Damaged Love Poem by Chukwuemeka Ogbu

Thou innocence-primed beauty
Thou dainty svelte
Emotion-ripping
Like the sun's silhouette
Painted on canvass of the horizon:
Almond-eyed woman
Just like a diamond
Lyrics of the lyres of yesterday
Thou rippling voice
On whose crest
Memory potsherds
Are borne to berth
On the shores of this heart

Frenzied Suitors,
Soil your hands in every toil
Till until evening!
Though on your laps
She lays no love
Pay the dowry of a thousand foreskins,
You may savour
That supple salmon-skin
Like dew-washed apples

I parted
But with her painted picture
Pasted permanently
On the porches of my memory
In comatose to potent words
To sculpt a goodbye
I left to cry in the Nile

What heifers of words
To sacrifice on her
Altars of love
Will suffice to appease
That heart once split apiece?
No need!
I leave to live
In the memory niche
She once carved for me