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MAMA GAVE ME MY GREEN EYES
The first time mama whispered
she did so to my quiet soul.
Before me she was thunder,
a giver of words, whether
your ears had a mouth or not.
My eyes were soaked with a deep
green sheen fed by the foliage,
across the fence, pulling me.
Then she tapped my toned shoulders,
spun me that I might be saved.
Till tall ambitions my son,
dreams wild and iroko-strong.
Want more, watch the great farmers,
But while you long for freedom
found within another man’s farm
bend; I thought bend was part of
the sleep-grained words she fed now,
so my head still stayed unmoved.
Bend, she said again. This time
I did and saw for myself
that all the teeming space beneath
my feet was brown – very, very brown.
She smiled, came out of my soul.
The sleep and sheen gone, I could
grow green eyes in my own world.
Review Request (Intensity):
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Last few words:
It is often so green on the other side that we forget each and every one of us has an ability to create greatness from within. So many people make the blunder of learning to be others, instead of learning from others.
Editing stage:
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Nigeria, Port Harcourt
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Maya Angelou, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka
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Comments
Osadolor Osayande
Fri, 2017-10-06 05:09
Thank you so much Steph. ania
Thank you so much Steph. ania. Glad I made your coffee more enjoyable.
author commentGeezer
Sat, 2017-10-07 06:21
I find...
that giving critique to someone who's main language is not English, hard. Not that you are un-intelligible. I do understand most of what you have written, but there is a question that I would like to ask, to make things clear in my own mind. What do you mean, when you say "whether your ears had a mouth or not"? I think that I understand that your mother is/was the main influence in your life and her voice strong in your up-bringing. I like the way you portrayed the dream as her coming out of your soul. This gives it an other-worldly quality that makes the poem. My only advice is to read as much as you can in English, and not just poetry. Poetry is not the best way to learn any language, let alone English. Keep writing and I will keep reading. ~ Geezer.
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Osadolor Osayande
Sat, 2017-10-07 21:05
Poetry across English cultures.
I would consider joining Neopoet a huge blessing not just because of the opportunity to share my poems with other poets but for the deep fact that it has been very revealing. I find it a little uncanny that majority of the Western world thinks English is poorly articulated by the typical African. I won't speak for every other Nigerian here but I for one speak English as my first language (Nigeria is really structured in such a way that more emphasis is placed on English than on the countless indigenous languages. Nigerians speak English just as well, or, as may be case occassionally, even better.
So, more than half the time the unease you encounter when reading the poem of an African like me is not due to a substandard wielding of the English language but the poet's deliberate effort to manipulate the words in a manner that tilts towards unorthodox.
I'm neither about to deem you prejudiced nor ruffle your sensibilities concerning how the English language is wielded by others but I'd suggest you approach literature written across cultures with more openmindedness. If you see the topic of my comment, I have titled it Poetry across English cultures, and so honestly mean that. The advent of colonialism left a lot of Western influence and in a sense, at least for people like me, language became an easy thing to embrace by being single minded about it. In other words, because English is my lingua franca it almost is logical to make it my main language of communication while even your my native language becomes secondary. In a way it would interest you to know that just as there has been a distinction between American and British English over the years, there has come to be Nigerian English of some sort. And you've only got to be empathetic enough to reach the soul of art across culture. Really, empathy makes art accessible.
The line you didn't understand was a usage of personification. I am so grateful for your appraisal sir and look forward to more of your views. And once again, the power art which makes it appear greater than the artist's will to own it completely is showcased in the fact that you think it is otherworldly, for I never had intentions of making it so. Thanks.
author commentEumolpus
Wed, 2017-10-11 14:59
some thoughts
I have had the privileged of meeting many Nigerians as a result of some volunteer work I do for those who have been granted asylum to the United States. These are highly educated people some of whom speak English perfectly and others to whom it is clearly a second language. This I think is true of the several Nigerian poets who have joined recently, which has been a joy for this site. So I agree we who live in English only countries can not generalize. Unlike most Americans I speak a second language, and in Europe most people speak several...what I have found is for myself and see in others, that people have different personalities or personas in each language..
Your poetry for me is very different. I do not think it's a language issue, more of a craft issue. I have similar problems with absorbing your messages as I do sometimes in Wole Soyinka whom I have a collection of. .The images are compelling, stark, brutal, emotional, the words seem to find their place...but after 10 so attempts I know I'm missing the essence of your poem.
You have explained the main idea of the poem in the notes, which I very very much appreciate you doing to give us a hint. But the poem becomes a maze to me; who is "my son"and how does he fit in? The spinning to be saved? The feet WERE (not was) brown, and this maternal mother image has emerged from your soul so you could grow green eyes, the eyes which were fed the green foliage... My instinct is the eyes can paint the brown landscape green, but not actually "growing" eyes...
Very often, (most often?) poetry deals with a poetic narrative, a connection of images or thoughts which exist in the poetic universe they were created, in the imagination. The "meaning" of your poem may reach some, but it is just my personal aesthetic that I prefer more accessible logic. I think most of the great poets we read have been able to transcend being both accessible and have a larger and expanding meaning. This is no easy craft!
Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings