By Christian Mowarin

poetry bookplay

an oxygen paperback

July 2013

I remember falling sick

In the wild of my palm

Over the remnants of my dreams

And laying back in your hands

I remember you weeping

And burning the incense of time

And calling out my name in numbers

Sulking out the cold from the couch

Where i lay in unison with your

architectural primitive

I remember well your large eyes

As they stare miraculously at me

Hoping the day will come...

Christian Mowarin

for my mother, clara

Children of the new forest

The bell rings just once

Not once in a life time but

Once in a class time, time to go

Time to run seven miles

Along a lonely stretch

We run along and wave along too

To some mill day plantation workers

Who work on traction and tractors

With the attraction of palms

Long telegraph poles line the polars

Their perspectives dimming into the horizons

Only to appear as we appear around a bend

Long twines in between the scales

Kneel up high we climb up hills

One legged spirits running a race too

Though we couldn't see them

We feel them when our ears twitch

We hear their laughter

And native reverberations

In the cave walls in the long forest

Where their world separates us

And their kindred kindles with hope

That one day make our world collide

The little trees were our friends

Smiles brilliantly at us as we turbo pass

Giggling mischievously at one another

Occasionally losing a berry in the sides

The slouching sun a little behind

Blinding our backs against our backpacks

Our shadows making sure they keep up

Friendly little shrubs as brothers who closes

Their spread as we touch them

An endless race of no consequence...

Come, come little

morning

The eel sound of isimili river

Goat skin drum rattles us

Out of our sweet dreams

Bitter palm kernel fronds still

Bitter from all nights suppression

We hurry out of our hut

To catch the morning greetings

To the insidious goddess of daylight

As earth's little children

Eyes wide open from sleep land

from the scents and burrows on the hill;

Who Hangs within the glimpse it carries

Her shining daffodils open smiles

Down again the valley underneath us

Sprays fragrance too enchanting

Over farmlands and over yam ridges

In a little quivering drop of a spirited song.

All adorn the pale morning cloud

Begins to gather at the summit

Of the spirit mountains far down

Hallucinating the traces of twilight

New wings �ying in the wake of day.

The sun with stretches, shaking off

The cold new dawn dews

Fancy follows creepily in her rise

Where the premonitions of a native story

Shaken from the brilliance of light

Between the pure, the good, the true,

That our weeping eyes may strain for,

But shall never after view.

I remember you

My lovely

I remember you well

I remember your fond smiles

You memorable white grin

And your playable composition

I remember your thinking

And your in�atable ideas

Made only by your spirit

Though procedurally little

But very well lit

I remember your motionless

And ageless body language

Arguably and urgently gentle

I remember talking with you

Making sure you hear my words

Made golden by the hills and cave reverb

I remember promising you

That I ll recreate the world for you

With violet and indigo caramels

Scratched from our rustic evolutions

And mix bold hues out of our darmnations

I remember loving you

In all heart of hearts

Hope day and night you care

I remember worrying about you

I remember how you make me laugh

I remember looking at you

In wishing the world could slow

For us , bring the hands of time back

So the heavens could solve us

Plan our lives in such a way

We will �t right in place

I remember you II

I remember telling you it's ok

That the fear is nowhere

That nowhere is everywhere

I remember holding your hands

I remember the warmth I felt

When your body touched mine

I remember not knowing

What to do with or without you

And praying to God to heal you

To let heavens convince you

To see the other side of lies

I remember falling sick

In the wild of my palm

In the palm of my pathos

And laying back in your hands

I remember you weeping

And burning the incense of time

And calling out my name in numbers

Sulking out the cold from the couch

Where I lay in unison with your primitive

I remember well your large eyes

As they stare miraculously at me

I remember the tears roaming freely

Not because of the pains

But the gains I could have

I remember leaving this world

Glowing in metallic silver

Shimmering in feathered �lters

I remember you crying for me

Beckoning for my energy

To slow down and stay down

Girl I will miss you

Goodbye my love

Evening of our life

The time was four markets

When we were born

So tiny into this resemblance

Our spirit running like caravans

In a mangrove moon lit plain

The time was roving

In a solitary circumference

Bathed in an African sun dance

We were the dust that tinged

The footsteps of the dancers

That pounds the mosquito paradise

Again and again and again

Only yesterday eve I watched with

heart at rest the nebobola

Looming far within the shadowy

Shining of the Milky Way wary of

Findings in the stillness of joy and hope

for all the sons of sons of the land

Now what silent anguish �lls a night

More beautiful than then.

For earth's age of pain has come,

And all her sister planets weep,

Thinking of her �res of mourning

passing into dreamless morning

In this cycle of great sorrow for

The moments that we last

War fever

All along it was a hard conception

A blue headed cold deliver

All the bloodshed in my head

Threw my energy in the clan

gods please give me sanctuary

Inspire something I can believe

He said if only you stop the anarchy

The bright red lights of cacophony

Follow the beam and let it liberate you

In this land of symbolic ancestral connection

All through the late harmattans

All around the great four clan

The fever comes again and again

And the land cleansing continues

We accepted our faith with our own folly

And let the pogrom loose on our children

Claiming new souls of years past

Now we can no longer market uli on eke

Nor eat ugba with our grandchildren

Instead we taught them to �ght

To defend the legends of the fall

But is it just a sign of the times?

Gruelsome and centipedial denials

Keeping us awake all night

All its strong energy in us it �lls

In us it moves and still drains

Where were you

Where were you when the

Clouds opened and poured vengeance

As rain and swept away our history

Our ancestral lands and clandestine consciousness

Marked by the timeless great Dibias

For the umuludu prophesies to manifest

Washed away every maternal gengons

Flooded away our naked souls

And used them as evil replacements

For the dead to play in our kinematics

Who would have thought this mayhem

Of yours delivered in primitive speeches

With no end but dotted renditions.

Where were you

When the evil came to town

To kill and maim all that stood

Take their place in the time stands

To carry us away to the land

That reshaped our thoughts

And remake our saddened truth

So when we came out to judge

We speak in a new voice of

Our land and everything change

Where were you when

They came in their número

All in blank and planned embers

To take our natural civilization

And creative divinations

Our civil and native rights

Our trepid women and sons

As spoils of a conceptual war

Make us pay our laboured cowrie

For the freedom that never came?

Tear and fear thus became our stitches

Homeland honour became hopeless horror

Monkey sky

I knew i was a monkey

The day i went up the trees

The day my limbs let off

The grip of a brown earth

In a day full of promises

Made in an oily clay pot

Made for an innocent maiden

Towering up in the trees

As clear as a monkey sky

The earth waved at me

The day old leaves smiled

Cleverly rehearsing the days revelatory

The evening believed in me

Showing all my skill at once

Who will stop me now

Even the skies remained ease on me

As a pound of �esh with feet

Glued rhetorically to the sands

As the day grew old

I grew gracefully with it

In mind and in liquid body

My soul played the piano

As I danced in the trees

The grip in eternal marriage with

The alligator coated stem and stench

It's alive, the airy playground

It's here to stay and only

True life and freedom can live it

By Christian Mowarin

an oxygen paperback

July 2010

all rights reserved @2013