We Will Live & Other Plays

If you receive this post you are part of my close-knit concentric circles of friends, colleagues and relatives. This is to inform you that my collection of plays titled “We Will Live and Other Plays” will be in bookshops by August 2010.

This publication will be a collection of three of my selected plays, “We Will Live”, “This Time Tomorrow” and “Objections Overruled” and I fervently pray that, like its predecessor, “Shadows of Existence”, it meets with critical acclaim. Once again, I sincerely count on your support toward promoting this project. It may interest you to know that Shadows of Existence is currently on sale in almost all the countries in Europe (even in countries like the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Greece!), available in India, Japan, the USA, Canada and South Africa. It is also available on all the major online bookshops like Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobles, Tesco.com, Virginmedia.com, edenbookshops.com, waterstones.com etc.

It is novel (for me at least) and truly humbling when people you don’t know, writing in a language you don’t understand, review your work. For me whether the review is positive or negative is immaterial since I can’t read or understand the language anyway. Just the fact that people are writing or talking about the book is fulfilling, very fulfilling.

Meanwhile find below select reviews / articles on Shadows of Existence. More can be found on the internet, simply Google Jekwu Ozoemene.

Thanks and my best regards as always.

Jekwu

1. Compass Newspaper – ‘Shadows of Existence’: Enter pacifist Africanist Poet, Ozoemene http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:bd99YMf58bwJ:www.compassnews.net/Ng/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D38750:shadows-of-existence-enter-pacifist-africanist-poet-ozoemene%26catid%3D46:sunday-compass%26Itemid%3D698+jekwu+ozoemene+%2B+compass+newspaper&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ng

2. Foreword Magazine (Fore Word Reviews) – Shadows of Existence: An Anthology of Poetry | ForeWordMagazine.com http://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/shadows-existence-anthology-poetry

3. Nigerian Tribune Newspaper – A Poet’s Shadows of Existence http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:YZtJnMUkaL4J:www.tribune.com.ng/02112009/tue/arts2.html+jekwu+ozoemene+%2B+shadows+of+existence+%2B+review&cd=22&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ng

4. University of Leicester Alumni News http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/publications/2000-2009/2009/09/nparticle.2009-09-25.2496500882

For more reviews from local and international media…Google Jekwu Ozoemene….

Oh How We Beg!

We who love to beg hail thee!

Our nation’s guttural call we obey

Please! Please! Please!

Gi’me! Gi’me! Gi’me!

A bereft beggar nation begging for bread that it can bake

Complacent indigence of the mind and spirit

We beg

Begging bowl clutched in two well manicured hands

Dual tribed beggars of necessity and choice

Confluenced in a shameless display of poverty in the midst of plenitude

Our begging diminishing the productivity of the productive class

Grovelling for a visa to Eldorado, a job, a spouse

Sexy students selling sex and ménage a quartos

Assiduously, since we have made an art of begging

A home grown vulgar supplication for alms

Not Tithe here, not Zakat, just begging

Our treasury purloined while we droll for titbits

Youths earnestly asking for inept continuity

An offering of incompetence in perpetuity

Down on our knees we beg

As we are ground and trampled into the earth’s clammy bosom

 

Jekwu Ozoemene©2009

Strums of Depression

We grew up riding on Orpheus notes

Singing along the coast of Coromandel (where the early pumpkins grow)

Manning Hispaniola’s wheel as we rode the waves

Journeying to the Far-Away Tree

Conjuring with Hecate and her cohorts as fire burned and cauldron bubbled

And Narnia! Gosh, there was Narnia

 

But they have killed Orpheus

His lyre now played by the dyslexic stubby fingers of leprous hands

Rendering mournful strums of depression

While our mother muse mourns his martyrdom

 

They have killed Orpheus

His death a testimony to our collective neglect

For we ostracised Nancy Drew, banished the Hardy Boys

Tarred and feathered Brothers Grimm and ran Hans Anderson out of town

 

