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Nairaland Forum / Entertainment / Literature / Poems For Review / Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems (12177 Views)
Short poems on love lost and love found / Unpoetic Poems / How Poems Rise Into Tomorrow (2) (3) (4)
Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by TruthNigeria(m): 7:11pm On May 02, 2017 |
Winning Poems Romeo Oriogun lives and writes Nigeria. His poems, which mostly deal with what it means to live as a queer man in Nigeria, have been featured in Brittle Paper, African Writer, Expound, Praxis, and others. He is the author of Burnt Men, an electronic chapbook published by Praxis Magazine Online. Invisible Man And the voice was a lost bird embedded in a boy like a word stranded between pages. He said flee from the heat wrecking your body and you ran to a place where water running over pebbles is a whisper of wildness, where lost boys are birds hiding their heads under wings as they touch their wetness in the dark and whisper hallelujah. The radio said, a father shot his son for loving another man. Marvin Gaye lives in the heart of a black drag queen and to be a song of pebbles and water is to run into a city of light and surrender your throat to the song of a bird. On the streets of Lagos, a boy searches for himself in mirrors, he opens his heart and hears the voice of his father breaking his bones into a prince collecting burnt teeth lying as warning on holy grounds. This is how we kill love; hunting it in the dark when it is soft like a newborn chick, breaking its bones till it becomes a boy filled with dead men. Rainfall teaches the ground how to breed: a boy learns about the wetness of his thighs on a cold night. Poster of boys diving into water holds him in a trance. A horse hears the coming of speed rising in his blood; a horse responds to the call of wild hills as water tickles the sky. Wet dreams: a boy hears the whisper of another boy deep in his bones and wonders about the origin of stars, his body is a lamp learning how to give light in a place where a boy opens his mouth from the door of a tomb; where a boy takes his first breath and resurrects into life; where a boy learns how to make honey out of a skin. This is how to live: a resurrected boy hides in dark bars and stare at muscles of hard men. He is called Joe, he is called John, he is called The Wind and that is how to be unseen. And this is real: a man hides his voice in a throat before bursting out into songs. Verbs are boys learning how to kiss, like you turning your body into a blue sea; turning your lips into pictures of love. Like you opening your body into a little island; opening your skin into a beautiful world. Verbs are boys learning how to love in a place where death lives in water. One step at a time. A boy learns how to dance, his voice is a stream learning the music of the ocean. He opens his mouth and paints blue skies with the magic of flying. He opens his hands and flowers plait the air with music. One step at a time. A man kisses another man and hears bullets hitting his windows. A man kisses another man and hears a mob running on his skin. A man lies on the edge of bliss and hears the rape of boots on doors, still we rise with the sun and plant seeds of love in dark places; still we love and hide and wait for rapture inside a boy’s body as a voice flirts with the birds in his throat, while a man burns on a street in Lagos for singing too loud. Elegy for a Burnt Friend Because the night is silent, the trees will search for a voice, the wind will fill a body with sorrowful songs. Forgive me, I drank an old wine as a mob marked your body. There is nowhere to say enough, nowhere to breathe in the open sea without salt stinging your throat; nowhere to wash our body in water and become free. There was mockery on the spot where your hand touched the blood on your shirt, the voice said, you are fallen ashes, a mirror of something unnatural, the dark side of God. This was the point my mouth should have poured water over your burning skin. Forgive me, there was a pipe lying so close to another man; there was a fire burning nearby and I ran into a dark street, where I called your name in silence and said live, knowing people like us will always be hunted. I remember the night you licked the salt on my palm and said do not be afraid to live in your skin. Maybe you knew, you knew one day your screams will stretch my throat and my silence will break out of a darkness hard as a wall. I’m trying hard not to cry, I’m saying the earth ate the moon last night but someone will mock your last prayers and my skin will burst into a river. How to Survive the Fire The first rule of survival is to Run, I tell you this to understand how memories are floods drowning a lonely man, how