THE RAMBLINGS OF A POET IN LOVE - a poetry video

ANOTHER DAY

It may take a while before you notice it - that you don't wake up as quickly as you used to, and when you do, your body aches; that you lie back in bed too many mornings staring out the window, and what you think about always makes you sigh. You see, life is a path that should twist and turn, and when it runs straight for years and years it begins to feel like someone is slowly turning the lights down inside you. Yes. Do you still remember what you wanted to be in primary school?

I wanted to climb mountains. But the last thing I remember climbing was a stool, to reach up to change a bulb, or was it to pull a file down from the top shelf? I tell you, if you do these things too many times – the mechanical motions of a life on auto-repeat – you could wake up one day and stop seeing the green in grass, or the many shades of yellow in the sunset. That used to be me, you know; star-gazer, legs dangling down the sides of my neighbor's uncompleted fence, looking up. All I ever wanted was freedom.

But the world is troubled and refuses to be healed. So, what do you do? You find a place in it and hold on tight, hoping you can make it across the middle passage safely. Build a house, while at it. Raise children. Work long enough to earn a pension. Is that life?

Sometimes, my brother, it must be. Not everyone has the luxury of alternatives. So, even if you get up tomorrow knowing you would rather be elsewhere, where do you go? This is where you are – in a job you don't like, in a house that's too small, with a man or woman you used to be madly in love with, and children who are currently too old to be 'cute' and too young to be responsible. Eh? What shall we do then?

If I was like my brother Che, or my sister-in-law, Shioke, I would wake up a little before dawn, around that time when it is still pitch-black, but not the same kind of darkness as midnight. The darkness of pre-dawn has a lightness to it, you see. I would sit in a corner with a guitar and play an old song, from the early days when I had faith in abundance, so much so I created art to store the excess. Now, I'm running a bit low. I'll listen to the songs of the younger me. For today is the day that truth is needed.

But I am no musician. True. These things don't come to me swaddled in melody, in melancholic riffs or titillating chord progressions. They come as whispered words, condensing out of clouds of brooding despair, falling on my upturned face like the cold rain of a mid-July morning. So, let me do it my way.

Yes. Starting is like being shot out of a cannon, full of adrenaline and the excitement of the chase. Everyone can start. And to end – ah! – to see the finish line sparkling in the distance, that alone is enough to mend broken legs, to suck energetic shouts out of tired lungs. It is the middle that has no joy, no light except the one you fumble for in the darkness to light yourself.

Yes. On some days, it is can be as simple as that, forcing yourself awake, forcing yourself to get out of bed and go in search of inspiration to do the same things – the exact same things – you did yesterday. Because, well, how can I say this? The children will need holding every day, and love will need tending, and the search for a better tomorrow will continue from where you left it last night, boring or not, routine, mundane and unremarkable or not.

So, my sister, sing Tracy Chapman if you have to, dredge the Internet for a story that will make you laugh if you have to, scream into your pillow, do the moon-walk in your bathroom, pray, or don't pray, read, or don't read, hunch over on a sofa and paint your toenails lemon green. Honestly? I don't really care. As long as you're ready when the sun comes up.

Image taken from:

http://frugivoremag.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/88623431-exhausted-runner-gettyimages.jpeg

THE GIANT WITHIN

I remember the day I ran into the house and threw my school bag down, flew up the stairs two at a time, zapped through the sitting room, down the corridor and into my father's bedroom like a cannon ball. He was sleeping. And I was panting, result sheet in hand. 'Daddy! Daddy! I came second!' He lifted his head slowly. Then put it down again. 'That person that came first, does he have two heads?'

Ah! Let me tell you something, even at the risk of sounding sexist, a man is not exactly like a woman. Yes. There are days I sit in my study and listen to my child cry. She does that sometimes, you see, when she wakes up from her siesta; sits in bed and starts crying, 'Daddy, where are you? Mummy, where are you? There is nobody here with me.' I tell you, it plucks at the heart strings, the voice of this little girl in a world that must seem infinitely vast and empty. Still, I just sit there and listen, till she gets up and comes looking for me.

I do not question it either, whatever it is that overwhelms my paternal impulse to jump up at the first cry of distress. For what is an immunization anyway? The world is full of things just waiting to kill you. And for many of them there are no cures. So, you have to bring it with you, that ability to fight back, carry it in your very genes, when you step out in the morning. It's the only way. Tell me, then, where do I take you for the vaccination against weakness, so you don't come in here tomorrow telling me you will die if he leaves you? There is a reason our parents made us eat whatever was put in front of us, left us standing there with a set of cold instructions: 'I don't care how you do it, if you have to lick the floor from top to bottom with your tongue, but this place had better be spick and span by the time I get back.' There are reasons. 

It's what I want to tell them now, when they stumble and fall, and lie there crying; when they threaten me with tantrums just because I keep saying, 'No, baby, put that toy back on the shelf'; when they yell out protests at early evening lights-out, or the standing instruction not to leave unwashed plates on the kitchen table. I want to tell them that Life is not fair. It doesn't distribute things in equal proportion amongst all the six billion of us. I want to tell them what Corpenicus discovered, that the world actually doesn't revolve around us (even if we're cute and cuddly). It doesn't care that we're too young to be orphans, or too old to start learning new things, too beautiful to be widowed, or too privileged to be impoverished. It doesn't care. But these are not the sorts of lessons you can learn off a blackboard.

You see, when we were kids on the Taekwondo circuit in Lagos, there was this one fight everyone referred to all the time. Two boys in a final. In truth, one was a young man and the other in his teens. And the teenager had hurt his arm so badly he couldn't use it much, but still said, 'I won't quit.' And those that watched said it was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen, the way he fought, the way he glided on his feet with his injured hand tucked away behind him, the way he won; it was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen. Even grown-up men stood up straight to applaud. And people said – How? You can teach a boy how to fight, yes, but how do you teach him how to fight on?

