I drank a cup of mushroom coffee
With a friend, now long forgotten
We watched the walls change colour
From red to orange and to yellow
We laughed at the spider with too many eyes

I thought I saw my friend, fixing his van
But in reality, he had wandered upstairs
So I watched the TV and then it spoke
The voice seemed to be talking just to me
And then mister sandman fluttered nearby

My friend decided he wanted to take a walk
I agreed and I knew it was time to go home
And where I was amazed at technicoloured butterflies
My friend jumped away in alarm from the giant frogs
And I never drank a cup of mushroom coffee again

My cousin Diamond Johnson just received this email for posting a poem about her boyfriend Josh who isn't on this site.

*Silent screams  10 hours ago
Hello, so I'm not sure if you have a serious mental problem
or if you're just flat out *******.
but, Josh has never loved any other girl besides me and he will never love another, and the same goes for me as well.
We have had a mutual love affair for a year, and I don't appreciate you writing creepy poems about my boyfriend and making up fake "love" stories
If you pursue or try to have any further contact with him, so much as a message or a text or anything.
the police will be notified and I will pay every last cent I have to have them track you down and find you, and that is a promise
Now get a life, and stop trying to interfere in mine.

Blackbirds chuckling in the arbor vita;
Vultures circling high
Against the blue and Sunday sky;
House sparrows scolding in the neighbors' trees;
A robin chorister brings Dickinson to mind,
And I don't mind.

Sunday morning's breakfast's done,
And we have time
To smile a little...
Bashful mornings
Just a little now
Even after thirty years.

Tomorrow storms will come;
Next week a tree will fall;
Shadows must make their surly steps
Even as sun slides down...
It's just the way this old world runs.

But this morning,
This Sunday morning,
Bright and fine,
I rest from all my worrying,
Rest in the love I have with you,
Amazed again to have,
Amazed to hold,
A girl like you.

There was a time when
all times looked the same
passing through seamless
dawn of ageless drain
We sought, fought and
bought our freedom for an ageless price
At a pace that dares not to take away our
endangered race
But what have brought
this craze of dismembering
the maze we felt less safe in.

The incorruptible men who
once calmed the storm
are now cohorts of a demeaning plot.
Their role in a war of stakes
is a gusty grab for the frontline
as they tussle for the ratio of cake
a game they so delight in.
Exhausted in a place which
was once a timeless haven
as their dignity is torn in shreds.
All sorts of glory are lost
still no one feels this is a shared shame.

If only we knew the journey would abort halfway
but the signs were like flare from the start
as sides became drawn in clear spat.
Two hundred and more of our “prized cowries”
got snatched from our land and our leaders
cannot guard our streets because they say
the times are bad and the enemies are back.
Everything get soured and some of us are left behind
as limbs are severed high into the firmament of red horror
We go hash with our tag
twitting and chanting that they restore our girls
bring back our girls-we pray
bring back our girls- we chant
Bemused, the soldiers assure to search our lands
While Boko bomb us out from our very own sands
Tangled, mangled, limbs and bodies get buried in our time.


© Chijioke Izundu P