Flix Laband

Monday 8 February 2016

Rock of Dakota

You stumbled into Nigeria
A stone,
For a season
In a jungle where
Rocks like you
Take root
And flourish or flounder

With your eyes wide aware
You fell
Headfirst into family and belonging:
Ndiowu and Ngwa orbiting around you
Special stone of bonds
Formed for eternity
In the eyes of God

You have outdone yourself
Paving way for other little rocks
To follow,
Not in your footsteps of
Impromptu tantrums and minute-long madness,
But in your quest to conquer
Motherland and Fatherland alike.

Friday 5 February 2016

Negative Space

Your reign begins with
A crown of grief
In a throne of thunder!
That rips
Hurts
Burns
Flesh
Like sulphur,
In a void
Where death exists
Supreme.
And your head tosses
Uneasy;
A king in your rights
Yet unkingly in regard
Because the red dust
Dictates obligations in the shade,
And wild Angels
With scarred wings
Sing of your trauma:
              Of lost days in the tropics
              Of last days in the arctic
              Of overrated organza fabrics
              And dancing jewels
              That must adorn you
              Involuntarily

Thursday 28 January 2016

The Incest

Fleeting was your touch
Yet it sparked magic
Like another's wand would
Bound by blood
Before we were
Before we lived
This blood now forbids
Us be entwined
So I am
Strait-necked
Staring into your eyes
Dark;
They sing my song
And ask me why
I covet the things
I cannot have.

Flower Song

An ambush in amber is
Heather in bloom!
Sky flowers and
Plain green rockets
Tossed and drowned in seas
Of dressing,
To make it
Edible
Lovable
For fickle you.
Calla lilies to sing your dirge:
Blood orchids to fool you
A Rosebush for your soul;
Thorny for your vanity
And Peonies for the epoch
Of your initiation into
"La Pauvrété"

Friday 11 December 2015

For Norma

I thank you
For teaching me to love from a distance
The Postcards from Italy still carry the scent of fresh Olives; a
Token from the waiter, whose eye you caught
All I can ever be to you, is the darkness that you know:
On our trip to the river
I remember how
With my head bent and my face in the water
At the riverbank
Held there by your strong hand
You taught me how to save a fish from drowning
I remember the times we had
Floating in Limbo, weightless.
Every moment was synchronised bliss! 
Here Lies a changed man, Norma
For rain will only be water as long as Man says so.

Thursday 10 December 2015

Doe of the Morning too.

I'm here waiting for you,
I'm waiting in my best dress
By the altar of your doom
With my heart in duress
And a bouquet of calla lilies, beheaded.
But you
You're busy being dead
Cold and stiff in the heavy gloom.

Tuesday 8 December 2015

BEHOLD, GOD

Go! stand outside in the air
Just before the rains  
And consder the dark remains  
From dusk to dusk
With the sun no longer
Giving its light      
                
That will be the age to come
After God with his sickle
Has reaped a harvest of his people
With their fruits and deeds
In thirty sixty hundred fold
And the chaff left behind

Ready to burn, to breathe sulphur
A warning today,
A reality tomorrow
Behold God now while he tarries,
Otherwise behold his wrath
When it is unleashed.