poetry playbook By Christian Mowarin
I remember falling sick In the wild of my palm Over the remnants of my dreams And laying back in your hands I remember you weeping And burning the incense of time And calling out my name in numbers Sulking out the cold from the couch Where i lay in unison with your architectural primitive I remember well your large eyes As they stare miraculously at me Hoping the day will come...
Christian Mowarin
an oxygen paperback July 2013
for my mother, clara
Children of the new forest
The bell rings just once Not once in a life time but Once in a class time, time to go Time to run seven miles Along a lonely stretch We run along and wave along too To some mill day plantation workers Who work on traction and tractors With the attraction of palms Long telegraph poles line the polars Their perspectives dimming into the horizons Only to appear as we appear around a bend Long twines in between the scales Kneel up high we climb up hills One legged spirits running a race too Though we couldn't see them We feel them when our ears twitch We hear their laughter And native reverberations In the cave walls in the long forest Where their world separates us And their kindred kindles with hope That one day make our world collide The little trees were our friends Smiles brilliantly at us as we turbo pass Giggling mischievously at one another Occasionally losing a berry in the sides The slouching sun a little behind Blinding our backs against our backpacks Our shadows making sure they keep up Friendly little shrubs as brothers who closes Their spread as we touch them An endless race of no consequence...
Come, come little morning
The eel sound of isimili river Goat skin drum rattles us Out of our sweet dreams Bitter palm kernel fronds still Bitter from all nights suppression We hurry out of our hut To catch the morning greetings To the insidious goddess of daylight As earth's little children Eyes wide open from sleep land from the scents and burrows on the hill; Who Hangs within the glimpse it carries Her shining daffodils open smiles Down again the valley underneath us Sprays fragrance too enchanting Over farmlands and over yam ridges In a little quivering drop of a spirited song. All adorn the pale morning cloud Begins to gather at the summit Of the spirit mountains far down Hallucinating the traces of twilight New wings ying in the wake of day. The sun with stretches, shaking off The cold new dawn dews Fancy follows creepily in her rise Where the premonitions of a native story Shaken from the brilliance of light Between the pure, the good, the true, That our weeping eyes may strain for, But shall never after view.
I remember you
My lovely I remember you well I remember your fond smiles You memorable white grin And your playable composition I remember your thinking And your in atable ideas Made only by your spirit Though procedurally little But very well lit I remember your motionless And ageless body language Arguably and urgently gentle I remember talking with you Making sure you hear my words Made golden by the hills and cave reverb I remember promising you That I ll recreate the world for you With violet and indigo caramels Scratched from our rustic evolutions And mix bold hues out of our darmnations I remember loving you In all heart of hearts Hope day and night you care I remember worrying about you I remember how you make me laugh I remember looking at you In wishing the world could slow For us , bring the hands of time back So the heavens could solve us Plan our lives in such a way We will t right in place
I remember you II
I remember telling you it's ok That the fear is nowhere That nowhere is everywhere I remember holding your hands I remember the warmth I felt When your body touched mine I remember not knowing What to do with or without you And praying to God to heal you To let heavens convince you To see the other side of lies I remember falling sick In the wild of my palm In the palm of my pathos And laying back in your hands I remember you weeping And burning the incense of time And calling out my name in numbers Sulking out the cold from the couch Where I lay in unison with your primitive I remember well your large eyes As they stare miraculously at me I remember the tears roaming freely Not because of the pains But the gains I could have I remember leaving this world Glowing in metallic silver Shimmering in feathered lters I remember you crying for me Beckoning for my energy To slow down and stay down Girl I will miss you Goodbye my love
Evening of our life
The time was four markets When we were born So tiny into this resemblance Our spirit running like caravans In a mangrove moon lit plain The time was roving In a solitary circumference Bathed in an African sun dance We were the dust that tinged The footsteps of the dancers That pounds the mosquito paradise Again and again and again Only yesterday eve I watched with heart at rest the nebobola Looming far within the shadowy Shining of the Milky Way wary of Findings in the stillness of joy and hope for all the sons of sons of the land Now what silent anguish lls a night More beautiful than then. For earth's age of pain has come, And all her sister planets weep, Thinking of her res of mourning passing into dreamless morning In this cycle of great sorrow for The moments that we last
War fever
All along it was a hard conception A blue headed cold deliver All the bloodshed in my head Threw my energy in the clan gods please give me sanctuary Inspire something I can believe He said if only you stop the anarchy The bright red lights of cacophony Follow the beam and let it liberate you In this land of symbolic ancestral connection All through the late harmattans All around the great four clan The fever comes again and again And the land cleansing continues We accepted our faith with our own folly And let the pogrom loose on our children Claiming new souls of years past Now we can no longer market uli on eke Nor eat ugba with our grandchildren Instead we taught them to ght To defend the legends of the fall But is it just a sign of the times? Gruelsome and centipedial denials Keeping us awake all night All its strong energy in us it lls In us it moves and still drains
Where were you
Where were you when the Clouds opened and poured vengeance As rain and swept away our history Our ancestral lands and clandestine consciousness Marked by the timeless great Dibias For the umuludu prophesies to manifest Washed away every maternal gengons Flooded away our naked souls And used them as evil replacements For the dead to play in our kinematics Who would have thought this mayhem Of yours delivered in primitive speeches With no end but dotted renditions. Where were you When the evil came to town To kill and maim all that stood Take their place in the time stands To carry us away to the land That reshaped our thoughts And remake our saddened truth So when we came out to judge We speak in a new voice of Our land and everything change Where were you when They came in their nĂşmero All in blank and planned embers To take our natural civilization And creative divinations Our civil and native rights Our trepid women and sons As spoils of a conceptual war Make us pay our laboured cowrie For the freedom that never came? Tear and fear thus became our stitches Homeland honour became hopeless horror
Monkey sky
I knew i was a monkey The day i went up the trees The day my limbs let off The grip of a brown earth In a day full of promises Made in an oily clay pot Made for an innocent maiden Towering up in the trees As clear as a monkey sky The earth waved at me The day old leaves smiled Cleverly rehearsing the days revelatory The evening believed in me Showing all my skill at once Who will stop me now Even the skies remained ease on me As a pound of esh with feet Glued rhetorically to the sands As the day grew old I grew gracefully with it In mind and in liquid body My soul played the piano As I danced in the trees The grip in eternal marriage with The alligator coated stem and stench It's alive, the airy playground It's here to stay and only True life and freedom can live it
an oxygen paperback July 2010
By Christian Mowarin all rights reserved @2013