the sight of a man burning in a park stays with you; his voice becoming yours at night. There’s no boy hiding in my throat, I tell you the truth, my mouth is clean but on my tongue are cities where boys are beaten to death. Say Lagos; say Onitsha; say Lafia; say cities where the only freedom for a man who loves another man is to leave. I tell you this to understand my silence, to understand why I crawled into my voice, I do not want to die. There is no where safe in this city of mine and songs of freedom are just what they are. You have to see nails drawing blood from a swollen head before you understand why God turned his face from Christ and whispered, run. Coming Out The woman on the bar stool knows your body is a journey into songs, the door into a moth flirting with fire, which means there’s a pretty boy living under your skin. I do not wish to come to you but I can’t help it and you look drunk like a man seeking a way out of himself or a way into the beginning of his voice. The city knows how to kill a man like you and on the face of some men I can see you burning. Tonight you take your first step into music, saying your body knows how to beat a path through hell and back, saying angels do not die in song you are daring like a throat accepting the fire of tequila. Across you in a dark booth, I want to scream silently, do not dance, do not give in to the wild beat flowing through your heart. But you are dancing like a boy drowning inside his blood and all my body can do is pray your soul into a bird’s wings and hope the wind call you home. Do you know the first thing about fire? Have you seen a mouth calling God only to find a body rising in smoke? The city does not want to hear your song flowing through a bird, they don’t want you dancing inside a rainbow. Come into the dark before a man greets your body with violence, come into dark, let me sing the night through your body like a man learning how to worship God in a strange land. The Theory of Hatred You can never tell the exact moment it crept in softly like a cat, the hate that turns a name to a rotten body. Maybe it began the day you ran over a deer, maybe it began the day you called a man a cockroach and watched as his body fell into the rotten carcass lying on the roadside. When we were little, men could die for other men, I do not know when it became okay to die alone, I mean to turn into a silent street as a man is changed into a burning name; I mean the song booming in your ears as the gun goes off; I mean your arms folded as men are sent to the sky as smoke and yes, I’m young and sad in a town where love means fire. My body is filled with the ashes of dead men and I seek for water, for my heart to be calm as a blue sky. Maybe water is a way into love; maybe it’s a way into forgiveness; maybe that’s how we learn to sleep with the wound in our hearts but my body collecting rain will never forget the taste of smoke rising from a burning skin or the taste of fear lying under my tongue as a man is killed with the name of his lover half-spoken within his lips. Denial In the dark, my lover with a halo offered his skin to me and said eat. At night everything becomes a dream; becomes real; becomes a dish. The skin of a lover is a fish baked with olives, in my mouth he multiplies into flavors that make love to the tongue. When I was little my playmates washed their fears into my soul and giggled. There was no shame lying under my shirt as I carried them into the eye of the sun. I know tomorrow you will hide from me as I walk across your shadow. Do not try to explain, I know there’s always a beach waiting for the souls of slain lovers but no one walks into death willingly. It is a fact that everyone has eaten a part of God before tasting the fall of man. When the sun is high there’s a thousand men waiting to mock my loneliness with pictures of death. Tell me, what passes your lips as a mob lynches my body into a wounded song. I want to remember you as my body falls out of your mouth but my song reminds me of how you betrayed me thrice in a room filled with angry men. There’s a part of me willing to forgive but unlike Christ I can’t find my voice. Remembrance I won’t tell the world to slow down. Instead, I will say come into my house, sit. Drink milk. While I plait its hair with the scars in my fingers. There’s blood under my nails and in cities faraway a mother checks the sky for fire falling from heaven before singing a lullaby. I run and return, it’s still the same picture, still the same story spinning in the waters of Asaba. The year always running back to 1967, when men clad in white were killed like sacrificial doves while their mouths chanted one Nigeria. Nothing prepares one for death in your own home; nothing prepares one for the sound dying in your throat as a