PRINCESS CHALYA MIRI-GAZHI

PRINCESS CHALYA MIRI-GAZHI

BUT MY SPIRIT HOLDS

Born woman in a crazy country, discriminated by traditions of men

Born second in a family of 10, with all the challenges of kith and kin

Born Christian not knowing Christ until Christ introduced himself to me

Born and steeped in the relics of religiosity, held back by inhibitions of conventions

But my spirit held

Born in an impossible country, where the act of faith is a feat of its own kind

Bombed with sweet colours and flavours of multi-ethnic conflation

Buttered with the biliousness of religious and military severity

Bested, blamed biased and held by a bootlace of hope and affection

Brazenly my spirit held

Balderdash swirling like clouds above me, denied a place of residence within me

Bucolic lovers have become bucolic slayers of men, women and children

Bodies of unacknowledged past corpses dug out of nationhood navigated in bloody murky waters of past wars

Brave victims and warriors of all manner of historical injustices still crying out for compensations that may never come

Brazenly my spirit held

Baffled by the offensive basic instincts of a deformed mind of blind supremacy

Banshee wailings of the spirit of an orphaned nation gives warning of a demise that can be prevented

But the belligerence of barbaric domination will not heed the sense and sounds of times and reason

Bottlenecks of ethnic, religious, regional and vested attachments obstructing the flow of life to a wheezing nation

But tenaciously, my spirit held

Beaten, battered, wounded, trampled and crushed

Bold valiant audacious Nigeria

Bestowed with the beauty of nature of mind and of resilient people

Bitter braving odds, unrelenting breed of children who will not bow or yield

But our spirit holds.

Ikpan Awo Yi Ogenang –

Fellowship of Brotherhood

My Great Tarok People let me salute you

We are the fierce people adorned in tiger print

Across the skies and over the mountains, we must remain one people

We have but one language, we call it iTarok

Ikpan awo yi ogenang, kusuk, kpan awo mi - Let’s hold hands in unity, please hold my hands)

Who will unravel the cause of our conflict with each other?

Who has dared to strike at the heart of our unity?

The cries of strife and conflict cannot be our anthem song

We know but one God, we call Him Ponzhi Nan

Ikpan awo yi ogenang, kusuk, kpan awo mi - Let’s hold hands in unity, please hold my hands)

Kang i re onimchin a tar nshimshe yi kat – Do not allow a stranger to divide us

Kang i re ayang agbel i men yi kat – Do not let hunger or poverty kill our love/unity

Kang i re adom-mbwai agbel ntim yi kat – Do not let the greed for money or materialism kill our unity

Kang i re nlak igwak agbel ntim yi kat – Do not let anger kill our unity

Ikpan awo yi ogenang, kusuk, kpan awo mi – Let’s hold hands in unity, please hold my hands.

Kang a tim kin kwabu kat, u Tarok inim wanta kat – Do not stay alone, come let’s stay together, it is not Tarok to do like that

Kang a sad kin kwabu kat, u Tarok inim wanta kat – Do not stand alone, it is not Tarok to do like that

Kang a ri yembu kin kwabu kat, u Tarok inim wanta kat – Do not eat alone, it is not Tarok to do like that

Igwak mi I ra kat until we become our brothers’ keepers – My heart will not rest until we become our brother’s keepers

Kusuk, kpan awo mi agenang, mi kpan jibu kpa – Please hold my hands, I’ll hold yours too

Onim Iganggang O Tarok, O lib ibonggong – Beat the drums of unity, blow the trumpet of peace

Onim I yilyi lyam kat, onim ilung yi lyam kat – People will no longer laugh at us, they will no longer fight us

O wong O wong O wong kukul ayem ninen faru cit – Stand up, stand up, let us stand up because a good thing has happened

O Tarok wal ogenang cit, igan pyal na byet – The Tarok people have become One, we can only go forward now

O Tarok wal ogenang cit, nle vong ya kat! – The Tarok people have become One, there is no going back ever!

THE SURVIVING WARRIORS

You sent me off to die in desert land

Camouflaged in dirty green and brown

Shooting lamely at men who shot back with better graded weapons

I did not die

You sent me off to die in a plane that shouldn’t have flown

With my own money, I paid the fare to pain and misery

And when it crashed, I lost my friends to a fire that also claimed my body

I did not die

You sent me off to die on roads that corrupt men built poorly

To drive through potholes and death traps that would make an Achilles out of me

A trailer fell and all was crushed except for me who lost both legs

I did not die

Off we went, to farm, to church, to market, to school, in traffic, at gatherings

Boom boom boom! Ta-ta-ta, shrapnel flying everywhere, bullets spraying everyone

We all fell down but few got up

We did not die

This horror is my story, the accused is Lugard

The die that rolled our fate to birth a marriage of foes

And all the leaders who have made us mad

This terror you have brought,

Lies and lies they speak, round and round we go

What would you do if you were born in such a place as this?

Should we put asunder what Lugard may have joined?

These rumbles demand that we who have not died

Must set the stage for healing and prosperity.

WHO AND WHAT MANNER OF MAN IS THIS?

She was a public prostitute not a private courtesan

She was an adulterous woman not a faithful wife

She was a porn star and not a reverend sister

A woman of ill repute and despised, she was everything they were not

Dirty unkempt and a sinner, God forbid I can never be her

Who and what manner of woman is this?