It is for this reason that we must find the heart to say to our children, 'Go back.' Yes. 'Go back and try again.' So, I did. And when I came home the next time with result sheets even better than the ones I started this story with, I showed them to my big brother. He was no longer a teenager, by now his own genes had been fully encoded with flecks of steel. So, he smiled slightly, tapped me on the forehead and said, 'Let me tell you something, Dike. You can be a giant to everyone around you. But it means nothing if you're still dwarfed by the giant you could actually be. Try harder.'  

Yes, my brother - that too is Love.

Image taken fom:

http://allchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Father-Son1.jpg

FOR THE SAKE OF A SMILE

That moment when the feeling of someone touching you, brushing against you in passing even, makes your heart beat faster.  What do you call it? When you have to clear your throat so you don't suddenly sound like a man castrated before puberty? 'This woman!' You blurt it out, drawn like a flying insect to those lights some restaurants like to hang from the ceiling. 'This woman! Hmm! If I grab you…' Ehn? 'Grab who?' But you know she's not really angry. 'You this man…' Not with the way she's smiling and twirling curls. 'You fit?'

It's as old as the hills, you see, this dance. But, tell me, is it still as entertaining as it once was? I remember…when you had to go back to the hostel first, to take a bucket bath and wear fresh clothes, before heading out to G.H., at the gates of which you would then linger in supplication till you found someone willing to go in and call her out for you. Now? You send a message on whatsapp: 'Meet me in the Common Room'. Follow her on Twitter. Befriend her on Facebook.

Ah! Do you remember when it took three months to get a reply? Do you? When you tore out the middle sheets of your higher education notebook and bought a brand new biro, so you could explain in detail how she made you feel? Wrote the date carefully at the top right-hand corner? Counted each day that passed like the rest of your pocket-money for the term? I remember the first Valentine card I ever got. Yes. Shaped like a rectangle, colored lilac. Do you remember? How you found a quiet place to read it, away from the prying eyes of those god-forsaken amebos in your class? And your heart jumped to see the sheet of white paper inside, folded neatly and covered with her spidery writing? She replied!

Not like now. My brother, my email-box is always full. But hardly anything gets read more than once these days, not when there's an endless Universe of Internet pages out there. Back then… Ah…Back then, the sun strolled like a man with little to do, and – I swear – the moon was a lot brighter, because you could read a love letter by its light alone. And so you did; and every time was like the first time. Do you remember? And if she made the mistake of including a picture…Chai! My sister, you won't understand. Not with the way we have hundreds of your personal pictures on Instagram now. Ehn? There was a time when being handed a single Polaroid spoke volumes. So, you pinned it up on the inside of your locker and watched it like a feature length movie.

Or should we tell the stories of whispered conversations, of how some people cracked parental security locks on rotary dial telephones, then cuddled up on sofas in sitting rooms downstairs – late in the night, lights all off – with receivers pressed tight to their ears? And that was only if you were lucky enough to have one. Yes, I know; it's hard to comprehend it now, a world without smart phones to vibrate in your pocket every time he calls. Imagine. What if you had to slip out the back door, scale the low hedge, all to negotiate with your neighbor's son for time on their telephone; a 20 minute-window, in the evenings, when you could receive that call you would have spent the whole day thinking about? Love was an adventure like that, you see, before Skype, when you had to take night-bus if you really wanted a face-to-face.

Ah! My baby, I still love you like that o, even though the world is changing around us. Yes. I used to trek across town to see you. Now the effort seems too much, the one it would take to get up from this couch; so I think of sending a text instead down to you standing there alone by the kitchen sink, 'Please, bring some water when you're coming up.' No, ah, let's not go there, to that place where everywhere is too far and everything is too hard. Sometimes, love is in something as simple as this, coming downstairs. Flying a hundred miles just to find out what happened. I know, she will look up and start complaining, 'Ah, no, you didn't have to. Why did you? Don't bother, don't worry…' Don't mind her. Very soon, you will see, she will start to smile in her sleep.

Image taken from:

http://dvsl3w2q45hb8.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Health-sleeping-woman1.jpg

PRAY WITH ME

Just the other day, my little girl said to me, "What are you doing?" It was in the middle of a church service, so I looked around nervously and put a finger to my lips, "Shh! I'm praying." But she must have taken my 'Shh!' to mean 'ehm, let's communicate non-verbally', because she nodded and made a gesture with her palms. I knew it meant: 'Why?'

Honestly? I was not in the mood, but that question would have stayed on auto-repeat. So I whispered, "Because I have things to tell God."  

She blinked a few times and did the gesture again. I stared at her. So she did it again, and again, and again. My brother, it was not that I didn't know what she was asking this time: 'What? What are you telling God, daddy? What?' But it had been about the lost girls of Chibok, those thoughts she'd interrupted. And suddenly, watching her, I found myself thinking: 'What would I do if someone took you away from me?'

Ah! My baby, if love was a billion candles, I would light each one; line them up like breadcrumbs, so if you ever got lost you could follow them home. It is true. I have gone there, with eyes tightly shut, to the edge of the Sambisa forest, and called out their names; to the banks of Lake Chad, and called out their names; to the highest peak of the Mandara mountains, and called out their names. And when there was still no answer, I wrapped my arms round myself and whispered, 'Where are you?' But I wasn't sure any more, if I was asking them, or if I was asking God…

Yes. For that was how my over-active mind interpreted her questions. Why do you still believe? Why? Will it bring back the dead sons of Buni Yadi? It is where I am now, you see; at the place where I stand over their bed and watch them sleep, watch their little chests rise and fall, and wonder what I got myself into. Did I really think it through; that to have a child is to take a soul in your hands, to protect it so it can grow strong, to teach it so when it leaves it will know enough to navigate its way to Paradise? Tell me, if you know, is there a future for these ones?

