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Raphael Uzor  May 2014
Igbotic!
Raphael Uzor May 2014
She said she was Ibo
And spoke with a fake accent
Wanna’s and gonna’s
Littered her speech
Not a trace of Igbo, in her exotic accent.

She smirked boldly
As I answered my phone
Greeting my friend natively
In a lavish of deep expressions
So deep, only Ndi Igbo can share.

With a ****** passport
She spoke better than most Britons
She was born in her village
Yet all she knows is “bia”
She thinks she’s cool, I think she’s lost!

The whole point of wooing her
An “mgbe-eke” from the east
Was so we could regularly, take a break
From all formalities and English
And bask in mother tongues…

I might as well be yoked
With a foreign damsel
For the whole purpose of looking within
Is defeated if your tongue is white
And we can only commune in “oyibo”

Call me tribalistic
Call me uncivilized
Call me superficial if you will
But what you call vernacular
The same is my root. I am proudly Igbo!


© Raphael Uzor
Its Igbo NOT Ibo.
Bia means come (in Igbo)
Ndi Igbo means Igbo people
Mgbe-eke means village girl (literally)
Oyibo means English (can also mean white, as in white person)
Andrew Rueter  Sep 2020
Coins
Andrew Rueter Sep 2020
There's a giant disparity
No economic parity
Or intellectual clarity
When they're scaring me
So I'll collapse invariably
Under coins they're barreling

They nickel and dime me
So I'm pinching for pennies
No peace I'm finding
Working at Wendy's
For the money lending
Capitalism bending
Sharks that are trending

We coin those with stacks of cash
As successes
Even if their heart's black as ash
It impresses

Money doesn't grow on trees
But it seems to float in the breeze
The direction these people please
Or happen to sneeze

I scrape
And claw
But those apes
Are frauds
Playing God
No sin absolved
Without their call

Because I don't put up with their torture
I haven't made a dime this quarter
Because of dollar hoarders
Ruling through law and order
Creating tribalistic borders

Nobody's paying my bailout
I'm too small to fail now
My life's become stale, how?
The **** of a male cow
I tear apart my only couch
Looking for a coin pouch
To get me out
Of this drought

I cut my fingers
And bruise my knuckles
My fatigue lingers
Until I buckle
My stock tumbles
As I scream uncle

We allocate all our resources to a few
While the rest of society turns into a zoo
Where people die to pay their dues
And are given a pocket of coins to use
Which ignites their fuse
But their obfuscated views
Are swayed by the news
Teaching trivial truths

Change starts jingling in my pocket
When I get on a revolutionary rocket
So they buy a gun and **** it
To preemptively block it
They use marketing to stop it
Like it's just another stock tip

They have the guns
They have the money
I have to run
If they start hunting
Because those that say something
Are the edges they're blunting
With coins they're dumping
To protect one thing:
The profit margin
Like social Darwins
They say the hard win
With unholy marred sin
By collecting the coins of their foes
To help economic hostility grow
Until coins are all we know
Twisted arcane depth
Is the proclamation
They claim for thoughts inept
Tribalistic view for a blind man
No proud ******* ever wept

Congruency is shelved for late
Consistent shapes become a mascot
For those who can not adapt to a new taste

**** for brains will always swing the cranes
The wrecking crews' got no skin in the game
So leave power to the insane
Do not blame me
I'm too ignorant to feel the shame

They know you are guilty but pay no mind
They see how the deck gets stacked
so they stay inside
The verdict is a glass
The illusion is the wine  
Justice is a joke
And you're the punchline
So you just stay pacified
You're just too poor to afford a good alibi
Beyond Love, there is nothing.
So, let us look at that which lies before.

There is a skier on the Rockies.
She is fraught with fear and worry.
Her muscles are fatigued. Below her feet, the oxygen of a stranger runs low.

She is trying.

Sweltering summer heat beats down one billion souls.
Of them, in a small corner of Churu, a man of little faith sits beside a dog.
She is wild and angry. Thirst grates her tongue.

He is giving.

Chicago is alive with nightly clamour.
Friends crawl between bars, *** and slumber on their minds.
The alleyways are familiar. The screaming is not.

They are fighting.

Speak to me of hatred, and all the evils committed in the name of 'love'.
Profess to me your ignorance.
I will gift unto thee a thousand stories as above.

All of them beautiful.

For we are more than diatribe and division or tribalistic cannibalism:
we are firelight intentions, freedom's way and righteous truth:
we are as ever:

All too human.
Kinda bleh, but it's finished.

— The End —