NGOZI OLIVIA OSUOHA - POEMS

Ngozi Olivia Osuoha is a young Nigerian poet/ writer and a graduate of Estate Management. She has some experience in banking and broadcasting. She has published some works abroad in some foreign magazines in Ghana, Liberia, India and Canada, among others. She enjoys writing.

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                      THE LABOUR OF OUR HEROES PAST
 
Dazzling, crystal like a golden eagle
Young, green like a green eagle
Gentle, calm like a super eagle
Confident, relaxed like the big boss
Hopeful, lively like tomorrow
Keshi, you broke my heart.
 
You were better than an idol
Taller, higher than an icon
More conspicous than a beacon
Wider than a model
Wonderful like a citadel
The captain, the coach, the champ.
 
Your smile charmed defeat
Your courage shone on a glass house
You exhumed classy aura
None expected that you bow now
Our first world cup, you were there
Rasheed Yekini, Uche Okafor
A squad too unique to be gone,
Sam Okoye, Sam Okwaraji, Shaibu Amodu
A battalion too sophisticated to be conquered.
 
The flight of death crashed your fight
The plight of nature took your sight
The pain outweighs the gain
Yet the gain stampedes the pain,
A hole worse than a vacuum
An abyss so unfathomable;
You left in our heart.
 
Bore the cross of a boss with less loss
Shone dignity and integrity
Half mast flags, twenty gun-salute
Medals of honour, immortalization
All; some volumes and editions
You remain a statue and of monument
You shattered the domain of sports
Stephen, the football martyr.
 
I wished you became a sports' minister
To fix the pieces of the glass house
I wished you became a soccer god
Or like adidas, puma and nike
I wished you became a better Bora
Or a mightier Clement Westerholf
I wish your wife never died
I wish you were never gone,
Left unannounced, unprepared
Keshi, you broke our heart.
 
More than a hero
Far, yet close like a friend
This tune of june
Heavy pain, heavy heart, heavy ink
Delta, Nigeria, Africa, the world
This piece is so empty
Because Keshi broke my heart.
 
My Captain, My Coach
My Boss, My Legend
You were a patriot so sound
A compatriot so resounding
If you still have eyes
You would see us devastated
We pray you find perfect peace
Stephen, a saint from his labour, rests.
 
IN MEMORY OF SOK (1962-2016) AND ALL OUR FOOTBALL LEGENDS WHO FELL ASLEEP

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                              DEAR CHINUA ACHEBE
 

At night, in the village square
At gathering for moonlight tales
I tell the dwindling hope of my people,
In a theatre it unfolds like a movie
I see their agony,
In a theatre like a sugeon stitching a torn flesh,
I feel their pain
I watch them wail and weep
As they swim in aches and navigate the trauma,
Penetrate the pores of hardship
And permeate the rocks of starvation
Because the center holds no more
Things are falling apart
And they are no longer at ease,
They mourn like a widow mourning her murdered son
And a virgin weeping for her slain soldier.
 
From the river bank i watch
As the storm disband fishes
And wave blow up beaches
I watch tide sweep the shores away.
 
Titanic, yet sinking
Rowing, yet steady
Floating, yet drowning
Coagulating debris and fungi
Dead, like a dead sea.
 
Far from the madding crowd
I watch the struggle
As they labour and toil in vain
Harvesting vanity and waste
The outrageous disaster,
And the flooding blood
A rhetorical question
None dares ask nor answer.
 
Dear Chinua Achebe
Things are falling apart
I think there was a country with the arrow of God
Maybe they kept it like those that captured "the ark of covenant".
 
The banner of illiteracy engulfed our land
And chain of ignorance betrothed our fate,
The fetters of superstition clouded our peace
Then came the egocentric god to rescue
The god that indeed came against us, used us against us
The stranger that bought our ancestors
Enslaved our fathers, married our mothers
The tyrant that we served, guarded and worshipped
That one, that broke our center
Cracked our wall and made us fall apart
The one that sold and bought us for nothing.
 
Dear Chinua Achebe,
He bewitched us to practise witchcraft on ourselves
Till now things remain fallen apart
As though our womb bore no talents
As if our land was thorn instead of crown
As though we had no patriarch of gold
Brave and bold,
As if there was no matriarch of ruby, sacred and consecrated.