'A triangle on the mount of mercury
is certainly an auspicious sign'

Thumping percussion of a native beat
in my head, a gyrating hindsight

The evening streams down pouring
streaks of grey and mangled orange

Walking past a bicycle chained to railings
front wheel mangled into a rough square

Squaring a circle, huh? How did that happen?
two thumps and a sonant beat...and again...

I see you sipping latte by Nero.
Mangled, stream out of your eyes
many coloured triangles
rushing, wheeling at me.

Vibrant beat, gyrating bottoms.
The mercury is soaring. Ululations.

The night-witch has charmed the city in her cloak.
Stars, oh, I see mangled triangles out of her hat.

The Seventh Floor
By Otuogbodor, Okeibunor

He just saw her downstairs seated
She saw him pass by but noticed him
He went up to the seventh floor
She breathes the air of freshness
Freshness from home, freshness to school
His mounts of the stairs mounts hope
She sat solitary savouring that air of hope
The university,the hope shaper
The dream comber, ivory tower,
A monumental hope to mount.
One hour past, from that height
He looked down he saw her
She looked up she saw him
Eyes  locked in seconds
Hearts lost to hope
He held his heart lost
She looks her hope not sure
He dare called she dare answered?
Clutching her bags she mounts the stairs
The university stairs to mount in years to come
He stood there on trembling feet waiting
She climbs on and up,on n up
Up the height their  hope clingy
He is up there she mounts up to him
At the seventh floor to  meet  him
As she makes it up all eyes on her trail;
Noticeably slim model of freshness
Admirably everyone to behold
She climbed up to him
Before him she stood
His call she dare answered.
Transfixed! He took her bag
Willingly  she gave him
The floor quakes! The feelings of not just two
The feelings of an age quakes
The hope of many quakes too
The seventh floor quakes!
The waiting room quakes
She enters with of all but him!
He Leads  her to a chair
Her tired Legs grateful.
A sachet of water he gave her
Her thirsty soul appreciative.
He loved her immediately!
She sips the water genuinely thirsty
And She saw the eyes!
His eyes  beholding her.
Her nerve quakes the water pours
Pouring on her chest her white shirt dampen
The chest thumping reveals her Breast
A beautifully moulded set of young Breast
Breast shaped by only the Almighty!
Breast only can be possessed by a Goddess.
Adorable set of gem like diamond points at him.
He looks on. All in the room looks on.
He breathes hard like he just climbed the stairs.
In shock he brought  out a brownish white handkerchief
Dampen  the  chest staining the wet area
She felt his hand. He touched her soul.
The seventh floor quakes the more
Quaking the very foundation of hearts in the room.
He looked her in the eyes , kissed her forehead
She quakes inside of her
His very soul sincerely stared
Her very innocence quakes.
He mutters this lines;
    ‘Be mine sweet Angel’
Her soul heard the lines from a distance
Transporting further the very quake
Whose after shock will last for years.
He was in his third year fed for himself
She was in her first year in daddy’s shadow.
Tortious was the climb
Broadlynarrow was the road
Choice was  a task
Trust…! a life bet
Two hearts-dice juggled
The quake was seconds still
Single mindedness was the decision
The mindful was n is the after shock.
Her friends bemoaned her
His friends fearful cheered him
Her mother cautiously careful
His mother hands off n up in prayer
Her father tearing n threatening.
Thundering his nerve to the brims
She remained obstinate n focused
He remained supportive n sacrificial
Sacrifices of an umbrella in the rain
She appreciated him. He protected her.
He provided the hanger for her  grip
She stretched her arms like the pumpkin tongue grips
The vow of  protections as a service  after graduation.
A service not to a fatherland but for truth
Truth of two souls in opposite divide.
The protection from unspoken facts
Facts only known to one n whispered to the other.
The bet on Trust not Love?
And four year stroll  past
For time crept in to birth a newness.
A new birth n a new day of destiny berthed
As fortune of two set sail
And another two stuck on the hyacinth.
She mounts the podium
He watched from afar in tears of joy
She was the best in the pac
He made it happened
Her mother esthetic n jubilant
Egoistic  father puffy with pride
The pac applauds success n true work
She worked for it. He saw to it.
A synergy of trust for result seem unattainable
Impossibility made possible
Success he desired but archived in her.
She is rewarded for excellence
He is rewarded for steadfastness
Her mother is rewarded for unspoken fear from shame
His mother is rewarded for daily travails in prayer
Her father is rewarded for money spent on trivialities.
The reward of one pervades a whole lot
Avalanches of rewards open n secrets.
UnOpen secret between father n daughter
Shared secret between him n her.
She collects her award admits ululations inside of her
He feels n knows her pain admits the atmosphere
Her mother is carried away like the gele she is wearing
Her father boastful in an atmospheric  blindness for his money's efforts
Her hearts inner workings is detached from the day's euphoria
He standing at the distance transmutes her experiences
Experiences of a father who knew only his desires
Desires bought n explored from every available mode.
The university was a safe heaven for her
He provided the guard and guidance she lacked at home
Her encounter of him n the journey to the seventh floor
Shaped her to today n assured her of tomorrow
True  love stands like strong pilar  
He longed n gave love he wanted n  never had
She believe n trust for him save the climb
She is a daughter her father only knew  in the dark
He is a friend who is a true father n never had one.
Drives n ponderings of the hearts
The podium is for gallery elicit joyousness
Joyous celebrations into the night.
The night comes with  it's sounds
Darkness comes with it's secretes
Tides n storms in dark hearts alleyway
Lighten flashes schemes it's way in the dark tides of time
The heart thunders in ‘tick ****’ motion of time
Tale  trail to time
Quest of two in timescape alley
Time: a healer n a judge?
Time n space bridged reward
A collusion of hatred n love rewarded.
The reward of time is unquantifiable  
And timeless is its weight.
The weight of love prompted a search
A search for his father
A search for her true father
A father who constantly seek n desires  daughter’s nakedness?
A mother whose silence at the face of such shame?
Truth bound by time  rebounds in space
Complicit of two self lying marriage between man n woman
Rebounds in  two young honest lovers
The happiness of youthful individual being sacrificed?
The weight of a DNA is  love for him and her
And hate for father n mother .
Her mother was shameless n still is
His father was irresponsible n still is.
The early light dispels darkness
Darkness of the heart under a fretsaw
Patterning  in style  actions of the dark
Every secret did have open reward
She was n is her mother from a man she refused her knowing
He was his father Who absconded 33 years ago
Hiding in the arms of another woman bewitched?
Likes begets  likes in a mate of two deluded snakes
Living in the dark holes of there night
Orchestrating symphonies of lies n lies
And now likes dogs leak their  poisonous venom.
At dawn light gains its penetrations
Penetrating the very marrow of truth….!
As Morning dawns with it's dews
A climb to the seventh floor was the dew.
And light melts away this dew
Shining in the life of two young fellows
Who loved from their souls.

