MOTHER TONGUE

“Give these words life,” cried Akumedei the old sage.
His three grand children turned to look at him,
Found mother-tongue inscrutable and paused.
The old sage adjusted his wrapper, stood up
From the colonial rocking chair bemused.
Turning to his son he rained

FOR LIONEL MESSI

...But I couldn’t bar the pressing magic.
Limb, pressing limb
In no overstretch of your skip
I witnessed your football boots hover
The ball. Springing on
Done like scissors diametrics.

THE NEW FACE OF FUEL SUBSIDY

Face --
Definition:
Outward appearance;
Bridled intro to the seat of thinking.

The wheel is spinning
The steering is turning
Without a driver

WAKING TO GRAVITY

How can I assuage moments
in photographs, knowing
in my old brain
I hear a rickety train
draw up to a region in air. . .

A Portrait: The Successful, Happy and Fulfilled me

[The Award-winning Essay by Onis Sampson in the annual McPherson University Essay Writing Competition . Mr. Sampson came first in the essay competition. Prizes were awarded on the 18th of August, 2013. Prize Money: $100. McPherson University is owned by Foursquare Gospel Church in Nigeria.] 

A few years back while a teenager, I was perusing the pages of “The Western Experience,”¹ and came across an artwork. It was the portrait of “Louis Bertin,”² a nineteenth century European statesman painted by Dominique Ingres. Flipping two pages forward I saw another artwork, titled “Self Portrait,”³ a painting by Camille Corot in which he painted himself with the aid of a mirror before him.

Queen

To hear that voice again,

The selfsame voice of the crystal queen

Calling ubiquitously; the rushing stream

From pictures of you in my dream

Inundates my soul

JAZZ AFICIONADO (For Yemi Sax)

The gasp of music is the elevating stretch

She works on the minds open to her reach.

Jazz lifts the being from sand

Sweeps him upward

To balcony apex of a skyscraper rind.

Hurricane

 Demented corners

Of the wind’s brand beat

Take a summon into

The silent quarters of night.

Trees by the verge sashay

Possessed by the chill sway

In the eyes of this new wind.

Something huge, strange but known

In the remoteness of memory

Drives forcefully from the sea

Pulling down the houses by the coast.

Virtuous Sister

At the well of waters proceeds the virtuous one.

I see the immaculate beam of truth in the lamp of her soul,

The delight of perfumery uniting mind and matter’s whole.

Jaccuzi People

I feel a boulder on my nerves; 

Brush of sticky imagination

Binds me to a pole of abstraction

As I watch these people

Glow like lawns in palatial GRAs

Who seek for pleasure but refuse labour.

The artist with an easel in hand is the guide to a world afar

Brought close in the memory that recognises.

BUTTERFLY KISSES

Two lips cling
Beside grey hallows of bamboo bed --
Above their stay is the wing
Of a many-coloured butterfly.
Softly, little by little passions rise
To a summit so high.

A Presence like the Wind

Through the doors of my heart
Her presence enters,
A trail of light, wind, and commendations
Of summer escort her footsteps
Sashaying the strands of her hourglass garment.

BOOK RELEASE by Onis Sampson

Book title: Eyes of Passion (a collection of novellas).
http://www.amazon.com/Eyes-of-Passion-ebook/dp/B00D22XFAK

On Passing an Emergency Ward.

It's an unbearable feeling
Criss-crossing my heart's xenophobic boundaries.

It's a formless build of half-conscious
Rush of cold down into the basements
Where the self is dignified
Sequentially pulling down
Expectations of another dawn.

The Alarmist

Red lights. Somnambulant courage pushing him on. Uchenna pauses when he feels an edgy pain in his abdomen. The bottle of whisky drops from his schizophrenic palm, splintering all over the wet green terrazo, the red lights fading off in the dusky nimbus. He turns his visage away from the lights. Then he hears a screeching of

Your Eyes

(Dedicated to Folake)

Your eyes, woman
are like twilight rainbow
amorously bearing aloft passions of mine

toward androcytic ecstacy.
They tell of endless lights.

Night skies clarion the warmth of you
keep me balled-up till

Before You Set Forth

You must come shaven before the river bank, child,
And keep your eyes inward.
You must harken to the notes of the river-bird,

Go paddling thru river reeds
At the rising of another sun.
Booze takes you no nearer to your horizon . .
Let the melody of the wind against palm raffias