8 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO YOU

After writing, ‘8 THINGS I HATE ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO YOU’, Babe of Life peeped into my study and said, “Hmm, I saw what you wrote on facebook o.” Ah! I have known her long enough to know what “Hmm, I saw what you wrote on facebook o” really means. So, for sake of life and limb, I meekly re-submit:

#8Yearsandstillcounting: 8 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO YOU

1. That I can be awkward without ridicule and naked without shame. Forgive me. This is the reason for all the times I sporadically break into what I think is makossa. And for the unhealthy amount of time I spend in the same boxers every weekend. Forgive me.

2. That we are slowly evolving beyond the need for unnecessary talk. So, look at me now over any dinner table and I will tell you whether you’re saying: “I take God beg you, stop eating that thing as if you don’t see peppered chicken regularly”; or “I take God beg you, eat and pack take-away, because I am not cooking jack when we get home, you hear?”

3. Have I ever told you? Everything about you smells like perfume, even your morning breath. True. It smells like Chanel. And I love it!

NOT LIKE THIS!

4. Those nights when you are sleeping and I get to sit there watching you, yes, but not like Willy-Willy, don’t worry; just thinking – ‘seriously, how did a nerd like me end up with a top to bottom if you doubt it check the label complete chikito like you?’ You know? I like it. Those nights you wake up, and we get to lie there gisting – like friends, not lovers – in the darkness. In fact, I love it.

5. I feel safe enough to say these things, you know? I am afraid, I don’t know, I feel my life is spinning out of control. You know? You keep my secrets. Better still, you forgive me for having them at all.

6. The way we fight these days, not at all like before, when your mouth was Ogbunigwe, and my expertise was 7 days silence. Sometimes, I still ask myself - what the hell were we smoking? Trying to knock out the teeth of somebody you will wake up next week and try to kiss? What? Biko, I like the way we do it now, like boxers planning to retire without debilitating head injuries.

7. Our children. Sometimes, they smile like you. Sometimes, they frown like you. Sometimes, they sit there absent-mindedly singing, “oyigiyigi o o o’, just because they hear it blaring out of your car stereo every morning on the way to school. You see, I like the way they are beginning to resemble you, down to the same nervous break down at the possible sighting of a cockroach… In fact, I love it.

8. You are the color of our carpet, the paintings on our wall, the two armchairs that sit in a corner, straight out of a John Lewis brochure, but made for a fraction of the price by the local carpenter you found. Undisputed: you are the reason I live in the coziest, coolest, (never mind the buckets we have to put here and there to catch the drip when it rains), most beautiful house I have ever lived in. Undisputed: you are my home.

Happy anniversary.

(Ehm…please, can I come back into the room now? Biko. I will not post anything on facebook again without permission. Biko.)

Images taken from:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51hE8ymr3XL._SX522_.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d9/58/49/d9584949f7cf2f942c994f4e4e39f3ef.jpg

https://forestparkchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/FTDF2.jpg

http://sellingrockymountainhomes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/happy-home.jpg

8 THINGS I HATE ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO YOU

1. You are shouting something from somewhere, only God knows what you’re saying. So I look up from my desk and yell, ‘What did you say?” You shout back something, only God knows what you’re saying. So, I grumble to myself, get up, walk to the top of the stairs and yell, “What did you say?” And you shout back something, only God knows what you’re saying. So, I hiss to myself, walk down the stairs, to the door of the living room, and find you curled up on the couch reading. So, I take a deep breath and ask quietly, “What did you say?” And, looking totally surprised to see me there, you peer over your book and say, “Oh, I was just wondering where you were.”

2.  If I ask upstairs, then ask downstairs, then ask before I start peeling it if you want dodo and you say, ‘No, no, no’. Then I peel it and fry it, sit down to eat it, and you sit opposite me – and in the name of ‘keeping me company’ – take one single dodo and put in your mouth. I hate it.