Night, the oldest of mysteries
settles, spreading like hunger.
A pall of mist
shrouding over the world.

Siren sounds and firefighters,
drunken brawls, and
receding beats.

Eyes of wonder asleep,
emerging out of
the network of shadows
growing creeper-like.

Stray nuggets of light
also reach the eyes shut
in meditation.

Furtive shadows of passion,
elsewhere. Muffled joys;
Shades of bottle-grey.

Cricket-song. Ululations
faint.  Raspy owl-calls,
intermittent.

In the deep, secret
rites of initiation.

Somewhere in the far
highlands
the stars and
the broken moon peep in.

Old song on a highway truck.
Little lamps adorning the hills,
courtyards in the distance.

Ululations break the night –

Primal lows meandering over marsh:
The voices of creatures curious and lost,
Alien to these muddy shores.

Spectral under first-light obscurity,
The estuary’s fog swathes those beasts,
Slick hulks rippling the dark water
With trailing wakes of brackish grime.

Bank side, a lonely smudge stands sentinel,
Helpless to heed the low mourning song
Trembling across the fen.

These wearisome keens are muted in murk

And all sound is swallowed
By the rallying dawn.

We sat, legs spread,
on the glass-cracked hatch-backed beat-up cruiser
with fingers numb from cold beer bottles,

and billows of smoke swelled in the air
like nuclear mushroom clouds
but quiet.

And the voice of the crowd
echoed back to us in vacant ululations
from very far away

and what did the score matter anyway
when the sun valiantly battled the autumn breeze
and won?

And my hair whipped back in fire-tongues
and we held up our arms to embrace the sun
and we were champions.

Wind whips, whistling in the seat belt,
Crooning along to the emotional ululations
As I succumb to the emphatically teenager-like emotions,
Grand in their extremity,
Both realizing and fully embracing the cliché-ness
And dramatization of every quip, gesture, glance.
My mood soars irrationally with the voraciousness of my tires,
Devouring every granule of cement at velocities upwards
Of 30 miles per hour.
Jason Mraz and I make an excellent duet,
As I’m quite certain the disgruntled woman a lane over
At the stoplight thinks as well.
He sings of skies “getting rough”
And I allow my eyes to wander to our own ominous clouds,
Creeping from the east like panthers prowling in search of prey;
I appreciate their slate undertones and umber rumples,
The gold shining from behind and within, tinting their edges,
But I turn my attentions slowly, with a bittersweet notion,
To their fluffy brethren, friends of Magritte,
Iridescent and captivating as they weave among the rays.

