A Toast to IBB at Book LaunchBy Chudi Okoye (Second draft: Feb 21, 2025)What an event they made of it!Grand, gilded, and glitteringA blistering reminder of their mighty gainsAnd glistering provenance of our biting pains.
The Risen and the ChosenBy Chudi Okoye(First draft: Jan 13, 2025)The tone of the Tanakh tells it allAs do the texts of its varied scrollsThat many had in fact been createdBut the Jews were the truly...
20% Population, 1% Political Power
By Chudi Okoye
The math is simply mind-bending
Bleaker even than in racist America
Where once the beleaguered Black,
Considered as White man's chattel,
Were estimated three-fifths a human
In their owners' political calculation.
America re-jigged its rusted math
After eighty years...
Stooperpower
By Chudi Okoye
Anthony Blinken blinks inartfully
At the spate of unspeakable horrors
Visited upon Gaza by America's vexed ally.
Joe Biden, his boss, bends unabashedly
To the whims of a wild client state
With balls bigger than its budget.
Oh, how are the mighty crawling!
Amid...
Achebe Mourns Nigeria
By Chudi Okoye
October 27, 2023
It seems that God Himself, like a Vengeful Creditor, would deny this country a respite or Civil Peace.
It feels truly like the Beginning of the End. Everywhere in this land, even as you...
And The Voters Went Out To Vote
(Lament for the 2023 Nigerian election)
By Chudi Okoye
(First Draft: Feb 27, 2023)
Oh hear now all ye here gathered
Words akin to ones once rendered
By the Lord in his Parable of the Soils
Here recast as...
By Chudi Okoye
December 14, 2022
It is sit-at-home day in the South East
One fiercely enforced by local bandits
Who have caused a split in our homes
And cut a reddened slit in our hopes
Today they killed a pregnant woman
One among many harmless...
By Chudi Okoye
November 25, 2022
Apostle Peter looked upon the lame
Squatted by the gate called Beautiful
Fractured and forlorn, with no name
His arm stretched out seeking alms
And Peter said: Silver or gold, I've no stock
But in the name of...
By Chudi Okoye
November 21, 2022
The big shot who called us a 'dot'
From his spot in blighted Aso Rot
Is now caught in a demeaning squat
Wasted and become but a naught.
In our history he'll be seen as a blot
A sloth who,...
By Chudi Okoye
(Tribute to Maya Angelou: “Still I Rise”)
You may slight us with your mockeries
Or spite us with your hateful forgeries
You may grind us into the very muck
And even bind us to the rueful murk
In which you and your...
Nigeria’s persistent dysfunction as a federal formation reflects unresolved tensions in the founding visions of its original statesmen. A reckoning is long...
Donald Trump’s MAGA and Bola Tinubu’s Èmi l’ókàn are poignant political slogans. They are also clever political technologies that parlay elite ideology...