TO THOSE WHO STEAL GRIEF
you who stole grief & milked bereaved eyes to water your wasteland what shall you tell them when they ask of you: "is this your grief?" can you say you lost what was never yours? should you harvest tears where you sowed no smile?
PERDITA
will we ever be truly happy
not condensing a handful of tears
for one granule of happiness
or cracking macadamian sorrow
for one mouthful of joy
that goes with a swallow
will we ever truly live
not breathing through our mouths
and swallowing through our eyes
not eating to stay alive
and staying alive to eat
will we ever truly be seen
not like salt: ignored among
the condiments it sweetens
because it is colourless
will we ever truly win
not fighting interminable battles
against the enemy of self
will we ever truly die
not lying with the moon to rise with sun
tell me: will we
FORGETTING TO REMEMBER
There's Happiness in Forgetting & Remembering but we often never find it in our wanderings: for we Forget what we should Remember & Remember what we should Forget… We travel into cobwebbed memories to recycle our long-binned pains into brand new Unhappiness.
Kukogho Iruesiri Samson is a Nigerian writer, communications professional, and publishing entrepreneur. Kukgoho has authored four poetry books: What Can Words Do (2013); I Said These Words (2015); Words of Eros (2017); We Who Sowed Hurt & Beaded Pains (2017, 2019); and a novel, Devil’s Pawn (2020). He is the recipient of the 2018 GT Bank Dusty Manuscript Prize, the 2017 ANA Prize for Fiction (first runner-up), the 2016 Nigerian Writers Award (NWA) for Best Poet in Nigeria, and the 2012 Orange Crush Poetry Prize. Aside from managing the assisted-authorship firm, Authorpedia Publishers, he is the editor-in-chief of CỌ́N-SCÌÒ Magazine, a quarterly literary publication. He is known for his efforts to promote Nigerian writing and for working with young Nigerian writers.
