Bade Me Goodbye Poem by Cookie Iwuoha

Bade me goodbye
For near draws the night
My spirit finally is empty of thee
After you no more will I sigh,
no more will salty tears for you
cross my face and eyes


Isioma: delicate like my Grandma’s Clay Jug
Faulty was my mind not
Intepretation of my souls contents was all I sought
For every 22 year old must attest his adult
Loved you at a time of war
So tempting was the spoils of war
That I embraced a dream that could not be won
nothing in a young soldier afraid of nothing
Could buy your trust,
And everything was all I lost, when you left for Johannesburg



Oluchi: Mbari Cold evenings with beer and Malt
Keeps your memory so dear and close
Your face nothing could erase in my heart pages
So much needed of you was unasked
with all your strength, too little a love
was all you could give to redeem a man that lost everything
a man afraid of everything,
afraid of anything you could dream to give
and redeem a man who had lost everything



U D: , was I not picking the crumbling pieces
Of this life from its Loss and tragedies?
you seem the missing piece to make everything fit
With you, again a perfect picture was dreamt
but your childlikeness so much needed to heal my fiends
you Locked away from my dying grace
to survive, I absconded, leaving it all behind
like a talisman, so sacred was your face and name
that it hugged every step I took away from you
5 years and I fear still,
Piece’s of you will follow me to my grave, this is certain



Binta: you were a lost dream
that I remember fervently
till the path you became unfinished
I have held unto you like the way an artist
Guards the picture of an unfinished painting in his memory
Our meeting was too wonderful but too brief
You are a paradise lost
that its remembrance causes more pain than joy
I feel like the excommunicated Lucifer
And you are my denied heaven.
But the sin is mine, I chose freedom instead of you
And left for Accra three weeks after meeting you.
Yet till date have not found the freedom
and now there is no more you.


Anna:
Renovation of my spirit was to be your destiny
Your soul so weak and so strong forced me to hate
and love you consistently
you became the crisis that blew maturity out of me
my pain and blessing are complete in your presence
i devote my existence to you
But so many night in the darkness I have screamed
Your name and heard only silence
This Cross of Neglect is too heavy for my conscience
I wonder if you remember us in plumstead
will this Golgotha someday evaporate from my senses
January I hate for taking you away
I only pray September will bring you again


and alas she came
The awaited comforter never comes too late
Ronke: a name that I know not what it meant
But on her face lies the missing puzzles of my life
The forgiveness of all my sins became complete
When she said that name
The MOST needed thing on earth
Grace, finally found me
I feel like Jesus after Resurrection
Now no One shall touch me until I ascend unto My Mother
Wife and Lover.
I return to innocence, my heaven I have found on earth
Yet My hell remained just a door away
As she kindly told me that she is already taken.


I embrace my shame, know with all my faith
someday I will find the love that never fail
till then, I shall only hope to write away from my brain
the misery and pain of a decade
knowing with all honesty and bravery
that I wait not in vain
I wait not in vain
knowing that love will find me again.