Spontaneous Creativity: The unedited Poetic Stylings of Miz, Nathaniel, Opumie & Eye Kay.

More often than not, social media is used as a platform to engage the senses of users to achieve varied goals, some of which are often entertainment without an intention to impulsive creativity.  I am often this way. So yesterday, I posted a photo on my Whatsapp status with an idea to call for a poetry tag-team to create a poem (

a poetry duet, more like it!) for fun. 

The only rule was this; write lines from a theme suggestive of the image attached. Three people volunteered to spare a minute.  Soonest Iheanyi Nathaniel, EC Opumie, and Eye Kay N chose themes ranging from love, loneliness, and pain.  The results where genius and beautiful, and unedited!                                                                      (1)  A limbic duet By Miz Conquer Soonest I. Nathaniel Miz In the dead of night I lay awake in the musk of a guilt thrusted on me by body counts, of uneven numbers, and hopes buried in limbo. SIN Fibonnaci holds the secret, but how do I say it's you I crave, how do I pray to the God of prime numbers? So I cling to the square roots of memories, love is an equation, there is an ecstasy yet to be proved. Miz You are my ecstasy,  my Eve moment of choice between the apple and snake. You are my knowledge and my woe. My already had and my known. SIN Between two positions, love, please let me relight the candles and circle the grave where we have buried lust with chalk. Let us eat again of that fruit of knowledge and woe, let us raise a temple at the spot of refuge where we hid, our maker will not ask why we have come naked. I come again to your garden alone, defying limits, outsmarting Newton; between promise and fact, pleases etch again your name as a sacred word at the tip of my tongue. (2)  Journey to the sea of rebirth and light A poem by Ec Opumie, Miz Conquer Miz I think of you, lover. Keeper of my lost days and maybe- things. I lay in a sea of cotton softness mimicking the sight and smell of you. Ec 2. Every night I pray our simple love last forever. Miz 3. Forever, for that is what loving you feels like. You are my now and eternity. My present and future and infinity Ec 4. Thoughts of you surround me. You are the beating of my heart. The love you give defines me. My life is no longer dark. Miz 5. Ah! Come to me my love. Let us lay in this sea of white that is us. This purity that joins our rebirth and light Ec 6. Your cuteness knows no bounds, your beauty has no limit, you are the only woman in the world, to which I will commit.  I look at you and gasp in awe, wondering how you are mine and I am yours, you take my breath away my sweetheart, for you, I will walk the line. Ec l love the way you nag and glare. It makes me know how much you care I love the way you walk, just like a man. Not really sexy but it sure is fun. I love you just the way you are. No pretention even from afar. I love you because you love me too Just like the way I do. (3)   The Sea of Loneliness A poem by Miz Conquer Eye Kay N. Miz I lay here in a sea of Cotton creases, like waves through skin, palms forming motions , reaching for a nothing that once was everything Eye kay This bed is much too big for one, and the spaces between my fingers are right where yours used to fit. Miz I lay here in want, a million thoughts foraging for memory of you. Eye Kay They say the worst thing in hell is the knowledge that you missed heaven, so the worst part of being alone is missing you Miz But who needs a heaven when anywhere with you bests the best of heavens and hells my love? My furnace is when you are not here with me. My furnace is when are with me as well Eye Kay A furnace, I burn, consuming what is present, fuelled by what is absent, and the ache I feel is begging for your sweet release Miz Sweet release. In your arms I find the best things. In you, my great love, is  the beauty of an ocean breaking on rocks. Of waterfalls, and of waters between thighs. Eye Kay Like waves, we surge, we urge, we pooled and ebbed, slowed and steadied, and only when the waves break on the rocks do my eyes open and I find. Myself. Alone.

Of sacrifices and Love

6/8/2014 

I had Just watched this show on Oprah's channel about two women. 

The first was married to a man, had two kids and realized much later that she was a lesbian. She met the second woman after she came out and they developed a relationship but could not marry because gay marriage was illegal where they where, so the second woman underwent a double mastectomy, did a sex change and they got married in 2012(?).

I am not cynical about love and sacrifices, far from it, but I am thinking now about how love does not work out even when a party fulfills some condition or another to make a relationship work.

I am thinking about Bashir now.

We met through some very unfriendly circumstance during my second day at the NYSC camp (camp Bende) in Abia state. It started with us threatening to kill each other. 

See, we where registering for camp and that particular exercise had to do with filling the information of our hometowns, addresses and our next of kin. It was a huge line, I had stood in line for hours, and, just before it got to my turn, Bash cut through the cue, right in front of me. He came with his 'boys' too.
I didn't let him.
He told me I would 'hear from him soon', that I will be sorry.
I told him I was an Ijaw girl, that we do not fear threats like that.
He pushed me. I hit him, he fell from my punch too.

He succeeded at registering after I did though. being an open register, I was certain he wrote down my hometown and next of kin information so I waited to write his details down and told him I had his Momma's address too. It was so romantic.

The NYSC (National Youth Service Corp) camp is a para military training that young graduates in Nigeria undergo to equip them with some defense and life skills to help them 'serve the nation', so when our altercation broke out, the Nigerian military men who where the 'owners of the camp' separated and punished us for an hour after he (Bash) was done writing. Frog jumps, press ups. I did good. I had to, else he would see me as some fragile girl he could bully.

The days after our fight, news had gone around a bit. We were assigned to the same platoon (9). Bash was stalking me too. Once, during a para military party in camp, I had to be protected by a female army official from Bash and his boys too. Aronkus, remember? 

It became easier later though. He began to like me. I was not willing to cede a relationship but told him he would have to show that he really liked me now by doing something he was afraid of. He didn't know how to swim. Was terrified of villages in the Niger Delta because of Militant activities then, so I playfully responded one day that I may date him if he traveled to my village (a three hour boat ride by water to a little village surrounded by water as well.) . Months after we left camp and I had even returned to Law school, my cousin called from the village (Eniwari). Bash had, without even asking me for directions, traveled to my village, almost drowned because he had jumped inside the Silver creek to swim with kids,and had introduced himself as my friend to my cousin Corbon who housed him and called me until he left my village. When Bash called, I told him he was crazy but I would still not date him. I didn't loath him. I was just really unavailable by then.

Sometimes, sacrifices or even fulfilling a condition present to have a relationship with another person does not guarantee a successful relationship. My analogy with the lesbian is not on the same level of sacrificing, but, sometimes, we should just do the things that are best for us because having a life/career change for another may end up badly for you when the relationship ends (or never even starts, like Bash's disappointment). This woman probably had the surgeries because she really wanted to do it for herself but I am wandering; wont it just be the worst thing if her (wife? husband?) decides to leave her shortly afterwards?