Save it for the classroom,
Your incomprehensible words!
This is my poetry
Simple and straight to the point.

Must I write in meters?
Or hide my message in layers?
Closing the window to the soul,
Like a water pot with holes?

You write for aesthetic beauty,
I craft for spiritual purity.
Your words please the eye,
But my verses lift the mind.

Your Metaphors wander,
Looking for where to perch,
Its meaning lost to the wind
Like the treasures of Atlantis.

So they float like debris,
Unable to sink deep,
Just because you entertained,
Rather than set free the message.

How can the wind have ears?
And my dreams tattoos?
Whose music does the former listen to?
Whose clothes does the latter wear?

Your poems shout from the rooftops
Without making a point,
Conjuring high-sounding words,
Displacing music with noise.

I prefer to be a foot-mat
That others thread into the heavens
Than be the security guard
Protecting an incomprehensible verse!

So save it for the classroom
For your lecturers and grades
This is my poetry
Simple and straight to the point!

BIOGRAPHY: NWAKANMA CHIKA
Poet Nwakanma Chika is a Nigerian writer. He is currently studying for his post-graduate degree at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

His rise in the poetry world is rather meteoric. Haven only been a poet for less than a year, his works have already featured on different poetry platforms like poetryghana.com and Society of young Nigerian Writers anthology.

In December 2012, he was First Prize in the first edition of the Eriata Oriabor Poetry Prize 2012.

For Nwakanma, poetry is the most powerful genre in literature because of its ability to say a lot with few words.

He says; “Poetry is the weapon that I would like to use to dispel the overwhelming ignorance in the African youth. I believe poetry should be used to pass a message not just entertain. The African youth is bedeviled with a lot of distractions and my poems are sermons to exorcise these demons. Poetry is the last genre I experimented with but it has also unearthed things I did not know about myself.

“My ability to introspect and philosophize has been given form by poetry. What bugs me is that poetry is the least appreciated of all other genres. The onus is on us poets to turn ourselves into a formidable force.”

Nwakanma has also written non-fiction works, some of which have been published in Baobab magazine, Business in Africa Online magazine and other journals.

He is also working on a collection of poem he hopes to published later in the 2013.

EDITOR’S NOTE:
For someone who has only written poetry for less than a year, I cannot but praise the immense quality I see in Nwakanma’s poems. He writes with purpose and his attention to form/structure, theme/setting and language/diction is largely unmatched on WRRPoetry.

Its funny that he never caught my attention until he won WRRPoetry’s first ever competition.