Poetry: Christmas in Biafra by Chinua Achebe

Cover page 

This sunken-eyed moment wobbling
down the rocky steepness on broken
bones slowly fearfully to hideous
concourse of gathering sorrows in the valley
will yet become in another year a lost

Christmas irretrievable in the heights
its exploding

Poetry: 'ABIKU' by Wole Soyinka.

Abiku is a Yoruba word that can be translated as "predestined to death". It is from (abi) "that which possesses" and (iku) "death".

In vain your bangles cast
Charmed circles at my feet;
I am Abiku, calling for the first
And the repeated time.


Must I weep for goats and cowries
For palm oil and the sprinkled ash?
Yams do not sprout in amulets
To earth Abiku's limbs.


So when the snail is burnt in his shell
Whet the heated fragments, brand me
Deeply on the breast

Poetry: "The Casualties" by John Pepper Clark

Image | Casualties

THE CASUALTIES.
to Chinua Achebe.

The casualties are not only those who are dead.
They are well out of it.
The casualties are not only those who are wounded,
Though they await burial by installment.
The casualties are not only those who have lost
Persons or property, hard as it is
To grope for a touch that some
May not know is not there.
The casualties are

Wesco: A piece to my "Alma Mater".

Western College
Western College!
A college of gratitude,
A school of good aptitude
Were students strives to attain a goal.
A goal of wisdom
A wisdom that leads to freedom
Here is Western College!
The kingdom of guruship.

This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital.

It was sent by a medical doctor -
Make sure to read what is in the closing statement
AFTER THE POEM.

SLOW DANCE
Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain slapping on the ground?