There is an inch of sleight in this house – this cold chair,
a burst of cologne clogging a 20 minute stride. The stringent
air tonight blusters deeper than gashing sheens.

The little dryad of dew outside and the cadenza of frogs
after lambaste of rain. Whenever you sing, your voice
communes an immense pain, something unconscious of its
gravity, something that levitates back to momentary ululations

swelling in the grime of times and heady chances. A long stretch
of a day submerged in silence resembling a howl underwater.

There will be many sorrows and they will take form of doves,
assume the skin of the populace. They will come in a volume of
names pressing the linoleumed musk the way the body turns
maneuvering over the saltine, the mattress, juxtaposed to a lover,

a brusque aroma of coffee brushing away the calm demeanor
of the morning, dragging along the weight of its lassitude
towards the sprays of fern opening a dense ornate of forget,

you, in all places that pulse without recall – an obtuse
fish feeling its life in a surge of blue, overtime, finally knowing
    what it means *to sing and drone only words.

Sometimes we dig graves for ourselves
Then we cry wolf when they start swallowing us
Time and time again we go back there
Infact we don't even make any effort to stay away
We make merriment, ululations and joyful noises
We dance and celebrate by the graveside at all hours of the day
Then we cry wolf when it swallows us
Deliberate recklessness
The stench of death we ignore
The warning signs blaring
The signals loud and deafening
We eat, drink and make
Merry at the graveside
Without a care in the world
What consequences?

Daybreak: a sleeve of wind’s voice,
Gentle ululations, then a smear of gold

There’s a shuddering of sequined water
Reflecting ice-veined crags still frozen
In distress.

A living lens snaps the moment
All the way to its vanishing point.
Then, long, slow sepals, slippery
As syllables of a foreign language,
Transmute to a giant bloom,
A silk-red reflection falling upward,
Tumbling over pink-sheep clouds
Interrupting the stillness
Of this blue-grey universe.

Me and my brothers
We are raised tall and defiant
We are rallied and railed against
An apathetic world at which we spit
We spiel our ululations to the night sky
Our candles burn at both ends

We rise to get broken
Here comes ocean
Icarus wouldn't be a legend
If he hadn't aimed for heaven

Your festive ululations
fill my mind-halls
with bird chatter
bending from your
broken beak
in ten thousand melodies
hung up in the air

long that distant eve
when you bore the torch
flaming
into the horizon

every lonely hour,
weeps the sky
mourning your loss,

when the palms in the searing season
sway blown in your breath

our forlorn world:
anguished the ululations;

The hour when
the darkness lifts,
deep in the soul
when the moment comes,
rise rise,
secret power of the world,

knows not the demiurge -
Who lies curled in the cell and root
that rises up in the sprout,
long after the wildfires,
that the saw and axe cannot log
the sap of life,

scattered but not lost even in the
pits of the night, the light
that shines as the stars

now setting the eastern sky
on fire.

These things that we gather about
these fornicating scribbles of art
scimitars of sense and sound bubbling
rejections spelt like blood running out
ululations of spirit and other certainties
bleeding hopefully read and deeply felt
I'll take a coffee and a sandwich of meaning

yes yes you are right you are beautiful yes
this sound bathes your nerves and raws
those things that connect you to time's killers
seconds slaughtered here in honor of your fear
what about what about what about what they say
shame rules your day blame rules your way
something is running out something is running
forward about to run right out of my skin right
aside to your reading here with your judgmental
ear skinning my hearts work like small snacks
ick you say ick this isn't to my taste this isn't
my cup of tea i don't take it filled with blood
this was a day in my robe this was a day

with a finger in my ear a song in my art
i am pulled along bumbling grinning
awkward in the slip stream keeping me off
really
are you still there are you still curious
if this has meaning if this has beauty
if this has some understanding that will
ease the up-welling of annnngst and anger
or click the box of right and let you smile
just smile

Fifth commandment breached regularly
epidemic of gun violence in America
bullets fly, scream and tear into flesh
senseless rampant mass killings
rip across fabric of society
buzzfeeding, jump/kickstarting,
paradigm of mortality.

Since January first
two thousand and twenty three
countless innocent people lost lives
deliberately, yet randomly targeted
shot dead at point blank range
merely going about
their ordinary business.

