulf I faced the terrorist

Rooting with terror I found they were men like me-

All limbs jittery, snout deep in water logged trench

Embraced by the squalid ramble of the battle field

A dozen or more corpses are on the anal tip of a crater

The khaki uniform stained with my own blood and urine-

Both factions, lying dead in chump and rows

Others were still screaming in horrible reality

Some without legs and arms, barely alive

All sinews ashen and splintered, shattered on the battlefield-

Yet herding the cattle, Barking at us, our leaders shouted

Go get the terrorist! Go get the terrorist!

Whiles soldiers were being blown or shot to pieces

falling like autumn fruits-

sound from iraq

2006-01-31T01:11:00.000-08:00

The thing that make me turn the television on
and skip the pages of late paper
or listen to grand dad radio when he is out
is the same thing that makes
us burn with horror at the fact
and rage against the name of what
the modern riffraff calls a call of peace

when I watch TV everyday
the news was recited
like a momma reciting litanies;
telling about the body count…

Have supposed animals in slaughter
imagining arms around me
the shout the scream
the cry the wails
the siren song
arms in arm impaled upon me
in a mating dance of death

As the world comes down upon us
I pout, I stare;
Mouth agape at a coverage so clear
Antiseptic likes the nurse uniform
in respect of modern technology
telling me news in black and white.

First a little puff of smoke
told us a faction have scored a point
grandma denture flying out
like a rocket screaming hisssss
at the most vivid enactment
re creating classic battles
in the smoky hut it comes blaring
we found ourselves in the Arab land.

and here granny lead her voice to mine
and
I saw the lightening
and that na the gun
and then I hear the 'thunder' come
and that na the big gun
and them I come hear
the rain day fall,
and that na the drop of blood day fall
and when I go farm to gather our crops
na dead men I go gather'

I feeling the way things be
As I ask myself what be this?

who tell you say
I never hear the scream of realities
because me no they for dear
who tell you say
me never feeling the fate and horror
of a carnage way so complete
for our fine television

standing still eyes on the screen
in that moment we be the same
the wounded world right
in my in my granny hut

I was there inside an open skull
I was there inside a broken skin
I was there inside all drops of blood
I was there in the air with the paratroops
I was there falling down with the bombs
I was there inside the chaos of this century
I was there and I am here in the Smoky hut

I have lent out a voice among the location mob and drunks
I have lent out a voice among the intellectuals
But in the 'bush' the villagers though the Yankee was right
going at em the way James bones does
With all the fancy stuff shown on TV
To make it seems right

today the first causality were
the local dreamer dreaming
then suddenly sirens started screaming
the hospital were full to draining
on houses with no window left to smash
were rooms stank of gases and broken drain
in completion of roasted human meat.

The sound the color
To still the subtle fear
Made worse when the death were justified as right
But the joke was even funnier
Out of the valley of death
repeat a startling vision.

The thought of so much death
The more there is the less it mean
Though object find reflection in the eye
the mind alone knew what lies beyond

when a dwell is started
it is of a simple rule 'to win'
it cares not for the families it devastates
not you or me

at the onset both factions has the conviction
that they stand on the right side
willing to die and fight for a course justified to be right

but let us stick to the fact
can there be peace when peace means broken bones
can there?

With the tears at the corner of my eye
my body heard before I really did
the value I thought life posses
walking down the track of troop and saints,
runs down the street in stream of blood
hearing a mother crying for a son she loves
as terrorist claim them in the name of peace

Well
is there peace today
answer me
no there is no peace and there will never be
the donkey still wired with explosives
the fanatic Tommy is full of bombs
above the birds still screams laying down their eggs in flight
splintered knees and broken arms
marked the stable once that left home.