3.  When I am sleeping and you wake me up because I am snoring. Honestly, before God and man, is it fair?

4. You complain and complain that you take care of everybody in this house from morning till night and nobody ever takes care of you. So I get up the next morning and say I will make you breakfast, and you act excited and follow me to the kitchen. Then I open the cupboard and select one pot, and you sigh like someone recently bereaved. So, I ask, ‘What is it?’ And you say, ‘That is my wok. I only use it when I’m making Chinese fried rice’. So I select another one, and you say, ‘Ehm, I don't use that frying pan anymore.’ And I turn around and ask, “Should I let you do this?” And you say, “Perhaps it is best”.

5. You come into the sitting room. I am watching a movie. You ask, “What is that?” I press the “i” button. You read the info and say, “This is a nice movie, why didn’t you call me?” I say, “Sorry”. You sit down. Three seconds later, you ask me, “Who is this man?” I say, “I don’t know. I have not watched the movie before.” Ten seconds later you ask me, “Is he going to kill her?” I say, “I don’t know. I have not watched the movie before.” Six seconds later you scream and ask me, “Will she die?” Honestly, I hate it.

6. You hold up 2 dresses and ask me to pick one. I do a quick ‘tun-bum-tun-bum’ in my head and point to the one in your right hand. “Really?” You look disappointed. “Doesn’t it make me look fat?” So, I point to the one in your left hand. “Really?” You look disappointed. “I think it makes me look short.”

7.  When we are sitting at a table somewhere and a girl with a ‘look at it’ bum walks past and you immediately start looking into my eyes, and keep looking into my eyes till she has passed the point where I can only see the glory by very obviously turning my head… Honestly, before God and man, is this fair?

8.  Now, you are frowning. So, I ask, “Is everything ok?” You say, “Yes.” And I go back to writing this article. Please, how is this ‘insensitive’?

Image taken from:

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HOW TO CHEAT ON YOUR WIFE

First, remove the ring. It might remind you of stuff, you see, like sitting on the floor, both of you, to a meal of bread and indomie, maybe. Imagine. To be reminded of it, that first quarrel, how cool and collected, you threw cool and collected out the window, because this was the one person you’d brought so close, she’d mastered how to get under your skin at will. So, unable to stand a second more in her presence, you’d left the room, but only as far as the parlour; lay there and slipped it off, this ring, put it on the ground, a few meters from your face, to watch it – watch it like it was some suspicious object a pastor specialized in countering sporadic attacks of witchcraft had pulled out from under your bed. After a long time watching it, this ring, you’d taken a deep, deep breath finally, and slipped it on again…

Brother. To do what you are about to do, you must take this memory and put it where it will not be remembered. You hear? Lose it, this memory…of her leaning into you, to prop you up, on days that weighed heavily on you, of you leaning into her, to prop her up, on days that weighed heavily on her. Not really a pronouncement, you know – this ‘two becoming one’ thing – but a process that takes way too much of our irreplaceable time, much like trees growing into each other.  Yes. To forget this, to pretend it did not happen, to – in fact – attempt to re-write what was written on the ethereal scroll where Time recorded the early History of the two of you, brother, you will have to construct very circuitous arguments.

Like – ‘she has changed’. Yes. You will have to tell yourself – ‘she has changed’ – over and over again. Yes. Once you make a habit of doing this, your eyes will open and you will start to see the proof of it everywhere. In the morning, you will see the folds your children left behind when they wriggled out of her tummy. In the afternoon, she will call you, and before you answer, you will say to yourself, ‘I bet you she’s calling me to tell me something has broken in the house’; then you will answer, and what will she say? ‘Honey, we have still not paid the children’s school fees’. You will drop the phone, and after thinking again about it very deeply, you will say: ‘Honestly, this is the only thing she is good at.’ So later that night, when you lock up and come up to find her fast asleep on the sitting room floor, you will think nothing at all of turning the lights off and leaving her there. Yes.

But brace yourself, brother…brace yourself. When you remove the ring, you see, you may find underneath it a determined circle of pale skin. Yes. Some people say, give it a day or two, and it will fade. This is true. But not for those who thought of everything, right down to where they would buy the keg that would hold the palmwine they needed to take that day to their prospective father-in-law… yes, not for those who left absolutely nothing to others. If you are one of those, then – I am sorry – the determined circle of pale skin you find underneath your wedding ring will never fade. This is true. And you will have to live with it, what you are about to do…

Sleep well.

