Hi Jon Adoga,

Thanks for your comment. Ebere was simply weird.

And thanks for visiting my blog.

I should always keep track of ur posts.

Cheers.


Sahmmie

Your comment is appreciated. Thanks.

Hello Simpart,

I guess you need to reread the post. It's not meant to be a smear on Ebe's personality. It's a tribute. I enjoyed his wierdness.

Thanks anyway for your comment.

Visit my blog www.aloofaa..com for my "explorations".

Holy Starvation

Veiled faces and turbaned heads
Bleat babbly with choral zest
Miffed, the rude sun unleashes a hellish spell
On ‘llah’s children, his subjects
We are fasting!

Muffled voices of hunger-biting bellies
Belch noiselessly in sulky complaints
‘llah’s messages roarly rendered
by the one with the beardal bloom
We are fasting!

Says he, “One full month of pious submission
libidinous leisure henceforth ceased
till lunar notice.”
We are fasting!

The moon shall soon be full, to ordained capacity
then men, foolish men,
shall resume routine madness
We are foolish!

The Man Below


I remember that day
When you aborted my sleep
with your philtred scent

First to wake was the man below
whose startling alertness
could cause riotous ripples in a sea of bathing maids

The man above, beholding
the lofty swaying hips,
the sensuous lips,
dashed after you like a beast at a flirting prey

these restless fingers are now bored
of cupping those frontal lobes
I'm even sick of those lusty lips

When will you shuck off
your iron pants ?

[center]Tribute to an Insomniac Poet, Ebereonwu[/center]

I got Ebereonwu’s anthology, The Insomniac Dragon as a gift from a friend. My friend had wanted me to see that there are Nigerian writers with real weird inclinations who employ poetry as a medium to express their zaniness. He must have burdened himself with the task of browsing through the Literature section of the University of Ibadan bookshop to fetch out that beautiful piece of unusual anthology in order to refute my claim of a dearth of such poetic content in the Nigeria literary landscape. Few days before, we had argued over the proliferation of ‘political’ and ‘African’ poems in the country. I was emphatic in my assertion that as much as I do appreciate poems with such content, that it was high time we started reading poems with real existential leanings… with a stress on an individual’s quest for meaning in life, an individual’s struggle against life’s strange tides, rebellion against the conventional etc., etc.

Sooner had I leafed through The Insomniac Dragon, than my hunger for existential poems (from Naija) was satisfied. I think Ebereonwu was something else. If death had not callously taken him away from us, it might be necessary, in the nearest future, to request for a psychiatric examination of his brain. I oftentimes find myself captured in awe of his crazy ideas and also wonder that his inspiration cannot but be from anything less than the bottle. No sane man (non-literally) could have chunked out such screwy lines untipsied. Or what shall one say of a poet who writes:

[center]The cobra’s venom is my cough syrup
(“Mankind”, The Insomniac Dragon)[/center]

or of these poignant and depressing lines:

I[center] have drowned a river in the ocean
And buried the night in the dark
I am my parents’ unrealized ambition
My lover’s promise never to be fulfilled
(“Next door”, The Insomniac Dragon)[/center]

As though this were not enough, Ebereonwu sequeled The Insomniac Dragon with yet another outlandish collection so aptly titled Unpublishable Poems. If I were to offer a change of title, I would have suggested Unpalatable Poems because if poetry is meant to be savoured, the poems in this collection are definitely too tart for the tongue.

In this new collection, one either gets stunned by his personal jabs on erstwhile president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Odia Ofeimum in the “Ode To The Odd Man” or totally gets knocked away by the rather cynical poem, “SINFUL WORLD” where he writes:

[center]Judge me not so that you shall not be judged
You don’t have to break your own law
Just to see me punished for getting involved
Throw me not into the lake of eternal fire
I wouldn’t do that to you if you were a sinner
(“SINFUL WORLD”, Unpublishable Poems)[/center]

Ebereonwu’s poems are particularly disturbing. He is daring in his ideas. They are unconventional. Pretty wonder that he writes that:

[center]My poetry is the graffiti
On the trunk of a jacaranda
(“Just a poet”, The Insomniac Dragon)[/center]

I wish I knew more about Ebereonwu’s personal life beyond what is profiled in the blurb of his books. He cannot be any less different from his poems.

Ebere! Ebere! Are you there?
Ehn?

