Okeke Onyedika
The Secret Diary of a Man in Exile
For a friend who desires missing
Boundaries have displaced us.
& diplomacy constantly robs us: I stand by the edge of the universe,
brief & abandoned , to lend the memories the world
took away from us a new room to breathe. Because not even death
is ordinary.
In another room, a man cries out for the
misfortune that has befallen his homeland. His brown skin,
stained by the cheap paints of the prison wall
is a sad proof of a miserable past. Of unpromising future.
I sit on his bare chest—a tripwire, to write tributes to those
who misunderstood our kiss for farewell.
How do I –a boy of yesterday, tell what secret thunder
hid in the strength of the rain? I crave for a home erected
with these scattered gravels that sky a father’s grave;
so when the night creatures feed my room with elegy, when bombs and their
mournful screams approach my doorstep with pictures on my wall
posing with unfamiliar style & every echo in the radio
reminding me of what god has been awakened:
I will lay my body quietly under the soil & sing the dust to sleep.
Boundaries have displaced us.
& diplomacy constantly robs us: I stand by the edge of the universe,
brief & abandoned , to lend the memories the world
took away from us a new room to breathe. Because not even death
is ordinary.
In another room, a man cries out for the
misfortune that has befallen his homeland. His brown skin,
stained by the cheap paints of the prison wall
is a sad proof of a miserable past. Of unpromising future.
I sit on his bare chest—a tripwire, to write tributes to those
who misunderstood our kiss for farewell.
How do I –a boy of yesterday, tell what secret thunder
hid in the strength of the rain? I crave for a home erected
with these scattered gravels that sky a father’s grave;
so when the night creatures feed my room with elegy, when bombs and their
mournful screams approach my doorstep with pictures on my wall
posing with unfamiliar style & every echo in the radio
reminding me of what god has been awakened:
I will lay my body quietly under the soil & sing the dust to sleep.
Biography
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Okeke Onyedika writes from Ojoto, a small town in Nigeria. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Brittle Paper, The Blue Nib, Rockvale Review, Deluge Journal, African Writer, Praxis Mag, Tuck, 1870 & others. Currently, he is a final year student of Sociology/Anthropology in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.
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