Because I have tried, with Google and the information Voyager 1 is sending back from deep space, to answer that question. Honestly. I have tasked my mind, twisted and contorted it, stretched it as far forward as possible, but Einstein says there is a cosmic wall beyond which it is impossible to see. And so it must be, for how else can you explain this, that even after we have blamed poverty for this madness, we keep bumping into people who will never – no matter how long since their last meal – feed on the flesh of children? How? My brother, it can only be because we have not yet wrapped our minds around the entire Universe.

Yes. There are still wells in the souls of men that go so deep they tap into rivers the sources of which we cannot find, even with our deep-sea probes and supersonic spaceships. And it is from these wells that they draw, these people that come to us with an insatiable thirst for blood. But! Do not despair, for the same resilience is available in every spirit.

So, I took a deep breath and told my daughter, "I do not have an answer to every 'why?' or 'what do we do now?' But if I am sitting here talking to someone you cannot see it is only because it leaves me with an ability to tell you things Logic cannot. We will win. And even if I am not here on the day it happens, you will be, or your children, or your children's children. Do you know why? Because you will teach them what I am about to teach you; how to hope against hope. For, ultimately, the only thing that keeps people searching for something they have never seen is the belief that it actually exists. Do you understand?"

Ah! Don't worry, my brother, I am not mad. Of course, I know; a four year old cannot understand this. Not yet. That speech was made in my imagination. On that day I did something much simpler, I bent forward and whispered: "You this girl…Just pray with me."

Image taken from:

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/AGF/9375~Three-Girls-Praying-Posters.jpg

THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE…

Sometimes, it will shock you how satisfying the simplest things can be. I'll tell you something. Once, when I was in secondary school, in form four, I used to sit out on the field in the evenings to watch the sun set. Me and two friends of mine. One was called Jiles (short for Ighile) and the other one we nicknamed Bolo. And when it was night, we would watch the stars and tell stories, and wonder why it was so important to know the nineteenth element on the Periodic Table. What?

That was the time in my life I used to turn back to look at the mechanics working at the entrance to Ojuore GRA. Every time we drove by, I would turn to look at this particular mechanic with his ragged oil stained clothes, and I would envy him. Because he looked so – honest to God – happy. Now (that I'm grown up), of course, I agree with my mum. She said, 'You'll thank me later. But, no, you cannot drop out of school to become a mechanic.' Because life is not that simple, and nothing is exactly as it looks.

You know, I think it was a search for meaning. Because rap didn't make much sense to me either, and it didn't matter much that liking it was synonymous with being cool. You see, I wasn't cool. No, no, it's okay. You don't have to protest. I really wasn't cool. I didn't know labels or brands, makes of cars, or the release dates for the latest versions of Street Fighter.

So, on my first day at Uni, when every department seemed to require a passport picture, I walked out the school gates to a roadside photographer. The camera sat on a long tripod, and was covered with a black cloth, underneath which he disappeared to snap me. I tell you, in this life, I have never been uglier than in those sets of pictures. But I didn't care. I still used one of them on my i.d. And, one day, when that i.d fell out of my pocket accidentally, the guys standing around for a lecture had a good snigger. Honestly? I thought it was a bit rude, seeing as I hardly knew them and they hardly knew me. But there was this one guy who didn't laugh, just picked it up and gave it back to me. His name was Ja'afaru.

We're still best friends, and sat many evenings, legs dangling down the rough brick wall that fenced off the hostels, just talking. He was the one that asked me, 'Why don't you like rap?' And I said, 'I don't understand what they're saying.' So, he said, 'Either let me fly, or give me death. Let my soul rest, or take my breath. If I don't fly, I'll die anyway. I better move on 'cos I'll be gone any day.' Then he added, 'That's DMX.' I still sing it to myself, you see.

And so, the other day, when it was raining like someone had opened a trapdoor in heaven, I said to my people, 'Hold on, let me bring the car closer'. I did, backing the 406 right up to the corridor where they were all standing, with bags of shopping, before popping the boot open. But the really fun part was when we started going in one by one, squealing through the rain and into the car. First the two year old, then the four year old, then me, then her. You know how it is, don't you? When it's dark and rainy outside, but you have everyone you love in the car with you, plus each one's favorite chocolate?  So, we just sat there, engine running, watching the water streaking down the windows.

Honestly? To me, that's what a fairytale is. Because, in this life, there are too many things we do just so other people think we're happy or successful or intelligent or good-looking or whatever, like take science courses instead of arts, or a glass of beer when you know you should be drinking water. But being myself has brought me good things. You know what? I'm glad I didn't become a mechanic. That wasn't really the point.

Image taken from:

http://2020hinessight.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/the-best-things-in-life-are-free-lifes-good.jpg

REMORSE

Have you always had my breakfast

Ready at the crack of dawn

And watched me walk past

Eat…leave…with the briefest smile at our son?

Has that look always lingered in your eyes, of pain

As my footsteps died in the hallway

As I walked away from another argument, left you alone again

Just when your heart ached with things to say?

Have you always been this good with the children;

Filling the spaces I left with flowers

Masking the pain so you could be fun around them

Though you were alone in the night for many hours?

Have your eyes always brimmed with tears…?

Image taken from:

http://art.ngfiles.com/images/205/alagarse_remorse.jpg

Strategic Love: Simple Rules That Make Love Work by Dike Chukwumerije

CHOICES

I believe this: even if man had the capacity to live forever, he wouldn’t. For there is a way in which Life is not just the function of a beating heart; there is a way in which it is only the function of the will to live on. So, when I was asked that terrible question, ‘But how do you KNOW she’s THE ONE?’ I didn’t hesitate. I said, ‘I don’t.’ What I really meant to say was ‘there is no proof’, not in the swing of her hips, or the way the thought of her makes me stop in the middle of the street and laugh to myself; all dependable indicators, yes, but none that incontrovertible proof they were asking for, that this thing I was getting into was unbreakable.

It’s my greatest epiphany, you see. I used to wake up at night and wonder, ‘What if I wake up at night and it’s gone?’ Don’t lie to me.  If you’ve fallen in love before, you’ve fallen out of love before.  And I dreaded it, THAT moment, when the stone that had been hurtling upwards all this time begins to slow. Ah! How do you break the news to the other, that they are no longer ‘the one’? Do you search for lies when they ask, ‘But what did I do?’  Or tell the truth, ‘Nothing’? And what if you’ve had kids with them already, built this complicated life together already? Yes. What if it’s the morning of your fiftieth?

I used to have these thoughts… Then I said to myself – ‘Dike; feelings, like tides, will rise and fall but Love, surely, must be something more’. So, let’s ask a different set of ‘What ifs..?’ What if you took it all away; stripped it of every sonnet, every violin in the background, every gold-tinted sunset and gentle, meandering path? What if you ground it down to its irreducible minimum? Surely, there would be something left, something that held true regardless of who. Parent, friend, lover or your own child, something common to each instance you’ve ever said it, and meant it, ‘I love you.’ If Love lives at all, surely, it must be in that common denominator.

So let me hold on to what is real for a moment. You see, I have no fears of waking up one morning and ‘not loving’ my mother ‘any more’, or of discovering after many years that I don’t ‘actually’ love my daughter. And, yes, you could say, ‘Of course you wouldn’t, they’re your blood’, but in this same world there are those who creep into the beds of their own children. No. That bond you speak of is not in our genes. It’s in our heads. It’s in the things we’ve been raised to accept without question: you love your mother even if she’s a witch, you stand by your brothers, you take care of your father when his strength is gone, and if (God forbid) your child is born with six fingers and two toes, you kiss her gently still and say, ‘You are more beautiful than art, I swear.’

Yes. Regardless of how Walt Disney likes to end those fairytales of his, there are actually no ‘feelings’ that last forever. Don’t let anyone fool you. This is the nearest we will ever come to it, to make up our minds, independently of anything they are or will ever be, that come what may, no matter what, each time they look to us they WILL find succor. For at its core that is what it is, not a poem or a song or a colony of butterflies in the pit of your stomach, just a line you draw in the sand and refuse, thereafter, to step over. Love is a choice; more than a choice, Love is a faith. And I believe.

Image taken from:

http://www.bhmpics.com/walls/love_butterflies-wide.jpg

FRIENDS

Some friends are for an hour

It makes them no less true

For had I not survived that hour

There would have been no day

Some friends are for the day

This does not make them bad

For if I did not live that day

There would have been no week

Some friends are for the week

It does not mean they're fickle

For if that week had shot me down

There would have been no month

Some friends are for the month

Don't think of them as false

For if they had not played their part

There would have been no year

Some friends are for the year

They fade when it is done

But just because they stood with you

You have another year

And some are for the years

Undoubtedly, it's true

But looking back, I also see

All friends are for something

As long as you take time

To be a friend yourself

You'll always find you never lack

The friend you truly need

For when you sow a seed

Each time life demands it

You find a bountiful harvest

Each time you deserve it

So never curse or cry

When people come and go

Just touch the one in front of you

And someone will touch you.

This poem is from my collection:
'Malaika: A Poetry Collection for Children and Those Who Love Them'
Click on the link if you would like to purchase the whole collection

BEST MOMENTS

A performance poet needs to practice. So, sometimes, I escape to a quiet room in the house and start talking to myself. But, invariably, after a few minutes, the door creaks open and they stick their heads round it. ‘Daddy, are you doing your poetry?’ I nod, because I can’t stop in the middle of a recitation or, well, I would have to start all over again. ‘Can we listen?’ I nod again, and frown viciously too, so they know to shut up and stop disturbing me.

That day I was doing my tribute to Chinua Achebe. ‘Nna anyi’ I thundered. ‘Is it true that the calabash broke and I will no longer drink from it?’ They’ve heard it many, many times. But, still, they sit obediently and listen, while I leap around the room, stomping and shouting. Afterwards, I’m breathing a bit heavily. ‘Did you like it?’ My eldest eyes me, then slowly picks up her rubber duck. ‘Nna anyi’ she says laughing, ‘Is it true that I threw this rubber duckie at your head?’

That is what you call, a bad review.

A running commentary is when my number two cannot keep her mouth shut. ‘The Heartbeat of the Sparrow’ is a very solemn piece. So I take a deep breath and say, ‘If He can hear the heartbeat of a sparrow…’ and she chirps in, ‘Eh? What is sparrow?’ I ignore her; ‘… a droplet of water clinging on to the edge of a leaf, the shifting heart of the earth, the march of mountains, the movement of shadows, the scratching sound of a lizard scurrying across the sands.’ She tugs at my shorts, ‘Is it like the lizards in our house?’ I eye her. ‘If He can hear the tears sliding down my face, the hopes and fears rattling in my chest, the thoughts tiptoeing in my head, the rise and fall of every idea…’ She’s tugging at my shorts again, almost pulling them down, ‘Daddy, what is it? Why are you shouting?’

It’s what I tell them all the time. ‘What is it? Why are you people shouting? Please, keep your voices down.’ But they are not yet at the age where they can fully comprehend how someone would propose a rule with the intention that it apply only to others. So, the day she heard me say, ‘If a white man turns and calls me ‘nigger’…’, she echoed it happily, ‘Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!’ I stopped in horror, ‘No! No! You can’t say that!’ And she did her sad face, chin tucked in, shoulders lowered, eyes gazing downwards, ‘Why? Is it because only you can say it?’

Ah! How do I explain to this two-year old that I didn’t actually say it, that I said IF a white man said it to me, and that the poem is really a critique of the hypocrisy of those who condemn racism but practice tribalism? She’s still looking at me in complete devastation. So, I smile and say, ‘Who wants ice-cream?’ (I know; I’m a bad parent. But some things are just too difficult to explain.)

That was why I almost conked the elder one when I walked by, one day, and saw her standing over her sister, who was sprawled on the floor. And when I asked what game they were playing, she said, ‘Njide is dead.’ I think they learned the word from those weeks when Mandela’s face was constantly on our TV. She’s four. So, there’s no way she could have understood why my heart stopped, or why my face turned dark, or why I threatened them with congested-nose-clearing smacks, or why I knelt down afterwards, gathered the two of them in my arms and held them close for a long, long time before snapping, ‘Oya, go and play another game’.

I tell you, my brother, it’s hard to choose a best moment. But I have not known fear like I know it now; sometimes, I wake up in the night and go over just to make sure they are still breathing. Still, there are those evenings when we sit at the dining table and they say, one after the other, ‘Daddy, listen to me, let me do my poetry.’ And, at first, they are shy and twiddling fingers, but soon rattling out my own words with that confidence only children can have: ‘If you see a broken heart, mend it, mend it, it’s a start. Make the world a better place, with a sweet smile on your face.’ And, sometimes, they like to add: ‘Like this!’ Before showing me their biggest, widest smiles.

Honestly, cute or no cute, I don’t hesitate in smacking a deserving bottom once or twice. (Okay - three, may be four times.) But, ultimately, it is to the simplicity of good words that I commit my children. That these things whispered in their ears over and over again will not be forgotten on the day - we long gone and they long grown - they have to choose between what is right and what is only slightly wrong. It is an important day, that one, for on it I too will find out, award winning or not, if I had actually been any good as a Poet.

For World Poetry Day

Image taken from:

http://www.epacha.org/siteimages/UN%20POETRY%20DAY%202013%20poetry2.gif

THIS IS LOVE

To draw a sharp breath at the sight of one you’ve never seen before…

 

This is Love.

 

To long for her to look at you, to come round the table and sit with you, to talk to you and find your stories amusing; and when the night ends, to hold these words in your heart though you dare not say them out, ‘Don’t leave…’

 

This is Love.

 

To touch the phone, with beating heart, and wonder if you should call. Or not.

 

This is Love.

 

To call with bated breath, and find a conversation so deep it never ends, with a life of its own, that takes you through places strange and yet so familiar; to fall asleep involuntarily because, on a night like this, you want to stay awake forever…

 

This is Love.

 

To steal a first kiss on a frozen night, and laugh the drunken laughter of the smitten, to walk with hands entwined, afraid to let go; to see the world with new eyes and swoon at the scent of endless possibilities…

 

This is Love.

 

To accept. To be accepted.

Not for where you live or what you drive.

 

This is Love.

 

To share the same conviction; that life will not break this bond, rough seas will not weaken this resolve, and where it is tested – on afternoons of trembling walls when the practicalities of living together punches holes in all your fairy-tales – to hold steady, to stay strong, to reach for those immortal words of healing and reconciliation: ‘I’m sorry, baby…’

 

This is Love.

 

To watch your children born…

 

This is Love.

 

To feel the weight of Time, the way it covers everything with dust and dulls the cutting edge of passion; to feel this weight with sorrow; to wake up in the early hours of the morning and worry about it, to pause in the mid-afternoon rush and worry about it, to come home in the evening and worry, that the routine of washing and feeding babies is chipping away at what you have; to stay awake at night, with only the glow of the side-lamp, and talk about it, to argue about it, and cry about it, then hold hands and say about it: ‘No. No! We will not let this happen to us…’

 

This is Love.

 

To find yourselves every time you lose yourselves…

 

To catch it just before you say it

That thing you could never take back

And where it is said, inadvertently, to you

A second later, to forget it

 

This is Love.

 

Image taken from:

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/15992-lovesxc-1360565537-290-640x480.jpg

 

ANDANTE, ANDANTE...

Ah! Touch me gently. Baby, take it slow. I agree there are places where my heart feels like stone. But - it will shock you - there are moments when butterfly wings could break my skin. So, let’s not be impatient with the process. For we all come with masks. Taking them off can be as delicate as waxing; peeling back layers of defense mechanisms carefully cultivated over years of mixing up with the wrong kind of people.

Honestly, there are those who cannot see beyond the swell of one’s breasts, the weight of one’s wallet, the size of one’s hips. And they come smelling like Chanel, talking like U.I. graduate with a masters from Imperial College, but there’s not enough polish in the world to compensate for lack of depth, want of character, lack of heart.

True. There’s no way to come through things like these without a dent or two. But no one wears their battle scars on their faces. So, when you un-dress me, don’t gasp out loud. You see, I wasn’t always this quiet. No. I wrote pages of poetry. Yes, if you had met me years ago, I would have shouted it out from the top of any roof: ‘I love you!’ But the girl I was with said it made her uncomfortable.

That’s the thing about a broken heart; even after you move on there are things that stay with you. So, you look in the mirror and clench your jaws: ‘I will never let anyone do this to me again.’ It’s the tragic irony of life, isn’t it? That the very same road that leads to dead-ends leads to true love; through the same gates of trust, down the same narrow paths of hope, gently putting those things that can only be totally safe if they stay inside you in the hands of someone else.

