Meditation of __________
Listen, I have nothing to say to the wren
that ruffles its feathers in my heart.
I do not swear my loyalty to men, to
presidents who walk on shards of skeletons
with a scroll of blood in their mouth.
Trust me, I owe no god my soul.
I have given all I can to the old bell
on that dusty road where tourists
walk daily to contemplate the strangeness
of God. I have trimmed my nails.
I have washed the blood of the animals
off my fingers. I took the last train
to Babel. I sold my language for two nickels.
I spoke in hums. I count on the birds
to lead me to the prairie where butterflies
build their dreams around the kindness of men.
I do not have hatred for the world. No.
I have disgust for the politics of men.
I know betrayal. But I know love, too.
I am a simple man with a simple mind.
The world looks not into my eyes,
but into my hands. They want to see the blood
before they touch the scar. People touch me,
& are shocked by their own sadness.
I have nothing to give the world except
for my heart. Its tired loop, tiny lullabies.
Its birds, the ballads of their wings. I can’t speak
to the unlit lighthouse at the other end
of the river. Can’t speak to the shadow of the boy
who walks at the knife-edge of the greenfield.
I am held down by the metaphor. Listen,
I can’t tell you anything that would save your
life. I, too, am negotiating my own salvation.
What if I tell you not all my gods leave
their temples drunk?
What if I told you that I took my gods to a crossroad
& willed them to chorus
to the music of my own doubts?
I am not a simple man. I have the logic of fireflies.
See, I have nothing to say to the dove
perched on the hill of my heart.
I, too, am a child lost in a forest full of tired gods.
Bearing
after Akpa Arinzechukwu’s Sentencing
I walk on the edge of the river.
At the end of the walk, I am still empty.
I send a voicemail to my lover,
& my voice on the phone is a flower
wilting. I carve prayers outside my heart.
In church, I pretend to see God.
I write the psalms in my diary
just to tear them out for spilling into my dreams.
All my lovers look at me
& see the knives of their own choice.
They touch my face & it is not flesh they feel
but the dust of me rising to the fore.
At the mirror, I mouth, you’re enough you’re enough
& that night, I look at my palms
Say, you too have borne the weight of bearing the seeds.
I can’t tell if my father is proud of me
but I know his love is a wet coal.
I’d burn my sleep to keep him warm.
I can’t. I’m not that good of a son.
I take the jacket off his back in my poems.
In my poems, I leave him stranded at sea.
He is never in a temple; never in a tent.
I know love only by its sheen
on the dull edge of a blade.
All love & no sacrifice.
All love & a scar in place of a son.
I bought a plant on sale,
& slept through its wither.
I have held the soft spine of a rosary,
Mouthed Hail Marys— yet the ache
in my bones stays awake. Lord, I’m not
a good lamb. I wandered away from the flock
only to bleat into a storm. At the end,
I swallowed my song. In my bones,
all the music flames alive. In my bones, a dirge.
In bed, I told Lucia I don’t know what
prayer means, when I meant to say I have given
up on the ritual of performance.
I started a crusade. I walked inside a fog
that whispered my grandmother’s name.
I took my hands to an old temple
& forgot to touch God with them.
I stand inside a song that is not a song.
I carried my tears around like little pellets.
I walked barefoot through my ache.
I walked on the edge of a river,
not to understand its abundance
but to listen to the whimper of my solitude.
I’m a good man. I’m a good man.
I sat by the water & eulogized my emptiness.
Notes:
“They touch my face & it is not flesh they feel/ but the dust of me rising to the fore” is inspired by Akpa’s “They look at me, & it is not them who hurt”
“All my lovers look at me/ & see the knives of their own choice.” is inspired by Akpa’s “I smile, & the people who love me/ are disappointed.”
Dusk
As the smoke rose through the hut,
out into the sky where God himself dreams of desire,
we lay there, my lover & I.
We watched the smoke spread into the evening light.
Every dusk, a bird sits on the verandah & sings the song of want.
I know this because I have spent my nights
staying up to watch the stars—to remind myself how blessed
I am to be here, amongst God’s artifacts,
to be here close to my lover’s body.
I sing silent—my tongue a trumpet,
inside it a tune fleshed out of thirst.
One morning, I found a wounded bird on my porch
& I whispered into myself the whole day this is not a premonition.
Lord, teach me how to see the fragility in tenderness.
