Poet: Sochukwu Ivye
Bio: Sochukwu Ivye is a linguistic stylistician, a rhythmist and a distinctive metrist. A final-year student of English Language and Literature, he is particularly interested in English Language (as opposed to English Literature) topics. His work, The Great Cold, an epic poem, is the longest metrical poem by an African. Sochukwu hails from Isseke, an ancient Igbo town in Eastern Nigeria.
Editor’s remark: this work makes for a very long read, strictly for the connoisseurs.
Books in deed define your pet name for you
I well brook them for their station quite true
Do you make one thing of such depictions?
I see but made-up scenes lived like fictions
A well penned note, a far-famed actor’s role
or a gemstone, books outline, not your soul
My soul shall not rest boneless for its child,
your pet name, led and captured in the wild
Even if moments with you calmed me more
they left me, each time, with a heart of sore
Now, I should not learn why on our first day
my poor spirit caught cold under your sway
I could have seen what was in store for me,
but blindfolded, my eyes were not thus free
My mind is fraught with memories unclean,
like a frenzied boy’s eyes caught at a scene
I write to sweep my breast of your pictures,
and breathe thus freshly, eluding strictures
I should let all these saunter past my grasp
but they would dwell in me till my last gasp
As one of those all-youthful twilights came,
with mates, I sat and eased on all the same
The abrupt wind which threw in your figure
might have not longed to assess my vigour
I had found most of the street’s best ladies
I knew most but could win none or maybes
A call came; my heart and eyes led my legs,
and I went for you, although to some dregs
It did seem that I had made one cute move,
but if hours, days and years, after did prove
I heard none else, but listened for your ‘yes’
I was the leopard; you seemed as harmless
I led the thought that I had seen some gold
and beat the past, but there was the untold
There were times my feet even cried in pain
They had to take me to you, though, in vain
The first years nursed me like a newly born
Who would evoke the tales of the lovelorn?
Nothing felt frightful about how hearts halt
But, O heartache! Into wounds, you rub salt
Signs cried out to me; my senses sat numb
Omens played in my eyes; I just grew dumb
What would destroy my soul arose on time
You took no time to divulge this love-crime
How to meet your heart turned to my worry
If some thoughts met my mind, I was sorry
My warmth with you was a style of worship
To lure mates, the female display courtship
Everybody will say, “Some date themselves”
Well, who spare any hearts on any shelves?
My poise was fate-doomed: I left other girls
but because you dressed like a lot of pearls
I saw you when, at some girls else, I looked
in that all my care and lust you had hooked
My long search for the one came to an end,
but would fetch a verse I had never penned
A certain affaire caught our breaths to fare,
but no man who saw tomorrow would dare
I had to walk through some muddy love life
believing that such would win one the wife
You toyed with my rest and sullied my face,
thus that I could not lead myself with grace
Civil linguists say: no schwa, no triphthong
To merit a four-faced, what was my wrong?
My mates kept us and adorned your image,
because they were hopeful of our marriage
Friends at work, school and on the internet
did honour my Miss World and her vignette
All who wished me ill did not want you well
They won, to have met my right woman fell
You did cradle their traps to bring me down
How would I see but roam, about, a clown?
Whose only lover stabs them from behind?
Indulge me, how do they like the cut, blind?
One overreached oneself if one’s ship sank
as did mine, a short distance past the bank
I had once more begun to thrive, it seemed:
all my vows to you I could score redeemed
You well noticed how and lauded my nerve
but the base of your mind laid your reserve
To tag me new, my past knew less passion
but this foul-souled lust lent a new fashion
Your plots I did foil with some selfless acts
May I applaud your grins that read impacts
If you confessed your doubts about dating
you found me hungry for your love, waiting
I served kind judgement in will and in deed,
but saw not when I would bewail my breed
You did have my skin to breed some itches
and my waking brow to wear more stitches
I hoped that my silence smelt of most men
To your requests, my deeds echoed: Amen
You were well at it while you called me dad,
your longing and rightfully yours. How sad!
My groping heart did head for your kindred
Could it meet them in one year or hundred?
My nightmares unmasked overhanging ills,
but you dismissed them as offensive chills
To your dream men I took you, like a bridge
Who misreads you cannot repulse a midge
Except behind closed eyes, I was not yours
Until you felt hurt, past me shut your doors
You felt faceless to show me to your peers;
quick eyes saw: I was the prey all the years
I came out thus strongly despite your plots
to confess the fact: we must brave our lots
Do I miss your hugs I once scored faithful?
Or, your burning brow I did weigh graceful?
Now, for my blindness that still beheld love,
I must watch to tell the hawk from the dove
Now that yours of all lives is led four-faced,
who would still run into your likes in haste?
