NEVER AGAIN
ALM No.84, January 2026
POETRY
THE LONG JOURNEY
Before the sun set on a blue sky
I flapped to hue arc of my star.
The twinkling lights of long forgotten norms.
And golden corals of its dome.
There, I gazed at the slapping tide
Whooshing at a palm tree side.
Honking mackerels,
Feast of eels.
I faced the coloured wooden cabin,
And dense sandy forest of Halmstad.
Of families, laying picnics
On woven mat steads.
Peregrine falcons
Creaking to their falconers.
Then, a clear fickle of Northern Lights.
I watched the wake boarding,
Water skiing and snow boarding.
Of fabulous skaters,
Gliding on woods with metal skates.
On their cuprous faces,
The golden coin flickers.
Life here is a full bloom geranium.
Blue bells and herbarium.
But blow to red balloon.
What a maroon bell tolls.
NEVER AGAIN
The green, warty, bitter gourd of war
Squeezed its bitter fluids
On the dune of a crying river.
Ninety-ninety two.
The Srebrenica crimson liquid
Bosnian and Serbs.
Purged the seas and rivers.
Howling vultures.
Squeaking hyenas.
Feeding on interns of shiny bellies.
On the ground shrapnel and torchlights
Razed the wretched earth.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Does it?
Never!
Well, love is all that matters.
Not barrels and bullets.
THE MIRACLE
The brown peat always grow yellow potatoes
Not the grains of wheat on toes.
By the early sunrise with my hoes
We dug and dug holes
And placed the crown above all seeds.
Come the pattering sound of rain,
The blinking of ball of fire at rage.
They grew tall like a Nephilim.
But this season,
The miracle of sorghums grew taller,
A miracle between an anther
And a stigma.
The author, Joseph Marcel, Ikhenoba is a Biochemist by profession and a passionate writer. He has published several poems, articles and stories which have been published in Amazon, Poetry South, Active Muse, Short story.net, Poem Hunters, Core Humanity Commons, Academia.edu, Writers Space Africa, Goodreads, Afri-Library and Kinsman Quarterly. Semi-finalist for Black Diaspora Award, shortlisted for Natives Award, and longlisted for Iridescence and Dr. Paul Kalanithi writing awards in 2024. He likes sports, writing and scientific researches.