Well,
In your demise
I found muse

[center]HERE

Your spittle harpooned the shark of bigotry and norm
Your voice unsettled the moon even in its abode up high
In your mortal strides, you caused cherubs to fret and sigh
You’ve gone now leaving behind your prepuce and your venom

THERE

It isn’t the fool anymore, let them know
It’s the wise and strong that treads where angels fear to go
So with your pen, cause ripples over there
Unsleep their slumbering stare[/center]

Aloofaa (c)

Well, you need to first understand that the poem opens with a background information about where it was performed. I deliberately segmented it into two. The opening and closing gambits were just there to arrest the attention of the audience (mostly students, and Val was still very much in the air). The speaker's outburst is, however, unconnected with the palmwine or his lover. The poem only exploited the essence of the event to speak about 'the terrors of our time', with a little humour.

I hope this is understood.

Nice comment.

Untitled.

(Performed at the Trenchard Hall of the University of Ibadan
at the pioneering occasion of Super Bowl, an oratory contest)


At the tranquil dawn of Valentine’s Day
Some wintry wind ferried me to my lover’s place
A bottled gift, well-wrapped, threatened to be liberated from my
greedy grip.

… I knocked.

Not having much time to spend, I deliver to her the bottled joy.
She must have thought that some exotic perfume waited
to be fumed!

Well, I couldn’t wait to witness how her smile melted into a frown.
Poor lady, her Val gift was a bottleful of rummy palmwine.

Enuf.

But shall we talk about the terrors of our time?
Compatriots, they are foolish children
Who watch their father squander wealth
With wanton, thoughtless, recklessness.
They are stupid children who watch cinemally
As father pay for their future in crossed, unsigned cheques!
They are truly cursed children who won’t ask:
“Mother, why is your milk a watery mess of bitter, choking spill”?

The heart of this matter is a matter of the heart, so painful.
Can we close our eyes as we curse!
Shall mysterious mortars from Ogun’s own workshop
crush the bodies, souls and spirits of dream crushers…
May beastly fire from Sango’s own chambers
Stream down with fiery swiftness to bake the bastard bones of
marauding predators of our time…

The heart of this matter is a matter of the heart.
May hungry, angry soldier ants feast on their naked scrotums.
If any of their children is here,
May brimstone, heavy like Olumo, fall on him,
For sucking dry our blood and stealing our voices
May fertile twilight flash from its throne and pierce their darkness

Compatriots, let us not drench our dreams in the fountain of hopelessness
Let us not scamper about seeking the compassion of strangers


, that one day the already soiled pages of our history
Will bear a new chapter, chronicling the exploits of saintly citizens
Freedom songs will cascade from our tongues
We will be free from such senseless political ideologies
From such religious hypocrisy
From such tribal and class intolerance

We’ll be free to laugh and embrace the fathomless
expanse of happiness.

Back to my lover!
That evening, expectedly, she came to my place,
Fuming with rage, she called me a Valueless Val.
How dare you offer me palmwine as a Val Gift?
I told her briskly – “It’s the economy”

Aloofaa (c)

Between WS and CA

May I draw our attention to the triviality which some members of this portal have accorded a topic I consider rather too significant and weighty to be reduced to some purulent leanings in a bid to market some ethnic cum personal pride.

Going through all the rejoinders, I was most embarrassed , at least my sensibilities, to discover how ‘intellectuals’ (or aren’t we?), suddenly garbed themselves in such subjective cloaks as their ethnicity and personal stances to discuss a topic that begs for a high sense of objectivity. When will we unblind ourselves to this nauseating Nigerian factor that gauges every issue of national/literary importance through ethnic goggles? Or what has a topic that simply borders on the literary ingenuity of Nigeria’s foremost writers got to do with their fan-base (such that they exploit any available avenue to demonstrate their discipleship?

The damage was already done from the outset by the initiator of the discourse. Why, in the interest of rational consideration, could he not make the topic plain devoid of his own idiosyncratic stance? Why couldn’t he be a part of the discourse only in the capacity of a moderator? If he so wishes to be part of it, he could have delayed his comments, at least towards the middle of the discourse.

While I lay no claim to have read the complete works of both authors, I’d like to categorically state that to appraise their individual creativity will require a spelling out of certain criteria against which the appraisal should be made.

Aloofaa

A very interesting topic. It ended up being reduced to a emotional tussle between die-hard hero-worshippers of both writers.

Can we start this topic all over again, with a firm rule that "personal jabs are not allowed"?
I will suggest the topic reads: who is the Oluaye/Ogbuefi of African Literature?

Peace.

nice poem, though i really don't buy the 'hero-worship' undertone.

The Celibate
(some place in St. Peter square)


I peered
as the chink will permit
at two dogs
duo-ed in a Siamese fashion
at pelvic borders

writhing…
with such wild coitus
on a lush couchy chancel

I…, I…, I
I…, I
I

Hey!
What slimy droplets?
Mon pant est drenched