Uche Ogbuji VERSE-VIRTUAL 2016 September

September 2016

I was born in Calabar, Nigeria and lived, among other places, in Egypt and England before settling near Boulder, Colorado with my wife and four children. I'm a computer engineer by trade, but poetry is my passion. My chapbook, Ndewo, Colorado is a Colorado Book Award Winner. In my spare time I snowboard, coach and play soccer, and train in American Kenpo. I am also an editor at Kin Poetry Journal. A selection of my poems was included in the Best New African Poets 2015 anthology.

What Belief?

When hunger's licked my qualms I've worked
My share of repue franche;
Bouillabaisse and and flawns when luck
Supplied a run of dosh.

Barrollo bottles, tarts and eggs
Through industry or con;
The temple of the sated nap
From prophet quick Villon.

I've stripped the mystery from food
For light escape of thief;
What heroes championing what gods
Are left to my belief?

I've stroked it while it gently weeps,
Caressed each trembling string,
Cranked up to weapons grade at times
I undertake to sing.

And yet I disappoint, I rip,
I charm a wicked scar;
Hot venom as the scorpion bows
To cantor de Ronsard.

If poetry and song provide
The island with a reef,
What heroes championing what gods
Are left to my belief?

Doubting truth in unseen things
I seek the literal tree,
The prickly fruit, the leaves, the flowers
Some posit it to be.

Uproot the tree of vegetable love
And plant a swooning spray—
I'm well across the gospel of
Our prelate Chartier.

If love is nectar blossoming
But fades to autumn grief,
What heroes championing what gods
Are left to my belief?

First published in Lucid Rhythms

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