urdeen all rights reserved 2004

2006-01-31T01:07:00.000-08:00

INTRODUCTION: an Ode to the freedom fighters

In you the caravan trod

In line with the merchant chants-

'Bound in a sheaf of dreams

A black man in a nigger suit

Here at your view

In you the wagon trails

Across the forgotten part-

'Standing in a pulpit

A rambling preacher

downed with a bullet'

in you I smelled my odor

from the stench of the hold-

'the sound of a captive voice

echoes our shackled fear

across the shadeless grass

in you sisterhood awakes again

the voice of a kitchen mammy-

'the rich laughter of a Negro maiden

in a song our fathers sang

taking us home again

Somewhere I heard a Negro cry

2006-01-18T05:07:00.000-08:00

Somewhere I heard a Negro cry

Of talk buried deep in dreams

The words more ours came back to me

Savage lines against my memory

Black hands and feet and faces

The act of nigger past

My pen; responding to the fury in my mind

Like a blade of grass bending to the wind

My language was theirs

Their pain was mine

I spoke as if it was a second tongue

My rage has captured my poems utterly

As I write the pencil inflict deep sore

Wounded I edit

Gnawing away at these foreign

Vocabularies to make the manic real

and let the spirit live-
---------------------------------
The more truth we seek
The more confused we are
Coz we are ashamed 2 see
The truth of our past

Are we free from shackles 2 day?
No not at all
Though there is no chain today
We are but still a slave

the beauty of Orature

2006-01-18T02:14:00.000-08:00

Whenever I go to the tribe during festivities, I often had to prepare some meals and invite the kindred poor to come and have a feast, we could gather around the wood stove in our compound and I would make them happy by telling them stories I learned from my childhood, the elder of family and kinfolks would listen carefully and at times adds comment if unintentionally I misquote a proverb,

I try to recreate the scenery around the hearths as it was in the past, to sit around fires to poke and smell the sting of the rising smoke, to see myself as the great story-teller in the age of gold as I take the wide eyed kids thousands of miles back into the memory lane of the child I was.

Now I write imaginatively from the oral culture, most from my own story telling. And my first book” music of the mind” a collection of poetry; tells of my journey and the beauty I discovered as I try to continue the priceless vocation of a habitual story teller..

today when I think of an African story I once had the privilege to listen to, a story of how the sky used to touch the earth and how an old lady used to wipe her hands on the moon after each meal and how the sky eventually got angry and moved away from the old lady. I now think of another meaning behind these words, I see myself as that old lady, asking the sky for forgiveness, trying to bring the “moonlight tales” closer to the earth.

I have a reason why I do what I do, recreating details as it was true to life, because I believe that story telling is a simple and wonderful way to act out our imaginations, the art helps the mind grow and learn to create. is a way to let the children use their imaginations and help the them build up their communication skill as it has done to this author,

growing up in the village, as a child I looked forward nightly to the story times that took place at of our multipart, my favorite stories were the sing along ones, call and response form. My grandfather would quote a proverb and would summon us to finish it.

in this method the art entails a caller or lead singer who “raises the song” of the story and the community chorus will respond, or “agree underneath the song.”
But in stories, the storyteller “calls” out the story in lines; and the audience “responds” at regular intervals

Granny: Once upon a time
Children: Time, time
Granny: Many, many moons ago
Children: Mmmmh

Each story or song had a lesson to be learnt from within, as I grew the lessons strengthened me, my writings today is conditioned by the childhood scenery, these riches of the story telling culture are quite evident to me and very beautiful

Today there may be no fires to sit around in most rural settings as it was in the past, because the world is not as safe as it was, but story telling lives on, and as I sit in my verandah looking at the moon at night my mind goes back home, memories closeting on the charcoal fire, the smells of either ground-nuts toasting or yam roasting recalls the beauty of the art of the stories that developed my curiosity towards the bits and pieces around me and taught me the importance of my lineage

I to write about the beauty of this gift, to share my culture and to contribute the little I can in preserving the art, at times I use illustration from the western stories that are written down and illustrated in books, because I want to make the modern writer know that he doesn’t need to go back to the past to recreate the art of “ orature”. They are available within reach,

an example of one story I loved to give the kid by oration is the latest bestseller novel “Harry Potter” a lot of these stories are based on village lifestyles that are quiet familiar to those of us brought up in rural setting,

to make folk understand what I intended for them to see, I tried my best so the fable stories are narrated in such a way using the lingering dialect of our village, that both the old and young are glued to my narratives as I do in my excitement as a kid whenever I heard an elder tell a story

Great African writers have often done what I do, writers like Chinua Achebe often introduce into literature, stories from their culture’s oral traditions and the meaning of the proverbs printed in his dialect, song-tales, myths, folktales, fairy tales, animal fables, One example is this proverb-song given in untranslated Igbo in Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Ch. 7, p. 42:

because they too are conditioned by their culture.

