Two Poems By Daniel Ezeokeke

BALCONIES OF UNFULFILLED DREAMS
 
The Power of essence lies in willed servitude
 
dad will say, leaning his aged back to our torn sofa;
the most glaring testament of penury in the balcony
of his unfulfilled dreams.
 
We will watch as he demystifies secrets in notes
emanating from snores using several algorithms
downloaded from the brain of uncircumcised ghosts.
 
His words were catalysts, enzymes of abstractions
which overtime formed behemoths of sagacity in empty
cells of our minds
 
Dreams are subtile, only legends accomplish them.
 
he will say this with his pipe cigar pointing to the sky,
oozing out whiffs like incense which appeased for our
shortcomings to the god of slaps and cords.
 
We could only see a fragment of it's reality dawning
on us before he breathed his last. And then we took
those words, like a ram held by it's horns, skinned
 
and burnt them alive on the altar of heed, only to
see his words producing fruits of excellence
in the garden of our dreams

FLYING WITH ONE WING

Right before my country's aesthetics got battered by
voices from microphones of prophets preaching the
gospel of changes(banalities) with the lips of lies,
we've heard of men, who once abhorred filthy lucre, hiding mighty
gallons of oil which outsizes the waterscapes of the Nile
in the bank of greed,
 
We've heard ballads depicting the virtues of Samson's
ferocity, his ordination from the womb, the folly in his
love and the gambit in Delilah's oomph.
 
We've seen Nebuchadnezzar's
whip and the dexterity of it's wrath, drawing designs of maps on
the skins of our past, we've also been told of how dames and popes
who were honored with a badge of truth later danced to beats
resonating from the larynx of demons
 
And as sagacity vehemently suffocate in the armpits
of fools, and wits are now considered inferior to imprudence
by those we call sages, how then will the signposts of truth be
erected on the way to renaissance?
who will purchase the ointments
of Justice from the streets of sheba, and then ride from the south
where thieves and bandits dwell to here and now just to heal the
eagle of our nation which now flies with one wing?

Daniel Ezeokeke Is a writer who hails from the ancient city of Anambra State. He sees poetry as a means of escapism from society undergoing decay and degradation. He is currently a graduate from a Nigerian university and loves philosophy, Jewish writings and history.