Rehashing
There’s so little we can do in the face of misfortune.
the wind blows; tree branches break & drop.
vegetable becomes sand. We —balloons trapped in a coal mine,
birds before storm with nothing to ark into—have
no say in the haggle for our head.
I’ve seen days come with their shade of doom,
when the ants flutter for escape lures the web;
seen moments prayer become thin airmere mutterings
& stroke in the belly of God’s coursing spittle.
We have so little under us —call it
a nature-fledged disability—that In
the eye of the sun,we’re thick mass
of darkness.the wind blows &
fruits fall from where they’ve known as home.
We are frugal hands, always open
We are beggars squealed forever
at heaven’s deaf gate.
Elisha to Elijah shortly before the coming of the Spirit Horse
I look at you bird
In the eye of a being that’s going,
and will remember you o words in the desert of my heart
As parting kiss.
Beside the shore, when you raised me o dying bone
I knew I would die again.
It’s a shame we were born to die. Or to be taken.
Nobody will talk about Lazarus’s death,
Of how the tomb will laugh him welcome back.
Hope keeps heartbreak at arm’s length
Resurrection is a sign of mortality.
you were meant to come and go,
O master of the road,
You were meant to go with the day.
But we’ll walk this path again. someday.
Priest and lover,
you leave a duty and a hole
A promise and a heavy staff.
You take memory of the stones,
Nights of cold and of us wrapped in blanket.
you take my parts as you go
my remains are behind you as a shadow.
Orjichukwu ChikamObi Golding currently studies English and Literary Studies at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. His works have been published or are forthcoming in Young African Writers Anthology, The Muse Journal, Pencillite, and others. He is currently the mate custodian of The Writers Community, a small literary family in UNN. He is also the associate editor (Poetry II) for The Muse No. 49. You can hit him up on Twitter @Chikamobi.