ON THE POETRY

During my childhood, I used to listen to my grandmother reciting to us the poetry of mythology and legends of our ancestral tradition, listening to her made me a humble and a respectful child, it is a brilliant way of coping with problems; “she once said to me” I sing it when I walk alone to the stream, fears would be lost when we recite poetry of hope. She continued. Today I agree with her

One of the beautiful things about poetry is that you can actually use it to heal your own emotion and to teach the world a thing or two about the basics of your society, for example like learning names and their meaning, the dialect and belief as you see it

Literature among the African is in actual fact spoken and poetic, 'a verbal art so pure and so complete.” touching, and emotional, the arts examines the black experience as reflected in the drama of Africans. I love the choruses which everybody including my grandma sang along to. The call and response form help those of us who were shy speaking in public because it afforded us the opportunity to overcome our shyness and also helped in boosting our confidence. This in a way is the first education I got to be a good in speaking publicly

It is very important to tell stories to children through this method. Apart from being exciting poetry helps them in many ways: to build up their listening skills, to become effective communicators with the use of their dialect, to appreciate the society in which they live, to bridge a gap between their generation and past generations, to understand their roots and to become more creative in what they do.

ON SLAVERY TODAY

2005-12-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

Forced labor in NIgeria.

I watched them coming toward me, mouth jerking as in worked by wires,
eyes open with beggarliness, arms stretching in violent outreaching,
eye milky drawing on me, killing me with my thoughts.

My country, Nigeria with every scenery to show for her ordeal.
The view of trafficked children working on the streets, children not
yet in their teens, hawking along the busy road, how many have met
their death? How many have been exploited and abused and used?

I read about them in the foreign media, and I wondered why not in my
own country are there publications on the subject? Yet I read on the
BBC web site that Unicef estimates that human trafficking is the
most lucrative trade in West Africa. Why? This discovery will shock
you when you realize the support that human trafficking enjoys at
almost every level of the Nigerian society, and more shocking is the
fact that the trafficked children were rented out with the
collaboration of the victims' own immediate families, Many of the
victims are too young to understand their rights or are illegally
recruited from the north or the poorer village tribes by individuals;
forced to work as hired hands and forced to work against their will,

What does a house help mean? What is the hidden meaning behind the
words, what does "a slave", mean, is there any difference
between the
two, and maybe we are ignorant of these terms but are we really? Are
we really ignorant about our past, is the government blind to the
plight of these children being taken into 'slavery' or when their
immediate parents, aunts and uncles were being tricked into taking a
loan, a loan that may tie them into the bondage of slavery forever
children work in exploitative and/or dangerous conditions.

According to the United Nations census (Unicef ) there are no fewer
that 15 million children working in exploitative labor in Nigeria,
but they are wrong, as an African and a traveling nomad I can paint a
bigger picture of the "21st century slave trade."

I had my first intimate sexual encounter when I was but seven years
old with a house help not yet in her teens. Children not yet in their
teens are forced to learn about sex or to work in the sex industry.

As the writer in me grows, so does the knowledge grow that this
trade will continue and as it continues , it will continue to use new
terms even though it is illegal under international law.
Trafficking is the fastest growing form of slavery in the third world
nation today, yet protection for the victims of this crime is never
there........
Tribal 2004

poetic passage

2005-12-01T20:50:00.000-08:00

In the morning when men still longs for their women, I start out at twilight, before all nature awoke, and as the clouds in its blanket of blues hangs over my head I heard a pheasant jazz across the field.

