Author: Iyan Igma

Going to Pick My Switch

~ Iyan Igma

I went to the sassafras tree;
With every step my feet were lead,
Knowing, should I not return soon,
There would be even more to dread.

With tears streaming down my face
Like a mountain thawing in Spring,
My moistened eyes tried to decide
Which vessel of pain I’d bring

Back for a well-deserved switching,
Though this seemed punishment plenty.
Why make a child pick their own doom?
I thought as a cognoscenti

Of switches, which one shall I pick?
A skinny, limber limb that stings?
But if it breaks, I shall return
To pick and face more swats and swings.

I don’t want to get one too wide,
But which is a suitable size?
The one I picked seemed far too big;
I tried not to think of the cries

That I would yelp, unless I could
Find the strength to bite back the pain.
But if I masked how much it hurt,
I might have to pick one again,

Since it was not enough to teach
Me the ills of sin the hard way.
Maybe they thought picking switches
Was the worst torture anyway.

Pummelos

~ Iyan Igma

Pummelos, with their citric smell,
Make me live in memories past
When I was still a little child
With no hopes innocence would last,

Nor a hope Christmas would bring
The coveted toys of all the rest.
A pummelo was my present then,
And I considered myself blest.

My family gathered around me and
The well-adorned, emblazoned tree,
Whose twinkling lights are like the souls
Of those passing in and out of humanity.

I was hardened by poverty, death,
Friendlessness, and low self-esteem,
So any gifts beyond the pummelo
Would be a suspicious dream.

The surreal chanced as, awkwardly,
I accepted some stranger’s gift
Out of the box on the doorstep
Left in hopes our spirits to lift.

The whatnots animated us,
According to our childish nature,
But proved a bit unsettling to
My pride strong and mature.

How dare they think us poor?
They needn’t think; it was the truth.
How is it I ruined their efforts
With feelings wild and uncouth?

How is it the cherished present
Was one I’d resigned myself to,
While such trinkets as I’d wanted
Became meaningless anew?

I sat and slowly ate my pummelo,
And its tartness has stayed with me
And caused me to resent gifts given
For sympathy of my poverty.

The years have died like many men,
But, unlike men, will not come back,
But remind me when I had naught
There was nothing that I did lack.

Tracking Your Influences

~ Iyan Igma

I can see where your paw prints lay
As lazy as sleeping cattle;
You left them in the sand one day
After the rain’s recent battle.

By such deluges freshly strewn,
The sand was begging to be trod;
Its past impressions picayune
And temp’rary will have no laud.

You’re all I see in silica,
Joining a collection of tracks
In this woodland basilica
That droppings as well scarcely lacks.

Amid desperate survival,
I can just make out the faint signs,
Left long ere the land grew nival,
Of passers through my copse of pines.

By some means they have persevered
The erosive forces of time,
Perchance ’cause their impact endeared
Them, or their acts were much maligned.

Regardless, they’re but faint mem’ries,
Unlike the lunar footprints found
That will last through eternities,
Long after I cease to be ’round.

Mem’ry No Longer Avails

~ Iyan Igma

I travel alone winding trails
That I’m certain I’ve trod before,
But mem’ry no longer avails.
The past’s paths are myths, legends, lore,

And stories I would fain believe
Were I not wary of the snare;
For confusion and fact do cleave
Like fresh lovers watched unaware.

Now, I know not what I should trust,
Since man’s mortal, and love is frail.
But is it wrong to love a lie
When real history’d be a hell?

I can see how I would have crossed
Through the leaves and over the ridge
To see the imagined sights lost
By entering the covered bridge.

I see myself wrapped up in bliss,
Her hair and dress flowing, twirling,
And ‘neath the ridge we wait and kiss,
Hidden to the world that’s whirling.

We separate. I’ll come again
To see her, my heart’s decided.
Why lose her to another man?
In deception, I’ll be prided.

Look how I am covering up
The evidence of my coming.
Surely that must be why I feel
So compelled to break out running,

Certain as a groundhog’s senses
That spring is shortly due to be.
I run to her, but find fences.
Sorrow streams alluvially.

Once more to the path I return,
Quite uncertain what is real.
Why can fantasy make me burn,
Confounding the ways that I feel?

Why can’t life be hon’rable as
Fleeting dreams prematurely dead?
It fails, despite the time it has,
So I’ll prefer to dream instead.

I can make up my destinies,
No matter what I’ve been slated;
When reality mutinies,
I can muse, like it’s been fated.

For only safe within my dreams
Can I ever be satisfied,
For what is man? Truly, it seems,
Misery till the day he’s died.

The Naked Mole Rat and the Penguin

~ Iyan Igma

Once, there lived a penguin, and she madly fell in love with a naked mole rat that fell in love with her. The penguin came to live with the naked mole rat in his burrow. But, alas, she couldn’t take the heat.

