spilledwoords
“Poetry burns in our hearts with the passionate heat of a lover’s embrace.”
Completely
Don’t, don’t take me to the dance floor,
my passion is too charged with energy
it will electrocute you.
Don’t lend my hand or heart to a rival;
you will never get it back,
trust me.
I don’t offer soothing words rather
a love acquired at great anguish,
at a demeaning cost to the heart.
I give you, among other things – myself
my joy, my wrath, my wiles, my lust
completely.
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org |2020
Photo credit: Original works from hungarian female artist Eva Szakacs.
MIDLIFE – A Collection of Poems (5)
Cross-legged
In repose against the couch
in a criss-cross plunging V-cut top –
breasts betrayed, legs splayed.
She sat carefree, cross-legged as if to say
“Enjoy the view,”
as if worn to be seen or complimented –
her lacy lingerie, the showing off of a thigh
that advertises her youth –
curves and crevices that used to tease Lust;
such wardrobe malfunction
does not ring a bell anymore, nor does it
bring to mind wild carnal imagery
all I see is an undergarment – an open leg,
“Good God! Has midlife kicked in, too soon?”
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org | 2020
MIDLIFE – A Collection of Poems (4)
Born Again
Papa is born again
this new spirit in him –
crinkled eyes, fading skin
bald-head, graying side-burns
is dogged.
Many thirty-year-olds or even less
are responsive, like Lydia was to Paul
this good news –
Money, Power, and Confidence
which were elusive at tender years.
It is difficult and different for Mama
this mid-life salvation –
gone down the drain beauty,
laugh lines that don’t die
long after Laughter has faded.
Although in her heart, fifty is nifty
she’s still that checkout girl –
that inspires lust with her alluring geometry
but such fantasy belong to Romeo’s Juliet
not to Juliet’s mother.
Torn like Nicodemus between consent and confusion
Papa is now master of his fate – a convert,
Mama is still perplexed by this life-changing gospel
playing Lot’s wife – looking at things left behind – wondering:
“Is my lord gonna trade me for a younger and prettier model?”
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org | 2018
MIDLIFE – A Collection of Poems (3)
Flipping the Script
A fortnight,
Like his siblings before him
My youngest son will be leaving home
To lead a life of his craving
My father, my aunts, my cousins
Too many dear friends are dead
I’m on calcium pills to save
My wasting bones from Osteoporosis –
A last-ditch effort to defeat middle-age.
Although my other half and I have
Attainted to our imperfect,
Funny and sad bond for two decades
The bombs of divorce and widowhood
Are falling all around us –
The rent we pay for a rich life-experienced
Version for flipping the script.
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org | 2020
MIDLIFE – A COLLECTION OF POEMS (2)
DIS-gracefully
Poised for a thrill,
so I pay – hiring a fit youngster;
she’s a moral burden
but I don’t mind so long as
I find a place to do our deed.
Weekends we’re out of town,
she brings delights into my life
I did not have in married nights
making me question what I saw
in my early years – my now stale mate.
She is my on-call,
no-strings lover
who warms things up under the cover;
with such lass to tend to me,
I shall grow old DIS-gracefully!
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org | 2020
MIDLIFE – A Collection of Poems (1)
This week we explore five poems highlighting a crisis older adults go through. A phase when falling health distorts their anatomy or worst a stage some feel they could be happier by making adverse changes in their life, and they feel the urge to accomplish results too soon. These often trigger making unusual choices – having an affair, walking away from their family, begin more concerned about appearance, and having more desire for excitement and thrills even when the hormones that support such pleasures have gone south. If you are at this stage in life, which the author refers to as every man’s demon, these five poems an extract from MIDLIFE – A Collection of Poems (a work in progress) we hope will be thought-provoking towards self-discovery and emancipation. Let the verses challenge your assumptions and conventions, liberate, and uplift your spirit. Real-life begins at midlife.
I am 50
So I –
sign on the dotted line
Midlife’s warrant, I am 50 –
the year of retrospect,
the year of sudden realization:
I’ve missed out on life already,
if I don’t hurry now, it’s going to be late
before gray hairs’ days when it becomes
harder to bear in mind two things at a time.
I want great possessions – more money
I want a good life – the sex
but I’ve become an inferior version of
the stallion I used to be –
unwitty weave the ruin of my own life.
So I –
sign on the dotted line
all things in excess now are no sin
it could be a defeat or a victory
the choice is entirely mine.
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org |2020
I Don’t Want a Marked Pit
Burnt on the pyre
or buried to decompose in time
whether am all bones or ashes
I wish to be laid to rest quietly,
peacefully, content, and courteously
I don’t want a monument,
a headstone or a marked pit.
Let my dead bones that will outlive
the maggots that feed on my stiff,
let the termites that dine on my chest
carved and crafted with mahogany
be left to their duty without bother
I don’t want a monument,
a headstone or a marked pit.
I wish my final resting place
in the damp walls of clay, underground,
beneath a spread spacious stout Iroko
unobtrusively rested under the shades,
under the roots and trampling of the earth
I don’t want a monument,
a headstone or a marked pit.
Although grief may make a night
as long as three endearing a stopover,
make no pilgrimage, let me be in peace;
let my tomb be in your heart
make it an obligation not to; not to forget me.
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org | 2020
Teach Me …
Teach me how to number my days
so that I may live today
not as a bubble but fully.
Teach me how to love life
so that hourly I may compose
myself to the remembrance of my maker.
Teach me before my last bow
the A-B-C of transforming to adulthood –
the agony of being human.
Life without Death is insipid
but why am I here
if it isn’t to live forever?
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org | 2020
Photo credit: Oliver L. Velez – Blue Sky at the Bay
Man, Man, Oh Man
Man, Man, oh Man,
Earth breeds no feebler beast than thee
Strange how your beauty has gone forfeit
Your world deaf to hope, deaf to its death
Destitute of honor, deprived of honesty
Greed gags you down to the deep
Worry queries many but few answers
Man, man, oh man has ceased to be Man –
Man has become a demon
What’s to be done? Why let this world frown!
© Ugo Nkwoala |Spilledwoords.org| 2020
9 to 5
To spend your life living
in fear and ignorance
never exploring your dreams
is cruel.
To work hard for money
thinking it will buy you
all things that will make you happy
is crueler.
To wake up in the middle
of the night terrified by bills,
is a horrible way to live.
More horrible a life dictated
by the size of a paycheck.
Thinking that your 9 to 5
will make you secure is a lie;
such is the deceit of Capitalism –
a rat race, a trap.
Copyright © Ugo Nkwoala | Spilledwoords.org | 2020
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