The trees stands out like accusers, the weeds seems to bow as I walk by, the wind have its own voice, applauded by the clapping leaves, I felt the chill from the contact as low branches along the narrow parts merge flesh against nature green

It is what I like about my works, the poetry I write, and of fiction I composed, of our ancestors and of nature, to be first along this ancient path, with my pad and pen, the spirit still lives in my works

And while the shadows stand watching
I seek the sculptured speeches
The dialect of old in terrace work
In time to put it to the proof

“Each section seems to welcome me, drawing on me dictating my thoughts, and I remembered the feeling, like a pioneer, the feeling of possession, my mind telling me, this is mine, all of nature is in me

Moving through the familiar parts, this scenery was my story book, something in its peacefulness calls me inward, the beauty of nature in the scent of our lineage, these things are special to me, like nothing else in my life ever will

This happiness is rampaging through me when ever I set sight on a topic of interest; an ancient tree, a lost artifact, of mud swing and the trill of discovering new things,

In my line of sight nature works with my state of mind, imagine the valley adjacent to my tribe as a slave pit, or the yam tendril entwining a woman to me in my dreams, as of now I thought of Ken and the Ogoni Eight

And suddenly crawling groping grapping, Arms of branches reaching to strangle the words out of me, Nature Unguarded utterance that may lead them to prints keeping watch over my steps, The roaring pathos Shrill loud and trembling, Pictured the bleak interior of a slave passage, Stealing into my heart taking notes of all that I do In poetry form, Seeking reason to deny my fear

The pain communicated through flesh
The clacking of separation
The slithering of movement
The pumping in my ear and vein
And I was fighting as the rope burned into my neck
Searing like fire
And something gave as the areole of the lung inflated
The unheard music in a captive cage

The rope were tight playing the song and were the Ogoni song, the air spoke the words, and was the Ogoni words, thought out words in rain of memory falling down healing hurts over the Ogoni land

The pen groped the pregnant air with blindfold I try to see the flesh left behind on the path as whole selves were briefly recalled with the shock wave of sudden death

Yet the yearning of my hearts beat on the path and old tree stir trying to speak of an Ogoni hanging on its branch, and the selves roared in me, blasting me with these grammars, the cords were still on my throat hanging me with the Sosa boys

In my pad the eight lifted each other up in prints that wordlessly wail as soul that rose out of flesh went over the shell-shocked oil well

Tangled in prison clothing In my poems you will hear an Ogoni cry as the ripped flesh exposes the desperation with the same Rotten English

From nature I listened to the music and I write about it, scene my mind knew note by note the words more our came back to me black hands feet and faces Igbo, Hausa, Edo and all ethnic grammar with the pulse and softness of it

Like a blade of grass bending to the wind, along the field my pen responded to the fury in my mind my writing were not mine, I was the Ogoni, the Ogoni and all minority were all me, and the spirit lives

Red Bird

2005-09-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

Red bird piping from the wood…
eye agape
passers by stare
locked in arms
I cross your view
A lonely poet and a kindred poor.

BYPASS

2005-09-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

The dancers perfect their art
And the scars tells the story
That is the instinct of the society
With over a hundred ethnic race
The trouble with such bypass
Found also with the cloth tradition
And the cultural association with the marks
Is that the man is methodologically living
Through the past history of “papa”
A common feature found in the observation
There is the inheritance of fierceness
And we all witness the division of a nation
Linked with the same theory we have studied

suffering in plain sight

2005-08-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

The shames I see accept a mother’s breast
a child I hold tried to squeeze an ounce of milk
and a taste of my own fear falling on my lip
the anguished act of torment swelled up tears

because it is my uselessness that provided legal justification
because it was the shame that attracted the press
like the hordes of flies feasting on a dying child
on us the scenes… the focus of a staged representing

I laugh to think of it, I laugh to think of you
To think of what the brotherhood in America could think
Huddled in typical nigger fashion the roots to deride
Looking at the Sudanese suffering in plain sight
I too could have thanked God for the slave merchants

2005-08-05T01:47:00.000-07:00

Here you go

Child Again

2005-07-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

Child Again
I watch children playing in the mud
Making castles out of clay
I wished their creative hands upon me too
Creating my thought into play
Me in form of clay
Me into a shape
My dream in all it fold
Happily ever after
Like children happy play.

Omosun Nurudeen Sylvester
Copyright ©2005 Omosun Nurudeen Sylvester

2005-07-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

Tribal Poet -Urdeen

How I write

2005-07-04T09:47:00.000-07:00

The Sun News Online | How I write Read the 'How I write' article in the Sun News Online.

Ebony lips

2005-07-03T05:05:00.000-07:00

Roosters crowed somewhere in the barnyards
Ebony lips patted in a smile answered their call
Nothing moves but the portraits on my consciousness'
Creeping close till it merges into one
Moving like Siamese engaging in sex,
pictured a woman voice in my head
Buzz and yammer they snicker tempting me
Take me! The voices said" take me!
Take the true black woman,

as my arts magnifies her belly budge
My pen thrusting at me their brown midriff
as the rhythmic swaying hips
Tempted me into an erotic faith.

as I write to encircle her hot behind
the fullness of her breast bumped my arms
Controlling my thoughts
To react to the kinsman scorn
Who said my color was erotic filth.

The Cracked and crazy

2005-06-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

The cracked and crazy chain smokers
Haunts the demands for my attention
The tempters rites enabling an escape
As something in me creates a gang
Till the anger needing outlet
Accepts the curtains falling
Streets hawking, working, talking
The gossip kind of habitual jokes
Beggars, touts and hawkers screams
Gaining my respect and admiration
Something in them
My childhood identified with
Something about the courage and strength
The shit that stinks like mine
Hawking commodity or body, working or in plea
With a beggars chant of triumph

sauced like a moan

2005-06-18T00:40:00.000-07:00

Breading badly, stammer, no words
Imagine the aphid on a plant sap
Adlibs all the loosened points
I will make the deed slow
Every phrase unhurried
Sauced like a moan…
The vowel grinding a e i o u
Answers the knock at the door
Pie, pleasure, the sudden thing
Leisure, fruits, an alter of swamps
Man, mum, all endearment terms
Likened to known juice and butter
to shack the corn of it clothes
with the workmanship sculpted
The arrays of your pleasure point
The impressive display and collection
In the chalkboard `cunt-esy' of tongues
Dialect of meaning only I can assemble
I like the base-equal size to a bib
Thinking about charting your geography
Tongue cropping, teeth plotting the site plan
Uh! All my life is aerial bound
I feel the stomach getting jelly
With the agitation of unhurried hands
I feel the full endowed roundness
Unaccustomed to my hungry gaze
Could I bore through that brackish bowl?
Ceremony through the ritual of space
Could I chisel through the channels?
Through milk mashed creams and ethics
Can I go into the Cray spot now?
Can I take the cheese of the trap?
Pod the cocoa of its pleasure juice
Uh! Or can I put the cassava back
Into the alluvia of her soil
I could, but… No not now
I am committed to the slimy cleft
Not the crevice behind the brown hair
like an animal related to untangle
Expelling fertilizers without contact
Something of bliss than civic
Savoring the gift of my after play
Uh! I believe i can harvest you right

I dream of micheal jackson

2005-06-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

I heard the man scream -
the wordings shaping his mouth,
I stare trying to see his voice -
Vague attempt to seize something from the void
with words and words and words inaudible,
.....Yet hearing answers already shaped in my mind,
snatching the words out of Dreams,
beating upon my deafness
-----And suddenly the…
The silent ebbs.
I realize that the image in the portrait was gone,
the portrait was gone,
shadows were creeping around me,
till it fill every where with itself,

....now I thought peace could come,

but a noise
intruded, alien and eerie drawing me within it fold,

I found myself,
in a grave yard familiar to me,
were many head stones had no names,
in front of me there was a nearly dug grave,

I tried to look away but I
could not, I was being drawn to look at it
as if my legs had a will of it own,

rushing me drawing me demanding my attention

......and lying within the grave was a man,
-face expressionless, mouth half
open, he was strongly built,
----there was an odd odor, not strong but
remained in my nostril the smell of the family grapes, grapes? ---