Her dress was too short some said too long

Her colours were too bright some said too unusual

Her hair was uncovered some said not rightly covered

Those lovely eyes should be veiled that sultry voice should be silent unheard

O this temptress must not mix with regular normal folks

Who and what manner of woman is this?

Innocent or guilty she was judged and condemned

Beautiful or ugly she was hated and despised

Rich or deprived, she was envied and rejected

Tamed or wild, she was the outcast of the town

Her story was as wretched heartbroken as she was

Who and what manner of woman is this?

This day everything was soon changed and reformed

A death should have happened, overruled it was dismissed

Ready stones were casted down, abandoned with haste

Me, yes you, are forgiven and set free

Where judgment should have stood, His mercy said no

Who and what manner of man is this?

For the law is the law and life must bow to law

But here I stand saved released from debts I could not pay

Take my tears and my oil and my hair and my kisses, my love and all that I am

For my heart has felt an unconditional love, my thanksgiving I bring to you

Who and what manner of man is this that can love a manner of woman like me?

AFLAMED

One dance

Sleeves grow short on arms reaching out

Strains of drumbeat song, fades into turbulent wind

Lips smeared by lust departed fever

Eyes drifting here, drifting there

One dance

Scents of you on me, yet remain strong

Yesterday, frangipani, today, you’ve become jasmine

O the thought of what you’ll be tomorrow or the next

Ensnares me captive to your ever changing musk

Lens exchanged for sharper lens give brighter vision

Better equipped sight should behold you in distant places

Quicken beats accompany humdinger gabble

Quiet aplomb gives way to maelstrom thoughts and still I am

Searching…searching…searching…

Just one dance

Demimonde, you’ve made me demimonde amongst kith and kin

unflappably, I do not care, let them say what they may

If they could taste, nay, feel, be embraced by you

Where art thou, O mystical maestro of mine

Only one dance

Come back! Retrace thy steps to arms opened wide

Still, lingering whispers of yesterday’s dance befriend me

Mirages spring forth lured by misplaced hope?

Ardent passion becomes arduously wasted in searching

Come. Let us gyrate like we did the other night on fire…

Come with your African rhapsodies that move my senses

Come with your rhythmic movement & rambunctious laughter

Teach me to be African once again

Come back! Come dance with me again for I am still, waiting on fire…

BEAUTY FROM THE WILDS

Not for me

I thought this darkish dastardly colour

Whose hue is many shades unusual from mine?

Not for me, I said, this accent that speaks my tongue with a brogue from continents too far away from mine.

Not for me, I felt, to be concerned with the knowledge of the history of the culture of these eclectic people with their febrile imaginations

Not for me, so programmed I was, not to think, to say, to feel, the pain nor misery of these pedestrian darkly lot beneath my pedigree

Not for me, as years turned into decades and decades into centuries of deliberate and undiminished isolation, separation, and peculiarity of pedantic proportions towards a people struggling to become, to assimilate with a tongue and culture, in a land once alien to their ancestral parentage.

With time my mantra lost its flavour and its spice, for those I had thought and said and felt were Not, had grown through thorns and briars of dogged untamed self-cultivation to become the beauty of the wild Rose

Defying the land that tried to restrain and define their defiant stature.

No longer will I say not for me

No longer do I think, say or feel that way

For see them stand, resilient and tall, fierce and majestic, strong and thriving Unrepentant in the identity of the strength of their wild beauty.

Not for me, not for time, not for fickle minds and despicable treatment

Not for threats, oppression nor discrimination and still they are

A people standing, not for anyone but for who they’ve become – a people not for nothing but for something fierce and true of the beauty from the wilds.

HUNDRED YEARS IS NOT FOREVER

She said hundred years is not forever

Look to the now

Let not the future decide what you will be today

Look to the present

Let not tomorrow defer today’s decisions

Do now what you must to safeguard tomorrow

What you sow today you must reap but a bountiful more

For hundred years is not forever you see

Till today is fully spent

Let not your hope be lost in tomorrow when you’ve got the now of today

That which you see now may not be here tomorrow

Tend to the love of today before it turns sour tomorrow

What you have now is what you must use to save tomorrow

For tomorrow is only a sleep away.

Tend to the grass my daughter

Tend to the grass my son

Tend to the grass of today to see tomorrow’s flowers bloom

Cultivate your own earth and the soil that throbs beneath your feet

For the grass that looks greener today was once wild and troubled

For the grass that looks greener today can be faded and gone tomorrow

The fruit that is now ripe for the plucking was once unknown and small a seed

Take this day and make it work

Stretch it, mould it, break it, swing it

Do whatever you wish with it

Let your wishes be noble and true

Today will be golden if you say it will

Every day is tomorrow’s past and today is your longest reality

Tend today so tomorrow won’t be your hundred years is forever

©

CHALYA PRINCESS MIRI-GAZHI

CHALYA PRINCESS MIRI-GAZHI is a Nigerian whose short story fiction, titled, Kokosikoko, was recently published by Kalahari Review. An MBA graduate from the University of Hull, UK, she runs her own small business in corporate event facilitation while pursuing her passion for writing. She grapples often with the question of diversity, often exploring the strength and conflict of diverse influences in her multi-ethnic Nigerian nation.