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  have it made into a ring for his

  girlfriend.

  ‘Give her – she has a son for me.’

  I nod, tears tracking the dirt on my face.

  ‘Make sure you give her.’

  Again, I nod.

  ‘Pray for me,’ he whispers urgently.

  ‘I don’t want to have lived in vain.’

  He died a week later.

  I did not know his surname

  or where to find his girlfriend.

  And anyway, Sargeant Adamu found

  the gold tooth when

  his rifle dislodged it from my

  anus.

  Buffalo Soldier

  In the last week before

  he died, John James would cry softly

  every night.

  His father, colonel on the wrong side

  absconded to Chad, across the border –

  they came looking for him.

  Finding only John James and his mother,

  they took him, ransom for his father’s head;

  but he never came – maybe he never knew.

  Unable to lose face, they held JJ anyway;

  one extra hand for graveyard duty – and practise

  for artists seeking the perfect torture.

  This child’s only crimes were an overactive

  imagination, a belief in the unseen – a father who

  haunted a despot.

  He sucked, through eager eyes tales from Jeremiah:

  goblins, ghosts, cannibals and parallel worlds. Doesn’t

  he recognise the plots from the comics he gave him?

  In the week before

  he died, John James’ laughter fell

  mauve gossamer blossoms from a tree shaking.

  Heavensgate

  The other politicos,

  privileged by class,

  education, family,

  preen in their bravado,

  safe from death, protected by old,

  powerful benevolence.

  They pay other inmates to sing their praises:

  Shouts of ‘Baba! Baba! Poor man’s saviour’

  chase their farts echoing up their own arses.

  Other heroes here are men and boys

  with no power, no privilege, no class,

  nothing to gain: not even a book published.

  Their crime is to be poor and proud

  in the face of tyranny: unbroken by angels

  they worry liars to madness.

  And one of these nameless

  crawled into my cell at night via sewer pipe

  to give me a jar of his own blood

  and paper, stolen inch by inch, hidden up

  trained rectums and glued together into

  sheets with mango sap.

  ‘To take write our suffering’

  These true heroes are lost

  in the heat hazes that shimmer over unmarked

  graves riddling the swamp behind the prison walls.

  Mango Chutney

  Plucking mangoes

  Sport for guards, soldiers, policemen.

  Drunk, home bound from shift-end

  they stop at death row, choose casually,

  lining us up against the wall scarred from

  previous plucking, under that spreading tree.

  Picking his teeth, Hassan, veteran of this

  game, picks us off, shooting blindfolded.

  Last rites, an unceremonious smoke

  harsh, throat and lung burning.

  Usually pure marijuana soaked in valium.

  They aren’t too good at moving targets.

  Sometimes they tie us, binding to post.

  Legs have a habit of giving out in the face of death,

  knees kneading your shame into dust, your feet

  muffling whimpers in the sand.

  Tied there, you die in clockwork regularity

  long before any shots are fired.

  Guns spit, arcs of fire hit bodies,

  jerking limbs drown in empty spaces.

  Bullets dust your body apologetically; you slump

  but hemp hugs tightly so only your head lolls

  face hidden. Ropes cut fresh tribal marks onto

  your body, weight pulling against them.

  Untied, you crumble slowly to the floor, and leaves

  fall in spirals to land on bloody corpses.

  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.

  Others wear it shamefully; others still, defiantly.

  Their protest choking, suffocating.

  Looking on, you notice small details.

  His trousers are torn at the groin. He has a

  lazy eye which gazes crookedly

  into your mind.

  His crime? Maybe he said no in the face of tyranny.

  Maybe he murdered. The point? We will never know.

  Walking over to the bodies, Hassan kicks them

  hoping perhaps that they are not all dead.

  The problem with mango plucking is the fruit

  falls too quickly; and harvest season is over far too

  soon.

  Spitting he bends down and cuts their throats

  – to make doubly sure – vermin are tough and

  cunning.

  Judge, jury, executioner – Hassan, drunken

  petty tyrant; lust, rude and unbridled

  by gun and 27 allocated rounds of ammo per week.

  And for me a simple lust – to live as long as I can.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he shouts to his friends; amid

  much laughter and back slapping they leave.

  ‘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.

  Rambo 3

  October 1.

  Independence Day.

  As a special treat, reforming us

  to accept this great nationhood

  we are shown a film in the

  dusty, dirty execution yard.

  The killing wall serves as screen

  old bullet wounds freckling the celluloid.

  Those who can recite the national anthem offhand

  get a free cola; throw in the pledge and you get a

  bun.

  Hours before the film, the courtyard echoes the

  voices of hungry men learning them in rote.

  Rambo 3. We cheer as Stallone

  achieves, in 3 hours, the impossible.

  Defying and destroying fascism – But there is no

  make-up, doughnuts for crew or fake blood here.

  Prices are higher, time moving slower.

  But then, we have terrible inflation.

  Hearing us cheer at the chattering guns

  on screen, explosions echoing our hope

  and believing we are rioting,

  a passing patrol storms the prison.

  Sprayed like so much water from a hose,

  bullets chase our fear across the courtyard.

  Trampling shame and dignity underfoot,

  blood runs thick with spilt cola.

  ‘Eat this,’ Stallone says repeatedly as

  the dead projectionist’s body jams the projector.

  Later, the body count is high; over

  one hundred are dead – or dying.

  From my cell window, overturned chairs

  check each other in a complex chess game.

  Not the laughter, cheering, Coca-Cola

  or Rambo 3 – not even the brief gasp of hope.

  All I remember are the screams of men in agony,

  the curious pop of exploding flesh, the stains on my

  shirt.

  Passover

  Before he was tra
nsferred

  again

  for fraternising with the prisoners,

  Lt Emile Elejegba came to

  see me

  in my cell at night.