Suddenly a chunk from my past rushed at me, for a moment I was too
stunned, I thought my heart had forgotten to breathe, it was I but I
looked like Michael Jackson with bleached face;
a black man from outer space-
And at the head stone… The name jumped right at me like Tyson's right
fist in the middle of my tummy
Seems I could hear the stone the field shouting it,
I saw a shovel leaning on it edge, I picked it up, grabbed the handle
and swung it at the statute with such force that I moved with it and
saw myself the second time butt down first before I knew I was down,
but I stood up, the weed I was and continue to swing it again and
again, harder and harder as I could, I can feel the force of each
blow jarring through me, rattling my teeth, the shovel glinting out
sparks began to fly as the handle gave way, I continue till at least
as all human my energy ebbed way, leaving me deflated, for the
longest time I stood there all alone in the world, I had no
appointment , no one waiting for me or worried were I was, standing
there with fierce tears running down my face, I look at the grave
stone still intact the name still there as if polished anew, looking
at me in big bold letters `nigger" cut into the stone forall time a part of me the real heritage of slaves
( you can't change your color)

what my write-up does ( warning)

2005-06-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

In my studies… there is no such moment like soberness,the churchy ideas cannot help you, because they are part of the corporate community the words could not offer it, only the self will, you will only find here the lust for initiation, into the spirit realm, The ritual of listening and could make you the true son.
Let me explain-In the past, when a child is old enough for initiation, he is taken to the forest were the chief priest lives, (a special and feared place set apart for such a purpose), it could be the first time the child was there, and there could be things, such as the totems of worships, things the child has been taught to revere, these things will be there with him, things that brought the native instinct to its sharpest lines, the fear and hunger for being, And then there is the initiation of blood, as each of the participant mingle their blood with the gourd of worship,Here the child leant the art of our lineage,the myth handed down from generation to generation, songs and stories that embodied the value of its possession,The assurance of the invincible and non verbal, help us to see the genuine face of the dark man...that is what my study does-initiate you from its beginning till the final chapter

i am omosun .. 2

2005-06-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

Imagining the scenes surrounding the name, is like a painters act, like poetry… once you get the ingredient down you work on them, you can change the word but never the spiritThe study though imbued with religion themes expresses my own personal faith and opinions about my lineage, the fascination of the unknown that has been a part of my life ever since I learned the meaning on my name, "omosun"My name gave me a hold to what the world has lost, a possession that could make me a god, the "omosun" that is true to the juju deity, I claimed it because I alone have it to share, with the spirit possessions still intact, as I try to recapture its power through my poetry.Believe me, the incarnations could work on me as I write, till I am no longer who I thought I was, and the spiritual values in its institution will no longer be confined to the shrine…it will creep over the globe through the work of my handsMy name could give me the power to persuade, because the voice is in me, the thunder of the son

i am omosun

2005-06-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

in my studies I could visit the juju ceremonies, memories the acts and then find the words for the poetry, Reading the edited works is like reading poetry for the first time, the collection rekindle the image of innocence as the victim of circumstances branded on us by the foreign culture Perceived in the eyes of a young Nigerian poet here we see the great re-birth from a son whose circle has been ancestralTry to explore the theme in the topics, try to read through the lines and see the words that has intrigued poets and writers all over the centuries, Read the totems of worship, the fact in the story with the words used to describe them and ask yourself how they fit into the lineage

tribalpoetry@yahoo.com

The wooded comb..part 1 (short story )

2005-06-04T00:22:00.000-07:00

In the early morning before nature wakes, that interval before the owl hoot and a cuckoo alarm, when men still longs for their women, we start out at twilight

The clouds in its blanket of blues hangs over our head, a red glow shows were the sun was hidden, and as we walk we can hear the lone some howl of a dog across the field.

