SWINGING EMOTIONS ( The Poetry Of My Youth) : The Book Review

 

 

Title- Swinging Emotions: Poetry of my youth

Author- Onyekaba N. Charles

Publishers- Magic wand publishing

Review by- Oli Jude Okechukwu   (olijude@ovi.com)

Man is an emotional and complex being and the best life for man will contain all the things recognised as desirable. His reactions to the vicissitudes of life can be analysed simply as emotional states

SWINGING EMOTIONS: The poetry of my youth, a book of 31 poems, attempts to capture the reactionary emotional states of people to different conditions of life. The writing style is adept in its simplicity. It is consistent in delivering pointedly the vagaries of human existence- love, happiness, fear, grief, nostalgia, anxiety and so on.

Clear expressions of emotional states solidify its originality and comforts one in the blessed hope that you are not alone.

Who is he? Opens with a common human emotional expression of anxiety- ‘panic, unrest, pretences everywhere! (page 25)’. This magnifies the human propensity to be anxious, to worry. Anxiety is an emotional state in which people feel uneasy, apprehensive or fearful. People often experience anxiety about events they cannot control, predict or that seem threatening or dangerous.

‘There are times I feel so ashamed of the things I’ve said or done. There are certain memories I wish to erase forever’.  These are the first lines of the poem ‘Blame me’ (page 34). It explores the human capacity for shame and regret, another common human emotion.

Grief-stricken, the author holds back no emotion in the poem ‘Rest in peace’ (page 27). The words ‘your memories still cast shadows even without the true image. I am in eerie loneliness and emptiness’ conveys the emotional response to death or other loss of a loved one. Dying individuals and their loved ones go through the human grieving process. Although the expression of grieving varies in some respects among societies and individuals, its basic aspects seem to be biological and universal.

Nostalgic feelings come to fore in ‘my childhood friends’ (page 35). The author reminiscences his childhood and the friends he spent it with ‘I had two siblings but many brethrens; I had two parents but many guardians’. We often experience nostalgia, a mixed feeling of happiness, sadness and longing when recalling a person, place or event from the past.

The author also explores the human emotion of love in its various forms- romantic love, fraternal love and the love of God.

He speaks about the experience of romantic love in the poem ‘enslaved love’ (page 10). Here, love is not given back for love, ‘a love that keeps getting back a pie of shit in return’. However he does not give up ‘yet captured, enslaved and compelled into a love only your heart can free me of’.

The love of God is communicated clearly in ‘true love’ (page 6). It brings to light the unconditional love of God ‘even when I resist and despise you, you are always there because your love is true’.

The last poem in the book reads more like an advice than a poem titled ‘The passion to succeed (page 41)’.

Like I wrote earlier, this book is very consistent in its simplicity and grammatical structure and more importantly, each poem represents an honest expression of deep emotions that characterize everyday living.

I recommend it to all lovers of poetry.

WHERE IS THE INTEGRITY?

March 26, 2012   ·   No Comments   ·  By ONYEKABA N. CHARLES

The word ‘integrity’ as defined by the oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current English is ‘the quality of being honest and upright in character’. in other words, a man of integrity is a man of unquestionable character and outstanding norms and values which he is ready to defend or abide with/to not withstanding how tight, difficult and/or tempting the situation maybe.

After going through the above definition, while it may be easy for many people to beat their hands on their chest and say to themselves: ‘I am a gentleman or lady of integrity’, it remains to see how many of such people can rightly justify that by their actions. Permit me to share with you a story of a man who stood rightly and whose integrity was unquestionable amidst mockery. It was on one of such rare Sunday mornings, when I had to trek to church. On approaching one of the traffic junctions which was unusually busy probably because of the time of the day, a certain young man who was patiently awaiting the ‘green light’ of the traffic even though he was about the only motorist at the junction was loudly mocked by observers and approaching motorists for no better reason than because he was abiding by the laws and regulations of a Nigerian society whose voyage has not been well anchored and has been tossed about by the wind of leadership crises, corruption, economic stagnation, social wreckage, decay of values and religious intolerance. That even with democracy in place, the so-called reformist claiming to be men of integrity with intentions of sanitizing and establishing a stable political culture cannot even raise their head above muddy water. A good example is the show of shame between the Hon. Hembe and Mrs. Oteh of the Security and exchange commission (who is probing who?).
While I won’t want to bore you with the well documented case of Mrs. Oteh and the Hon. Hembe led probe, I still feel its necessary to draw your attention to something Mrs. Oteh said on the second day of the probe. ‘I heard that in this country, when you want to fight corruption, it fights back at you’

Not surprising, this high level of sabotage and non-chalancy towards civic rights, corruption and un-patriotism have also eaten deep into the fabric of the citizenry as the upright man is persistently mocked and jeered at. In the face of all these, our society has been left with many unanswered questions. One of such questions remains; ‘where is the integrity?’ Yes!, where is the integrity? when we comfortably exchange honesty for dishonesty, efficiency for nepotism, truth for lies, patriotism for corruption, peace for violence, values for money and freedom for boundages?

