HOPE
It's a bird with three feathers and three beaks;
the past, the present and the future,
the ghost of yesterday and the egg of today;
it’s the substance of tomorrow, the thing that lives
when life has died and gone to the gloam.
Like a bird, it soars over the oceans and clouds,
waltzes across rivers, seas and the Heaven;
it sails beyond lakes, deserts and mountains,
hovering over rugged hills and hanging cliffs
and the rough necks of the mediocre moon.
Its feathers are heavy like irons, strong like oak
fluttering with ease over every housetop,
skidding on the ragged edge of the earth,
like a giant hearse romping to the cemetery
like a damaged chariot of fire.
Tomorrow, you will get somewhere on time
and the waves of the sea will not bear you;
borne on the flapping wings of hope,
reclining on the soft sofa of the sky,
it will not transfer the journey to another
The night will be the sweetening of your tea;
the air will be the rhythm of your flight
and the wind will have intercourse with you;
like a mother putting you in a crib at night,
hope will sing you a lullaby to fall asleep.
Sometimes the downpour drenches its wings,
or some fire burns its kidney and scalds its heart;
sometimes you look up and see the sky in yellow,
everything seems to be approaching a disaster,
the undressing of the sky is but a crumpled hope.
FAITH
Before my mother died
she said I must give her sweet memories,
a magnificent house with glass doors,
a dome like the Berliner Dom,
built like a Heaven-bound pyramid,
a swimming pool like the Pacific,
a family teeming with sugar cubes
without the grey breakable plastic;
she dreamed of the coming paradise
and said she could not wait for it,
but she had made up her mind.
She believed that hope was the wing
on which she planned to fly away,
the sky that never moved,
and the undying rivers.
I was a toddler then, and my hollow cheeks
smeared with the jam of Kwashiorkor;
the soldiers who took her away
where she died to slice me to bits.
Everywhere, the sound of drones
drowned my silence and tears,
cloning each morsel of my dream
to stay in my place after death.
I did not want my mother to witness
how the mortar would grind me to ash
or she departed with grief as sacrilege
when a mother saw her child retreated.
Surrounded by hills and mountains,
I found nothing to hold back my blood
except for the spinning of her body
before she died of her fears.
Decades later, I conquered the drones
and the drought that took my mother away;
I defeated the hyenas and the wolves,
the dark, heavy boots and artilleries,
the spilling spree and the dropping drones
died in the quiet graves in my churchyard;
I slaughtered the dragon of Kwashiorkor
and the soldiers with bullets and bayonets,
the armoured vehicles and mortars,
fusillades, snipers, bombs and bitterness
accruing from a macabre jealousy
between brothers and no buddies.
I built a house in my father's compound,
a thousand rooms weave like a labyrinth,
with glass doors and pyramid roofs,
though neighbours say it’s the Berliner Dome.
I constructed white sugar into its surfaces
and opened rivers as swimming pools;
flowers fight for a fragment of space
as though every forest is the cloning of flowers;
a hologram of love, not of jealousy
to sate my mother’s wrath against the time
that took her away amid her days.
She returned with gladness as sunglasses
and happiness as new garments.
On her forehead was the spear of a smile
smouldering the anger of an afterlife,
carrying the heavy consignment of faith.
THE PRAYER
I have sacked myself from the job of talking to the dead;
which I have done year-long without remuneration,
I will stick with the living with a prayer.
Perhaps they will hear and answer me.
I will sharpen my eyes to see and my ears to hear
when the moment of answering prayers shall arise.
I have gained more nervousness than happiness.
The monuments of my ancestors were my altar
where my knees cracked, my bones knocked out,
after I hung my prayers in the air, my offerings on trees;
I had waited until dawn for a response.
When thunder silenced the birds, my ancestors praised them;
when lightning struck down my beloved uha tree,
my ancestors killed a goat in appeasement.
My future wealth went up in the flames of sacrifices,
all I wanted was love and an answered prayer.
I decided to trade happiness for nervousness,
long periods of anxiety for days of bliss.
I have nothing against those who wait for eternity,
patience is always an experimental virtue
but secured with a mind riddled with positivity.
The shadow of negativity hangs over me
when the remnants of possibilities perish,
when my ancestors took away the little I had
without providing for unanswered prayers.
I was crying that the dog ate my yams,
when chickens collected money to buy new teeth.
THANK YOU
When was the last time we said thank you
for all the pleasures we receive
for the air we breathe, the food we eat,
and the pain that gives us blessings?
for all the work we accomplish each day
dimming the sun to shield our skin,
thinking that we are the dust of the earth?
we go out and return to our homes
with neither pain nor troubles and woes,
no accidents, no worries, no scratches;
and no involvement in fatal fracas.
three hundred and sixty-six days in a year,
more than twenty-four hours a day;
all the twelve months and the fifty-two weeks;
we walk through snares, tempted traps;
yet none of these things split our skin,
or give us a gash we do not gasp.
Since we made science our best friend,
there are invisible dangers everywhere;
on the road, we walk or in the car, we drive,
or on the trains and busses, we sit and belch
and feel the world under our freckled flesh.
Christmas is that time of the year
for us to count our blessings one by one;
so we know the ultimate reason
for saying thank you to our God.
We went through sickness and sorrow,
we travelled through the road of sadness,
thorns scratched us and tore our clothes,
but none touched our bodies and spirits.
We saw disaster hit our friends' houses
we cried out our eyes and hearts for our enemies
and let the ocean roar at our neighbours.
Thank you for the year passing by,
for all the things I witnessed and did;
thank you for the health and the wind
blowing around my home and garden;
thank you for the gifts I gave to people,
and more for the ones I received from all;
thank you for splashing the sun on my face
and giving me the hope to live each day.
Thank you for my wife, my children and friends,
and for all the members of my large family;
sweet memories follow me every day
when I remember the deeds that you did.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a poet from the UK. His poems have been featured in the Atticus Review, San Antonio Review, The Ephemeral Literary Review, Strange Horizons, The Pierian, The Unleash Lit and elsewhere. He is the winner of the Alexander Pope Poetry Award 2023 and the second runner-up of the Wingless Dreamer Publishing Poetry Prize 2023.