Three Poems by Uche Ogbuji
Dancing Legs at the Color Line Ready, Set, Dodge on the Chance the Starter Pistol Might Be Loaded
We knee-up to bang in proclaimed world games
Racing through head-gale death cruise Caribbean
Through night rider nation racing the head-gale
Through dog and fire hose jet racing the head-gale.
We prove our will, our children snatch for franchise
They dash the poor track, box the bars in [on] jail.
Here's where freedom sweeps on rolling muscle,
Gasping lactic all-star way down John Henry's rail.
Out here bare feet weave reclaimed minefields, praying
No further than promise of hand-me-down cleats;
Here ten meter pools are deep the blue-sky tale.
No wired-up suiting for shooters and fencers
Hangs on display in great halls by prize golf clubs
On rigging salvaged from niceties of sail.
Here's where freedom sweeps on rolling muscle,
Gasping lactic all-star way down John Henry's rail.
The world wicks ever browner fuel, burning
Brightly in this city of altars and forts.
Out there the slow one percent pen in their pale.
We ghetto backstroke hard against resource flow.
Johannesburg was taboo word till Bafana-man
Mandela docked the springbok's turned-up tail.
Here's where freedom sweeps on rolling muscle,
Gasping lactic all-star way down John Henry's rail.
Migrant Song
We are the dune Adam,
First mates in the caravan.
We are the moving men,
Two foot brace on the jamb.
We are the shifting crew,
Transoms clipping our shadows.
We are trade Argonauts,
Bidding up for wind-blast.
We are no Myrmidons
But all-conquering cyphers.
We are mad marabouts,
Sahel pollinators.
We are spirit guide strays,
Buffalo trail trackers.
We are jet-set frugal,
Back-pachyderm mahouts.
We are boat populace,
Death train-line tarzans.
We are make-aghast workers
Gipponiggerwogwetbackchink.
We are cajoling stones,
Creep of continental plate.
We are cuisine carriers,
Wandering stars of Michelin.
We are a typhoid myria
Parents to zero-day strain.
We are Battuta babies,
Prodigal heirs to wonder.
We are your green lawn's mushrooms
Black and brown, eyed in red.
Now we tough-coat it—fungal—
Reclaimers of the meat in spurned work,
Genius of the mat in any healthy forest,
Genus of spores pressed underfoot on landing.
Wherever that landing may be we piggyback papi,
Hold out hurt hands to draw mama from the sea,
Your realm's make-pearls, soon to be sterling,
We hurl ourselves through your clapped lip
To take what you think is your world for oyster.
Get Your Money, Money!
"Now there is nothing new about poverty. It’s been with us for years and centuries. What is new at this point though, is that we now have the resources, we now have the skills, we now have the techniques to get rid of poverty. And the question is whether our nation has the will…"—MLK
It's up to me and you
But there lies the wedge
Between means and use.
There must be dreams
There must be dreams deduced
Into realistic schemes.
What does it mean, set free?
Regale me of that legend herd,
Mules worked forty on forty.
No one knows the trouble
The flung coin digs on landing;
There's not always change from struggle.
Kofi nodded thanks to Sherman
And bedded okro seed between
Beats of sweet corn and turnip.
Steady hand the speed of his drawl
Raising a jot each day beside
Itch-fast twitch of his fishing pole.
Each night they sang him from the marsh,
Because ghosts sue business too,
The slave's whole life tallied for discharge.
He is Kofi but no names
From Ghana in the bible nor
On dollar bills, so he is James.
One day some whip of Wilberforce
Accosts Kofi out on town rounds
To urge him: here's a noble cause—
Take up spades with that reviled crop
And join a cotton grower's guild
For presto! Hoist your own bootstrap.
So Kofi who just plucked whip thread
From his back should learn a crop
That needs the school in global trade?
No matter. Soon the white rider
Reading white-inked law on white sheet
Put Kofi's holdings to the lighter.
Chuslum, casino teller
Ponders a plaque he once read:
"Clan of Smith, Idaho settler"
Under wing of his weyekin.
It was a handsome mountain home;
The lady could have made a scene
When he stumbled to her door,
Starved and sleepless; over tea
She advised bond trade to raise the poor.
What he most recalls is wondering
At the madness of staking down
Strips of mountainslope country.
After his return Uncle Yut
Urged him through AICF spend.
Not his own cash he counts barefoot.
What is a stolen land's greatest
Resource but the vainglory
Of descendant perpetrators?
Kofi's great granddaughter Meg,
Nods to Chuslum, joins her motley
At the felt table, mouthing smack.
Got jokes when we marks work market,
Each crooked treaty a setup—
What's the diff between theft and bargain?
Can you trade sick rims for bad credit?
I tell banks I know what's up—ain't
No niggard, I'm a negro! Get it?
A cop stop swings its own punch line,
The red drip marks estate box-out—
Nope! Stow your down payment, sunshine!
To her left Lee Mark is winning
The banter not about correct;
Takes two, the stereo type of winking.
Innuendo makes for internments
And exclusion acts; they share the pain,
Meg chuckles: all chink, no change!
It's the million man tink-tink-tink
And women kicking shot of the sink
That's tilted old Hamilton mint.
The Man's last reserve? Venture cap?
So here comes Bangalore Boomer
To whip-crack billions with his bootstrap.
If all you have is bunker fuel
That will do for your lamps
To show your spoon to the gruel.
The dirty burn of bling power
Is all there is lamp-wise
For brown shades thrown, pinned to the floor.
Inconvenient truth. Though Vietnam
Put torch to the draft, even King's
Crossed Jordan couldn't defuse the bomb
Of the poor's young sold out to wars
Ginned up by princeling politicians
For red pottage of a college course.
It's up to me and you, money
But there's that wedge between means
And use, spoiled beans and lewd honey.
There must be dreams, and dreams reduced
To schemes among our cohort unseen
Before such dreams can green in truth.
That's what it means, set free;
It's all in means till we rig
Our bomb on the economy.
Uche Ogbuji, more properly Úchèńnà Ogbújí, was born in Calabar, Nigeria. He lived in Egypt, England and elsewhere before settling in the US near Boulder. An engineer by training and entrepreneur by trade, he fell in love with poetry and spoken word at university in Nsukka and now performs regularly in Colorado and beyond. His poetry chapbook, Ndewo, Colorado (Aldrich Press), is a Colorado Book Award Winner, and a Westword Award Winner (“Best Environmental Poetry”). His forthcoming book, Ńchéfù Road is winner of the Christopher Smart Prize in the UK. Work published worldwide, and featured in the Best New African Poets anthology, fuses Igbo culture, European classicism, American Mountain West setting, and Hip-Hop, often exploring afrofuturist themes. @uogbuji on twitter.