(IN MEMORIAM OF A DEAD POET)
BY EKANPOU ENEWARIDIDEKE
A great poet is dead!
Seiyei the famous poet, the unbeatable master of imagistic cliche is dead!
A poet dies in all who claims mastership
without awakening sounds from his readers
Alas, to the memory of this acclaimed
master poet, this dead master poet,
I sail today.
Away on the lonely island this master poet toils like Robinson Crusoe;
A great poet he is because he always poeticises like bulbuls using fixed words as bondsmen
To his hallowed world of poetry.
In long languid lines the poet tells disjointed tales
clothed with repeated images.
A poet who announces arrival in any poetic space with mermaid, habiliments, patriots, twilight, shadows,
delta, nightmare and eagle
A poet in whose long languid lines
He detects riotous and rebellious lines
of fellow poets on the line.
When mermaid and shadows dance in a poem,
know that the fatherless master father poet is in town!
Poetry flows in the veins of Ijaw people like a river.
Upon the waters of the delta creeks JP Clark canoed and told this story.
To the fatherless master father poet, JP Clark erred like the palm wine tapper who missed his steps on the
Rungs of the akoun ladder up the raffia palm tree.
Behind long languid lines, serpentine, sailing into senseless self-adulation like lizard, the poet perpetuates his lies against that great JP Clark and other poets.
Only this master poet knows lines gnarled like mangrove on the river bank.
Beyond his lizard garment usurped, the poet carries dark things on his back like a spider that carries nets everywhere.
Only from the wild wild, untamed animals
emerge to savage people;
And from wild waters wild marine creatures emerge to harm fishermen.
The wild lines of the master poet must be rooted in wild forest
and wild waters vomiting killer arrows without provocation.
Many times I have been banned and ‘Adam-eved’.
Banned and ‘Adam-eved’ from the poet’s
poetry republic for my critique on his poetry republic.
And by this time tomorrow I shall be banned from the poet’s poetry republic for this poem composed as a counter-product from the poet’s wild forest and wild waters.
Before me bans become ‘Balaamed’ because no poet has right to ban people from the poetry republic.
For deftly delivered punches on his poems
The master poet is always on the prowl to prohibit people from his poetry republic like a mother-hen that has just given birth to chicklings.
The fatherless master father poet is a masterful pilferer…
A weary poet wearied by new images.
The master poet steals wasted images from his past poems because he is wearied by new images.
A master stealer and user of wasted images he is,
The master father poet whose poetry republic becomes threatened when mermaids, shadows and nightmare desert the poetry republic.
The poet is the ‘akpainfoko’ who sings his own praises,
The poet is the ‘akpainfoko’ who lies against his fellow poets.
When a poet sews for himself the apparel of a living star, mermaid, shark and crocodile as his own befitting status,
the poet is the lizard of self-coronation.
When the poet sees himself as more on the poetic channel than others, the poet dies ignobly, unmourned.
The true stories of a poet’s worth are told by readers, not the poet himself.
May the master poet be asked this disturbing question?
Dear master user of used images imprisoned in the same old clothes of yesterday,
would the poet’s poetry republic crumble if mermaid, patriot, eagle and shadows did not appear as your imagistic enablers?
I know of no greater poet than this master poet,
A poet who chooses double identities on the island told in open lines for his daily bread
A poet poised to poison to death any critic who finds fault in his poems
A poet who has banned critics from buying, reading and critically massaging his poems
A poet who chooses critics to praise his books without any critical grimace cast at the works
A poet who uses poetry to instigate people into rebellion
But who is too scared to be part of the rebellion
A fearful poet too scared to face those he throws dirt
at from hidden corners behind long languid lines
That reveal his deadly mission
A poet whose latest dance on his poetry republic is a catalogue
of bile, abuse, belligerence and envy piled up against
fellow poets not reared in the wild of wild thoughts
A poet that proudly deploys dead images always repeated in his poems.
For whom does the poet write who claims nobody can mangle his poetic nuts as squirrel would the palm nut?
Of what use is the kernel when the palm nut cannot be cracked open?
Of what use is the cloth if the knot in the cloth cannot be untied or loosened?
Can the master poet respond to all these questions?
For a master poet who clothes himself with repetitions,
let us encore teaching repetitions for him here.
The master poet journeys everywhere as the crowned master
of imagistic cliche carried over from his past poems.
Mermaid and shadows are markers of imagistic cliche because they frequent his poems with identical clothes
worn in 1997, now frayed and worn out
like my grandmother’s ‘Deibede’ loincloth
In the beginning was poetry, and poetry the poet’s creation from the cradle of creation.
From the cradle the poet had no poetry father unto whom he leant as a mustard seed from the cradle of creation.
A fatherless poet he is;
Fatherless poet he is because he sees
in himself the master of poetry.
A globe-trotter poet who journeys everywhere without the priceless guide of a father,
And so on fellow poets he always lets loose excrement to soil them.
Poetic flightlessness is no barnacle upon Ijaw-born poets.
JP Clark knew this and announced this before retirement from earth.
Only from the wild, wild poets who wild fellow poets attribute poetic flightlessness to fellow poets.
A poetry devoid of soothing sail seamlessly submissive to memorisation and recitation every second …
That is the fatherless master father poet
in the wild who gaudily coats himself
as the only poetic mermaid, hipo and shark in the wild.
Petulantly, poetry pounds the poet’s paunch and head…
Far from immortal lines his lines line up and fly because the lines lack the submissive soothing sail.
The fatherless master father poet’s lines drown readers like overweight clams that drown a diver who went oystering in the riverbed.
Enewaridideke writes from Akparemogbene, Delta State
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