Three Poems

By Akor Emmanuel Oche

Friday, February 10, 2017.

DÁDÁ

forte et forte,

ash to ash. cremated,

dust to dust. sent

By ill winds blowing without direction;

we commit thee to mother earth,

a blossoming flower stampeded

by the foots of thy kindred spirit.

you came again,

(but stayed a bit longer than usual,

maybe for the love you found

in this den of comic memories)

to laugh at our existence;

enigmas of vanity,

to laugh at how we touch this body,

thy body, as a celestial media

that commune with erstwhile beings,

and now after beating her frail being;

emblem of childbirth, cicatrix

of sons who never cross the twentieth mark-- to the age long dance,

you have gone,

gone to return once again

as the child with cursed tassels for hairs.

ROBBED OF CHILDHOOD

too many sunrise and nights in darkness,

i have become a metaphor for dumb men

eating in silence, words falling from gluttonous lips

too many nights and i hack back to lost days

when at twelve, i became a man for the family.

father's exist left for us all,a pool to fill with

waters fetched from years of struggles.

seven years after a robbed childhood,

seven stolid years down this forlorn road---

i am still here sulking in silence.

it hasn't gotten any better yet; it never does.

ENKÁRE

there is madness in every drop of water that

touches the skin.

i never knew love was this skidding.

i heard blue dreams are envisioned from wide

opened eyes,

so if tomorrow you come again into my fantasies,

i would hold your hands and lead you to the top

of a mountain,

to crown you queen of my heart.

ENKÁRE! the ebony woman who glitters like gold,

the ebony woman who dazzles on a roll.

Akor Emmanuel Oche is a Nigerian poet, critic,essayist and thinker. His poems have been published or forthcoming in Ann Arbor Review, Pyrokinection, Mamba Journal for Africa Haiku, Synchronized Chaos Magazine, Greysparrow Press, Poeticdiversity, Pengician, Tuck Magazine, Praxis magazine, Savehage Review, Expound Magazine, AFAS Review among others.