Teach me to accept the innocence of wings;
even desire—the flower that sprouts in my ribs
each time my lover says my name.
Teach me to see paradise where the world sees pebbles.
At night, I place my right hand on my heart
just to remind myself to be here, in this temple that’s love, with my lover.
I have been speaking about love—
yet, each word comes out in a language that is not mine.
I have been speaking about désire—
yet, everywhere I turn, the world opens a mirror of riddles.
Lonely, I sometimes sit by a stream. I gift it my solitude.
I listen to the silent ripples of water. I say that too is love,
that too confirms my life—a portrait of the self.
As the smoke rose, the hut was warm,
& my lover’s body against mine was a hymn.
I still hear it now, the hymn, the birds, our cats on the
other end of the hut chasing after butterflies.
I hear it now, my body inside my lover’s —
a prayer and a tongue on which it melts.
Here
There are always holes in the blessing
we fail to account for.
In that warm harmattan, my grandma paid the pallbearers
one thousand five naira to change
the zinc roof. All through the rainy season,
The roof leaked. We collected the water with little bowls
from the kitchen. Nothing is promised—
not even the advent of another flood. God is present,
so is his history. In my diary, I put two brackets across
the word grief. A coat to keep it warm.
In the dream, I dig the dirt where a dog just fetched
a rabbit. I dig not for meat, but for the fur
of something alive. The world wasn’t ending
but I was alone with myself, in myself, outside myself.
I was a boy. I was a blue stream, I was a bird
with a scar on its beak.
In that harmattan, my grandfather went to bed, a man.
The next day, he woke up on the edge of the river
where the dead wait for the living.
I did not cry. But I learned that tears too had legs.
Eyes have history.
Years later, my grandma stood on the edge of that same river.
Not breathing, not singing, not even calling my name.
Which means I cried & the river swallowed my tears.
Which means I cried & my eyes gave away their own history.
I am sitting on a porch in a small town in America.
The grapes are ripe.
I have a kitchen knife & a hunger that sharpens itself.
In my mind, the skeletons of the past are restless.
I have no tune. I have exhausted my lullabies.
Promise
I swear to hold the lamp at the end
of the tunnel. I would walk along the prairie
at midnight as the sky falls
if it means leaving the city that haunts
everyone who wears the hue of my skin.
I promise to write to Lucia
from my past. I promise to wait for her
in the future. At the mailing room,
I search the handwriting of my friends.
I have given up on sainthood, on priesthood.
In America, I slept inside the body
of a painter. The next morning, the sunlight
from the window nudged us awake.
& it was not a premonition.
Even the stars nestled in my eyes are flying
to strange lands. The beatbox stops working
just before I made it to the mountains.
I will carry a camera with me into the haze
to capture the voices of men
walking with a song curled around their necks.
Nothing is going to change. Not my voice,
not the glint of dirge that spills from it.
I will build an ark, name it after Lucia.
I will tend a garden, invite my griefs to sit
amongst the green of God’s work.
I will take my gods to the river. I won’t drown
them. I will show them the vanity of thirst.
I will stretch my hand out in the haze.
I will do this despite of, in spite of, the ache.
I swear to hold a lamp at the end of the tunnel.
& I promise to sing a song while at it.
Origin Story I
I came in full, brimming with the names of my mothers
and their mothers
and their mothers’ mothers.
Here, the hymns climb up my skin, down my sleeve,
straight into my palms. Last summer, my lover held my hands
& said something about dandelions. That same summer,
the dandelions grew so wild. Every dawn,
We saw God hold sickles to them. Grey, the color
beneath my passion. The forests of my desire
grow wild. Inside it, deer lead their cubs to a stream.
See, I know the ceremony of desire —
the carol of a hunger only the body
can fathom. Every night, I go to bed naked as a truth.
I walk barefoot in my dreams. Under my feet, dry leaves whisper
my traditional name. Chukwuemeka. Chukwuemeka.
In one origin story, a bird picks up a stone
and built a temple out of it. It doesn’t end there.
In another origin story, a boy picks up a bird
and invented music out of it
and the world becomes one long song.
Do you understand what I am saying?.
In our own origin story, I am in a painting with my lover.
In the background, there is a blue sky, a white cat, a flute,
and a dove perched on my lover’s shoulder—
its beak brimming with the songs of our mothers, their mothers
and their mothers' mothers.