The way forward
According to Williams Backy ‘anyone who tries to change the society without the individual can be regarded as a lunatic’. If our society is to be remade, the citizenry must first of all be remade. The core of the problems lies in the fact that we have lost our orientation, thus neglecting our norms and values to the background. The average Nigerian is now contended with his mere physical needs which he does not transcend. Life therefore has become meaningless to him in the face of tribulations and hardships that he is therefore ready to sacrifice his code of morality, religion and integrity towards achieving and satisfying his lower nature while neglecting the optimum
It is an undisputable fact that the destiny of our society lies in our hands. We are therefore being challenged with utmost task of uniting ourselves to salvage our society from sinking further into oblivion. It is therefore useless for us to waste our energy fighting ghost enemies because our greatest enemies are ourselves. Not until, we stop upholding corruption, selective justice, neglect of societal values and responsibilities and chastising ourselves from the betrayal we have committed against ourselves as a result of selling our integrity, our society will continue to remain in the wilderness.

I wish to conclude this with the words of Pope Leo XIII of blessed memory (Pope Leo XIII, encyclical, Rerum Noveram, May 15th 1981) who said ‘if human society is to be healed, in no other way can it be healed, save by the return of Christian life and institutions. Christian morality, adequately and completely practiced leads to prosperity for it merits the blessings of God, who is the source of all blessings. It powerfully restrains the greed of possession and the taste of pleasure – two plaques which too often make a man miserable in the midst of abundance’.

Editor’s note: ONYEKABA N. CHARLES is an author and a poet whose first book ‘Swinging Emotions’ is currently in bookshops Nationwide. You can read his blog at www.charleyrosu.wordpress.com or email him at onyekabaeme@yahoo.com

DEAREST MOM!

DEAREST MOM!

 

……….Dearest mom!

Mother’s day bring to mind, what you mean to me.

You are my dependable source of joy,

………My cushion of comfort,

You are there for me through pains and strives,

………My light in the dark.

Your love is like a rush of spring. Like a bubbling water

-Unconditional, -unlimited, -ever renew and always –pure.

 

Most times, I wonder how you’ve been everything to me

To be my nurse, my nanny, my counselor, my cook and yet my playmate

I just can’t comprehend.

I think of the things you give to me:

Sacrifice, love, affection, and even your tears

Now I am convinced that without you, there would have been no me.

 

What would I have done without your love, care and affection?

What would I have being without your words of courage?

Not only did you give birth to me, you watched me while I grew and have always being there for me.

You call me ‘boy’ because to you, I’d always be your baby irrespective of my age.

Indeed! I’d rather be your baby, than be a man without all you offer and sacrifice for me.

Oh mom! I admire you! I respect you! And I love u more than you know!

 

ONYEKABA N. CHARLES (MAY, 2011) ……..A poem for my mom and all moms on mothering Sunday

 

WHO DEFILED YOU?

WHO DEFILED YOU?.

THEY DIED OBEYING THE CLARION CALL

Tributes, death notes, elegies, doleful songs and mournful groans:

All pouring, sung and written.

Yet our hearts bleed and blood has never ceased to gush out from them.

Our eyes are swollen and our tears run through endless rivers.

We mourn the fathomless death and butchery of these innocent souls whose only crime was obeying the clarion call of a

society whose voyage has not been well anchored and has been tossed about by the wind of leadership crises,

corruption, economic stagnation, social wreckage, decay of values and religious intolerance.

………they died obeying the clarion call.

 

Generations – altered,

Hopes – shattered,

The future – made bleak and

Citadels – destroyed.

Our tomorrow’s promises have now become a mirage.

In sunlight, these bright stars and conscious flesh shall perish and decay

But their spirits and legacies lives on and one day, life’s ruddy rivers would cease and it’s stormy wind shall stand still for them because:

………they died obeying the clarion call.

And to you, these murderous bigots,

Who fermented our tears to the taste of your honey

And sprinkled our blood for libations,

You might escape the bastard child of justice

But the inevitable judgment awaits you.

So cease, you mourners

Away with your lugubrious expressions,

The bereaved, Stop wailing tears,

Be comforted and join me in prayers.

Let’s pray for these brave warriors and heroes because

………they died obeying the clarion call.

ONYEKABA . N .CHARLES (MAY, 2011) ……..An elegy for the NYSC corp. members who lost their lives in the post election violence