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We love him!
eye agape passers by stare
locked in arms
I cross your view
A lonely poet and a kindred poor.
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the hen puffed up her feathers
sermoning me
seemed half a melon
the smile on her lips
sermoning me
Shadowing out the moon
Beggar's bowl in intimate palm…
sermoning me.
Hear the forest hum
Listen to the tune
Across the field of cotton patch
You can hear the chink of chains
As the timber comes crashing down
Clanking out all the wrong
Trying to burst my seam
Against the snarling drill
All that I remembered
happened to me here
as I browse the net
it spring to my line of sight
carrying me home again
the slave of my own poems
blown and plucked,
a snatch of song
from the field,
a herd boy call
lonely in the dawn,
the bleat of a goat
added to our tune…
from the beauty of the mind...
humming with the humped cattle
the penny whistle music
echoes across the hills
in a language of its sex
the odor of sweat
armpit and crotch
of the field and ewe droppings
made the manic real
in a true nomadic love
Tommy in knot
enfolded in arms and legs
there we lay
stringy and hard…
always hard
in a true nomadic fashion
quick the eyes
that scans for stray
quick the sight
that tell me things
color of night
black as coal
lean and tall
always lean
my nomadic love.
all rights reserved 2003
HAIKU FOR BLACKS
A moment in silence
Blind to all thought
Protected by its own silence
as though by a shield-
you shook your head
Shrugged and waved
Your arms to encompass
everything around us-
There was no sigh of interruption
Though my world was as silent as ever-
I watched you as your finger work
And thought how fat your hands were
Through the silence
Didn’t know there’d be words in deed-
Suddenly one word i never thought I could hear
a silence i never though could voice
creeps into my consciousness
in a world were I now
'see voices'...
Arms and fingers run
Forming simple shapes
Like branches on a live breathing tree
So lively that they seems to chatter
Like small impatient tongues
with a will to speak...
11
I was always afraid
To tell you with movement
Or even words about the silence
I was born with but feared
Knowing I have not been
as others were
I have not seen
as others saw
I remember
the need I created you with
the silence I summoned you from
the desire placed a trench
on the floor of my loneliness
deep as the wound in Jesus palm
Worrying you couldn’t come
Shaping word, wording my life
to taste for once
Just once the words upon your lips
111
alone in the quiet
I'd read you lips by moonlight
the redness and all
or by the light in my heart
its every shape..
as i look at you
i think of this -
think of how it feels
to love someone
someone bayond...
my quite little lonely world.
and knowing it is true
I have everything to fear
and the words -
I could not say..
nailed on my cross
1
Here there is no shame
A dog and a bitch press interlocked
Like monkey in heat
2
Here there is no regret
Am as naked as the naked tribe
could be
IN CELEBRATION OF LOVE
3
In search of the naked truth
we piss into a ditch
In full view of the world
4
Here there is no shame
Here my shit stinks just like theirs
Blacker than herb tar black skin
5
When I shit in the privy
The stench from the village latrine
Making my head whirl
6
the odor
adds a rhythm to my poems
Those make you whirl
FAVORITE POETS
THIS POEM "A MOMENT IN SILENCE" IS A
TESTIMONY TO THAT FACT .
DESPITE HIS HANDICAP OF DEAFNESS,
URDEEN HAS LEARNT HOW TO REACH OUT TO
OTHERS AND COMMUNICATE WITH THEM ON A HIGH
LEVEL AND BY DOING THIS HAS TURNED HIS
HANDICAP INTO AN ADVANTAGE AND A BLESSING TO
MANY.
I understand the silence I was born with at a very early age.
What passed through my person and made me what I
am does not have to be explained to me nor do I have to be
told that this gift I found to cope within my impairment
was one not posed by every one.
It was as if God takes away with one hand then he gave
back with the other.
As time passed my eyes becomes my ear and my
dependence upon them drew, there was no specific time
when I
accepted that the change has become complete there were
no crises in the process of change as my eyes accepted
the function of my ears.
It was as if God as creator, took me in a reproduced form of
clay made me into my selfsame shape but rearranged
all the blocks that made up all my senses.
Though the hearing were not always accurate but the were
always effective when they come even when they came
to a small boy whose legs were still unsteady they were
accepted the way I accepted my mothers breast each
morning.
Often my mother could crouch on the floor her face close
to mine, searching my eyes mixed with that great love
was a hope that I could always accept the gift and could
never be hurt by what has been taken away.
As time passed the gift did not prevent me from being
involved in what I came to call " a non-deaf
man-stunt"(doing things against the limitations to sound).
It did not keep me from enjoying a normal company on
Sunday afternoon or of laughing at my early Saturdays
cartoon fix, though quite often I strained against it’s
limitation to choice when I tried for more and wished that I
can as well hear like every one else.
I went through all the stages that leads a boy toward
manhood and like all children I grew into an adult moved
from my parents domain and choose my own and the use of
the gift grew as I did, and I considered my life a well
adjusted and comfortable one as I accepted the simple fact
that I live in a silence with many voices
Silence with many voices.
But one thing that life teaches us is to be thankful, and I
was, firstly because I am alive, I must admit I was very
lucky to be alive, at a very tender age with a common
childhood illness, when I say lucky I meant it, few people in
a poor society can make it without proper medical attention
to fight meningitis (the major causes of impairments
in children)
And how do I feel living at this crossroad? To say that there
is no word is inaccurate, it will take a whole volume
to explain it all.
It was like being born anew, into a new city a new world a
silent world with many voices.
What is it like being reborn without sound? To be hearing
impaired?
First there are the frustrations of living in a minor society
that does not understand you but more important was
the excitement of being different
I was swimming in realization; on a new world I found myself
The new knowledge the information
inspired me
Normally we were born with five senses; that of sight, the
sense of smell, that of hearing, taste touch and smell in
which to record data on their memory bank
Hearing is important. But sight obviously is the most
important of all, they are like window to the world, with them
you discover shapes signs forms and movements, without
sight when a person speak you will not knew the action
that accompanies such a word, it could be impossible to
imagine what the command of such words as ‘come’ meant
unless they took you by the hand to show you, you may hear
about color, about blue or red, like a red orange or
green you can tell how it feels and taste when you bit into it
but you cannot tell it yourself if it is yellow or green ,
so you understand why I said I was lucky to have the gift of
sight,
TRYING TO MAKE THE MOST OF IT IN NIGERIA
BY
URDEEN.OMOSUN all rights reserved 2003
In me the passion flows
New rage framed words
Over a race with doubt
In bondage into a brand new life-
In me the chains ring out
Like chimes in a church tower
Sounding out all the wrong
That formed my rage-
In me the river runs deep
through the sea of darkness
while fear in unguided utterance
slowly slips away-
In me the freedman sang
Down the deep water route
through the pause of time
In song our father sang-
its heritage of hills
I love the tribes
that hold me and my dead.
when I lay down to dream
the foot parts leads home
through the evergreen shrubs
to where i can find contentment.
Where the local languages
bespeaks the voices of our fathers
and the landscape hids
its lingering dialects.
Here my mind find home
home to where I wished to be
home away from home
in tribal Africa.
I really love the klans
its heritage of hills
I really love the tribes
that hold me and my dead
Body sticky with honest sweat
as I try to earn my keep
and look labour in face in triumph
by what I earn with my hands.
ba-boom-ba-boom ba ba ba-boom...
My limbs scared with years of toil
yet the best in a sculptors art
and when you hear the axe on wood
it is my heritage making the beat.
ba-boom-ba-boom ba ba ba-boom
in nuance with our thoughts.
ba-boom-ba-boom ba ba ba-boom
