A Friendly Foe Poem by Chima Ononogbu

In those earliest happy days,
when life at its freshest,
a spirited lad I really was; so innocent, so angelic maybe,
always in my father's loving arms cradled,
and on my mother's sturdy balmy back swaddled.

Those glory days of my babyhood,
rambunctious as a cruelly gentle leopard,
with a pair of unsullied chatoyant eyes -
deep in unstained grace,
I viewed the spherical face of the world;
So tenderly she stroked my fontanel
and my nose she nuzzled so softly.

Then at any turn of my face,
puffy as a young brown jelly,
laughter rang so loud I chuckled so hard;
pleasantly adorned with warmness of strangers
which in my eyes triggered sparks of electricity
that in seamless bluish waves
lightened up the face of the sky
dithering between gloom and cheerfulness.

The world, then, pricked my skin so softly
I thought her so gentle,
then my head I stuck further out of its sucket
for more tender strokes of hers, much more than before,
but less and less they came, then vanished;
her face changed, arid with laughter,
congealing into a frown of Mephistopheles.

Then ever clear it became I was no longer a child,
the fulgurant coverlet over me, gone, far gone,
pulled off by hands of fleeting time,
and now reality besieged me; a bitter sweet reality,
flapping on and on like a neurotic thunderbird
clutching down on a stray away thunder.

The cold burning hands of the world tugged at me
to slam me face down with the fury of a nursing mother hen,
never to remember my innocent face in years gone-by.
To escape this onslaught, I no more swing the lead,
but grew up to face the world for who she is:
a friendly foe.