Tasking Love

Ugonwanyi ...

Like the palm-kernel
Stalking the fringes of a pauperized living
Your love tasks the jaw-muscles
I chew and chew
And will not want to swallow
Lest I lose everything

Give me your love in trickles
Let it drop tom - tom - tom
Tomming to thaw
The years of unattended yearning
And soothe this suffocating lump
In the throat of my feeling

Like a hungry pauper
Let me hunt the woods of emotion
Desolate, seeking out that benevolent palm-tree
To hand out reluctant nuts
For me to crack and crack
And strive to reach your seed of love ...

Ugonwanyi

Unrequited Love

Odinsoeruaka
Destroy me with love
Suck away the juice of my life
Drain me of every fluid of emotion
And discard me, bedraggled
Like a fowl drenched
In an angry rain

Odinsoeruaka
Kill me; yes go ahead
And quench this fire
That flames, wrecking
The foundation of my being
Save me the trauma ... this agony

Visit me with a murderous love
But when I'm conveniently dead;
If the post-mortem says
'Unrequited passion'
Bury me, the carcass of a dead love
In the grave-yard of hope

Love Requiem

Here at this junction of desire and reality,
I libate my love.

Here where hurting and healing intermingle,
I confess this love.

Let the waking eyes
Of each breaking dawn
Behold my loss.