BLACK TRAVELLER

a collection of poems

Ugwu Erochukwu Shedrach

BLACK TRAVELLER

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BLACK TRAVELLER
Copyright ©2020 by Ugwu Erochukwu Shedrach
All rights reserved

E-book design: Barnabas I. Adeleke

shalomike01@gmail.com
Cover photo: Barnabas I. Adeleke

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For Jeff Cannon, the ones I have lost and those in the tunnel of grief, hoping
for a beautiful tomorrow.

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 Foreword

Poet, Shedrach Ugwu, through his book, Black Traveller, tackles a topic
many find hard and more find harder: Grief! These grief freighted, dark
ladened poems, nevertheless speak of promise. Their verses uncover
treasures of language that not only expose and polish, but more so, give
voice to vital feelings through images, sound, flow of lines that resonate
with grief, solace and renewal.

This brief yet explosive, dynamic, heart honest, spirit present, mind
awakened volume percolates from beginning to end with the vibrancy of a
wounded person seeking to heal the bleeding space left by the departure of
a loved one. The opening poem, “Rest In Paradise” starts where grief starts
with lamentation. Here woundedness seeks healing through a sense of
failed mission with the refrain: “I couldn’t save you as I thought I would: I
am sorry, I am sorry, but rest in paradise.” Lamentation becomes a lamp
light in the wilderness, a time of Emotional Chaos (1) where the author
describes the gutted sense of meaning, body, mind and spirit in the poem
“Epiphany”.

This continues with “Black Traveller” the bereaved feels he has become “a
microcosm of a swayed chronicle of complex complexities”. This mournful
poem becomes a welcome respite for the process of slow relieve of what
could colonize a person and imprison them in grief for their life. Why?
Because the bereaved is working through his grief. Grief denied by silence
only festers to rob a life of its goodness of its gift to give and leave life.
Thus, as ‘yesterday died, today would and tomorrow will create me in

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another quantum of truth and a sweet–bitter reality.” Bluebird”, “Tata”
and “This Is Us” continue this process of Search and Separation (2).

This shines especially with “This Is Us” with memories that start to heal
the present. It also screams with “When This City Cries” and “Delirium”.
This time of agonia becomes a further expansive wrestling with death, grief
and one’s life force seeking to live. We move from Lamentation further
along this Psalter of sorrow to a Book of Revelations. This poet leaves no
stone unturned especially with “Jump Suit”. “Black Rose”, and “For
Africa”. Things appear to come together more when pity is denied, given
the slam in “I Had A Bitch”!

Something new seems to blossom in the last two poems entitled “The Just
Man” and “Death In The Pot”. Here we find a keener link to the both-and
outlook upon life. The use of hash marks accentuates in a precious way
vital expressions of heart, spirit, epiphanaic and mindful learnings,
insights, appreciations.

Here there is no wrestling, no shadow boxing. Here, we arrive at a calm,

steady paced, relaxed other outlook, a slightly different acceptance of life,
self and others having realized “but everyone has/a culture:/of a bruised
heart or/ a smiling face or whatever that stands in-between/… There is
here, a kind of coming to a new sense of self and world (3).

Many shades of grief are allowed to show their culture, speak their story,
tell their view in the light of weighty real: the pre-dawn wonder of
mysterious gray, sometimes foreboding mist, while the choir of morning
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birds sing their morning hymns of joy, of awakening, life calling to be
lived.

This poet’s verses despite their anguish fuel perseverance to carry on.
Everyone traveling the path of grief can despite its pain and loss, look back
one day and whisper “Thank You”. The loss of a beloved is great and yet a
gift is left in the pocket of grief for the sake of our aliveness!

I, heartily recommend Shedrach Ugwu’s Black Traveller as a handy soul-

guide in your back pocket to better get over the hard to better live the
good!

Jeff Cannon

(Massachusetts, USA)

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Nnamdi (1990-2015)

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 Rest In Paradise
(beautiful monody IV)

to the memory of Nnamdi

Often, I feel something that pushes my heart

To the edge of brokenness, like a stallion breaking off

A chariot, I want to follow its rhythm, its traces, its language

But it leads me to a darker place. I don't

Want to live to see another painful day, but I keep

Drowning in every fragment of you.

I couldn't save you as I thought I would;

I am sorry, I am sorry, but rest in paradise.

