When God tries to give you C.P.R

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

When addiction refuses recession,

lungs go on their knees interceding for breath.

Pictures of the last supper are hung around

a mans ribcage to change his perspective.

Church becomes substitute for the pub in his stomach.

Its been two months since he had a clean shave of alcohol

Resolve dissolving into doubt by the second.

His relationship with his weaknesses are much strong than his faith in God.

Hours, days and nights of being sober slowly loose grip of his tongue.

A perfect time for the alcohol to lean over his shoulder

and lend his resistance a hand.

Glass in one hand playing the role of mirror.

liquor in the other hand a curtain pulled over his eyelids.

He can no longer see himself,

feet surrendering,

mouth dancing along to scent of liquid.

The Bottle contains all the stuff good

fictional stories are made of.

Eyes longing to read the entire book for crave

is too ripe not to be harvested.

Tears custom made for disappointment

wear his face like a mask.

As he quenches the incense burning inside him with martini.

Whisky preaches from the pulpit

as it shoves drunkenness down his throat.

Two months of hard work down the drain

and he knows the liquor is no purification.

6 bottles into the sermon

and he is still listening,

still praising the name of God in vein.

He is in too deep now and drowning.

Help me

Help me

I am drowning

I can’t swim

I am drowning

5hrs later and still drowning

And God is still whispering in his ear throw up.

He is still saying no

He still refusing C.P.R

Birthday wish

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

This skin is my mothers prayer.
My mothers prayers are the
only kind of forgiveness
that age well.
Boys raised like forgiveness aren’t
afraid of rocks or cold hearts.
I have been fetching water out of
them since back in Lagos.
Boy is half ogbono half egusi stew.
Boy’s mother covered his heart
in scripture now the boy’s love
speaks in tongues.
Boy spoke in tongues so much
he forgot to translate.
Boy knows wisdom is known by
her children and boy learnt from the best.
That Friends and Family members play the role
of fire exit if boy is ever on fire.
However,
boy owes God an apology for not
following emergency procedures sometimes.
Boy will be alright though.
Boy knows they all got his back.
Boy your birthday was today and
Boy really is too old to
be called boy.
The word
“man”
still feels
baggy when he wears it on somedays.
Most times this man thinks birthday’s sounds
more like hard work.
like keep going, like
there is nothing to celebrate
yet.
Boy remembers family
and friends keep him going
so boy celebrates.
Boy knows time and talent are just dogs
on a leash.
life has taught him to continue
to make sure
this dogs don’t waste time
barking up the wrong tree

POEM OF THE WEEK

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

The above poem is a question. it is for all the immigrants who daily find it hard to chew the English language and swallow western culture but do so without complaining. It is for the moment the African or Asian in your name expired the day it step foot on European soil. It is for the people we call freshie, the ones we tell to serve us English with less African and more western feature yet we struggle to even pronounce their name correctly. For those professors whom foreign names expose the insecurities in their diction. For the person I told your diction is great but my name still  taste western when it comes out of your mouth. For the people who took time to pronounce it correctly and continue to take time. For those who had to shorten the life span their names to fit in. This poem is all of the above and much more.

Scar Tissue

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

The first time your body plays kiss chase with the wind

The blood in your mouth will be having a heart to heart conversation with the pavement

You will be surrounded by a choir of boys who will make harmonies out of your bones

Their song will leave you speechless

They will leave scars on every inch of you but you will pretend that they are just lyrics

At least that’s what you will tell your mother.

When your mother ask you a question

When her voice sounds like an allergy

When she tells you to explain all of the bruises on your body

That will be the 1st time you lie about being jumped by a gang of boys

That will be the first time your body resembles a slave song

and you can not afford for your mother to memorise the lyrics

Claim that you fell of a bike

Dear boy

4 years later

Your mother will tell you the following

Remember that day you said you fell of bike while point to the scar on your skin

While digging into the Braille of your bodylook

She will say

Son

I can read between the lies

I can read between the lies

A boy will then ask his mother

Why do you know so much about scars

She will smile and then say

You were born from a c-section

So loving you was always going to be full of scar tissue.

Mourning the night

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

Line of the day

I lay up at 2am
Smile rinkled with envy

Jealousy a sniper riffle aimed at the sky

trying to assassinate 2am then something hits me.

The sky is just another red carpet for the stars to walk all over

Pull the plug on all that glitter and

it will just be another dead looking rug before Xmas lights were assembled around it.

Knowing this

I do not take the safety off the gun

Hatred is too much of an expensive bullet

to be wasted on a corpse.

My smile lets go of envy

My nose inhales the funeral

My eyes tell me the stars are just family members

mourning the night

You dream of shadows ( A celebration of brown skin)

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

I just wrote this freestyle in celebration of melanin, the earth of my skin and being a black person.

To be told you are ugly
That your soul is the colour of midnight
That your skin is a suit only fit for a banquet of mourning
like funerals
like lose
To be known as slave
To have nigga as a last name
To have your pieces scattered around the atlas
To be dealt the pursuit of finding your leftovers
To have others force their language down your throat
To be fed literature with an expiry date and still speak healthy  
To make hiphop out of the bread crumbs of English 
To make music your rebellion
To have to remind them that you are soil
That your skin is the carpet on which animals, plants and trees walk on
That the earth has your pigment
That sapphire, jade stones and diamonds are hiding in your stomach
Crude oil is what comes out when your water breaks
You who gives birth to fuel
To engines
To industry
Yet 
Forgotten
Yet displaced sometimes 
Greatness living in denial
This handwork of evenings 
You bedtime story of medicine fed to sleepless children 
You dream of shadows 
You trail of blood whipped from over 600yrs of history
You whistle of whisper blown when hypocrites slide tackle
You red card on a pitch full of racism
You are more than a game they are playing
More than 600yrs
More than an excuse
More than victim or victor
You crusade of brown
You nightgown of melanin 
Fabric made of sleep
Of resting places
We all wear you when our eyes shut
You passport between sleep and death
You dream
@emmanuelsugo

 

A list of options available when the elevator to your lovers mouth is broken

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

This poem was inspired by a prompt during 30/30 challenge last month. Hope you all enjoy it.