Wait! It is in this way – not in the Disney way of ‘happily ever afters’ – that we will speak of Love on Sunday evening at 6.45pm at the Main Auditorium of the National Centre for Women Development. Yes. At NSW, Poetry is our brush, true, but the picture we paint is of Real Life. Do NOT be late. Believe me, we always start strong. Have I not said it before?

Sleep well.

Images taken from:

https://dates4usblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/removing-ring.jpg

http://media.salon.com/2011/11/brain.jpg

INVITATION TO NIGHT OF THE SPOKEN WORD (6)

I hope this meets you well. I would like to invite you to a live show I'm hosting on the 14th of Feb 2016 at the National Centre for Women Development, Abuja by 6.45pm.

Night of the Spoken Word (NSW) is a live Performance Poetry Show. That means I will use Poetry (yes, Poetry) to entertain you. But not just any type of Poetry, and not just any type of entertainment.  The Poetry here is a very distant cousin of the one you think of when I say 'Poetry'. Yes. There will be no 'thee's or 'thou's, no puzzles requiring solitary meditation to unravel. For I know you've been taught that simple words cannot communicate deep truths. But if you come, my friend, I will re-educate you.

Because this not just any type of entertainment. So, yes, I will make you laugh; but, tell me, are you not also weary of consistently being fed crap in the name of fun? The last time I checked religion  – not art – was the opium of the masses. So, tell me, what is wrong with designing an event to educate as thoroughly as it entertains? To appeal not only to the physical senses – with its weakness for women with the supernatural ability to move their buttocks independently of anything else – but also to the ethereal soul? Tell me.

They told me – you cannot sell edutainment to the Nigerian, for he is far too hungry to enjoy anything more sophisticated than football. They told me – if you are planning to make sentences with many complex words, take it to the expatriates; they are the ones who appreciate these things. I told them – What's the point? Of attempting to build an industry on expatriate foundations? As if Development is something you can put in a container and ship down to Lagos. It is not. Yes. For even if a nation had no roads of its own, no dams of its own, no ports of its own; even if it had no country of its own, no physical space anywhere on the face of the Earth it could name as its own; do you know that that nation could still live, and live on through unending Time, so long as it had an art of its own – music and culture – a Poetry of its own? Did you know this?

So I have not tried to be a flawless copy of someone else's inspiration. This Poetry tastes of Sango-Ota and Gwagwalada, of that afternoon in Potiskum when we stopped on the road for the robbers ahead to finish their business. Yes. And you – child of epileptic power supply and run down libraries – are my target audience. So if you've never seen one person on one stage in one night perform 17 poems and 5 short stories, if you think that this cannot possibly (Nigerian that you are) hold your attention, then come, my friend, and I will make you believe.

Because I am tired of trying to jump with both feet on the ground. That is not faith. Faith is the first step you take beyond the point-of-no-return. So, look, I am not bringing Kanye West from America to entice you; no, it is me you are coming to listen to. Me. In a venue many years past its glory, with its peeling doors and 1000 seats, but I told my friend I will burn so bright they will not see the walls. For, I've done 50, and I've done 500 – and I could stay where it's comfortable and agree to grow old – but, tell me, can this Poetry fill a Thousand seats? I tell you, my friend, this is not a question I will be taking to my grave.

No. I will answer it now, while there is yet Life, on Sunday the 14th of February 2016 at 6.45pm on the stroke of the clock when I walk out to that solitary mic on that solitary stage, then turn and face…whatever awaits me. True. It will be Valentine's Day. And I'll be doing it for Love.

Will you come?

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For excerpts from the last Night of the Spoken Word (NSW5), visit this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJp8ipfZ7VY

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See Dike Chukwumerije Live@

‪#‎NSW6‬  #AnIncredibleLoveStory

Live Poetry.

February 14, 2016

6:45pm

Main Auditorium. National Centre for Women Development

N3,000 (Regular). N10,000 (VIP) @ Salamander Café and Silverbird Abuja

N2,500 (Online) @ www.ticketmypal.com

For more info: MadMo (09022222290). Joy (08123887996). Dare (08067348956).