I sit in a maze like a beggar without bread, distracted

By the thought of what I wouldn't be without you and without your

Gay smile and without who you are. I collect the product

Of heaven supporting your disappearance.

I couldn't save you as I thought I would;

I am sorry, I am sorry, but rest in paradise.

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 I don't know if I am closer to this grey sky, or is it

Falling on me? I've levitated over empty places, and

Sometimes pretend to discard every beautiful monody I've scribbled

Just to be at ease, just to come back to the basement of whom I was,

And to paint my face with another colour.

I couldn't save you as I thought I would;

I am sorry, I am sorry, but rest in paradise.

I hope the angels got you arranged from your

Disarrangement? I hope you confirmed the pierced

Palms of Jesus? I hope heaven is as good as advertised?

You used to tell me I was too young to be in college,

But now I am too freaking young to see you leave.

I couldn't save you as I thought I would;

I am sorry, I am sorry, but rest in paradise.

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 I'm thrown into abeyance like a used napkin.

I want to let this old song slip off my acrid tongue.

But this is it; too late to suck out this venom. Too late

To shatter this glasshouse, too late to have a smile

Again, too late to fight back, too early to see another tear fall.

Too early to know you wouldn't come back.

Send my apologies to heaven if I should fight a different way.

I couldn't save you as I thought I would;

I am sorry, I am sorry, but rest in paradise.

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 Epiphany

Abstracted,

in sheer wantonness the earth

marched towards obdurate dereliction.

In her ghostly smile

depleted of sullied desires,

death ceased gainful motility.

A play of missed profit—

comes a moment of deep dyspnea

withering the bloom of survival.

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 And upon this night,

silhouettes with shrouded appearance cooed

to the rhythm of baneful songs.

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 Black Traveller

i. sometimes i fail to

understand the forces

that brought me here.

ii. i do not carry an intention

of life but its reverse—

(they say humans are sometimes evil),

I can never comprehend the paradox.

iii. and the first day i

felt the piercing of grief

and brokenness upon me,

it was like the hit of a

sledge hammer buried in my head.

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 iv. i do not understand the agony

and sweetness of my every breath,

i do not understand the concept

of love, but i carry the truth of what i was.

v. i carry a crucifix of uncertainty

—a paroxysm of an unfaithful self and sometimes i

delay my exit, to find healing in unwanted places.

vi. i failed to find definition

the day i labelled me as another being and walked like

a peacock in different colours and lay

in an empty gutter and dived into

the Euphrates without a life jacket.

vii. sometimes i fight

for survival, and end up

in a coven of nothingness.
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 viii. I often gaze at my vulnerabilities

and end up seeing the devil in every corner

singing lullabies. i am a

macrocosm of a swayed

chronicle of complex complexities.

ix. so, when you ask me to fly

as a bird, i'll tell you grief stole

my wings and threw me into an

inflated hot-air balloon.

x. i have thoughts of withering

petals, like yet another night falling

to my face like the debris of a burnt butterfly.

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 xi. but just like the elixir of the

alchemist would stir laughter,

i carry an elixir of bitterness–

a saturated anthem of the living

and the dead.

xii. when will i become a

blossoming pea? i am the oyster

clamping to fear and striking the

yarn of lonesomeness and dragging

myself to pieces.

xiii. how many times would

i bribe myself against fear?

how many times would i try

to be human? how many times?

how many? how many times?

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xiv. yet, twenty and a four is an even number,

but i am still the odd one, an

optimist of a wounded eternity.

xv. would i love myself more?

i care less now. if you see me,

don't fail to kiss my forehead, and do

not think of a fatal betrayal because

i died long ago.

xvi. i am a sinful soul in the

religion of love, i am a black traveller

blinded by darkness.

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xvii. i am a mortal in-between

the greys, i've run enough.

let the wind take me to where

it wishes, like a lover would do

to his beloved.

xviii. don't run away from me,

i am human. though i may

paint you with my colour like

a fallen chameleon.

xix. don't break me,

i am already broken like a wall

in harmattan and i may break

further than you know me.

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 xx. i am traveling within

myself, i'll find god in

due time above everything

that makes me human.

xxi. yesterday died, today would

and tomorrow will create me

in another quantum of truth

and a sweet-bitter reality.

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 Bluebird

I still don't want to wet

My already sunken eyes again.

