by Chris Abani
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.