The unending ritual, the endless rows of Quakers marching to the plots, young maidens strolling to the stream or the men to factory, stumbling into one another testing the mist,

In the familiar early morning scent and breeze, I could hear curses and snatches of conversation, the science of tongues at its best along the village wood

The trees stands out like accuses, the weeds seems to bow as we walk by, the wind have its own voice, applauded by the clapping leaves, I feel the chill from the contact of the cold air and low branches along the narrow parts, the flesh against nature green

There were fewer of us in today expenditure; for security reasons we walked in a group, ever since we heard about the missing individuals in the Okija forest,

There is a woman near me, the perfect figure of a working nomad outlines in the morning mist, she is wearing a patchwork of a gown, that did not conceal her small breast

I look at the dozen plaits fanning out on her head, the afro-style decorated by cowries, and I imagined my hands on them…kneading

There is someone behind me, he seems to want to walk in front of me, and trying to block the view I am having of the maiden hips in sway for me, but I am a weed too, blocking every opening in the narrow lane,

We have finally made it into the wood, the area at the edge of the hills; I took my machete of its sling and went through the tall grass, making a part through the new working site

Something is moving on the bush to the left, murmurs from the group lead to hurried footfalls, and the instant a pheasant screeched most were in panic

A snake I suppose, but I am certain there are worse dangers in such parts; the stories of lost kinsmen along this area are no joke.

I saw a ten-foot-long black mamba the instance the others shrunk back. I cut off its head the exact moment it strikes; I cut the writhing body into sections. The action were born into me, the instinct on a nomad, the knowingness that man is above all animals

The sun is rising as we finally made it to the farmland, the maiden and children went along the moat to the stream, and we the men went uphill,

The Hen Accusation

2005-05-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

The Hen Accusation-

Like a talent the hen puffed up its feathers
Accusing me of religious blasphemy
Made me think of my culture
My loitering unwept as I weep
Born only to live worshiping foreign
Coed through life unsatisfying trail
I bequeath myself to reason about a god
As the ewe raise forth a threatening horn
Lately I seem to be thinking of me
A very well known what I mean
The dirt loitering with barbaric treason
Summed up a prayer in such recognitions

Sylvester Omosun
Copyright ©2005 Sylvester Omosun

in a book, in a valley

2005-05-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

I think that the more years that pass, the more years I wondered about my roots. There were times I was ashamed of my kinsmen because they still practices the juju culture, I saw so many faults in them. The many faults I have studied at school.

But now knowing me, the tears unshed…I now realize how stupid I was. The birth of a culture Pilgrim settled in a desert land And the valley shed its feathers Foreign names adopted the hills By men with clothes like butterflies Houses came as tall as trees Pressed together like cobs of grain And everyone who have a tongue to speak Blend the collision of two civilities

2005-05-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

The nature of incest in a society like ours is misunderstood,

almost all adults has had at one time or the other intimate sexual thought about the body of children,

and some can go as far to satisfy his or her wants when given the chance

Like hundreds of house helps and hawkers in the local scene,

the slims were abrupt when they come,
so were the hurried hands,
raped and trafficked sustained by nothing,

the innocent and dependent children accepted it

wind

2005-05-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

i watched the swing

as the strong arms worked the earth,

at the blade going through the tall grass,

trimming branches and cutting weeds

i wish to tell the her about her gift,

the sensation and arches breaking me apart,

things i felt when ever i pictured her toil,

and the passion of feeling her eyes on mine under the scotching sun

i wish to talk about the local maiden fit to the bone,

defined with chest beat full of milk,

the narrative intend to sketch the outline

as the perfomance ply the part of hope whose exeption alway climax such a day

e-book of tribalpoetry

2005-05-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.realm-of-shade.com/House_of_Muses/clients.html

glimpse

2005-05-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

As I lie in bed and consider the mystery to me that is my life

I am surprised that I am here,

I have taken to looking at myself,

talk or that I am talking at all,

without hearing my own voice

it strikes me at odd moments that in the midst of this misfortune

life continues and exciting too

myth mystic means

2005-04-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

There have been many account attributed to the myth of mystic parables, some has been explained by scholars who studied them, but others has never been. In my native town, for example things that happened in the past is still happening today, one of the most intriguing and unusual revelation occurred in 2004, by the other side of the country; within the armpit of the beautiful hill surrounding the pastoral realm of the still water, here we learned of the many rituals held out to us by the tentacles of outstretched corpses, the sightings brought talk of spirit and ghost, facts that cant be explained by logical means…it is the revelation I am trying to capture in my poetry. One of my poems the “frontiers of fear” published in weekly trust newspaper last year perfectly surmises it.

