Civil Math solve, approximate answers to the nearest trillion: if it takes a family & the society nothing to smoke classroom labour, how many teachers & civic education lessons will it take to convince pupils that religion is not the S.I unit for humanity? who will teachers be? emissaries from heaven? syllabi do not compare with ideologies (professors rig elections here) my six-year-old pupil once thanked God that “there are no Muslims in this class” & it became a debate. i versus nine pupils in my fantasies, crescent & crucifix children hold hands. everyone is happy hallelujah is not petrol; the name of Allah is not matches ideologies are not cured with exams & wallcharts & kindergarten rhymes. ideologies are like hormones. like all things that expand & contract with your diaphragm as you breath. like all things cured by exorcism in a certain nation if the national anthem on tongues means no more than a ceremonial song, calculate to the nearest century, probability that there will be unity & faith, peace & progress. Noise, A Therapy For Despair been years since i last went fishing in a cleared swamp… since i last saw swarms of felled trees, hollowed by termites, lying as vegetable — still, in every habitat, to decay is to lie idle — i know this because asuu declared strike & my face became a courier of worries — i see my father break every time he beholds me so this is how a hen drinks her egg in incubation (God forbid) so this is how the land grows fangs, becomes a giant whale, chews a tadpole & colour waterbody with green blood so this is where we retire our guts and run like femurs of chicks fleeing hawk claws daily, i see grasses gain a thicker grip on the soulless compound next to mine… it’s true. silence is the forerunner of despair — it’s true. there are many things that campus noise shields your mind from. Incantations For Times Like This like water, i come today when homeland is a courtyard of rocks tungsten-armed, i come lord, fatherland is molten magma i come rooted as mountain; fatherland is a nest of windstorms will the skylark not sing in a field of carcasses, and beautifully? can a daffodil not sprout on a wasteland? you can pluck the hands of a clock you can muffle the crow of a cock but who can stop the rising sun?
Author’s Biography
Enobong Ernest Enobong is a Nigerian poet and award-winning essayist. His poems are mostly centred on memories, psycho-social experience, humanity, Black, Africanism, and mythology. He is a Best of the Net Nominee of Arts Lounge Magazine (2021). His poem featured in the 2021 SprinNG Afro-Eros anthology To Borrow Screams from the Atmosphere. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Praxis Magazine, Brittle Paper, Ghost City Press, The Shallow Tales Review, Arts Lounge, Acorn Haiku Journal, African Writer Magazine, Kalahari Review, Wales Haiku Journal, & elsewhere. He is a staunch believer in the power of memories, the formative years of children and the pro-African gospel of Professor P.L.O. Lumumba of Kenya. He writes from Lagos, and is currently a law student at the University of Lagos, Akoka.