WHEN LOVE IS YOUR MUSE...

It’s not only about a corner table in a nice restaurant with that bottle of wine you injured your atm card to buy. I know; we all look beautiful in candlelight, I know. But Love is not only about this, the sides we turn to the camera, pouting in ways that persuade others to organize elaborate evenings all in the hope of snagging a kiss at the end. Me too, I know how it is, to sit distracted through dinner, wondering if all this eye gazing and finger grazing will amount to anything tonight. But Love…is not only about this.

It is not only about crying yourself to sleep. Please, do not lie to me, with your bullshit talk about how nobody can ever make you cry. I tell you, a broken heart (if your heart was truly in it) is worse than the sting of an unexpected slap. And the sting of an unexpected slap is one thing that never fails to dislodge a tear. But Love…is not only about this.

Or the levels of self-humiliation we are willing to descend to in the face of their reluctance to say ‘yes’, or their determination to say, ‘no more!’ Ah, these are private matters, you know, the number of times we check their facebook page each hour for clues. And though we come out, lift both hands and swear it never happened, behind the same doors we burst through to tell our lies – God knows – we’d been down on both knees begging to be taken back. But Love…is not only about this.

Tell me. If you spent a bit of almost every night of your years at Uni leaning against the hostel wall, gisting – in fact, growing up – with the same three guys, and now, even though Time has put cities and careers between you all, you will still never fail to answer that call – is this not Love?

Tell me. If you are alone only because you’ve been asked to pay a price for companionship that made you think of your father, how he used to sit out in the evenings with your mother, and the ease with which the night – when it finally fell – settled in the spaces between them; so that, now, you cannot help telling anyone who asks, “If I cannot have this, then, let it be” – is this not Love?

For the sun rises because of its love of adventure, and sets because of its love of the night. And the iroko bends because of its love of the wind, and straightens up because of its love of the sky. Do you think this is only poetry? That a woman’s nose will double in size, and she will spend miserable mornings with her head half down a toilet, that her bones will creak with the weight of a child whose tumultuous entrance into this world will split her open in soul-trembling pain, and yet once she puts its lips to breast all things, all things are forgotten? And you think this is only poetry?

No! True, I have not found a more prolific muse. From the way it makes us giggle at absolutely nothing, to the courage it gives us to be ourselves, to give ourselves to causes others have since abandoned; Love is that inspiration long enough to go round the equator, tall enough to reach to the Artic and down to the Antartic, to stretch to the moon and keep going. And if Love starts telling stories just as we get to Pluto, it would still be talking when we reach the edge of the known Universe… But do not despair, my friend, for with this poetry, we shall keep up. With it, I swear, we will follow…

#AnIncredibleLoveStory #NSW6

Main Auditorium. National Centre for Women Development. Central Area. Abuja.

Dike Chukwumerije Live on the 14^th of Feb 2016…

Get your tickets.

Image taken from:

http://www.awakening360.com/content/images/articles/1874.jpg

TRUE LOVE

The first time I wrote a book, someone said, ‘That’s great. Take it to your Dad. He’s Chairman of the Education Committee. He can get it on the curriculum.” And I said, No. Not because it was wrong. But for what I think success is, not so much as what you achieve, but how.  For the rot in Nigeria is not a person, but the little compromises we’re groomed to make at every entrance, no matter how minute the elevation it leads to, to get in. Yes. Never enough to say – Judge me sir. And if I am good, let me pass.

Have you ever tried insisting on this? You will find what I have found – a hunger in the land, a crippling hunger that’s blunted the edges of our spirits. No. This is not poetry. This is a description of an all too common fear, one that regularly advises us against acting out our deepest intuitions, all because ‘the naira is falling’, and ‘interest rates are rising’, and ‘there are no jobs’. So, rather than see a seed and let it grow, we demand of it a bribe – first – so we can ‘feed our children’.