“Honey,” the penguin said, “I’ve got to get out of the kitchen.”

“Well, come on inside the living room burrow and lay down in the cool. I’ll finish supper,” the loving naked mole rat said.

“No, honey, I’ve got to go back to where I came from. I want to stay here, I honestly do, but I can’t.”

“If you cannot live here with me, then I’ll go to Antarctica with you. I cannot live without you.”

They packed up their love and left the homely burrow to live in cold and windy lands. But, just as the penguin could not take the heat, the naked mole rat was unable to cope with the bitter freezing cold. He died. In the snow.

Moral:
There are some things love can’t conquer.

The Zenith of Oblivion

~ Iyan Igma

The success of my oblivion
I shall never surpass,
Should I scribe an epic
For each lad and lass.

Oblivion is my acme,
Zenith, and bounteous yield.
In it the greatness of my
Characters was developed and revealed.
Compared to it all else
Lies as a barrenly fallow field.

Nothing else could achieve
Oblivion’s universality;
Everyone can attribute
It to me.
Should even a few recognize
Other works my pen doth decree,
Oblivion’s numbers grow daily
As the flora in the lee.

Cereal

~ Iyan Igma

“Chewy,” thinks me, fork in hand,
Commenting on her taste.
Throughout pubescence had I been
Taught etiquette and not to waste.

She tasted not like chicken but
Of sumptuous carnal pleasure.
Sat I picking at fickle fillet;
I had deboned her at leisure.

All of the girls who’ve died for me
Have touched me in endless ways.
In love, I trust all’ve had the misfortune,
I know of one crime that deliciously pays.

Disdain from Wittenburg Castle

~ Iyan Igma

“It is easy to disdain from a sheltered place,
But harder to shelter the place of your disdain.”

I can attack your inherent flaws
Because I am protected.
With luck, you will change,
As I have not projected.

And from a secure place in my soul,
A speck tedious to locate,
I sit ‘neath a willow tree.
I weep for you and agitate.

I would shelter you from
This if I only could
Disguise the barbs
As satirists would.

But then this assault would
Have no satisfaction
By achieving an indignant
Or hostile reaction.

Sin Colored Glasses

~ Iyan Igma

You’re looking at my world
In shock and in pain;
Everything I do
Seems quite insane.

But I see things
In a much different light,
Your strict and dull ways
Are such a bland sight.

To see as I see
Requires not classes,
For my education comes
With sin colored glasses.

Shade your eyes
From what’s right
And let avarice be
Thy guide through the night.

I’m looking at the world
In a sin-colored way,
But everything seems
As clear as the day.

Omnivenicient

~ Iyan Igma

Empowered with my Venetian sight,
I longingly peer through blinds
Into a rustic courtyard, emptiness, where
My vision has spilled, is present in many kinds.

The slate sky suspended distantly away
Has abandoned its loving rains.
Lonely, it has become sorrowfully blue;
The colour of one who complains.

Solemn oaks and willows have lost
The intimate company of wind,
Who must journey wherever Solaris’s
Heated passions fickly send.

No living being with a soul
Takes refuge in the exposure
And have instead forsaken the courtyard
For the sheltered brick enclosure

That stands formidably and,
As a turtle, low to the ground.
The base foundation has been painted
By the deluge’s silt that has browned.

Lo, movement stirs beneath the catwalk
Roofed with one rippled tin segment undone.
Like wildfire over thick humus, they
Blaze a rampant course as they run

From the battered black double doors
To the innards of the cafeteria’s walls.
One of these few streaking teens
Stumbles, slips, and slickly falls.

As if arisen from the dead,
The ravenous youth moistly stands
And angrily chases those who’ve fled
Madly for nomadic sustenance.

With his jeaned departure all is still,
And fallen oak leaves are left alone
In plastered heaps of rusty brown
Where by wind and rain they’ve been blown.

But the solitude interwoven departs
With the stampede of unaware pupils
Boisterously speaking, without hearts,
Cold words and jokes and lack of thought.

The lips do move, as do their legs,
But neither makes audible sound.
The promise of edible confetti leads
Them targetedly across the ground.

Despairing as they all pass by
Without a word or acknowledgment,
I feel battered by ostracism.
Of what do I need repent?

A peculiarly unfitting sight has caused
Me from my thoughts to be awoke.
This herd has a straggler;
She’s halted near an weathered oak.

The wind, who has newly returned
At this time of mortal repast,
Speaks mildly to his leaféd cronies—
Presumably about adventures passed.

The interaction of conversation
Stirs the residential dew of the leaves
Which gravely by gravity mattes
The red covering of where she conceives.

As if she can feel mine eyes,
Glazed from staring observations,
Upon me has she fixed
A glance of considering consternation.

Alone, I slink back to my comrades
Treading the boards where all can see
The illusions I represent while still
Being unable to perceive me.