The Oracle of Dead Things
Poetry by CP Nwankwo. "god’s boutades lingering in bloodshed. but if peonies of salvation ever bloom in this country, let it garden the remnants left in abysmal fractions."
The Oracle of Dead Things
In this city—
we plug into god, breath by breath, splitting libation, for the uniquity of things unalive. even the bullet has held more hands in worship, more songs in dispersal, like roads jeered with vestiges of warfare. point to the quietude scrawled in scraps of grief, & in haggard graffiti—bones cleaved from flesh, & flesh sated with death. hewn by time, we bade the gravesides in half-throated hymns, stripped our teeth of jubilees, & scurried elegies like the shovel that shoves the dead. but in war, who salves the woes? we rattle our blood—baited or unbaited—something to pelt at god. & to riffle our souls. at least, there’s reawakening with whatever wets us awake. but sanity only thrives inside a dreamscape. aren’t we enthralled by dawn? I mean—at dawn, gun sprouts again, bearing unforgiveness. we lean unto freedom like sleep mounted on one eye. bet we know nothing of roses, ’cause nectar merges with silence. & the streets arched with ashes, the isarithms of spectral enclaves. bet no poem defines the weighted hour of muffled voices. we wear this old town of howitzers, & the creases of crank airstrikes, ranking our homes by a penury of bravery. but if tomorrow comes, let it be a naked emblem—fetching God, & facing war with clean amity.
Vantages Of god Rocking Muscles In The Regime End Of Country & Bones
“over 18 million Sudanese now face acute hunger, with 5 million on the brink of famine” —The Cable, April 15, 2024
to begin a life as something backhanded, silence dotted, draped in acute hunger—
the news hawked its gaze again on our aching souls. the shape of bowls shrieking in emptiness. there’s death for everyone with a blue smile. the land thwacks hard with music in a dark cavern. we danced pyrrhic, dressed in satin white, our legs chasing bullets. whiteness veins blue. a boy with ultra-violence in his blood. his bowl lacked the stamina to hold hope beneath a rattling sun. once a rosemary before ruin, chlorophyll still sketching—a home lit by the experiment of light. history is a mirth in wartime, the light that preps a satin girl to wear glory & burn out too fast. pistol is a small vigil behind one eye. graveling a gaping hole beside a fetor grave. our breaths have broken amen a thousand times. this is life. the undercurrent. the underside. the hysteria eating deep in the Jazz made of guns. vantages of god rocking muscles in the regime end of country & bones. before the talons gripped us like bitter grenades mid-phlegmatic run. our deaths have long prowled mischief in the mouth of our minds. look what harvests here: lilac bodies on scrawny podiums. citrus blood thrumming in gangrenes. flaky skins dried like the crumbs of an agege bread. survival is a mishmash of souls trailing the curse of a horizon. like edema suppressing reality & reality failing to droop pollens on our scars. this penury sharpens knives like the gusto of a slaughterhouse. killing everything with the intent to travel with breath. our salivas have savoured the tastebuds to initiate a meal. to dance tethered with the agony snapping fingers in death rows. of what kind of bloom gather bellies in disarray? somehow, a bullet satisfies hunger faster, just to escape the grief in lanky burning. here, little bones cruft into demeanours meant for elders, dyeing innocence with the portraiture of a raving blackout. god’s boutades lingering in bloodshed. but if peonies of salvation ever bloom in this country, let it garden the remnants left in abysmal fractions.