POETRY: TWO POEMS BY FRANK EZE

Read Time:1 Minute, 44 Second

…silence

evening hurries home
amidst sight of a sun smelted
into raindrops like molten gold
in an oil fuelled furnace.

uncertainty surrounds our home…

her sickening season
of sun showers drowns the year:
fishes without fins abetting
the rise and rise of rivers of ripples.

will this street madness ever be cured by sleep?

grace is that sweetness
in the sound of falling needles

or:

melodies in the chirp of birds caressing
a blue sky filtered free of
earth’s blinding breaths, her errs,
humour hungry tales of industrialization…

ah! peace has been pierced by blade and bomb…
her groans go green in the silence of nights,
soul-sundering
like the cry of a parturiated mother
at the cold cuddle of her stillborn
stabbing through night’s heart
as it filter through pores of winds;
waning, morphing whispers washed with mirth,
and drying fast as fats aflame at the clash
of the noses of dusk and dawn:

roars of men and machines.

…why did you leave home

i saw in the freezing eyes
of the coast guard a gathering i dreaded
as dusts rising to a storm’s call:

“why did you leave home
and on these waters dress yourself
a dessert for sharks?”

his eyes asked

and silence held me tight as my mother
at our parting, and the waters in blue
before me in endless dance to waves’ beats
made in suddenness a home of my sunken eyes
and took salty trips down my cheeks to my lips
creaking open, an old lock:

“darts”

i whispered

“see, i just want to breathe
but home is swarming with darts
of untold dashingness, you draw breath
and your heart becomes a dartboard”

About the Author

Frank Eze’s work has appeared in Praxis, Gnarled Oak, Antarctica Journal, Brittle Paper, Scarlet Leaf Review and many other journals of art. His poem ‘In the Feet of a Refugee’ was nominated for the Pushcart prize in 2017. He won the 2016 edition of the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize and is currently working on his debut poetry collections, Amaranthine and Season.