Putrid!

[Roca]

My emotions shift
as often as the sands beneath my feet.
My pain, my grief
as raw as an open wound
from a blow to the head with a scimitar.
I am covered in putrid blood!
I am disfigured beyond recognition!

It’s a shame really
that I walk around in pity for myself—
While around and about
there are billions whose pain is worse than mine.

But the faces of those we have lost
haunt me night and day.
They walk around my house like
little ghosts in little slippers, making slapping sounds.

They hide in the most unexpected places!
In the lonely pages of forgotten novels!
In abandoned cereal boxes, nibbling like pesky rodents!
In little dark corners underneath strangely
shaped mountains in the far reaches of my putrid dreams!

Udoka
Orinary Roland Jack
Azuka…Azuka.

In retrospect it all seems so simple—
The reasons for his insanity boringly elementary.
It was not, after all, the work of the devil.
Instead it was the handiwork of a putrid gene—
Passed on to him by his putrid father—
Passed on to his father by his putrid father’s putrid mother.
Passed on to her by the putrid beast of Nnewi who,
rumor has it, jumped off the cliff of Ugwuaji’s hills
and cracked open his putrid skull on a slab of limestone-

His putrid blood spilling from the open wound like
Putrid secrets.