  Wrinkling his nose against the

  smell

  and trying hard not to cry,

  he handed me a slim worn

  volume

  with the picture of a smiling white girl

  on its cover. The Diary of Anne Frank.

  ‘This might help,’ he said gently.

  ‘I hear

  Nelson Mandela read it on Robbens Island.’

  In the morning he was gone as

  I turned

  the first page and began to read.

  Still Dancing

  I anoint my heart

  Within its flame I lay

  Spent ashes of your hate –

  Let evil die.

  Wole Soyinka

  I Anoint my Flesh

  Birds of Paradise

  Single

  Window.

  Through murky glass, outside glimpses.

  No roses, hibiscus or bachelor’s buttons are planted

  here.

  But in insolent defiance, a bird of paradise

  runs

  amok

  with colour. Screaming in ancient tongue

  my spirit to fray.

  Even pain cannot breach

  my conviction that the best in us cannot die.

  From

  that window

  sunlight

  trembles in the musty air,

  caressing my torturer’s arm pausing him in

  downward

  blow.

  Sweat blisters his face

  and when the blow connects drawing blood,

  spittle, broken teeth, it is

  soft sweet

  lover’s embrace.

  Square Dancing

  Two prisoners face off in the courtyard

  cheered on by a bored audience.

  Sunlight diamonds off a piece of glass;

  the other prisoner is unarmed.

  Flesh is very fragile, ripped open,

  it reveals a soft malleable matrix.

  Blood, water, bones. Fabric tears:

  Red jelly of a heart, pink clouds of lungs

  knots of muscle. The glass sighs into

  the other, drawing bubbling red blisters.

  The others turn away, bored again.

  And the unknown, unnamed prisoner

  denied even a number, dies here.

  The dust sucking life up indifferently.

  Death does not always wear guards

  uniforms, but it is always foretold.

  With time, you acquire second sight,

  the ability to smell its funk.

  Stir-Fried Visions

  Black-eyed beans again.

  Popular because they ballast stomachs

  to a healthy illusion which deflates

  at first gas.

  Okoro, practical joker,

  stands beside the huge metal drums used

  to cook and pretends to pee into the steaming beans.

  The kitchen detail cracks up at the looks

  on the faces of these

  hard prisoners, men who would not balk

  at murdering a child. When he died, no one

  noticed for a week, believing it another prank.

  There is the incredible self-awareness, deep bonds

  between men, and the routine and monastic discipline

  can be applied to many tasks, shaping our lives.

  And sometimes, on a hot day, sweat crawling all

  over you, tomb flies flaunting the stench everywhere:

  searching for sense, seeing only random pebbles on

  a beach,

  your mind cracks open and you glimpse paradise.

  Egwu Onwa*

  At night, squinting off to the left

  just so,

  stars corral across the barbed wire

  on top of the high walls.

  * Moon dance, a children’s game. Also refers to a time of innocence.

  Terminus

  Last bus

  stop.

  End of

  the line

  for most,

  leaving in cheap coffins

  postmarked ‘Return to Sender’.

  Smoke Screen

  Humour here swells, filling our nostrils.

  Percolating senses. It is not bravery

  in noble round-table tradition,

  but the best disinfectant against death’s rankness.

  Laughter, square-wedged down our throats,

  splinters into rough shards, tickling us to cough.

  When I ask: ‘How can you?’

  A reply comes through curtain of smoke.

  ‘Laughter is the same as crying,

  only there are no tears.’

  Reflexology

  Beatings:

  To the top of the head

  elicit an idiot’s smile.

  To the ears and nape

  affect your balance,

  tipping you dangerously

  close to insanity.

  To the face humiliate you,

  destroy perspective.

  To the back, slash your

  self confidence, invert your anger.

  To the soles of your feet

  erode your sense of humour.

  To your stomach, exaggerate

  your hunger and desire.

  Beatings change you.

  Drive a wedge between what is

  essential and the husk that

  haunts your old life, replying:

  ‘I’m fine, and you?’

  Solitaire

  Lampblack smears my vision,

  fading into 220 shades of grey concrete.

  Yet I cannot tell

  where the shadows end and I beg-

  in your head

  Voices

  Visitations from seraphim

  compensate for human absence.

  Mantra

  Angels stalk me in sleep.

  I dream myself awake,

  dreaming myself asleep.

  I will build me a ladder,

  wrestling eagles on every rung.

  I will myself to live, so hard, until

  the darkness crumbles, ash on my tongue.

  Dream Stealers

  Refuse to give in to it, the nothingness

  that smears ice on your soul,

  numbing life out.

  Unlike Peters from Calabar who died after 2 days,

  screaming: ‘They stole everything!’

  And they will if you let them:

  memories, dreams, hope.

  Nirvana

  Solitary

  rolls sensuously off the tongue, whispering

  hoarsely of Buddhas, hermits and nirvana.

  Your spiritual dilemma?

  3 days in wet or a month in dry.

  Standing

  stagnant green water breeds larvae

  and bacteria up to your chest.

  Sitting

  is out of the question, unless you are

  a fish; sleep is death. And not philosophically.

  How many mosquito eggs can be laid in

  4 square feet?

  Dry solitary is not much better.

  You stare at your hands alternating

  between seamless darkness and spot

  dancing fluorescent light.

  Continuity

  is impossible to maintain and time

  becomes pores counted in your arm.

  Moby Dick

  Graffiti painted in excrement

  on prison walls infects the very air,

  burning nicotine-tan stains on our lungs:

  FOLOW THE YELLO BRIK ROAD – CAPUTIN AHAB

  Six Ways to Deal with It

  1. Shut yourself away in your head, pretend it doesn’t exist.

  2. Punish yourself, blaming it on

&
nbsp; some fault in your own nature.