Onye Oji, Black as the Bluest Blue
Silent Dweller

Eze ndi isi oji
Onye oma, a god with starry eyes
My Beloved
Groom of all grooms
My King, Eze’m

I bow before you Lord of the Worlds
Cosmic representative of truth and justice, ofo na ogu
Star traveler, mapping the way, taking us where we need to go

Trailblazer
You

Eze Osetulu, Eze nke kachisi eze
You build the pyramids with your hands
Split the world in half
Spin the cosmic waters
Make matter out of words, okwu afa

Nna nke uwa, whose love is eternal
May we never forget our inheritance
We your chosen ones
Your eternal suns.

by Ebele Chizea

by Ebele Chizea

Our father is the great rising Sun

Our mother, the serpent who birthed humankind

Records of our footprints reveal we have marched this way before

Who is our mother you may ask?

She is the energy in your spine, your back bone, the ground beneath your feet…

Our father is a wise king descended from a realm of gods

A city with numerous vortexes of light

He is known by some as The Dweller

He also dwells in our hearts

Which is why we smile so much

Even through the rain and the whirlwind

Through hunched backs and trepid movements

We dance & sing & make music…

By our stripes, the world was reborn into a new way of doing things;

Of loving, of expressing, of worship

More than that, the ones to come later were fed

Because of the great human sacrifice

That history shall never forget

Umu anwu (children of light) we were

And just like Anyanwu (the Sun), We rise

Just like our father

Who came before us

So that we may also live

And like our mother who bears witness in this breath of time.

by Ebele Chizea 

A long time ago
in a land far, far away
I arose to distant hills
in translucent shades of blue
In the backdrop
Black birds soared
flapping their wings to the rhythm of their coos
They spread gossip about other towns
Grandma listened, nodded and suddenly went:
“okay!”

I only got the part about Emekuku
What happened at Emekuku?
Grandma’s lips were sealed
It was older people’s business

I long for the days when birds could talk
and we took the time to decipher
When chickens and goats co-existed with humans
on the front porch
Swearing away the heat
each in its own tongue
Longing for harmattan…

Sitting under moonlit skies
Listening to a particular tale of duality
as corn roasts with crackling sounds under the fire…

Chanting:
“udara mu cha nda cha cha cha nda…”
sniffling at the girl whose stepmother starved her
and who prays for the udara to ripe so she can eat

In a famine Udara dwarfs itself to feed girl
and grows infinitum when step mother sings to it

We cheer!

It’s bedtime

And with a belly filled with corn and ube
I move lethargically towards my mat
determined to rise early
to decode what the bird from Emekuku had said.