When the elevator that leads to your lovers mouth is broken,a flight of long stairs will become the only option you have left.

1. You always have the option of contacting maintenance to rectify the situation in which you find yourself however, waiting for someone else’s courage to arrive can take anything from now till your last breath.

2. There are 1267 flight of stairs and climbing all the way to the top is no joke.The real question is how bad does you mouth need to be watered and is a kiss worth climbing 1267 stairs for even if your lips develop cramps on the way up.

When the elevator that leads to your lovers lips is running smoothly but you accidentally end up on the wrong floor.
1. Does curiosity kick in or do you return back to your initial destination.

2. Do you step out of your lovers mouth and begin explore the world around it.

3. Do new surroundings begin to feel like home.

4. Is home were the heart is?

5. People say follow your gut feeling all the time because that is the natural thing to do.Is it natural to be dishonest?

When your lovers mouth is stuck in an elevator filled with strangers, let’s say the science aspect of nature feels deviant today and decides to juggle the elevator. Now imagine if all that ruckus causes your lovers mouth to shake hands with someone else’s for a second or two.

1. Does that make you feel like cussing the hell out.

2. Do you begin to inspect your lovers grin to see if they show any signs of enjoying it.

3. Are you more pissed about it being an accident or finding out that even if you kept your lovers mouth on leash,it can still slip out of you hands.

When your lovers mouth relocates to the ground because it is tired of being living at from the top floor.

1. Does the ground floor change the landscape of your love.

2. Do you begin to miss kissing sunrise in the morning.

3. Does their mouth begin to taste like leftovers.

4. Do you find someone else who lives at the top floor were your heart used to be .

@emmanuelsugo

How the conversation between a blue whale and a tsunami went

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

“When a fish wants to break up with the sea it always heads for shore”

A blue whale was once asked by the ocean why are you leaving?

That whale looked at the ocean and smiled and said.

My heart only lights up cigarettes around leaking gas pipes.

My love is one that is passionate and

looks like eleven stories of burning bricks.

Do not call me a house on fire

This is what a house looks like when it gets into a heated debate

and you are 2993 miles of fire extinguishers trying to destroy my point.

Even 2993 miles of water muttering don’t go under their breath won’t change a run aways mind from heading towards a fisherman’s hook.

Woe to us when the ocean in our love tosses and turns because it can’t sleep at night.

Woe to us when the waves become restless and the sea gets desperate.

Desperate is an oceans anger jogging at 890km/hr trying to keep love in shape by chasing a blue whale and maybe

you don’t find that funny since being heated is the only way water can blow off steam.

Do you want to hear a joke?

What does a healthy hazard chasing a blue whale screaming come back look like?

It’s that tsunami you saw from your window.

“When the oceans heart is on fire the shore will start to look like a fire escape”

Someone asked all the water in that ocean what was so terrifying about a fisherman’s hook that you drowned

all of Tohoku in 2011.

It replied,

no one ever intends to become a tsunami and

for a long time I thought fishes were only made for the ocean.

I was banking on that,

banking on them swimming back to me since I was all that they had.

You feel secure when you know that you are all they have got but

I wasn’t aware that human stomachs also serve as an aquarium which was terrifying.

A tsunami is just the trembling you feel at the idea of your lovers heart making bubbles in someone else’s stomach and so I snapped.

30/30 challenge

Orphans

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

Every country abandons the agriculture of raising a child

Rearing of the human soil is no longer in practice

Hard times increase the cost of an organic childhood and

the average citizen is at the mercy of being processed.

Science tries to cut corners and fills in the blanks with needles.

Can you see why most of us have a genetically modified upbringing.

Bigger than we normally are at a young age

Make up, haircuts and clothing this days can add adult responsibility to teenage tendancies.

It sad when the food looks ripe but taste uncooked

We are filling our childrens frustrations with preservatives

under the guise of youth empowerment.

Rough neighbourhoods harbour concealed weapons 

masqueraded as pesticides to keep mosquitoes away.

They say they are trying to protect their blocks

They say they are all so grown up

The fruit of society looks so ripe but question

Why doesn’t anyone want have a bite
30/30 challenge 

Home is where you snoar

Posted on by emmanuelsugo

A three bedroom house with two receptions, a kitchen, a front porch and a back garden in a nice neighbourhood is all you need to start a middle class family. A two bedroom flat with one reception, a kitchen, no garden and no front porch in a rough neighbourhood is all you need to start a working class family. Pockets tend to determine the circumstances in which our hearts are brought up but not necessarily how they will turn out. Somewhere love is an extra room or a guest house for visitors and in other places love is let’s make the best of what we have got. I know of a family of six who all sleep within hugging distance in a 2 bedroom flat were at bedtime each persons face is a country on the map of Africa and snoring is somewhere on the west wing planning an invasion. You would think it would be difficult to find rest in all this commotion however, some people know how to sleep through a war and still come out alive. Such people take no offense or see snoring as a terrorist threat to the national security of their sleep because in this family snoring is love murmuring in sign language. They know somewhere there is a troop in their mouth following a general on a race horse made of breaths screaming
“I got you, you got me and we are going to get through this”

30/30 challenge