But who has not also been a victim of this thing we all do? Tell me how many times it has been said to you – ‘Oh, yes, I know you’re the right person for the job, but…’ ‘Oh, yes, I know you’re telling the truth, but…’ ‘This project, this concept, is a beautiful one, I know, I know, but…’ Too many buts on the road to Paradise; turning faces from the sun, bending us all into hunchbacks with rote responses to the big questions of Life. But diversification is not the top-down policy you think it is, sabotaged only by an unimaginative government. No. It is you too who continues to sit behind a desk accepting what a monolithic economy gives you to do.

For people are people, you know, we like to travel with the herd. But sometimes – and this is also true of people – the heart may nudge you towards an idea you cannot find in any textbook, a career that does not yet exist. And on the morning after it does, you will wake up and find yourself toying with this mysterious belief, one that nothing you know or ever experienced can explain, that – connection or no connection, masters degree or no masters degree, empty wallet or no empty wallet – there is enough power in your focused mind to do what you just dreamed.

Honestly, many of us will consider this for a few seconds…this inexplicable urge to begin to pursue something we do not presently stand a chance of becoming… then laugh out in derision, and continue with Life. Yes. But for those who will still wake up the next day, and the day after, and the day after, with the same thoughts knocking on the windowpane of your hearts; let me say this. Should you decide to grasp it with both hands, that urge to live from inside out, and begin to use it to strike repeatedly against the cold and hard and unyielding ground of this country, you will discover something I am even now discovering. That there is nothing in the world that is more frustrating. Yes. That there is nothing in the world that is more satisfying. Yes, yes. It is always like this with our acts of True Love.

#NSW6.

14 Feb 2016.

Love and Poetry Live.

Image taken from:

http://jennifercovington.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/follow-your-heart-print.jpg

A HOLIDAY LIKE THIS...

Sometimes, when the heart breaks, it breaks softly, like a rain drop on a hard surface, shattering into a million pieces; an anguish vibrating at a frequency too high for the human ear. Yes. It is in that sense that I answer, “I am fine” when what I really should say is, “It’s been a difficult year”. But if every human spirit is a forest, within that forest are many trees destined to die in drought, no doubt. But also a tree or two with roots so deep they bow their heads to hurricanes and raise them again when calamity has passed. For as fragile as we are – bodies of clay, clinging desperately to a spinning planet – we are built to last; because we carry within us – forget sun and wind – the most renewable energy source of all.

Yes. So no matter how tired you are at the end of the day, the tireless sound of children at play, their laughter naturally immune to the vicissitudes of life, could still be all it takes. Or catching the whiff of something on fire, you know? This could be all it takes – the whiff of akamu, pregnant with the memories of many a childhood breakfast. Did you not know? There are excitements you think you have forgotten, pleasures you think you have outgrown, until you hear that sizzle, the one boiled meat makes when it is sitting in a pan of hot oil violently protesting its conversion to fried meat… Ah! This could be all it takes to re-charge the heart, sometimes.

More powerful, I tell you, than the most powerful machines man has ever built. For, tell me, which jet engine, after a grueling cross-Atlantic flight, can be ready to fly again just by closing its eyes and listening to ‘Mo Sori Ire’ on repeat? These people who think that money makes the world go round have never tried to heal a heart so broken it cannot eat, or drink, or tell the difference between two pillows, one stuffed with ostrich feathers and the other with mama’s old wrappers. On a day like that, it may be only Bob Marley who can turn the soul from despair. Tell me, which one of us has not sat in the darkness before, singing songs from the past just to re-awaken a zest for the future? Eh?

So, do not underestimate the power of sitting up to watch the sunset or sitting down to watch it rise. Or of driving kilometers into the past to visit the home you grew up in, where your parents still live perhaps, and even if they do not, my sister, do not underestimate it still, just how long the spirit can linger over the places True Love has been. Yes. Do not underestimate the power of scrolling through your phone, in search of those you really should call more often, for sake of those magical conversations you used to have, longer than any kerosene lamp could ever burn. Did you not know? Getting down on hands and knees so the children can ride horses, simple as it is, can heal the spaces the WorldWideWeb has built between us. So that when we get back up and log back on, and type ‘Lol’, it would be because we have actually – and genuinely – laughed. Yes.

This, my friend, is the sort of Holiday I wish you when I say it, from my heart – Merry Christmas.

Image taken from:

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