The eyes that see you have known a Judas
and must give heed to a snake in the grass
Knowledge is might but I loathe this lesson
Yet through you, my inner might did lessen
How you could sift nothing but rip my trust,
and ask to have it again, struck me trussed
I did pledge my trust, and met all my words;
your still small voice did fly away with birds
You had not come to plant or mend fences,
but to steal my heart and numb my senses
That ours was unknown to your confidants
blew me as my encounters with your aunts
We had struck as one, but you posed alone
scratching for wooers, moving on your own
We named our unborn, having built a home
An abode solely of steel, glass and chrome
Who builds a home and for a lifetime plans,
with a woman who does refuse her hands?
Fate struck me moneyless to clear my eyes
I saw one yet nailed downwardly crosswise
I was the one. Who could have believed all?
You did not stand me but fashioned my fall
To have dug my pit and feigned innocence,
you did shear me in deed of my sixth sense
I sought your face while I missed my wallet
If you feigned love, amounts left my pocket
Think that my ageing parent laid her health,
so that you would be with me, all by stealth
She peddled things to get me some money
You kept all and more. Were taps so runny?
If mom’s and my head abandoned your heft
you well did in deed not deem them so deft
My good mother, the marrow for my bones;
she dared all, just to build up my hormones
My eyes and mind were tried by some devil
I could not strive through but, weakly, revel
In your chasteness, the acts you titled fuss
you observed with your boys but denied us
You relished to hear but truths but well lied
You extolled me as meek but fed your pride
Your yes was but yes and your no sheer no
because your heart was a rock in the snow
I did most days bear guilts, could you ever?
All bent knees were mine, as you felt clever
The venom you fed me became some soup
Breaking out of us could not feign a swoop
I incurred more ache when you feigned pity
and shook at your plots sticking thus gritty
When I had smelt myself trapped in a maze
time past time failed me to defeat my craze
You were almost done with your fell intents
when you could pay no heed to my laments
I saw no hope as your heart failed to shake
I held my heart soft and faint for more ache
I watched us turn to walkway souls, quickly
All my labour forthwith crushed, thus sickly
I had marked the last of my love times past
but had yet to vanquish the spells you cast
Of the most foul-souled, the most silent are
If I was ruined, who would breed a memoir?
You chose Janus’ month to cast me to rout
but my God of doorways could lead me out
Could ceasing one’s life taste like a refuge?
The practice yet finds me as then and huge
I should gulp some drinks and submit inert
but something struck my dying deeply hurt
I saw my mother’s book of days half closed
In front of my heart, her face in tears posed
The dead parts of me made out of my form;
they stuck in wait for my breath to conform
Nothing else held the rest of me but mom’s
Her rheum of distress fell like barrel bombs
Had my landlord’s daughter not run to help,
who anywhere would take heed of my yelp?
Chika had but sought to succour my plight;
the whole of me, her nearness would ignite
I did predict that she would seize your seat;
having smelt your place, she called it a feat
Once again, my soul did meet one so loose
but she found me in your filth thus profuse
She would fall for a soul with no such work
and not when she had known many a quirk
She thought that I should not let you away;
I knew that she would see better, someday
She copied your looks and copied your gait
Not for her use; she is mirthful, but straight
How much more anguish did I have to feel?
Which suicide chart had I more to conceal?
For your foulness, what other grants had I?
Was there something else I did have to try?
Except you feigned them expecting returns
you had no care, but cast my balm to burns
I thought to myself that I had less strength,
if I could keep a sweetheart at arm’s length
I wondered what could render me thus foul
and shorn of wits, but now at myself scowl
I considered how tides would flow and ebb
Drowned in ill hopes, I was caught in a web
How you robbed me of my faith and reason
but filled your boys’ would rout any treason
It shook me while your voice within lay stiff
You must have killed her to enjoy your skiff
If I outlive these days, meet some soul else,
but like her less, shall we say our farewells?
While I pray that the well esteemed forgives
I fear that my scared soul beyond now lives
The leopard now mourns his meeting a linx
I could not see myself pull through this jinx
May all who follow closely mark your mode
and how you wrecked my spirits and abode
All that learn from the price that I have paid
shall meet the oncoming days, better made
I have loved. All who come after may watch
He that may wear love, my case is a swatch
Should I grow feeble and slump at this crux
all must deny more blood such state of flux
If anything slits my soul, some shame does
And through the space, I see but a dim fuzz
I howl in deed to think on these things ours
but placate my spent spirit, bearing flowers
How you could hurt and soothe like Cassio,
Shakespeare knew not the name as Cameo
Of your foul likes, our era should be cleared
to keep many from the collapse well feared
Your followers would with you be punished,
if they kept not from your path all-banished
Reap your will, get fat and gain all the world
From vivid eyes, bear your intent well furled
Win your admired and let his heart no crack
but then, may our days at no time turn back
May your breed never again know my heart,
whilst I bunch up my fragments flung apart.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)