But – ah! - don’t get too cocky now; thinking you earned it all the first day we kissed, the key to every locked door. There are still things you don’t know about me, may never know about me. Listen – and don’t forget it – if the Past is as good a teacher as they say it is, then there’s a darkness lurking on the far side of everyone. All of a sudden, I’m not firm enough for you, funny enough for you, rich enough for you. Fear – the cold fear of rejection – is the only real obstacle to total intimacy. But do you know the future? Can you guarantee it, here and now, that even on the worst days, the sound of my voice will stay the darkness in you?

So, what’s the rush? Trust is like stacking empty bottles, one on top of the other; like performing open-heart surgery on a three-month-old baby; like reversing the effects of global warming; or getting a wild horse to eat out of your hands. You cannot give up at every failure, or the sun would have stopped trying, long ago, to tease the seed out of its skin.

No. Let me tell you what to do. You don’t really win hearts with love poetry and candle-lit dinners, you win them with Time – every morning I wake up and you’re still here, when we shout at each other at the top of our voices but you reach across at night and squeeze my hand still, these things speak more eloquently than Achebe. True. I don’t need a serenade tonight, baby. Just touch me gently. Just take it slow.

Image taken from:

http://render.fineartamerica.com/images/images-stretched-canvas-search/15.00/15.00/black/break/images-medium-5/love-is-gentle-sally-huss.jpg

This piece was first published in:
http://achalugowrites.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/andante-andante/

THE UNBRIDGEABLE VOID

“Ah! Death is not something I want to write about because it is very, very hard to describe how it feels when someone has always been here and, then, suddenly will never be here. Just like that. And the time that separates the two events seems so slight that, sometimes, you think you could just step over it and back into better days. But, even if it is only one second that stands between what was and what now is, that one second is an unbridgeable void. That is what makes death so painful for me – its finality. It is the finality of death that is so cruel.

It’s like a child that drops his sweet and the man says, ‘No, you cannot turn back and pick it up, you must move on.’ Even though the child is crying and crying, and saying, ‘It’s just lying there, let me just turn back and pick it up and I promise I will do whatever you want me to do afterwards.’ But the man shakes his head and says, ‘No, you must move on.’ That is the only way I can describe how death feels.”*

True. Even though he is only a character in a book I wrote myself, sometimes I like to close my eyes and listen to Urichindere talk. He reminds me of someone I used to know.  Look, let me tell you now, there is no cool way of mourning for something that really, really hurts, for something that reaches inside and rips your heart out. Honestly, in that moment, you yourself will not believe the sounds – the guttural, near primitive sounds – that will escape your janded lips. But love and sorrow, these are not things that can be hidden.

You see, sometimes, when my people after a long, long night finally welcome dawn and a new child, they hold him up and name him, ‘Ozoemena’. I will tell you what it means. That inexplicable illness that crept out of her own cells, crippled and killed one of the most beautiful teenagers in the whole wide world, my cousin Uzoamaka; let it not happen again. That twisted road from Abuja to Minna that flung my friend, Imeh Ekanem, head first through the windshield, cracked his skull on its cruel asphalt; let it not happen again. That child in Yola that woke up in the night, gasped out ‘Mummy!’ then never woke again…

Ah! We die too young in this place. Ozoemena. It is a prayer, a lifting up of hands to an unknown and unknowable Fate, but only if the cessation of life was unavoidable, like the cancer that killed my classmate, Duzu. On any other day, it is a resolution, a threat even, the drawing of a jagged but firm line in the sand: ‘Ozoemena!’ For the one thing worse than the death of a loved one is the unavenged death of a loved one. But – do not bay for blood yet – for, no matter how much of it you drink, it will not fill the emptiness. Yes. If you would just wait till the pulsating in your temple slows, you will SEE that the only way to truly compensate for a life cut short is to pick up its trailing ends and finish it.

True. My brother had a slight dimple in one cheek, and now sometimes I struggle to remember which. But that is not a real tragedy. A real tragedy is when people forget the details of your dreams; when they leave you like that, an unfinished script, a body in a coffin buried with all the things you could have been if you hadn’t died so young. Ah! I will not let you die like that. No. When I have grown so old I have no strength left to pursue these dreams anymore, I will come then and sit by your grave. Do you understand me? But not today.

Today, I will listen to the boy I once was, before life touched me with its perverted fingers; for that faith of old will never grow redundant: “when that child drops his sweets and begs the man to please let him go back and get them, the man is not being wicked by saying, ‘No’, he is merely showing the child the way to real freedom. There is nothing in the past, except doctored memories. There is nothing in the grave, except a decaying body. Whatever sweets you are looking for, you will find them in front of you. And the sooner you move on, the quicker you’ll find them.”*

Yes, my people, gone but never forgotten; for you, I will live on.

Image taken from:

http://barrydean.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/michael-angelo-01.jpg

*Excerpts from my novel, ‘URICHINDERE’

http://www.amazon.com/Urichindere-Dikeogu-Chukwumerije/dp/0955794080/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393594455&sr=8-1&keywords=urichindere

VALENTINE

I want to BE happy. Not as in a picture on facebook with two faces, cheek to cheek, smiling into the lens. Really, how much can a frozen second tell, when life is a rapid, or a winding bush path; a tumbling up and down in the eternal search for equilibrium? My sister, you will know it, if you have it, when you wake up in the morning and your heart is not racing, and you’re not brushing your teeth absentmindedly, all the time trying to remember why you feel so, so unhappy?