mother covers her young daughter’s eyes while a soldier rapes her sister. Years later I will watch a man look into my eyes without regret as he recounts the moment the land covered her ears as bullets reduced sons to silence. Mother said some men don’t feel the pain of a dog passing away, I try to tell her that’s what they were called as they marched them to death, she said don’t remember those things, everyone has moved on, they’ve forgotten the sound of men crying into the heart of God. I built a wall around my ears but their screams kept tearing it down, so I’ve ran to take their names, the names of all who died in the hands of a man that resembled a friend. I list them and it’s so long, I call them, no one answers. I walk into a house and it is empty; the door unhinged, cobwebs writing poems on bare walls, a mother bending her wrinkled face over an old paper as she searches for the name of her child. I turn from her and God falls. The Origin of Butterflies Give a man a piano and his fingers will find music but when grief lives in walls what music will a mouth produce? My hands are beginning to find space deep in my room – say a butterfly once lived in your throat, that’s to say you once held the winds under your skin, that’s to say you once rode bicycles on dusty roads, that’s to say you once saw pregnant women and thought of flowers hiding behind laughter. On the blank page of your life what will be the next sentence? Write death, sadness, a little boy singing about silence in a room made dark by his mother’s shadow. Last night I saw a butterfly break darkness with the colours of her wings, she rose gently to the moon with songs within her body. Give a man words and he will build a castle full of darkness and light. There is a place where butterflies live – mother said happiness can come from sadness. On the next page of my life I wrote only one word: Happiness. I watched it grew from my book and broke the night into fragments of stars. Someone once said, when the sun is dead we take light in small sips. I do not know what it means, I only saw stars falling as butterflies. One Love after Bob Marley and John L. Stannizi It was the day the world sang ” So Many Things to Say,” the day the hills gave me a way into a religion of love. My father had come into my dream, into that place where love and hate are illusions playing in water, where a man wonders about the song threatening to break his throat, both of us walked down the beach like two homeless men chasing the sun, talking about what the dead try to tell the living when they are tired of remembering the sadness they left when they became one with the earth, when they’ve learned everything about the living, even the tears that lives in a city under my bones, even the sea, the one that tempts a man into leaving, the one that kept crashing on rotten boats, where I thought forgiveness was more than a word, more than an escape of air, more than my father letting his toes sink through sand but the song came from afar, cutting my thoughts into a rasta rising before the sun, rising into the green stone lying on my neck. When I raised my head to say the words of blood, air, and freedom, he was no longer there, there was only the song rising from the beach as if water remembered Tuff Gong and knew one man could lead millions into love, as if the world knew forgiveness is freedom for both bodies rising from the Funde. After A Visit To The Museum In primary school my teacher wrote on a board as black as him: A white man discovered River Niger. Forget the fact that Mungo Park was sick and his bones were brittle like old papers when he saw the origin of water. Forget the fact that our fathers showed him the way into leaves before they were written out of history. Forget the fact that our mothers pulled our breakfast from the heart of that river. Forget the fact that the river was a goddess and from time immemorial our throat has been filled with her songs. Here is what the book didn’t say: After drinking tea and rising up from a room made cold by 10 black women fanning her naked skin, Flora rose up and named us Nigeria, the name she screamed as her body fell over the cliff. It is true, sex has always led to the altering of history, ask Adam, ask Cleopatra, ask my father. I came through a soil brown like the wrinkled skin of my grandmother. The truth is we were here before the beginning of time. The truth is everything a white man touches he names. I was told my ancestors rode the wind till it bore their name. Someday I will accept this truth and write an elegy to places that are lost names walking in blindness. 20 Likes 5 Shares
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Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by TruthNigeria(m): 7:15pm On May 02, 2017 |