We let them kill Orpheus

First asphyxiated by the gun wielding Junta

Whose bland rhetoric was dwarfed by the flowery poetic language of the gods

For when they played their martial music

 Orpheus it was who played music more beautiful and louder

Drowning out the Sirens’ bewitching songs

 

They have killed Orpheus

And at his passing, men and gods wept (and still weep)

For no longer do we charm the birds with our lovely songs  

Lure the fish and wild beasts with our feathery oratory

Coax the trees and rocks to dance

No longer can our words divert the course of raging rivers

Our writings lead the destiny of nations, halt advancing armies

Conquer Hades

Lure the powerful hounds of hell to sleep

And give us the audacity of hope

 

That is why they killed Orpheus you know

For without his depth we are naked

Bound and gagged by the shackles of ignorance

Vulnerable captives of the philistine beast

Riding listlessly on these strums of depression

 

Jekwu Ozoemene ©2009

Our Beautiful Game

Today na today! We go deal with dem again

Na home we dey play dem, their own don finish today

We go show dem proper pepper for Stamford Bridge

Smiled the cobbler at the end of the poverty stricken Main Street

A pitiable, almost laughable sight as he speaks

Yet this picture perfect profile of penury beams

The season is ours he sings, as he twiddles his dirty bare feet

A mockery of a football dribble, a grin bares his yellow-brown teeth

A feint, a furtive dribbling dart and his back disappears into an alley

The last I see, the emblazoned ‘Essien’ on his cheap blue Chelsea jersey

 

At least, I muse, he will never walk alone

For at the end of his daily gloom is a golden dome of hope

A galaxy of millionaire maestros’ dribble-shooting a football

Soccer gods for whom he adulates when they win, ululates when they fall

 

But deep in the dungeon of his blues, the swelling uproar at Stamford Bridge

Lurks the red devil that drowns the new disquiet under Oshodi Bridge

An arsenal of defty footwork masks the booming guns of the gunners in our creeks

Suspended animation, suspended nation, suspended people we no longer speak

Meek Lilliputians, misgoverned, maltreated by misfits

A soothing ‘treble’ poultice for our engorged blistering woes

The principal balm our roars to the gladiators’ goals

 

Beware, this raging Rooney looney an intoxicating opium of the masses

A leveller of the poor, the rich, and all social classes

Lofty goals momentarily forgotten, buried under silverware

Our football ancestors starved, sulking in the cold bosom of our derelict stadia

Like howling wolves wandering warily across a desolate wasteland

Our local derbies drab, our premier local stadia empty stands

Our ancestors aghast as their offspring now cheering fans of a distant foreign deity

Cheering gustily while the voice of their ancestors fade into the gloom

 

Jekwu Ozoemene ©2009

‘Chi Ejie’ (Night Falls)

I am! I am! The black wind howls through the cold night
Dark cape stealthily sweeping across the murky moor
Wet wasteland of wasted dreams dumped in a dustbin
Dreams, dead dreams of a dead president and great beings

Wey dem! Wey dem! the evil cyclone beckons
‘No shaking’ ‘carry go’!! Agbata e ke, Peter Dey Pay
Disperse! Scatter! Drive them to the ground!!
Bow or perish as the cyclone circles the money mound

Serially sodomised, the raging tempest still raging
Our keepers castrated, we are down on our knees praying
Whose mother’s ransom paid, whose brother’s blood sprayed
Silence! Punctuated by pin drops of muted prayers
Wrapped in fear, who knows who are the hooded slayers
Ohh great warriors of our land, protectors of our protectorate
Lets all rise in unison, a call to arms on this date
Our lone she-goat suffers the pains of patruition on its tether
This shame is too much, this pill is extremely bitter
Ana mbara, land of great men, great minds, ‘home for all’
‘Ijele dike di egwu’ the dirge of a great warrior… now our song

