Orike Didi

the triangle-
canons;
clowns
and all
...

Like roots we dug deep, like roots
We dug into the depth of her soul.
Her flesh had quaked with fever in a long drawn battle with herbs,
Her stride slowed like the coming pain of her children,
...

I don’t stand out famous
Like Mandela’s cell
Or Soyinka’s cloud head
Or obj’s false faces.
...

I come with my verses,
I come with my debts.
Accept me like the earth does the sea
Not minding her depths.
...

I shivered
and stopped
to see where 24 bullets ripped through
the heart of love,
...

Eventually, I speak for
the limping
and the dead
for I, dead too
...

I shall dip my tongue in the sea
and wave farewell to freedom;
it is not far from mile stone-cold.
...

We watch the waters go past
Distilled by waves
And dance to an unknown song
From the constellations-
...

We are all bugs
Running around the globe
With words as weapons.
...

I sit at an angle
At the table head
To watch children of men.
...

With all powers
Bestowed on me
I make bold to say that;
‘I, the poet
...

Not all laughter
Comes in times of joy;
Some come in moments of pain.
...

I am another Ken
standing, short like the Eiffel Tower
wanting to spew my body fluids
on the faces at the Ecole Militaire
...

I pity those who struggle
with words
and the words end up killing them;
what shall we do at their funeral?
...

Above sea bed, cold
city of tunnels
where short and long coaches live
a life of their own.
...

I walked cloud-headed
Into the Hall of Shame
To lay a wreath of thorns
On the casket of a dead soldier.
...

Mini-Iji II

I was sitting here when the river met me
Stretching its wide arms to embrace me,
...

and
preachermen
politicians
prostitutes,
...

Let it be today
That I am one with the trees.

I commune with the earth, rooted
...

As darkness begins to illuminate light
They begin to run in concentric circles
Of lies and strange debates-
Parliaments of vileness
...