poethree:new poems:"and finally, love."

“And, finally, love.”
Mrs Blue is married to God by His insistence
There is no Mr. Blue and no distance
God will not be called mister
He will not let you sit on His lap and stroke His grey beard
He is not into romance
He is into life and living
The perfect gift for the non-giving
Anyway, God courts Mrs. blue everyday
He comes to her river with a song and a flute
Singing those old African songs of hope
And she cannot resist the eternal order
So she falls heavily in tune
With the renaissance of the heart
And the things we cannot do without

So when I met her she already had HIM
She was not looking for me
Or to be finally in love.

It was beautiful in the garden of sounds
Where I re-discovered that love was real
And it is more than what you feel
In the garden of sounds you hear nothing
But you know you are ready,
Ready for what?
I came with my heart and mind open
And I left with my soul full
But,
When I met her she was already Mrs. Blue
She was born with that distinction
She was not looking
To be finally in love
With anything
Or anyone
But love, love, HIMSELF.
So I went to Him so we could talk
About the things that will always be
The wind and the water and the tall trees
In the middle of the garden of silent-sounds
“You fool, you fool, you lovely fool,” He said to me
Can’t you see you are finally in love?
Back to the garden as quick as I can
Overseas and un-dry land
To find her there where I never left
She takes my hand in such a way
I am seeing her for the first, real time
“I had a good time all the way,’’ she says
In letters on an endless page
Final fantasy realised
I hold her in a crystal moment
And the day is not ending but beginning
For I am finally, utterly in love
No hope for a cold heart anymore.

poethree:new poems:"woman."

note: while in law school myani bukar, nasom ngaro and i wrote poems. we co-authored verses during class on a wide variety of topics and on varying gusts of that devil called inspiration. i coined the name poethree(which i suspect the other two dislike) and now i present some of our work to you, the reader. i do not have the permission of the others so they might well tell me to yank it off. so read fast. some of these poems are individually written but they fit into the kind of conversations we always have. the new poems are the most recently written. this is the first one...

"woman."

On a hill in the place of disbelief
Lived a boy of dark and light
And no matter what went up with him
He could never believe
In the imagination of things
The magic of being
He could never believe
In being complete
And so he wasted years, waiting, watching
For the thing he could never be
And he could never see
Far pass that hill
Never seeing the magic
That lived beside the trees
In the place where alchemy was real

He built things by a tower
He built a tower so he could see
The thing he could never believe
But hope failed him
All things were elusive
Far away from him
In the land of disbelief
His fortress turned to sand
The mix of rich and bland
The giver with the missing hands

Until one day of sun
When the thing walked by in gilded dress
The kind that comes together in a total mess
Her hair was the wind
Her mouth was the moon
Solitude made her that much more beautiful
Her scars were all on her face
She had nil to hide
And so, there, in the light and dark
They began to create, a life

There was no summer or winter or autumn or spring
All seasons stopped
There was no rain or dry land or harmattan wind
All nations ended
Time was a bubble that will never burst
They had many, many bubbles
In this life of leading
Where there are no hills
And no hindrances
Only a land of the sacred dances
-this must be love, he said
As they made fish by the sea
-this is not me, he whispered
His prayer for the lasting
And so the story is told
Age to age
If you care to listen
If you care to bleed
If you want to be seen
Or heard
It is the story of all us
Finding God in wholesome eyes
Simplifying till we are simplified
And, then, while not expecting it,
We fall, finally, in love.

the final word.

"These chords are old but we shake hands Cause I believe that they're the good guys We can use all the help we can So many minor chords outside I fell in love with your sound Oh I love to sing along with you We got tunes we kicked around We got a bucket that the tunes go through Babe we both had dry spells Hard times in bad lands I'm a good man for ya I'm a good man Last night there was a horse in the road I was twisting in the hairpin My hands held on my mind let go And back to you my heart went skipping I found the inside of the road Thought about the first time that I met you All those glances that we stole sometimes if you want them then you've got to Babe we both had dry spells Hard times in bad lands I'm a good man for ya I'm a good man They shot a Western south of here They had him cornered in a canyon And even his horse had disappeared They said it got run down by a bad bad man You're not a good shot but I'm worse And there's so much where we ain't been yet So swing up on this little horse The only thing we'll hit is sunset Babe we both had dry spells Hard times in bad lands I'm a good man for ya I'm a good man"
josh ritter-"good man"

the GOD series: song of songs 4:7: no wrong in love or loving.

"Steal my heart and hold my tongueI feel my time My time has comeLet me inUnlock the doorI never felt this way beforeAnd the wheels just keep on turningThe drummer begins to drumI don’t know which way I’m goingI don’t know which way I’ve comeHold my head inside your handsI need someone who understands I need someone, someone who hearsFor you I’ve waited all these yearsFor you I’d wait 'til kingdom comeUntil my day, my day is doneAnd say you'll come and set me freeJust say you'll wait, you'll wait for meIn your tears and in your bloodIn your fire and in your floodI hear you laugh, I heard you singI wouldn’t change a single thingAnd the wheels just keep on turningThe drummers begin to drumI don’t know which way I’m goingI don’t know what I’ve becomeFor you I’d wait 'til kingdom comeUntil my days, my days are doneAnd say you'll come and set me freeJust say you'll wait, you'll wait for meJust say you'll wait, you'll wait for meJust say you'll wait, you'll wait for me."