tribal

2005-04-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

My studies of the tribal ceremonies remind me of the unity of personality I had as a child, the radiance in play is something I am trying to get back with the poetry I write- “ The stench of poverty bestowed on me urges me inroad to seek it feel but the anger stopped the voice in me the fury rapping me of my speech Words through the grinding hinge of a door echoeing the footpath in the memory tends to doubt the sincerity of the study as a collection of image that rekindles pity

ritual space

2005-04-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

The interest I have with the woman ritual space, is linked with a bond I have with a name, the creativity and sins the branded me worthy to be born the “son’, The women who needed to live with their own value and belief system, and raise their children free as they were raised, to be in their own world and not give a damn of what the new age thought of them, such as we witnessed in ritual ceremonies in most African tribes

The Words and Serpent

2005-04-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

“The words and serpent creeps
In the pleasure nest of hell
Graphing the outlines that clips the beaded waist

And the oracle chants and prays
As the rapped women screams
And the freedman cried out blood as the pen-pleasure bottom soften

As the bile aims at me the pulse beats to the drum
And in shame I felt me stir with lust

Falling deep in the ritual space”

Withholding the Truth

2005-04-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

Withholding the truth left us for weak
Against the hassles that shackled our voices
Just what I held against the missionary
Stressing Christ submission to humiliations
Conditioning my race to accept their chains-
Said I wasn't the only 'race' of `slaves'
Talk about `Joseph' being sold
More so by his own `white'
Quote a chapter of `timothy' at me
Cast its doubt in the chaos of your mind
Something to do with `massa' over `slaves'
And bid the chain clang out shut
Through the window of doubt
Against the greatest sham of all ages
Of land which hold no echoes of other land
And all the crops we raised with a breaking back
Where the wheat, corn and cotton grow
Beyond the `Mississippi' river
Were the nigger hustlers
Was just having a temporary custody of you
Coz you were just under the prote...

http://www.freewebs.com/jujuman/eyesoftheauctioner.htm

JuJU

2005-04-18T00:04:00.000-07:00

"Oh,

Tribal Poetry
and words of life

Dealt with past
dealt with strife

Open doors,
unlock hearts

Welcome hands
brilliant arts.

Welcome to the new world. It has it's roots in the old world.

Nourishment comes from the sun.

Lucky we have more than one."

-Scott Lindsley

A Moment in Silence

2005-04-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

A moment in silence

Blind to all thought
Protected by its own silence
as though by a shield-
you shook your head

Shrugged and waved
Your arms to encompass
everything around us-

There was no sigh of interruption
Though my world was as silent as ever-
I watched you as your finger work
And thought how fat your hands were

Through the silence
Didn’t know there’d be words in deed-
Suddenly one word I never thought
I could hear
a silence i never though could voice
creeps into my consciousness
in a world were I now'see voices'...

Arms and fingers run
Forming simple shapes
Like branches on a live breathing tree
So lively that they seems to chatter
Like small impatient tongues
with a will to speak...

11
I was always afraid
To tell you with movement
Or even words about the silence
I was born with but feared
Knowing I have not been
as others were
I have not seen
as others saw
I remember
the need
I
created you withthe silence

I summoned you from
the desire
placed a trench
on the floor of my loneliness
deep as the wound in Jesus palm

Worrying you couldn’t come
Shaping word, wording my life
to taste for once

Just once the words upon your lips

111
alone in the quiet
I'd read you lips by moonlight
the redness and all
or by the light in my heart
its every shape..

as I look at you
I think of this -

think of how it feels
to love someone

someone beyond...

my quite little lonely world.
and knowing it is true
I have everything to fear
and the words -
I could not say..

nailed on my cross