by Chris Abani
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.