I AM A POET FIRST

THEN AN AFRICAN

Alexander K Opicho

(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

 

From America I have gone home to Africa

I jumped the Atlantic Ocean in one single African hop and skip

Then I landed to Senegal at a point of no return

Where the slaves could not return home once stepped there

Me I have stepped there from a long journey traversing the

World in search of dystopia that mirror man and his folly

Wondrous dystopia that mirror woman and her vices

I passed the point of no return into Senegal, Nocturnes

Which we call in English parlance crepuscular voyages

I met Leopold Sedar Senghor singing nocturnes

He warned me from temerarious reading of Marxism

I said thank you to him for his concern

I asked him of where I could get Marriama Ba

And her pipe sucking Brother Sembene Ousmane

He declined to answer me; he said he is not a brother’s keeper

I got flummoxed so much as in my heart

I terribly wanted to meet Marriama Ba

For she had promised to chant a scarlet song for me

A song which I would cherish its attack

On the cacotopia of an African women in Islam,

And also Sembene Ousmane

I wanted also to smoke his pipe; as I yearn for nicotinic utopia

As we could heartily talk the extreme happiness

Of unionized railway workers in bits of wood

That makes the torso of gods in Xala, Cedo

As the African hunter from the Babukusu Clan of bawambwa

In the land of Senegal could struggle to kill a mangy dog for us.

 

Any way; gods forgive the poet Sedar Senghor

I crossed in to Nigeria to the city of Lagos

I saw a tall man with white hair and white beards,

I was told Alfred Nobel Gave him an award

For keeping his beards and hairs white,

I was told he was a Nigerian god of Yoruba poetry

He kept on singing from street to street that;

A good name is better tyranny of snobbish taste

The man died, season of anomie, you must be forth by dawn !

I feared to talk to him for he violently looked,

But instead I confined myself to my thespic girlfriend

From Anambra state in northwestern Nigeria

She was a graduate student of University of Nsukka

Her name is Oge Ogoye, she is beautiful and sexy

Charming and warm; beauteous individuality

Her beauty campaigns successfully to the palace of men

Without an orator in the bandwagon; O! Sweet Ogoye!

She took me to Port Harcourt the capital city of Biafra

When it was a country; a communist state,

I met Christopher Ogkibo and Chinua Achebe

Both carrying the machines guns

Fighting a secessionist war of Biafra

That wanted to give the socialist tribe of Igbos

A full independent state alongside federal republic of Nigeria

Christopher Ogkibo gave me the gun

 That I help him to fight the tribal war

I told him no, I am a poet first then an African

 And my tribe comes last

I can not take the gun

To fight a tribal war; tribal cleansing? No way!

Achebe got annoyed with me

In a feat of jealousy ire

 He pulled out two books of poetry from his hat;

Be aware soul brother and Girls at a war

He recited to us the poems from each book

The poems that echoed Igbo messages of dystopia

I and Oge Ogoye in an askance

We looked and mused.

 

I kissed Ogoye and told her bye bye!

I began running to Kenya for the evening had fallen

And from the hills of Biafra I could see my mother’s kitchen

My mother coming in and going out of it

The smoke coming out through the ruffian thatches

Sign of my mother cooking the seasoned hoof of a cow

And sorghum ugali cured by cassava,

I ran faster and faster passing by Uganda

Lest my elder brother may finish Ugali for me

I suddenly pumped in to two men

Running opposite my direction

They were also running to their homes in Uganda

Taban Lo Liyong and Okot p’Bitek

Taban wielding his book of poetry;

Another Nigger Dead

While Okot was running with Song of Lawino

In his left hand

They were running away from the University

The University of Nairobi; Chris Wanjala was chasing them

He was wielding a Maasai truncheon in his hand

With an aim of hitting Taban Reneket Lo Liyong

Because him Taban and Okot p’ Bitek

Had refused to stand on the points of literature

But instead they were eating a lot of Ugali

At university of Nairobi, denying Wanjala

An opportunity to get satisfied, he was starving

Wanjala was swearing to himself as he chased them

That he must chase them up to Uganda

In the land where they were born

So that he can get intellectual leeway

To breed his poetic utopia as he nurses tribal cacotopia

To achieve east African thespic utopia

In the literary desert.

 

Thank you for your audience!