Lalasticlala, this should be in front page |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by fearlessV: 8:07pm On May 02, 2017 |
Too long, dis one tire me |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by Dexter93: 8:07pm On May 02, 2017 |
The poem is too long. Biko who has strength to read all this? Read and come and explain to me 1 Like |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by Iceman2017(m): 8:08pm On May 02, 2017 |
Extremely long |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by sisisioge: 8:08pm On May 02, 2017 |
Wetin! E too long jor |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by seuncyber(m): 8:08pm On May 02, 2017 |
Awesome but Is long kilode |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by wintersnow(m): 8:08pm On May 02, 2017 |
This guy is fcking talented... I can't even recite "jack and Jill" 1 Like |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by Iceman2017(m): 8:08pm On May 02, 2017 |
Extremely long |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by wickyyolo: 8:10pm On May 02, 2017 |
So deep mehn... make i take igbo first, then come back to read this epistle 3 Likes |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by jstbeinhonest(m): 8:11pm On May 02, 2017 |
Op just combined 3+poems and posted it together. |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by CACAWA(m): 8:11pm On May 02, 2017 |
lol |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by SIRmanjar(m): 8:13pm On May 02, 2017 |
Nawaooo! Naso I go visit my cousins one day,dem say make I carry car make we go hear poem(spoken words). I slip away from dem go relax for one nearby bar. 2 Likes |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by LaRochelle(f): 8:16pm On May 02, 2017 |
I sent the link of this thread to one of my friends, a poem writer, performer and lover. She was now thanking me as if I gave her the winning numbers for lottery. PS: I didn't read it. I'm yet to appreciate the deepness of poems. 2 Likes |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by Nobody: 8:17pm On May 02, 2017 |
Too long jor! |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by ebby9z(m): 8:17pm On May 02, 2017 |
That's not just a single poem. OP u misled the readers. The poet employs diction of conflict tho. He weaves his words around contradictions with a fine dose of metaphor, brewed with strong imagery. 1 Like |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by siie: 8:19pm On May 02, 2017 |
SIRmanjar:washerey.. Omo aye 3 Likes
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Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by superior1: 8:20pm On May 02, 2017 |
Ok |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by MDCCCXXXII: 8:22pm On May 02, 2017 |
Free verse! Always free verse! If Nairaland mods and seun aren't bias, they would have seen pure talent in Nairaland's Poem for Review section. Any poet who fail to evolve and always write in free verse is just a poet, nothing, nothing less! 5 Likes |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by SIRmanjar(m): 8:22pm On May 02, 2017 |
siie:Hahahahahaha! |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by MDCCCXXXII: 8:23pm On May 02, 2017 |
ebby9z:So what's new? Is he the first to do such? |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by Nobody: 8:23pm On May 02, 2017 |
the poem na about gay o 4 Likes |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by ebby9z(m): 8:26pm On May 02, 2017 |
MDCCCXXXII: He's not. There are few things new under the son. We are just reinventing the wheel |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by MDCCCXXXII: 8:28pm On May 02, 2017 |
ebby9z:"Reinventing the wheel?" I see. Have you visited the Poem for Review section? |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by JoeBlocks(m): 8:30pm On May 02, 2017 |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by Ekejoestar(m): 8:30pm On May 02, 2017 |
gay 1 Like |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by ayamAgenius: 8:32pm On May 02, 2017 |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by ebby9z(m): 8:36pm On May 02, 2017 |
MDCCCXXXII:No sir. |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by MDCCCXXXII: 8:38pm On May 02, 2017 |
ebby9z:Please do and see for yourself. |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by Moneytize: 8:39pm On May 02, 2017 |
When the night comes like a thief, And there is no stars left in the sky, Sorrow your breath for the moment bekons, As finally the rain sprout from the earth like a mushroom hat, That is when it became clear the poo has finally hit the fan. I try small na. 2 Likes |
Re: Read Romeo Origun's Winning Poems by dalhjana: 8:40pm On May 02, 2017 |
wickyyolo:lolz. you no well |
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