MY CHILD

The moon was smiling at Grandpa's homestead

I could hear my clansmen pounding the leather drums

Crickets chirping and owls hooting

This was the African night I longed for.

Grandpa laid asleep

His face up, while his back faced the earth

He was among the fallen heroes of the Hamlet

Sleeping six feet below a pile of sand.

Grandma sat on a wooden stool

Chewing on her youthful days 

As she munched her chewing stick

Her eyes staring into the future as she thought about the past.

My child! She called out

Come sit close to me

Under the luxury of this moonlit night

Let me tell you a story

A story with which I'll write history

On the clean slate of your childhood memory

Let me tell you what my father told me

About his father and the fathers that were before him.

Once, your ancestors were giants

Men that wrestled with leopards and lions

Men that fought with tigers for tribes

These men carved the ivory mask of Benin

They made the furnace that fired the terracotta

They carved the Calabar statues with elongated arms

They danced to the tune of the Tom-tom and Kakaki

They lived the written literature of Moremi, Mutanda and more.

Your ancestors were great men

Their braveness the height of the Kilimanjaro

Their love for one another flowing like the Nile

Their strength like the raffia ropes of Ikot Ekpene

Their African spirit was wild fire in the harmattan

But like your grandpa,

They died forgotten as their red caps lost its colours

The day they died, 

The African spirit fell asleep

What killed the African spirit 

Was the question my innocent childhood lips could mutter

Change!

The white change

As the church bell rang from afar.

Grandma pointed at the crucifix

There lies the reason

That cathedral sent the African spirit to sleep

It made us cast away our sack cloth and follow the cotton cassock

We lost our fathers because a man came to teach us how to say our father.

And like sheep, we ate the wheat and weed from the pastures of the pulpit

And till today, like sheep, we obey the shepherd and not the master.

© Ifiokobong Etuk

(KING of the QUILL)

PALLBEARERS

PALLBEARERS

Your legs are revamping brooms

Sweeping the life out of the way

As you stride in a dancesteps of the dirge.

Your shoulders are open umbrellas

Carrying sleeping souls and dead dreams

In the parade of a last respect.

Dear pallbearer.

Does your shoulder ever ache

From carrying the heavy burden

Of a widows wails and an orphan's misery?

Does your soul ever feel sober

To the dirge meant for the men you lift

In the long procession to resting in peace?

Does it ever occur to you

That while you're just working for butter on your daily bread

The world sees you as ambassadors of death?

I salute your courage for many million reasons

To march in the midst of tears and not tear

Offering your shoulders to lift the funeral burden

While your faces become a mental image the dirge creates.

I worry about your end more than mine

For if you lead all to the grave and none is left

What feet shall walk you home when you die?

What shoulders will lift your cups in a toast?

What voice will sing your dirge?

For if you lead all to the grave and none is left

Then none will have the right to bid you farewell.

© Ifiokobong Etuk

(KING of the QUILL)

AT THE CROSSROADS OF TIME ( a duet )

AT THE CROSSROADS OF TIME

A duet by Ifiokobong Etuk and Artitude

IFIOKOBONG

Dear future self

I know you're living the life that was a dream the day I wrote this

With my eyes closed and my mind wandering and time traveling

I wrote this so that one day, you'll get the chance of hearing from your younger self

And have the rare opportunity of knowing your past didn't die to time.

I know you've grown to become the big picture I used to paint with words

But the imagery I wish to create with this

Is that of when the canvas you now live in was still blank

Before muse turned you into the Da Vinci of words you now are.

I hope you now sit to dine and wine

On the table discussion of men whenever they talk about legends 

And remember how the art became a potion

That you drank and became immortal 

Living forever on every page that met your Ink.

The day I wrote this

I was young, living in the solid reality of a present that is a past for you

You were in the future that was promising but never promised

A sacred mountain top in the wild of my imagination

That I wished to reach someday.

On the day you'll read this

You will be the solid reality

And this will be just another piece of time from the past

And I will be nothing but a liquid memory blended in nostalgic wine.

