Nathaniel Soonest Iheanyi

Look Me in the Eyes

Look me in the eyes
and see captured on its films,
a story of true-lies;
a tale of wounded dreams
and of broken ties.

Look me deep in the eyes
and I bet you would realise,
the residues of cremated aspirations,
the ashes of incinerated visions.

Look me deep within the eyes
and I bet you’ll notice the drought of many-a-years,
Years without a single drop from the skies;
Decades of streaming tears,
Where, the hopes of our thirsty souls, now lies.

Look me deep within the eyes
and see mirrored therein,
tattooed scars
of a dark past;
Blackened stars,
the bleak future of an outcast.

Tomorrow Died Yesterday

Tomorrow died yesterday,
And thus our future in the sepulcher of history does lie.
Yesterday we ate
Today’s yams,
Thus the steep price of fate
We now must dearly pay.
We live our today without plans,
Thus, for tomorrow uncertainty leads the way.
Empty lays our barns,
All that is left is but rot and decay.
Tomorrow died yesterday,
And all our hopes, dreams and aspirations
Are but chimeras; which forever within the ossuary of our past
does coldly lie.

I am
{…Creed Of An African Child…}
I am the sore tale
Of the prematurely ruptured hymen,
The bitter, aftermath taste of stale,
Of a lustfully decanted semen;
I am an African child.

I am the last echoed note
Of a sweet, faded song,
The empty can’s music you loathe,
The blank message the rattling gong;
I am the African child.

I am the skeleton of a dead dream,
the eclipsed flux of the moon’s beam.
I am the cadaver of addle visions,
The remains of rotten aspirations;
I am the African child.
I am the special gift of the bowels of fate,
The best offering from penury’s greatest estate.
I am the fume of smoking factory chimneys,
The chime of the poor beggar’s pennies;
I am an African child.

I am the content in the belly of the ashtray,
the lesson of the corpse after decay.
I am the uncultivated alluvial core,
A virgin maid that’s known no man ever before;
I am an African child.

I am the spot of the leopard,
a sheep straying without shepherd.
I am a candle light hidden under a bushel,
An innovation trapped in ignorance’s cell;
Yea! I am the African child.

Nathaniel Soonest is a student of Math and Computer Science at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri.