Kalakuta Republic Read online

  I never get used to the amount of

  blood; bodies droop like so many flowers.

  Eyes stare, bright and alive into

  another world. And death becomes some men.

  The same composure that ends the poem is that of deep and disturbing pain, the composure of confession that must be ordered and organised within the safety of the poem if the poet is to find a possibility for redemption:

  ‘Who did they shoot tonight?’ a cell mate asks.

  ‘I don’t care’ I reply looking away. ‘As long as it’s not me.’

  Daily epiphanies bloom as angels walk among us;

  the few, the chosen.

  To admit in this moment that he, asked by an older man to write their story in blood, is not an angel, and yet that he walks among angels is to subsume the ego and to allow the poem to be an anthem for the angels, for the many that people the poem – those that died in jail, those that never saw the outside world. It also evokes the sadness of the survivor who has no good answer for why he has survived. In this, Abani’s poem works its way through the complexities of the theme and emerges in song, rich and powerful.

  I have read the work of other poets who have written about their lives in jail. Sadly many of them have been Africans: Soyinka, Brutus, Awoonor et al. This is rich and noble company. It is company that may comfortably be joined by a poet like Yusef Komounyakaa, the brilliant American whose poems about his time in Vietnam admirably represent the genre of art emerging out of the crisis of human existence. All these unquestionably great writers have discovered that the poem about suffering is really one about finding beauty in suffering. The poem about incarceration is really a poem about freedom. The fact is that the poem, by its very nature, defies the baseness of suffering. By becoming the vehicle for the expression of horror, the poem forces the horror to be something else, to be managed, to be transformed into something beautiful. It is the ‘dulce’ in Owen’s poem, it is the soul, the heart, the pulse in Marley’s songs; it is the perfection of the Blues, the comfort and predictability of its verse by verse punch-lines. Abani’s poetry manages to understand this quality in poetry, and in the midst of his remembrances of the prison we sense that he is, for the moment, finding a ray of light, something like distraction in the art of verse – a way to escape the madness and the tragedy through these poems.

  For us, the result is some very fine poetry. There is a sensibility at work here that promises us these will not be the only poems he will write. It is an instinct for the well-wrought line, the care to make an image work, the instinct for metaphor and an understanding of the importance of carefully honed and rendered sentiment. But the future is not something we can easily predict. This collection represents a splendid introduction to what we tend innocuously to call a poet of great promise. Abani’s work emerges out of his strong Nigerian roots, and his writing is properly tied to other Nigerian and African writers. Yet, there is an expansiveness to his vision that allows his work to resonate with meaning beyond the confines of Kalakuta. In exile, there is distance that allows for memory that remains painful to be controlled. Always below the surface is the pain of the political situation in Nigeria, the memory of the deaths, the memory of his own fear, the residual nightmares of his life – they are all there, brimming beneath the surface like tears held in. Sometimes, as we read, we find ourselves scratching too deep and the salt seeps out. There is something noble and touching in this, something that makes us angry at the terrible politics of coups and dictatorships and by which we are amazed at the resilience and possibilities of the artist in that space. Abani’s poems eschew any discourse on ideologies – he does not want to reduce the moments of his poems to polemic, and perhaps the prison term has scraped away the ideologies, replacing them with another kind of vocation – the raw and simple vocation of the artist searching out words. Maybe this is the result of suffering, or of the disillusionment felt by many engaged African writers, or even of greater disillusionment experienced by the younger Nigerian poets whose ideological preoccupations have been complicated by the chaos that permeates their existence in Nigeria. Whatever it is, this is a fresh voice and one that needs to be listened to. For this alone, I regard Kalakuta Republic as an important work. What Abani will do with the experience of creating these well-crafted poems remains to be seen. But one senses that there is much in a poet who manages to end his collection with the kind of control and sense of timing that we see in ‘Jacob’s Ladder’.

  ...yet you are afraid

  to proceed more than a few

  steps from the gate. Convinced you

  will be shot in the back.

  Or that people will recoil from you

  knowing you carry the stench

  of death on your paler skin.

  But nothing happens.

  A gentle breeze ruffles your shirt and

  a dog menaces a parked car.

  The smell of frying plantain

  carried gently hurts inexplicably.

  Cold, sweet Coca-Cola stings you

  to tears.

  Kwame Dawes

  Columbia, SC, 1997

  Portal

  Dark waters of the beginning.

  Rays, violet and short, piercing the gloom,

  foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of.

  Christopher Okigbo

  Heavensgate

  Portal

  I

  When first arrested

  18.

  Excited by possibilities of fame;

  inflamed by

  legends of political prisoners: sure that

  Amnesty would free me.

  But the days

  dragged

  into months;

  no charge

  no sign

  of camera-toting journalists

  from Reuters;

  no word

  from my family;

  no amnesty.

  Caught in the cross-hairs of fear,

  the only way to mark

  the days is by counting the beatings

  3 a day

  62 days: 186.

  Housed in comfort; relative to;

  I watch the trials on TV of

  my co-conspirators; stomach fisted

  waiting

  my turn.

  But they are too embarrassed to try me.

  6 months later

  unable to hold me any longer and

  no doubt alarmed

  at how much it

  costs

  to feed me; they give in

  I am free to go.

  II

  1987,

  deciding to take them on

  I

  stand

  daily; reciting their crimes in epics

  daring them: ‘Go on. Kill me. Make me famous.’

  They do

  But 20 is not 18

  Guns, boots, truncheons, knuckles

  I realise – too late –

  this time it’s for real

  I’ve had my dress rehearsal.

  Pain draws out time razor sharp

  but I am unbeaten;

  I martyr my anger

  profaning their idolatrous power

  again;

  straight to jail; I do not pass go.

  Shovelling

  with three fingers cold corn porridge

  into my mouth,

  the enormity of it:

  I am being held by killers

  and nobody knows I’m here.

  Kiri Kiri

  Maximum Security prison

  D wing; or E, I forget

  with the worst of the head cases:

  Fela Anikulapo Kuti

  smiling: ‘Truth, my young friend is a risky business.’

  Mask

  Fearing

  they would be hurt,

  or used to blackmail

  me, I

  never once asked to

  see,

  speak,

  visit,

  telephone
/>
  my family

  cannot know.

  This lie,

  worn

  to the softness of a favourite shirt

  disintegrates when I touch it.

  These are not images

  to make you happy.

  Or sad, or cry, or laugh

  just a reminder that

  tyranny stalks

  us.

  Old Warrior

  One night

  a week after he arrived

  he crawled across the cell

  and shook

  me

  awake.

  ‘Please call me papa’

  he begged.

  ‘60 years I have been somebody’s

  papa.

  I must have someone to be papa

  to.’

  So a few of us called

  him Papa Joe until

  he died.

  Rasa*

  For Fela Anikulapo Kuti

  A regular. Nicknamed ‘Customer’,

  he even renamed his house Kalakuta Republic,

  to honour the death

  of conscience,

  to ridicule them, those despots

  swollen by their putrescence.

  He had a saxophone smuggled into

  jail and on some nights

  riffed out a forlorn blues

  condensing the walls into hot tears.

  And we believed the notes wove

  themselves into a terror that carried

  on the wind, disturbing evil’s sleep.

  * Literally juice. It also refers to an emotional state; in music it is the soul of performance. The fifth Veda describes rasa as a permanent mood experienced by the audience conveyed only by a musician who has experienced rasa. There are nine rasas: love, laughter, rage, pathos, terror, disgust, heroism, wonder and tranquility.

  Oyinbo Pepper*

  I tried to intervene

  in a fight once. They

  rounded on me:

  ‘Oyinbo pepper’, one taunted pushing me.

  ‘No more colonialism, fool!’

  Later I asked Turko why.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do they resent me? Am I not here with them?’

  ‘But you don’t have to be. Won’t always be. And

  when this is over, you can go to England or America.

  Start

  again. It’s not you they resent, it’s not having a choice

  that burns them up’

  * Sunburned whitey.

  Chain Reaction

  Prison psychiatrist

  from Harvard.

  Not completely

  insensitive, starts his programme gently.

  A dog is brought inside; intending ROW X

  to nurture it.

  That night

  we hear its pitiful chained whines.

  A thud, then silence broken only by

  the crackle of a fire.

  Morning scatters

  ash from a makeshift hearth

  patterning strewed gnawed bones,

  stirring the chain to empty chink.

  Ahimsa*

  My assailant does not

  seem capable of this sadism.

  Tortoiseshell glasses

  perched on nose tip, softens

  even the most brutish face into intelligence.

  He kicks me repeatedly; unprovoked.

  I cough blood onto the ground to

  stop from choking. His boot on my

  neck forces me to take mouthfuls of mud.

  Beatings have a rhythm.

  Once your body learns it, the

  pain loses its edge, smudging

  ink-stained over your mind. But

  they watch for the loss of focus in your eyes.

  Seeing this, he reaches down

  and pushes his revolver into my

  mouth. I tense, my waiting spreading

  wetly into the sand.

  Suddenly there is a shout from my left shoulder.

  Straining, I see a young guard,

  Edward, pointing his rifle at

  my assailant. ‘Leave him now or I shoot you!’

  he barks. ‘Leave him. What

  kind of animal are you. Bastard!’ He rams

  a bullet into the breach. I spit out oily

  metal as my assailant stands up. He smiles,

  ‘You will learn. You’ll see. You will learn’.

  But Edward, helping me to my feet

  is not listening.

  * Ahimsa is the Hindu–Jani religious practise of not harming any living thing.

  Passion Fruit

  Here

  Sex is not always a choice

  lovingly made and enjoyed like

  plump well-handled self-chosen fruit

  teeth sinking into soft flesh in a dribble of pleasure.

  Nevertheless

  it abounds.

  Some because it is the

  truth of their being.

  Some to deny, negate, sate

  deep yearning, wordless, timeless.

  Even the most rabid homophobe

  can give in

  to gentle caresses

  comfort in this loveless, concrete

  cesspit.

  Some never do

  and not from fear and loathing.

  Some erupt in

  painful, bloody, self-annihilating rape.

  Some fall in

  love; soft green moss caressing crumbling walls.

  Some, unable to stomach

  the truth that all love is light

  amputate their own penes, laughing insanely

  as they bleed to a stump.

  Concrete Memories

  In an empty cell,

  stone

  worn

  tortured

  scalded

  by tides

  of warm blood

  and water,

  petrifies their guilt.

  Nicknamed

  Kalakuta Republic

  in some distant pain

  by inmate or guard.

  Techniques to extract confessions:

  tried, tested, proven.

  Interrogations are carried out.

  Teeth,

  pulled from their roots

  with rusty pliers.

  Methodical, clinical; each

  raw tender wound

  disinfected by gentle cigarette embers

  and rubbing alcohol

  mixed with salt for extra bite.

  Rusty

  cold

  barrel of Winchester

  bolt-action Mark IV rifle;

  retired right

  arm of imperialism.

  Enema. Rammed

  up rectum, repeatedly;

  twirling cocktail

  swizzle-stick.

  Extremely effective, they say

  at dislodging caked-in conspiracies.

  Tequila Sunrise

  Angola beer. Brewed to perfection.

  Only the best ingredients are used.

  Reward for those daring to reject any act

  that jars with their sensibilities; moralities.

  Equal part water

  and steaming urine.

  Bets placed. Dares. How many bottles can they force

  down your throat

  before you

  a) gag

  b) choke

  c) die.

  This is not

  a game for warders,

  but for fellow prisoners, peers

  friends; an excellent ice breaker.

  Roll Call

  I remember rising one night

  after midnight

  and moving

  through an impulse of loneliness

  to try and find the stars.

  Dennis Brutus

  Letters to Martha

  Job

  1900

  hours

  cramped together: now

  20 men in a cell built for 8.

 
; Space is a closely fought ideal,

  savagely defended prize.

  Two men smoking:

  ‘If you die tonight can I have your shirt?’

  ‘Sure. If you do, I want your pencil.’

  Job. Older than any of us

  remembers

  this prison run by British soldiers.

  ‘Let me die. Please let me die’, he cries.

  No one replies. No one will console him.

  Here death is courted. Welcomed.