I write this to remind of your days of small beginning

Of when you wrote your emotions in small verses

Of when you were just another poet a nobody knew of

Of when your rhymes were too primary to wow kids

Of when your puns were not playful as intended

Of the time that was before the world knew your name

So when you read this

You'll sure have reasons

To propose a toast to the victory journey your life has become.

ARTITUDE

Dear Younger Self

I found your letter between the pile of books you buried it 

And to realize I was once you, makes me miss you so much.

Life is much more crazier than you envisaged. 

There are no big pictures, just big words. 

Don't get me wrong, I've connected every dot you wrote 

but the imagery is still a faux.

And Yes, 

I'm big now but more like a lonely elephant stuck in a pile of poop.

And, fame is just a popular thief that sticks a gun in your mouth

Forcing you to give up your right to a private life. 

There are no legends here; 

Not even me 

Expect for the bottle of chill drink that made it to the new era. 

There are nights I drink myself to bed 

And when these folks speak to me about legends, 

I just think about the liquor that sleeps in my tummy.

I think, I understand why they all call me legend and with the same breathe

Ask me to buy them a bottle of drink.

I miss you;

I miss when words had true meaning

And fame didn't know my address.

© Ifiokobong Etuk

  (KING of the QUILL)

© ARTITUDE JOR

ONCE UPON A CHILDHOOD

ONCE UPON A CHILDHOOD

Happy and cheerful souls we were, without a problem in the world
Like Kola, we broke the day with prayers and smiles
And like flowers, we folded asleep at night.

To grown up folks, we were just kids
Playing and rolling in the sand
And seeking to catch a butterfly by hand

But to ourselves, we knew we were kings
Ruling over the ambitions we nursed for the future
Without the fear of fate and it's doings

We worried about little things
Like how the siy got the lovely rainbow
And how the tortoise cracked it's shell

But slowly. Very slowly, without notice
The waters of time dissolved the solid reality pf the present
Until it became a liquid memory

And now
When we talk about childhood
We drink from the chalice of nostalgia


© Ifiokobong Etuk
  (KING of the QUILL)

Dear Lover series (2)

DEAR LOVER

It's my funeral already

So let's make a cake

That's what lovers do right?

The cemetery will make a good kitchen

A countless shovelfulls of sand 

A wooden rectangular cake pan

The earth will be the oven

And my carcass the dough

The real cake is me 

Six feet deep 

Meanwhile

My tombstone is just a well designed icing

Leaving sweet memories for my mourners.

DEAR LOVER...

I'm at the gate of heaven

God asked me to describe the mortal that sent me here

So I'll do it in just two lines

I tell him you are so handsome that his Angels would fall for you

But if hell had half the darkness in your heart, the devil would repent.

© Ifiokobong Etuk

  ( KING of the QUILL )

Dear Lover series

POISON

The love you gave me was poison
Killing my senses and blinding my thinking
So I fell dead over your lifeless Love

I died slowly and sweetly
On the arms of my killer
Because he was dressed in the costume of a lover

I got know too late
That there's nothing like a love portion
It's just poison in a well told lie for a vial.

DEAR LOVER

Our love was never a table top
I was never good in economics of the heart so
Equilibrium was absent

Our love was a see-saw
One up and the other down
You were up on your mistress
On the heights of her moans

I was down

Thinking deep
Until I got a head shot
From a bottle of snipper

So let this poem show the structure of our love
In unequal verses

© Ifiokobong Etuk

 (KING of the QUILL)

Picture Credit: Internet

❤️

❤️

A hand to hold 

A heart to love

A lip to kiss

A heaven to feel

I'm not falling

Just flying

On the wings of love

Surfing the air in wonderland

This feeling

Is what Neil Amstrong felt

When he walked the moon

Wheightless, love defies gravity

Don't wake me up

If this is a dream

I want to sleep and forever will be too short.

© Ifiokobong Etuk

( KING of the QUILL )