Agit Prop Poetry from Nigeria:

MORNING AFTER THE PROTEST

Dust encroaches

and the rioters linger, still

humming the bestial slogan

of a defeated tribe

Across the horizon

the earth litter with trunks

of corpses

placards kissing the dusts

stampdes of exiles

in the boader

sneaking beneath the General's

bestriding boot

in the morning

vutures perch

pleating their wings

sqeaking their peaks

because the flies had become poets, buzzing

and the bodies swell and swell.

BY AJUMEZE HENRY

COUP IS NO LONGER

My boader stretches

beyond the plateau

And in the landscape

before the mountains, the

death-toll heave upon heaps

like sand-dunes of butchered Middle-Beltans

Blood strains drivell to Kano

refugees stampede past, higlydy-piglydy

before the Emergency Declaration at Aso Rock

before the proscribtion of mayhem, before

the coup that is no longer treason

I saw Dariye wince at the parting hand-shake

that strecthes to his scrotum

And sqeeze before he will cry treason

Now that coup is no longer treason

beware of the waterfall at the creek of River Ethiope,

beware of the tadpoles that swim ashore,

And stir muds on the banks of the Niger,spill it

on our streets like over-flown lekki

AJUMEZE HENRY: Born in Delta State of Nigeria, Ajumeze Henry holds a BA

(Theatre arts) from the University of Calabar in Nigeria.

His poems have been published in art pages of most Nigerian newspapers, and

in such anthologies as FOR KEN, FOR NIGERIA, edited by E.C Osundu, an

anthology put together in the heydays of arrest and execution of Nigerian

environmentalist and writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Poems selected here are from

unpublished collection, In the begining, was Anioma.Ajumeze Henry currently

lives in Senegal....

Last update : 10-11-2007 14:37

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