O heavens, hear me now...
Hear me on the edge of this wilderness,
Ripping off my heart to you, calling out,
A traveller at crossroads, in this thicket.
Haven’t you heard me cry out to you?
Haven’t you heard my voice of lament?
Sometimes the day feels dry,
Like rotten oranges decaying in my mouth.
Sometimes the night comes too often,
With odd sights of rodents and reptiles,
Dotting this shrub, searching for fruits.
Yet, like jinns in nightmarish scenes,
The anthills and valleys gnaw at my thoughts.
My soul did learn the geography of silence,
And I swing between the living and the longing,
That this anxious feeling shape-shifts in sizes,
From tiny moles to molehills, then to mountains.
By these rustling grasses twitching my heels, I plead.
The peeping sparrows hold out at my furrow,
The hornbills, chirpy by their twiggy nests.
I seek to melt away as icebergs at high seas,
To escape this heat, heaving through the pores of my skin.
Come on, O heavens… O heavens, come on,
Before wild reeds and palm trees, see me weeping.
See me clutching at mahogany roots for safety, wishing
That if I flee the sunray browbeating my bones,
I’ll be set free from its groping hands.
This earth, these rocks and stony landscape
Burned red by the hideous eyes of the sun,
Scorching deeply into the forest of the wild,
In moments where dark shadows crossed my path.
Though their restful voices did rise,
As if a warrant for my capture was planned.
No guns have I to war, nor swords to slay those rogues.
I have become a prey to be watched,
By wild ghosts, haunting the woods.
Raphael Chukwuemeka Onyejizu is a Nigerian poet, playwright and literary critic with research interests in Postcolonial literatures, African poetry, Protest studies, and Fine Arts. His recent reviews (a poetry collection and a nollywood movie), pieces of poetry, a short play and scholarly essays on Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Hafsat Abdullahi and Alexander Haruna Izang, are forthcoming in The Lagos Review, African Writer Magazine, Mokwa Anthology, NWF Journal, The Waganda Review, The Muse Journal and Critical Perspectives on Oral African Literature. His works have appeared in JAY Lit (10), ALT (43), ANA Review (13), The MAAR Review (2), Opuluiche Journal (2), Best “New” African Poets 2025 Anthology, OPA Anthology of Poems on “Justice,” Nigerian Journal of Poems and Short Stories, KAPFEST, and elsewhere.