Ecstasy in death

When Olokun touched his lips
on my navel at Abraka, I shivered
and let my nipples pinch his chest.
They were hairy with river grass
and tangled with drowned walkways
melting slowly like the bones
of old ships in watery graves.

I stretched my hands
to touch his limbs;
bowlegged mangrove roots, spread
waiting for me to impale myself
in the wet cold turgid pubis fat with semen.
Olokun gripped me by my hair then
he took me by my waist.

He took me again and again,
tearing screams from my lips,
washing tears from my eyes
with waters from his kisses, freezing
my thoughts like ice-cream brain freeze.
Olokun took me deep under
And away like a speedboat to Bonny.

I gasped and gulped in his ecstasy.
My body bobbed, my hair thrashed and
my limbs trembled with convulsions
of orgasms, uncounted orgasms until
I ripped off my soul like a discarded skin,
my eyes rolled like dice showing no pip,
my breath squeezed out a last gasp
and I fell away to dreamless sleep.

Olokun left me, my womb swollen
with his seed, my hair spread like nets
to catch the first rays of the sun's yolk,
my limbs splayed apart, ripped through
by his ruthless ardor but who can carry
a god's child full term?
Who can bear that weight.
The wind echoes someone's weeping.

I wait in the darkness for the pangs
of labour but nothing comes except
the fumes of fetid gases and the bloated
weight of a pregnant bride slowly receding
into the silent tomb where old walkways
lie like the bones of old ships growing lichen,
water lilies, heron perches as well as palaces
for struggling fingerlings and tadpoles.

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_{Wikimedia Commons: Aghogho Otega}

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Notes: I have always been fascinated by the River Ethiope. Its mysteries enchant me. Considered to be the fastest flowing body of water in West Africa if not all of Africa, its depth is an optical illusion that captures the unwary. Many swimmers have been unlucky. This river is worshipped by many. You will find worshippers at Abraka, paying homage, offering sacrifices to the goddess Olokun at any given time.

Among the Benin ethnic group in Nigeria, it is called the Benin river and sometimes the Olokun river. Olokun also known as Yemoja is also the god of the sea in Yoruba Orisha mythology. I consider this god/goddess or this river to be one of my writing muses. It gives me a sense of magic, of wild beauty untamed by man's need to control all. Can you understand a river that has its mouth in the womb of a tree?

Bonny is an island off the city of Port Harcourt in Rivers State, Nigeria.

©warpedpoetic, 2019.