No clear cut motive nor profile
delineates active shooter(s),
who could be either (or any) gender
and range in age
from grade school to septuagenarian.

The latest homicides woo,
and appease the grim reaper,
where gunman(men)/women slew
***** deeds done dirt cheap
many baker's dozen innocent people
unknowingly and unwittingly drew
(rather gurgled) their last breath
choking on splintered blood vessels
beckoning, issuing, and twittering minimal
horrific animal primal gasps and groans.

Adversarial criminal minds
finds yours truly to interject
reasonable parenthetical rhyme without reason,
thus I temporarily tack tangentially offtrack
with cogent concise contemplation
to extemporize, lyricize, and soliloquize
brutal nasty senselessness
perpetrated courtesy fearsome
half cocked pistol packing maniacs,
whereby evils unrelentingly replaying nightmare
(exceeding cruelty by magnitudes administered

courtesy rocky horror picture show)
of gruesome carnage broadcast across
social media platforms
of killing fields anew,
in the minds of those unfortunate souls
who bear witness to deadly crime,
where odd stark juxtaposition
elicit skeletal goldenrods yellowed stalks
adrip with morning mountain dew
encompassing fresh footprints,
where berserk humans

prowling in the tall grass
(them of naked ape infamous
zoological niche) lately trod
in search of human prey
welcomed unsuspecting killer(s) true
colors transformed into hideous monsters
predictably soothing savage beasts
undertakers grisly task patching
shredded bodies after homicidal maniac
fired bullet(s) setting corpse
recalibrating counting queue.

As month one of new year
(according to Chinese tradition
water rabbit constitutes animal de jure)
allows, enables, and provides
brisk business for crematoriums
or funeral parlors.

Whether native American citizen
or foreigner (perchance student) slain
survivors bereave and issue final adieu,
whether gentile nor Jew,
perhaps including
child named Caillou
instantaneously slain, who
knew
not what felled them
engrossed amidst social ballyhoo

ex post facto registering grievous hue
pallbearers accentuating somber view
eclipsing most recent prior massacres
similar to previous you
ululations reverberate yesterday's sorrows
without handy dandy blue's clue
lame motive explaining
cold blooded slaughter
vis a vis unsurprising discover re:
firearms Jane/ John Q.

Public kept stashed loaded, deployed...
guns up the kazoo
cocked, gauged, primed...
for unleaded opportunity
to unleash barrage
invariable generating hullabaloo
to curb ****** violence
trumpeting predictable brew
ha ha alloyed against National
Rifle Association almighty

elephant in the room courtesy hathi howdah  
supported lobbyist's motley crew
(think three ring circus)
versus increased uproar
protesters chorus nearly few
tile opposition pitted grand Poobah
despite alarming statistics shew
plus increasing fresh gravesites dug
amidst freshly mowed fescue
attesting to wanton shell shocked
headlines indiscriminate brew

tilly assaulting sensibilities
without rhyme nor reason
yet, yours truly doth boo
leave rampant hatred
directly linkedin to
former "FAKE" commander in chief,
(biden his time as patient hunter)
whose acrid, horrid, rabid vitriol
still darkly colors political hue
man gushing ****** fountainhead few

ming and appreciable frothing
lathers up right wing supremacists
greenlighting smoldering new
bile radicals hot headed
volatile mindset whereby
self anointed anarchistic Guru
possibly fuels global warming
evidenced by displaced Inuits
flooding courtesy melting igloo.

I often think in metaphors of war
Like Rwandan gun shots
And the unceasing ululations of our ancestors
We are sometimes mistaken for our actions
Like pacts of night-time comfort  
Made between black and white lovers
Or packs of rubbers and grief lost in a garden
We forgot that the fountain's hands had once been held
And gods had taught humans to dance on this patch of dirt
There was a time when your eyes looked so promising
That even I considered pondering momentarily
That something divine might exist in me
If only once more we could feel the stars speaking

Ilse told of many things:
The noises of the casbah,
ululations from the musky
throats of the wasted women.
Tent smells from a hundred
hookahs.
She had her destiny all wrong.  
It's the same old story.

Cold drinks, a hot town,
thwarted love.  
A kiss is still a kiss.

Bombs mix with the
night sounds.

Louie didn't call off the search.
The suspects lined up

The enemy blurred.

Ilse left.  
Her stillness is forever.
The gin is always cold,
the fedora is slanted
and for the moment
of the last Act:

A kiss goodbye.

Casablanca is in the night's
glare. I hold my glass.

I will always toast to love. .
ft
Goodbye is never
forever.

A kiss is still a kiss.
    
       As time goes by.


Caroline Shank