I still don't want to taste the

Bitterness in my already-parched tongue.

Sometimes, the night stays longer

before the morning comes for the cock's crow, but

I still don't want to believe the earth

Swallowed your beautiful body.

I still await your magical smile as

A maiden awaits her lost lover. I hope you

Hear the silence of my comely grieving,

Perhaps, until we meet again?

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 I don't want to lay these flowers early,

But to feel your warm breath again.

I only look at your photos often, and

They create a void in my heart but deep inside

It, you remain a soaring bluebird.

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 Tata

i know how you

cringe to death each time you

hear me say, 'i am leaving in a month,'

your heart goes blank like the

page of a confused poet.

II

i know how you always

cuddled up to me, to inflate my eardrums

with stories of how your father searched for himself

in the depth of his own blood.

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 III

you always want to weep on

my behalf when i say

i am fatherless too.

IV

how did you spell me with

the magic of your mother tongue?

and how to drink the prí without sugar?

and how to adjust my arms for the mádá dance?

now, your eyes are like an ocean.

i know i am leaving,

let’s wet our cheeks together

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 VI

before i say farewell, because i am soon

to know how long it takes for a broken

heart to be mended.

VII

but we'll hold beautiful

memories of each other like the traces of

water droplet sliding down a window pane.

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 This Is Us
(for Princess)

Filling your fingers’ spaces with mine

Was a spell, spelled out of a

Spatial magic of bewilderment.

For all time, we'll jeer at the devil,

But for you and I, this is us.

Holding your hands was a touch

Of an angel's gentle arm sent

To my rescue when I kept finding

Lonesomeness in my pocket.

Heaven can wait here and now,

But for you and I, this is us.

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 We'll travel the cosmos on Sappho's

Strings, mend broken lips and dry teary

Eyes and weep with the grieving and sing the

Song of another new day,

Everything can pass now,

But for you and I, this is us.

At night, we are secret lovers

Letting the moon rip our hearts

Out before the night slips into itself.

But for you and I, this is us.

At dawn, we just let the yellow

Sunrise paint our skin. You must

Be a demigoddess, for I have found god in you;

But it's just you and I, this is us.

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 When This City Cries

These things were not crazy,

not obsidian like the hell I’ve known and seen and touched.

I recall this city as a vista of yellow

sunrise and of songs and of laughter.

Now, I find this city as a broken cup

and bone and bullet, every water in every

flesh is stone-dry. A city

of death and smoke and blood-stained windows.

I’ve forgotten where I know, I’ve forgotten

where I breed survival through the space

in-between my mother’s teeth.

In this city, no one knows the name

of forgiveness, everyone looks like a child holding candy –

I catch up with history.

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 This city is a shotgun carried in a plate

into a hotel room, where survival is a sin and

where bodies are beautiful distractions. In a bar,

the beauty of a woman is in the eyes of the beer-holder,

just like the eye of a faithful bullet.

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 Delirium

i made friendship with the dead, creating a diary of dead things. do i have
to speak to myself before anyone could hear me outside myself? they say
you can't heal what you never revealed, i have revealed my demons in
different chapters :

chapter i:

many things looked dead to me before they died like uncertainty finding
pace under my pillow and at noon, sensimilla arrives for breakfast. (it often
feeds on my soul, then adds life to my demons.)

i'd lived once, and sometimes i wonder how many times i am meant to die.

chapter iv:

i saw a black carrot dangling before my face, i lost touch with my mother's
name before she scribbled a dirge and hid it under my wet bed sheet. how
do i name seasons laden on my shoulders:

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 –of loss in a sordid earth painted with grief?

–of times when i thought the earth would move backwards?

–of resentment and the death in the probability of a failed likelihood?

chapter ii :

they say god is inevitable, but i've only found him in between my death
and silence, or whatever. call me mayhem, obsolete, obstinate, stygian—i
am all you could mention in a drama of nothingness.

chapter iii:

i've made t i m e my enemy. i've failed to heal from all its abundance. they
say it reveals what is hidden, but it has hidden what i revealed. how do i
heal?

and it remains chapter after

chapters, till the gentle wind of the end touches

my face in another night coming in faster steps.

