Today is Valentine's Day. There is so much ado about gifts, hookups, etc. I am not much into the celebration of love once every year. I feel that love should be celebrated everyday. I wrote some poems that have the love theme in them.

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While love is in the air, today is also Ash Wednesday; a rather sober day of reflections for Roman Catholics. How do I deal with love when I am thinking of death? Write some poems on death.

So what did the Warped one do? He offers four poems as a gift to those who are in love or dream of being in love and those who have the afterlife on their minds. Enjoy.

POEMS

LOVE AND JAZZ

I have never really heard you myself,

Or held you close.

I have just watched you from a distance;

Your twirls, your turns, the beats that made my foot tap.

I like the saxophone; its lows and highs,

Your breath on my neck as i dream you close.

I like the guitar; the strings that twing,

Sounds that zing across the floor.

Your skirt, sizzling red, lighting the room in a gasp.

---

I like the piano, the graceful keys;

Mismatched colours like bow ties

At a funeral: black and white.

Its graceful moan and diminuendos;

Your graceful neck turning to stare,

Your eyes darkening in remembrance.

Love and Jazz, my love;

Love and Jazz.

WE HAVE COME HOME TO DIE

We have come home…to die;

Our skins spilling back to earth in tatters of blood.

The river murmurs of seasons past

When fishes flew between the blood of its arteries

And delved the depths of its soul.

Our tears will wash the blue from the sky; salt and vinegar,

Lest Osa see through and his anger bloom

And dribble to inky depths, to flood the banks of fading memory.

---

We have come home to die:

Blood poked clothes burning in a fiery pyre,

Sacrificing, to Olokun, the depthless goddess

That girds her banks with the fast flowing fingers of death,

Our blood to wash away the screams and free the soul of the burning land.

---

We have come home;

Gladiators at the arena, buckler and shield,

Tridents and flags of a falling sun on a bleeding field of green, black and red.

Oh Ogun! We have come home to die.

File your spears and hide your children.

Orunmila, do you see? We have come home to die.

I STOLE SOME OF YOU

A bonding – cold hands, clammy with sweat,

Clinging like crabs to the sea shore.

I don’t want to go back to the loneliness – that cold black place.

I want to lie in the sun – the hungry heat of your bosom,

Listen to your heart beat, and suck the warmth of your lips –

Every single breath…every time.

---

A leaving – the sea shore recedes in a distance.

I have to go home, to tax and ties – vests and the ticking of the alarm clock.

I stole some of you – your scent hidden between my skin,

Your nether salty taste lying, bereft, on my tongue –

The hungry light of your eyes resting on my brow and

Your heat – burning beneath my skin like an ever burning torch.

I hope you don’t mind? I know you stole some of me too.

AN ELEGY TO WITHERING

We have watched the sun flee the sky

And heard the whispers of dying things fill the waters.

We have sought for signs and wonders on the knees of fervent fear

But there are no sinners here, just angels and saints.

---

Where doth the flower go when its petals fade?

When the wind tosses its pollen into the air, and let it set sail, faraway?

What doth the mammal see when it stumbles in the traps of man

And scream its fear, as its sight fade away from light and life?

How doth a man feel when he falls in the midst of congress;

His lungs failing his breath; his skin bleaching grey in the stillness of withering?

---

We have heard the priest grant eternal rest unto weary bones;

But what rest do we indeed get?

Is it the abodes of Vahalla; mead and maidens?

Is it the sumptuous feasts of Jannah; the beauty, the food, the maidens?

Is it the layers of Shamayim; seraphims and archangels?

Is it here, this bland palate of thirst and want?

Is it the cold breath of ancestral spirits in raffia and cowries, shrouded?

Is it the cold unknowing of the grave; the moulding rot of the flesh?

What rest do we get indeed?

---

Forgive me this elegy to withering,

For all things wither, even you that flower.

Whither I go when the chase is done,

And my numb fingers flee my pen, I don’t dare to ponder.

I suspect though, it will not be any of the mentioned

But until then, I will study the moon

For the secrets to the tides

And the sun for where shadows go when they are done.

NOTE:

OSA: The almighty, the creator of all according to the belief of the Bini people of Edo State, Nigeria.

Olokun: One of the orishas. He is the god of the sea. I like to make him feminine. He is commonly worshipped by the Yoruba and Bini ethnic groups of Nigeria.

Ogun: Another Oriana. He is the god of iron. He is worshipped by Bini and Yoruba artisans and artist. He is also the muse of Nigerian Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka.

Orunmila: The Orisha of divination.

peace.

©@warpedpoetic