Special Feature: Eriata Oribhabor, Nigeria's Foremost Poet and Poetry Promoter

For YOU

Eriata Oribhabor in poetic motion...

That very place and time came

Without a click, rolling back the

Innocence of your sincerity

Enveloping me till date.

The gate opened you onto the road

For a meeting of two; a brother

And a sister...careless about

Colour, creed and more.

That day, that moment, that meet

That click of life's beauty

Beauty...from the inside

Never weather beaten.

Turn back the hand

Of your thoughts...tell me

Its clicking sounds...a deep breath

Tell me we are not brother and sister.

These lines are for you...yes...for you

Who read them long before written

In bold letters on that cake you baked me

When I hardly knew how cakes taste.

In return, I bake you these lines

Eat them in remembrance of

The love we bathed...before

Wrapped in the arms

Of forever yours.

Yesterday, Today

It started hours and forty ago

Haughty curls heeled above innocence

Spotting spots of dotted foreignness

Entwined in hues of the gods

Told in books and films

Not a crap of holiness.

Wanton lines of wailing hands

Moving in calling shots

Steep in air of forests white

Poorly lost in local appeal;

Tumor sown on a taste

Of sha-wa-ma.

Biography

 Eriata Oribhabor is a poet and frontline promoter of Naija languej. He started off writing poetry in the indigenous Nigerian Pidgin currently being standardized as Naija languej. Writing in the languej, he authored; "Abuja na kpangba and Oda puem-dem (2011), edited, "IF YU HIE SE A DE PRIZIN" (poems) and "AMEBO YAD" (collection of plays). A former chairman, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Abuja Branch, Eriata Oribhabor is the author of two poetry collections; "Beautiful Poisons" and "CROSSROADS & THE RUBICON". He is the Editor, WUSHAPA - Beating the Drums of Peace, Who Shall I Make My Wife (collection of Food related poems), and a passionate lover of the streets where he once hawked various items in Warri, Nigeria; his place of birth.