Two Poems

Chi

Through the Nri dome, still the cradle we mutated from, 
    we emerge naked into pristine nature, plumped up 
    with grace like fluffy mushrooms. At dusk like this, 
    no matter the angle of your view, the landscape always 
captures the gravid green of the trees around. The viridescent horizon 
    in symbiosis with the wispy plume of foliage bring us closer 
    to the moment. A feeble November sun breaks through the 
    shade, almost drowsy, it sleeps into the roofs.  A primate 
emerges from the oil bean tree, right beside my father’s hut.  Huts here 
    are mutant versions of skyscrapers, & primates are the 
    harbingers of our Chi. The emergence of the primate is an 
    alarm clock for libation, we owe no loyalty to modern clocks— 
a feel of timelessness, of durable days that stretch beyond breaking point. 
    You already know this; of how traditions have been 
    industrialized beyond Utopia. My father rises to pour 
    palm wine from his calabash cup into the ground— 
a thanksgiving to our Chi, who ferried us beyond the debris of 
    artificial environments & civilizations. Millenniums ago, 
    we all existed in a world where ideologies buried beneath 
    imported religions masked our lives, with values gauged in 
foreign currencies; something too pricey for our morals.  Here,
    serene scenes abounds; humanity is a metric of success,
    & Mongo Park didn’t have to discover River Niger before
    my grandfather was seen fishing long ago from its belly.
Here, the humid breeze unpacks phantasmagoric images into lucid 
    realities, it feels so wet & near, touching across generations; 
    all of us witnessing the unfiltered grace of our Chi. Beyond a 
    two-eyed periscope, an island opens into our bones, so cosy 
& chilled, the green stretches into more green, into more knowing; now, 
    all of us are aware that tomorrow is only today stretched beyond 
    the breaking point. The first time for everything is past, the second 
    abounds, our skin, the spread of sand, it gets everywhere.

Bows & Arrows

     Of all places, I’ve always 
been here, tucking my heart 
          into walls & arrowing 
               mercy towards it. I tracked 

     the arrow’s zing, its desperate odds 
          silvers into my skin.

               Anxiety is alkaline; 
            it’s mostly salty. Which is why 
               I'm still here, waiting 
            for the poem that will

     wash me clean without 
salting my blood to maintain the PH of the 
          horizon. This world is not mine to claim,
               if I’m lucky enough, 

     my teeny-tiny hands will gather 
          a lifetime enough to worship watercolors 

                 into a fluffy rainbow. 
            I'm told to begin by opening into 

       morning, that a mouth asking 
            for stars must first cut itself 

     a plethora of gloomy clouds, 
even a hand cutting into a silhouette was once 
          a lamp holder. Remember, 
               the pitchforks of lightning pick up veins 

     enough to unfurl the shy palms of bryonia 
          when it does not come to 

               shut down timid hands 
            with thunder. As a bee cupping 
               its honeycomb into a wax 
            of eclipse, I confess 

       my shade for archery: how this poem 
began with arrows 
            awaiting the touch 
                 of decent bows.

       How gravity pulls us back 
            to set us free.

                    How the world 
               makes us less to make us real,
                    the way a bullet splinters 
               every surface it glasses.

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