I’ll tell you why. A dream – a real dream, not some sugar-induced rush of excitement – is like your strongest memories from childhood, the kind that have nothing before or after, just that one picture, crystal clear in your mind. Like the day I stood in my brother’s corner reading the graffiti scribbled on his wall; tiny little boy looking up at this vast expanse covered in quatrains and rhyming couplets. Or the afternoon I lay on his bed, warm sun shining through the double-bay windows, listening to Tracy Chapman on his walkman, and gently thumbing through a dog-eared copy of Khalil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’.

So, now, it doesn’t matter how you bend or twist me, what kind of potion you put in my food, there will always be a restlessness in my soul. Yes. Every time I look up and see the unique patterns of sunrise or sunset, or hear the plucking of guitar strings in a dimly lit room, there is something inside me that will always say: ‘Ah! There is more to this life than all this.’ True. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, or the beautiful children we have, or the wonderful life we’ve built around steady jobs and an affordable mortgage; this insane struggle to drive up to church in the biggest car. No, it doesn’t mean that at all. But, see, I was not yet fully formed when someone said, ‘Do not use it as an excuse’. And, now, I cannot get it out of my head.

So, let me tell you; Love is not an excuse for folding in your wings. And it cannot satisfy every need in your heart. And don’t just be wary, avoid them, the people that tell you to stop listening to all the other voices in your head. Because in the uniquely cruel entrapment that relationships can – when they go wrong – turn out to be, the thing that always goes first is your faith in the reliability of your own gut feelings. So, someone tells you that your restlessness is a phase, it will pass, and you stop listening to the inner warning - it is not, it will not. So, someone tells you that, eventually, staying home to take care of the kids will fill the void that opened up when you quit your job, and they convince you to dismiss it as immature, the lingering craving for a life of your own.

Ah! There are those who will always say, ‘Look, everyone compromises. Grow up!’  And make you think that wanting more is a terribly selfish thing. But you can only really love people with the same love you regularly use towards yourself. So – be warned – those who have chained their hearts will, in return for loving you, ask you to chain yours. And those who will never chain theirs will, in return for loving you, set you free. So, don’t swoon too easily at chocolates and flowers, my friend; tomorrow, with its retribution, is much closer than you think. Yes. If you have a dream – a real dream, not some trending tweet-induced rush of excitement – leave those kisses and follow it, because the loneliness on that road is not as crushing, but the Love – ah! –is truly, truly uplifting.

Image taken from:

http://ufigureitoutrelationshipadvice.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/bigstock-trapped-in-despair-36789902.jpg

THE SPACE BETWEEN EXTREMES

I will not forget that day. We had just graduated from Secondary School, my friend and I. I think we were on our way to his guardian’s flat, because Lamara had said it was a walking distance. Anyway, that’s not the story; this is the story. You see, normally, these things are done covertly. But I was at that time in my life when hormones were all over the place. So, Lamara, with his unparalleled capacity for both mischief and bluntness, after observing it all for a few minutes, turned to me and asked - ‘Why are you staring at that woman’s (and this is the sanitized version) bum?’

Well, I consider it the blessing of melanin, this genetic incapacity to truly blush. So, I kept a straight face and flat out denied it. Yes. I was still a few years away from mastering the art of the ‘side-eye’, but my awkward ways had already earned me the slightly annoying label: ‘prude’. Meaning? Someone who feels too embarrassed to admit he enjoys the view.

Let me explain. Maybe, I was fifteen or so; my mum took me to see a friend of hers, one of these Europeanized types, she grabbed me by both shoulders and kissed one cheek after the other. Honestly? I considered it assault. And barely restrained myself from executing a hip throw. It made my mum laugh, the ‘fight or flight’ look in my eyes. But, anyway, that’s just to tell you where I was coming from.

So, teenagers being teenagers, I found friends at Uni who made it their mission to ‘fix’ me. And, at first, it was excruciatingly irritating; a group of girls constantly interrupting my reading to ask, ‘Seriously, seriously, are you gay?’ But after a while I relented; tried my first arm across shoulder, my first hand in hand, my first side hug, my first full hug, my first ‘let me sit on your laps’, till I finally got it – repression is one thing, self-control is another.

Yes. Usually, it’s the very people who pretend that the sight of a woman’s behind does nothing to them (when in fact it does) who are in imminent danger of misconstruing a handshake. And even after you’re married, you could continue to find it all very troublesome – a partner who interprets physical intimacy, of any kind, as some sort of foreplay. Honestly, it’s not so funny then, when you can’t cuddle, or play wrestle, or just tickle each other under the sheets for fun. My brother, it’s a bit like missing all the colors between black and white.

But, don’t get me wrong o; there is really no progress in exchanging one extreme for the other. True! The person who can’t see it, marvel briefly at how much work God put into it, and move on with life is really not much better than the person who cannot even admit he just looked at it. And, you know what? For that special person sitting on the other side of your table, there will be days when even that brief glance will be a glance too many. Yes. Love can be funny like that. But just know it; no matter how long it’s been, there will be moments in every relationship when you will need to let them see it: ‘In every way that counts, you are the only one I have eyes for’.

So, yes, as I’m sure you can already tell, I am still quite prudish. And, if a woman swings by now, I still won’t gawk. But if you catch me glancing ‘codedly’, I will shrug my shoulders and laugh with you. Just don’t think it now means we can spend the next hour trading obscenities. True. And it’s not for lack of either imagination or appropriate metaphors on my part. It’s just that, honestly, there is a point at which this whole thing, no matter how we spin it, fades into the objectification of something that is actually quite precious. Yes, that’s what I still think. But feel free to draw your own boundaries wherever you will.