this is a coldplay song from the "x and y"album. it is one of my favourite love songs and i thought of it today. the tone is very much like a declaration toward that idea of what true love is and "waiting" for it. in that love ,where the object is also the subject and the giver will also receive, is a semblance of the mirror, the shadow God seeks to create in the incompetent meanderings of us men and women. i thought of if my love for ada measured up to that idea of seeing her as perfect and then walking with her toward that end. in truth it did not. there is possibly a five percent chance i will get another chance with her but the idea is not for us to hit the target. it is for us to fail at it and then align more with the person that is love Himself. but to try is enough. to risk is golden. to not grow cold is the key to staying alive. to be alive is to be in hope and the great possibility of change. we fail so that we might find true hope. in hoping again and again through adversity we find faith. and faith is hope that will be fulfilled in final love. there are no real mistakes in love. only longer and shorter routes to the same glorious conclusion.
i pray that we all hold on in hope and through faith, through mishaps and aches, refuse to grow cold, until we find in God that love that lasts till kingdom come. and then, way beyond.........

the GOD series: psalm 77 and psalm 67:God as first principle and last hope.

i was thinking, on my way to work this morning, about the question of God. it is the question. if He exists, that it is the most important question to face. if he does not then it is the most mundane question there is. the question of the question is the first thing to answer in discovering what being human means, in finding our real purpose or lack of it.
from the title you already know where i stand. God first appeared to me in whispers of right and wrong, then in the song and dance and festivity in my liberal, "unreligious" church, then as something more, then as someone more, as a real experience and a reason to approach life as a joy and not as a chore.
we had many conversations on buses as i made my seventeen year old way to and fro gwagwalada in my first year of university. and in school i sought him in religious orders and fellowship meetings, seeing him as honey dripping from the mouth of the blessed few. but he was not enough there. i sought him in the songs sang and the book read and liberated from the tyranny of clergymen and scholars . but he was too small in fine print. i sought him in friendships with the godly and in meetings away from the godless. but He is not found in effort or by sweat of brow. and i had been found long before i ever looked. the illusion is that you can find GOD. God always finds you. what you find by yourself is a god you can explain and love as object and be proud that you love your brilliant deserved object. God lives you no room to be proud. He is not into flattering you. He is into revealing who you honestly are so He can lead you to who you truly are. there is too much voodoo in the church today. too much waiting for a magic wand to sweep away responsibility and give a false sense of certainty. the only certainty is God. He is the most natural being in the universe. miracles are needed less and less as we draw toward the real experience of knowing him as Him. this is what i find in the daily freedom of becoming His son. it is more liberating than the false sense of being free we get by "making our own decisions". true freedom is in making the right decisions, in aligning with the divine will.
i might sound certain about all this but i am not. i am wrong in places and barely right in others. do not seek solace in my seeming certainty. find your own damn bus. take a trip to an unfamiliar place and get familiar with yahweh, all ready to explain who HE is to you. you.
p.s. the psalms are a result of my recent struggles ( and i mean more than the thing with adanma when i say this). they show states that are familiar to the common trend amongst those seeking God as first principle and last hope. en-joy reading them

bleak but blessed.

i have been crying. i fully admit it. i have the pain in my eye and the soreness in my throat.
i have also been laughing, inside, in the places where real joy is possible. it is not a contradiction to do both. in fact it is the hallmark of what one of my flamingoes calls "truthfools". those of us that have foolishly committed our lives to the idea and reality that truth is knowable and doable on this side of existence. so i have been crying and laughing over the woman i love and the very real possibilty that i have lost her forever. it is a bleak but blessed time.
it is bleak because i am wrestling with career decisions, personal foibles and the loss of the certainty of the beautiful woman who spent two months boldly by my side in everything and whom i still hope to share life with.
blessed because of the word hope. the idea that my character is setting, that i am learning from my many mistakes, that i am being shown my real humble state so i can finally encounter the five fingers of grace. blessed because of faith. the idea that God is working me out and walking with me. that He is the ultimate decider of my fate, that i am not the victim of random happenstance. that my tears mean something to him and they count in his eternal book and its eternal story playing out in the great hall of lovely potraits. blessed because love is the final silver lining and it does not fail. it is up and about and it only breaks your heart to renew it and set it off into the full experience of living. i am laughing through the tears because this is only a day in the life of being and finally we will, if we accept that blessing and are given the grace to, we will step into that day that never ends. to live in the love of japan forever.

i want to build a legend with room for two..me and adanma ezegbulam(then, banu)

adanma wants a break from me. i understand.i have a dark room inside me that i seldom go to. a place so light starved that it feeds on happiness and the excess of need. such a lightforce should not be by my side. but she will be. there is the ying and she is my yang. there is the dark and she is my light. there is the wrong and she makes me right. i want to give up on her but i can not. i have to see this to the end. i have to find the end of this rainbow in her eyes, this solar system in her head, this universe in her deep heart.
truth is she is the most beautiful woman on earth, aphrodite, helen, creator and created, giver and reciever, complete by herself in God. if there is any possibility that my kids can have her dna i will take it. for her to agree to share my bloodline would be an honour i can not repay. i know i am hyping her but my God hear this girl's heartbeat and try not to be me. she is every song, every woman, every poem i know in brilliant, outer light. to have her raise my daughter to be like her and better is the focus of my romantic life.
adanma has a break from me. she may never return. she may meet some unsung prince and find love away from me. that is the risk in loving. that love might find another way to express itself, another path away from you. but she has left me richer, fuller, more ready for love.
if you know her, tell her for me that i want to share my dark room and every other room i have with her. i want to write her name in the sky. it is firmly written in my heart. i love her. tell her her stone-covered ring is bought and kept, that the alchemy grows everyday in my heart, that 1409 was the best day of my life. that i cry when i think of a world without her. tell her she is the first and last mrs blue. tell her she is my legend and there is room for her in me. when she chooses. i am waiting. for her. only her.