Adelaide Literary Magazine - 9 years, 70 issues, and over 2800 published poems, short stories, and essays

DEAR LIFE

ALM No.72, January 2025

POETRY

Joseph Ikhenoba

12/23/20243 min read

DEAR LIFE

There’s always something on the jaded skies
That thumped the wavy spiral of my balloons
And that is death.
When we shut our lenses behind curtains
And our breath stiffened, our patches rigid
Our lips are stiff, and we can’t smell or touch
That which makes us feel like a living flower.
Ah! The dark oceans cleared when my tower kissed the soil.
He was my breath, always spitting white morsels
Into the potholes of my acidic well.
But he had been suffering from the sharp claws of tumours.
His bark has grown lean, crystal balls sunken,
A chubby self grown into a flabby tassel.
I was always at his four feet boxes
Cuddling the hairy strands of his palms.
On August 25th, 1998, however, the blue skies
Turned into a mirage of dark dust
When he muttered and breathe his last air.
A misty sweat drained through my spines
Flashes of thunderbolts ravaged my circles
Is this how bats and spiders lay on their graves
Fed upon by ravaging vultures?
I guess so.
As I stood at the mound of his dune,
My balloons burst into photons of dust
Knowing that the black sickled Hades has poached,
The encrusted diamonds of my soul.

REFLECTIONS

I saw the watcher bird last in 1993
At 7:00 pm at Carrington Bay ward.
You know he was a gleeful tower
With ox bow lashes and ocean crystal balls.
He was the purest sparrow I gleamed at.
He always opened his doors and dropped coins.
For the Lazarus at Carrington streets.
Though his beauty had gone with the wind,
Two seasons ago, in the shadows of tumours.
How he adored her like the heavenly seraphim
At the golden temple of God in seventh heavens?
But time heals, and he has moved on.
Until the aquifer beneath his rib hollow
Broke down and thumped crimson liquids
Around his weeds and wires.
A frost adrenaline rush sojourned my veins
After glaring at his chiseled claws.
Then this milky thread skies
His bud whispered he has gone with the wind.
On gawking at a sycamore
A barn owl and black vulture hooted and howled
Maybe to feed on his carrion?
I sauntered a forest path home
My crown bowed to the ground
Wondering at the death of the black widow
Knowing our breath is as short as flames.

DEATH AT A SHORE

There’s nothing more reflective
Other than staring at a rippling river,
When rain clouds gather at a shore,
And the fingerlings gasping for light.
You know the ball of fire has gone dim
That which reflects the inner bubbles
Of the lakes and shimmering oceans.
When the light goes dim,
Or a hurricane fluxed across the surface
The waves bury them.
Oh! I remembered I stood at a river’s shore
In 2003, to feel the cosiness of the palm trees
And the soft palms of the golden dune.
Momentarily, the blue azure turned into a monster
Dark and windy, like a possessed virgin.
I scampered under a wooden frame
Shuddering and staring at how the tidal waves
Dug the pit for the hummingbirds.
The rustling tower of the coast as well
Were uprooted and lay dead.
Is this the end of an opera?
My circles became widened, jaws dropped.
Honestly, my balloons thumped.
Then the brewing storm slept
But predators feed on the budding fingerlings.
By vultures and ducks.
I will never gleam at them again
Ah! What an irony and depth of reflection?

THE ST. PATRICK’S BELL

I heard the chiming bells at St. Patrick’s blocks
Clanging from afar, in a burning ball of summer
I thought it was the calling of the marchers at Heaven’s gate
To another round of bowing to their great, Breathe Maker.
But clanging and clanging, the metals toiled
And the harmonies of saintly calls
Soon reverberated into inharmonious symphonies,
Like a bell ringer, ringing and chiming for a requiem.
Then, as I knotted the cords, my two feet boxes
Shimmered with drops of sweat across my spines.
I saw a vulture on the cracked roof of the Sistine
Gawking to take entrails to its chicks.
Apparently, the blue skies turned grey
And the flanking velvet trees around a wooden corpse
With drops of crimson liquid and groans
Thunderbolt flashed across my crystal balls
That a rose has fallen.
On closer stare among the rubbles
It was the catechist, the purple cassock dove
Who never missed a sermon?
But he prayed for me that morning
As I trudge to the fountain of scrolls,
Only for the beleaguering, weeping canopies
To whisper, he slumped and puffed.
I flooded my feathered coats with oceans
Wondering how the claws of death
Can grapple the butterflies we love in a twinkle.

Ikhenoba, Joseph, is a passionate biochemist and writer. His essays, poems, and stories have appeared in Writer Space Africa, Humanities Commons, Poetry South, Shortstory.net, Amazon, Poetry Soup, Eleventh hour review, Academia, Kinsman Quarterly. He was long listed for Iridescence Awards and shortlisted for Natives Awards in USA.