Image taken from:

http://ionegiantmag.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/8a4dfc49b054da2881133096449e64_h498_w598_m2.jpg?w=630&h=378

PICTURE PERFECT

I consider it the great equalizer, the humble toilet, because we all have to sit on it, no matter how brilliant or beautiful we seem. Ah!  Don't let Mary Kay fool you; until you've seen the blemish, you have NOT seen the face. So, when you're day-dreaming, think not, who would look best beside me on the red carpet, or dancing up the aisle in our Sunday best?

 

No. Think of staring at your computer after a long day at work; you have one of those bosses skilled at calculating the speed with which subordinates scramble to 'help' her with her bag. So, understandably, you're tired – the inner tiredness that is always inversely related to the amount of meaningful work you've done that day. Now shut your eyes tight and imagine it – not being able to really look forward to going home.

 

Or an empty Saturday afternoon. No light. No Dstv. It can be scarier than not knowing where the month's rent will come from, having to sit down in a small space and discover that neither silence nor conversation is comfortable. So, let me say this; Love is not a feeling, just because there is a difference between not being in the mood to talk to someone and not being able to talk to them. But, believe me, you can go years before finding out which one you've actually got. It's the way it works when you've settled into a routine, and perfected communicating in clichés.

 

So, imagine kissing playfully. Because it's a lot easier to fake an orgasm; but a long cuddle – with meaningless chit-chat and the occasional tickle in between, falling asleep in each other's arms, waking up with the lingering memory of what you were talking about? You will struggle with that one unless you truly love her. And by that I mean you've taken the time to find out that having a bit more space for her clothes and shoes means a lot more to her than sexy lingerie. It's one of the things you only see when you're looking, only hear when you're listening; for there are people whose only way of expressing intense dissatisfaction with life is turning up the volume of the football game on TV.

 

Yes. But it is how most of us are wired, to hide our deep inner feelings and behave properly in public. So, imagine if you couldn't come home and take the mask off. Where will you breathe? I know, in this Life, there will always be roles to play and, truth be told, you may only learn how to act like a parent by experimenting with your first child. But imagine if you started calling each other 'Daddy' and 'Mummy' (to teach that child) and never stopped.

 

This thing called Love. And that's the confusion; it's not the only thing that could generate feelings. So, if you have feelings, how do you know it's Love? My sister, what can I say? In your day-dreams, wipe the make up off. And, if you can, that Yanni playing in the background? Turn it down as well.

 

For, if you KNOW that people don't smell like fried dodo in the morning, and you still want to do this; that there are habits they will struggle with all their lives; that we don't come with spaces in our hearts custom-made for anyone else; and no one is so straight-forward you could love them on cruise control. If you KNOW all this and you still want to do this, then, yes, I'll be more willing to vouch for you. But, honestly, it still wouldn't mean that much, not unless they knew it too, about your picture-perfect self.

 

Image taken from:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpO_oJGrBkHfTHQJ42nxSdjpStbBpyP23KYQDb5d1hy8KffNCaN3rs7GhuI17jlTi38k7hRf_Tq75YEb1ztVW4dip-XNB3wudazbrkJ6gALjt6oGjNHg_qxV2RPVTmU9Rz3bvHbkg-Bfo/s1600/Remove+Mask_sepia.jpg

 

I DO NOT COME FROM A BROKEN HOME

My parents were divorced when I was 5. And, to me, there was nothing worse. It didn’t help either, people always saying – children whose parents are no longer together come from broken homes. So, I carried that phrase, like a corrosive, inside me. Broken Home. And, on some days, I despised those who inflicted it on me. Why didn’t they just work things out? Isn’t that what everyone does? And even if they couldn’t, why didn’t they just stay together, because of us, ‘the children’? Isn’t that what everyone does?

But my mum only smiled, the quiet smile of someone walking the road others are judging. Then reached out and held me close, so we could cry together. It took me a long, long time to really understand, but she waited patiently, loved me unconditionally, till I did. It was she who taught me to say, I do not come from a Broken Home. It’s the people who wake up and walk past each other, sleep shoulder to shoulder, but never say a word to each other; who stay only because they are afraid of leaving, afraid of what other people would say, afraid of starting all over again at 40; the people who use their children as proxies for cloak-and-dagger wars, and let them grow up believing that what they look like to those watching is more important than who they really are inside.

Ah! Let me not do this. I’ve been judged too many times, felt too much fear, been a coward too many times in my own life, to stand up here and judge you too. So, yes, it is true; staying together regardless demands its own sort of strength. But, Life may happen to you that way. Yes. It may bring you up against things you can only get past by digging deep. And if it does, you will discover this Truth; that being true to yourself, as critical as it is to fulfilling your destiny, will threaten all but the strongest relationships in your life.

But, if it happens, do not be afraid; True Love WILL survive the journeys you MUST make. Ah! How did the poet, Gibran, put it? ‘There must be spaces in our togetherness’. Yes. Know this, there is a lot more to being family than coming back to the same house every single night. And, let me tell you, if you have a father who will not miss a day – the school concert, your inter-house sports, the middle of the night when you wake up afraid – of your life; and a mother who smiles, without a single trace of bitterness, and tells you Love can conquer time and space; if you have a sister who still looks up, with that half smile of hers, when she senses you need picking up; and brothers who will break their backs to shoulder your dreams; then – as mum always said – you have all the family you need.

So, please, don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re doing me a favour just by staying. Honestly, I am afraid of neither the darkness nor the silence; what I truly fear is to live a lie. So, hear me out. When you find Love, be grateful for it. Appreciate those who give it, for it is the only way to pay them back. Don’t love with cheesy smiles and meaningless rhetoric; show up and be there. For, no matter how well or how long we spin this thing, it is actually not real if we’re dying inside. Yes, my friend, there is no family picture hanging on my wall. But, trust me – there is nothing dysfunctional about where I’m from.