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Ozo Emena: The Story Of The Silent Men

And then you ask me what is ozo emena?
It is the many night of dreams that lead men to seek dawns
Dazed by a horrific dream that they die from suffocation
It must be that because you see that their mouths are apart
Their lungs squeezed out and their eyes filled with fright
They died gasping for relief from the gore of the nightly persuasions
Their legs spread so carelessly and their essence bare to strangers
Her breasts kept safely beside her for her child to move on with
She was virtuous; swears her fathers, brothers and broken husbands
Torn into pieces by many pangs of idiosyncratically bitter groans
Yet they will deny her now because she is bare to strangers

Familiar strangers nonetheless
After all, did they not dream it too when they slept
Or did they not hear that the night takes away with one or five black fingers
In the memory of a sea of blood they remember it all
Of the nights the moons were shrouded by the wails of misery
Neither did they forget the songs of feet as they stampede down hopes of a dawn
Dark huts so coruscantingly lit in the abrazo of an irksome inferno
Chinwags of four men at the door of mama ogechi's delight
And the fete at the village square,
As the young men dazzled danglingly from a tree top
You too would have been amused but your tongue is on the floor
But it ends soon enough and deafening tranquility rattles the ears
The rivers in red will put out the flames and chinwags wane from exhaustion
The youths dazzle differently now in the morning as the crowds disperse

Ozo emena: It's not a name of a man befriended by goodwill
You will not hear it in at the gates of a dome with four pinnacles of sky marks
Not them or there but you will know when you remember,
The child whose tongue is red with blood from sucking on a cold nipple
A man whose hunger dissipated from the aroma of his kin burnt flesh
A woman laid in her sweat and the only sweetness she knows is blackness
Yes, that's her name,
That is his life
That is his/her innocence
It's crested in the underbelly of life and they won't let you forget
You now know by which way they went home from the footsteps on the path
Even though your heart is broken, it imprints on your memory a request
Don't forget about me, about us and about the night.

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