DANCE OF CHANGE

A boutique
Of traditional antique
Glamour of form
Un-adorn
Market
For the town machete
Worshipping
Rituals at festivals
Untouchable
Unsociable
Untenable

Blood turns palm oil?

You say
We dance stringed
In cowries to the feet
Bond of bold scars-
From tribal marks?

Our art, an act of ants
Only to trade dirt
Underground the dark colony
Woe-ed not to be seen
In scenes of the gold sky

And
We gather
Like ant-soldiers
Coming and going
Working daily selflessly
Across the earth
Only to feed
Mould hill
And meet?
Look again!

See me
Greet beyond the breath
Of a cross-road sacrifice
Saluting fellow Africans
On knees with enchanting echoes
Of blackness to the beauty
Of our skin

And my pomade
Lies before me to wipe
The legs of our children
Standing still
Waiting ill
Waiting, to dance

This is not a helmet
Of shame to disguise PAIN
I am prepared
With a mask to celebrate
The ceremonies of seasons

In sowing and harvest
War and peace
Birth and death

I dance
A frenzy foot in trance
To see the gods
Wear their glittering faces
To know the next pace
The wood decorated
With cowries shell and raffia
Bears my late uncle’s bead
And mother’s lion-cloth
To be worn
In the battle shores
Of the Niger

Why myth
To prejudice my art
Look again
And see you in me
Me in you
Rescuing the present
With a new dance

So let’s tangle
In black white ankle

A crying eye still sees

My lips are big
To cover my big teeth
My short is brown
But it is the textile
You wear, fishing afar
The same river

Watch me lead
The dance,
Then you follow
In frames of Agbara thunderclap
Moving laughter in the wind
Calling interceding tunes
In the howling breeze
My tidings are silent happy smiles
For all our worried hearts

The dance is on
But the conquest is certain
The gods blesses our hoes
To revert those woes
Cursing our skin very holes
Deep In the blood
Like disastrous flood
From those river BANKS

Soon
And soon
The global drought
Economic pest
The prolonged hunger
Our persisting cry
Shall cease to be

Those couches shall overturn
The fluorescent shall burn
Into a coming terror
Of the night delight
Pillar falling limbs
The walls cracking
Down the stairs
In heavy rumble
Of pavement grumble

Discard those idea-logics
Let’s dance
As one feet
Killing their beat
Occupying the seat
Shake their hearts
Out of the locked ribs

Hold a broom firmly
Sweep the rest
‘Dust’ cant resist arrest
In defiance as mud
Sweep!
All in their sleep that feeds
From daily sessions
Toils and sweat of
Our farming children

They spell brilliance
For tyranny…for menace
Granting amnesty to criminals
Who comply with their continual
Dictates of ‘agendas’
Then sentence the majority
Thumb prints bearer
To a tea cup silence
Shunning the pulse
That throbs in many other hearts

This is the dance
Of change in exchange
Of dumb-murmuring
Serenity agape an
Eternity of atrocity

I am Ezenwanyi
I am the new dance
I am REVOLUTION.