Silence! Punctuated by rivulets of darkness rolling in cow dung!
Chie Ejieeeeee!!!! Terrorist, Kidnappers, Criminals desecrate our land
Freewheeling, our collective will lost in the sand
Petrified… yes we are, manhood, tiny little ‘toothpicks’ shriveled
Scrotal sacs desiccated cotton balls, fire raging while we fiddle

So you tell me?
As this pestilence decimates our land
Are we frozen by Agaba the masquerade’s macabre dance?
Silence, furtive looks, shielded whispers, erectile dysfunction
Great men now boys, toys for the marauding band
Really? What has happened to this great land of ours?
Night falls as darkness veils half of a yellow sun
Ijele dike di egwu, alas, the dirge that is now our song

©Jekwu Ozoemene 2009

Shadows of Existence

Learned Helplessness

 

My loving husband hovers around the blood-speckled gurney

As I lie, humbled

Spluttering behind splintered Prada sunglasses

Yet he still hovers

Concern tracing the delta of crow’s-feet dancing around his flickering eyes

Doctors, Nurses, charmed by his worry, his physique

His tears flow freely, salty pinpricks of deceit

Sliding down his cheeks, glistening on my wedding band

Tiny tear freckles on his bare feet, blood on his manicured hand

His clipped British accent, staccatos, fluid responses to their demands

Beautiful Nurses sway, kowtowing to his spoken and silent commands

 

As this surreal scene unfolds, I retreat within myself

A soul, stripped of self-esteem, verbally raped and haemorrhaging red

Hyperventilating, me needs to get a grip on me

Where am I? Alive or lying with the dead

Take stock, as I try to plan my next move in my head

 

I drift into flickers of darkness, a cinematographic vortex of memories

The blue-black eye and ruptured eardrum

Bloodied nose and cigarette burns

Cracked jawbone and hairline fractures

Eyes wide shut

 

Cracked skull and whiplashed torso

Hair pulled out, follicles bleeding

Bandaged elbow wrapped in a napkin

Eyes wide shut

 

“Is anyone home?” My soul cries out

I shudder, shiver, suddenly cold, all alone

Drift deeper, tumbling, cartwheeling into the warm murky gloom

I have done whatever he proposes, I whisper to no one

But he reverts with beatings, slaps, kicks, and more blows

At first, I thought this love, punishment for my transgressions

Now it’s obvious he will have beaten me regardless of my professions

(The first beating harbinger of torrents of successors)

 

As I struggle back into a reluctant hazy consciousness

He is there smiling, holding my hands, lovingly whispering my name

Then I gurgle, I hear him shout, “Doctor! I need a Doctor here!”

I smile back, head spinning, and sink back to the warm murky depth

 

In our patriarchal society, across social class, religion, or colour

Traditional belief holds that husbands own their wives (lock, stock, and barrel)

And those women should conform to an ideal of self-denial

Battered, butchered, raped, they cannot petition

 

Subjected to any excruciating stimulus, they can’t escape

They become submissive and reluctantly accept their fate

The earlier this stimulus is received and accepted

The longer it will take to overcome self-deprecation

 

I once heard that Man’s first written societal laws

Proclaimed a sentence for women who verbally abused their lords

Their names to be “engraved on brick,” a thick slab of stone

To be used to dash out their teeth, cleaved from cheek to bone

And since this 2,500 BC declaration

Wife-beating has been accepted by various races and nations

From Ancient Greece to the conquering Romans

Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Pagans

Even the much-celebrated French king Napoleon

Decreed that women be treated as “life-long irresponsible minors”

19th century British law states unequivocally

That a husband has “power and dominion over his wife”

And can beat her with a stick “no thicker than his thumb”

 

I resurface gasping, struggling through a mountain of pain

As tears cloud my eyes, my head throbbing, life fading away

The Doctor arrives and pries open my eyes

His flashing penlight tenterhooks searing my aching cornea

In desperation I summon the last strength from the pits of my stomach

Clutch his collar, and whisper hoarsely in a racketing gargle

“My loving husband, standing by your side, did this to me

It may be too late for me, but you may just save another victim”

 

 

2009