Ashawo

Your candle burning with a flame of vanity
You my sister, of naked purity
And shrinking heart,
Hoching your wet bosomunder,
The cover of spurious circumstance.
Sprawling your beautiful skeleton
Under the manance shadow of
invisible death.

Your candle shining now
and you are delighted.
Rustling and shrinking by the cold
Fire of love.
Digging and emptying the fruithful
Basket of your withered womb.

As your candle garders the last breathe
Of its blinking strength,
Asyour trembling future lie
In yopur trembling palm.
And when finally it's out,
The light of your life dims off,and
May never shine again.

Copyright © 2005 Franklin Chiakwelu

Time and dust

When sharp arrows
Roves round in the eye
Of the clocking quartz,
My heart beats quickly,
To the ticks of time-
Flitting away in the lonely pit.

Time's a vain gloomy moon,
Pregnant with sorrows
And dusty hopes.
Only timid fools
Pamper life like a diamond or gold,
For its starts and ends
On a stage built on dust.

Shelve your mountain burdens away,
And pluck laughter
In the dawn of time,
Laugh it, before
The fiery sun sets it ablaze.

Like a pure wise candle,
Burning bright
With yellow merriment,
Though, much aware of its melting
Away with the crow of time.

Let you who have nose breathe life,
For time is life,
And life, dust.

Copyright © 2004 Franklin Chiakwelu

IT RAINED BLOOD

I thought I saw the eyes
of the heaven illuminates.
I thought I heard thunderclap
compel the dust of peace to whirl.
I thought I saw the trees shudder,
and cover their faces
against the splash of rain.

I thought I felt
the chill air on my face too.
But wonder of that thundercloud
that shed tears
about the sun's bright teeth.

I hear your wrath
over the far of the east,
the miles of the west,
but is dumbstruck
to hear you speak in my land too.
Combing bushes and paddling waters,
over seven seas and seven beasts,
into my little hamlet;
the land of the starved ancestors.
Upon my loose raffia rafters,
Slithers about the bamboo walls
that shrunk and vanish
at the point of your hot breath.

Oh! Our hearts are casualties
of the rain fall.
not even mothers tears can save us,
nor her dangling breast over our faces.
Papa could only sit and watch the stage,
the suspense then the catastrophes;
keeping guard his falling heart
with his trembling palm,
as bitter tears run crookedly
in the narrow lines of his face.

Ah! The boom-boom of war
beats like the tom-tom
of moonlight dance,
and ripe youths are there in time
to dance the beat,
in the swamp of their cold blood.

Tears drench my face
down to the feet,
then the floor,
where our uncountable skulls
overburden the open mortuary.

Oh! War, you have dredged
the earth naked of living breath.
Why not sit back
in your royal majesty,
and chew gently the alligator pepper
you picked from the soil
of my youthful grave.

Copyright © 2005 Franklin Chiakwelu