By James Eze
Tales of our love have gone viral,
spreading faster than a pandemic,
to claim a hashtag on the moon.
Since we came face-to-face on Facebook,
we have incubated time with emojis
& hatched a festival of emotions.
I must tell you this now; those emojis told a lie,
I had smiled more often when I was sad.
Beloved, I’d love to lend more depth to our love,
to swaddle you in a thousand glittering idioms,
to adorn you with the most colourful feathers of a peacock.
But can a poet love when grief is the menu?
Can the griot sing with a boil in the mouth?
Can the songbird raise her voice in a thunderstorm?
I’m inflamed by the dying cries of slain farmers,
the groans of women raped in lonely streams,
the spasmodic yells of orphaned infants.
*Abugu
I’m wedded to the agony of the widow,
whose husband was traded for a cow,
the innocent smile of Leah Sharibu haunts my daydreams,
the steely gaze of Ifeoma Abugu incites me to violence against SARS.
*Sharibu
For love is not love,
which shuts its eyes to injustice,
or sprouts in a rich soil soaked in blood,
or resists the insistent shrill of reason.
Love is the grandeur of a tropical sunset,
the harmony of silver clouds in radiant blue skies,
the burst of applause in the orchestra of life.
* Eze is an award winning poet and Chief Press Secretary to Gov. Obiano of Anambra State