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 Jump Suit

i cut myself to see the light days and

to flee this darkness and hold beautiful things

before decay and walk away and carry my head like a baked potato

and make a glass of fine whiskey like a second god.

to burn cigarattes and watch the smoke waft betwixt my fingers.

to walk these alleys and look at the city lights and pretend as if

other days will be another beautiful song.

see how I want these things come to me.

to entwine everything to the amnesiac part of me and

to kiss broken lips and see the world come in a grain of earth dust.

i cut myself to see the light days, to flee this darkness but the light days are

here, i often arrive when it is dark.

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 Black Rose
(for the first I lost)

to the misguided

who fell into his beast—

that stood for a while

and vanished.

he bowed, for a no

where and for another day.

a sackless spirit, heaved

to an orange sunshine and into

serenity like two lovers

at the shore of lake Biwa.

i could hear his voice,

from the utter silence of this silvery night.

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 yet the beast came

out again and again

for that one whisper,

another bitter serendipity.

i closed my eyes and got

crushed by the companies

lurking in my head.

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 A Song For Africa

A craft of decorated fraility, stung

On everyside by cherry dearth—

Startling in utter quandary.

Flamboyant in her Othello and raking

Herself into grey dust.

We proceed on a journey into

Darker days, shall we sing

Again with parched tongues? It's like water

Upon an igneous rock. Too late, for

The twinge from dead memories linger.

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 I think of lost voices that

Exhumed light from earth and shared over

Obdurate cecity. Yet, strong embraces

To those acts of faith stand to salvage this sobbing

Soil, peharps when the earth grows cold?

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 I Had A Bitch

i had a bitch, her name was Pity, she was sometimes shitty.

we cuddled each other at night and sang to ourselves and

told each other what others did not care about.

during harmattan, she preferred the fire place to fresh bones,

she cared less about milk and ripped out her heart for every stranger.

she stared at cock fights and wouldn’t hear me call.

i had a bitch, she was my ditty.

she enjoyed watching the animal farm with me and distracted me from

farm works. she always wanted to have the day shitty.

i had a bitch, they say she wagged from her heart and

now i miss that scene and not once, but each time i

see her fur remains in that empty cage.

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 The Just Man

I.

The just man is he who buries

his feet in neither anticipatory terror nor

disdain like a merchant returning home at night.

Whom the zephyr of divinity is steadfast with, like the earth's rotation.

To whom, less ill to swerve, who sees not futile beauty

nor take to his bosom things sweeter than Delilah's eyes.

II.

He blenches not, seeking a reverential end.

Approved of calm and tender delight, and utter penitence.

The folding of his days shall wear his colossal name

in a din of beautiful farewells. For the air shall waft

Fragrance of his deeds and to the heavens,

Sing the song of a faithful servitor.

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 Death In The Pot

/and from afar, it looked bright/

like the ripened moon,

/but i knew not what it was, until/

the night came/ i searched

/for myself/ i got dearth

for dinner. /i saw death /

entering some homes/ and closing their

doors impolitely/

/i got renamed/chain-free

like a floating axe head/ and then

realized/ that life holds mist /

in a rickety sack /and in the teary eyes

of the sane and insane/

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 /but everyone has/

/a culture:

/of a bruised heart or

/a smiling face or

whatever that stands in-between/ for life

is death/ multiplied by the

distance journeyed / and cross-checked by/

/a plus or minus—

this is how i learnt how to live/

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 Boy Over Flowers
(for Ifeanyi Harrison)

And long after I am gone,

These scars will be your

Poem and it will be a memory

Of my boyhood and yours.

It will be a requiem for my

Supine body and this poem

Will be you, inhaling a breath of me

From every line and every metaphor.

For your tender eyes will be

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 Drowned in the emptiness of

My failed he(art). If you hear this poem

Recited in the streets, it's for

Boys who never knew home

Like me; it's for boys who

Knew love as a stranger, trying

To find a place for themselves in God's

Smile and if you want to

See me again, don't stare

At my photos, find me

Among those boys wandering

In dark places.

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Ugwu Erochukwu Shedrach hails from the city of Enugu
in Nigeria. He is an avid poet who writes across all
genres. In 2017, he was shortlisted for the 2017
Commonwealth Youth Poetry Prize. Shedrach is a soil
scientist, researcher and enthusiast of moral philosophy.
His works have been published in reputable journals
such as: The Praxis, African Writers, Squawk Back,
Algebra of Owls amongst others.

Black Traveller is his first collection of poems.

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