Preface
Chimezie Ihekuna
If you are married and reading this, a question (awkward it may seem) would have to be asked: ‘Before marriage, how many times have you had sex?” Do not trivialize this as it would be very necessary.
Probably, you are looking with disdain! It is understandable. As a matter of fact; if you use this question to X-ray different people on the streets, living in a district or community, you will be amazed at the various responses you would get. Some will give questionable numerical figures (taking the question with levity), others will not answer you, believing that you want to infringe on their privacy. Funny enough, other individuals would say something like ‘I will tell you later’ while others will respond by unleashing life-threatening words and actions on you.
However, if sex is an experience, should it be an off-the-record account, worth remembering and documenting, kept as secret for a time but (think about this question: is anything hidden under the sun?) or something to remembered when you are in the grave!?
If it is an off-the –record account, then why waste your time on a task you will not commend of yourself of doing, after all, anything worth doing is worth doing well?
If it is worth remembering and documenting, then you should be congratulated!
This is because you are about exercising empirical knowledge to others (interested), letting them (the wise ones) learn what are ordinarily vague when taught and possibly help improve the sex life of others before and after the particular time (marriage).
If you are advocating that it should be kept secret for a time, think of the question asked. Do you know that the wall has ears? One way or the other, the other party you had it with will unravel to his or her world what really happened. In time, this could be implicating.
If you are that individual who sees the experience, sex, as something to be remembered when you are in the grave, what an exclamation it is. Remember, it is just one life you and I have to live.
If you portray this disposition, it means that you are in a state of guilt. Imagine you carrying this burden of guilt all your life. How miserable you would be! No one you could share it with?
Then, you are out of this world! Frankly, you are in a world of your own.
How can an individual best know the actual number of times he or she had had sex before marriage?
‘Record keeping of sex activities helps to ascertain one’s level of sexuality and in a way, behavioral disposition, present and in future’…Mr. Ben
prairie
a single tear trickles along my cheek
dripping slowly down the crevices of my ear
a saltwater river passing over rocks, so to speak
the night’s adventures disappear.
a cole hardware alarm mourns its lost
warm protection ripped from my frame
young light from the sun melts the frost
california poppies admit to their fame.
soft pink beaks tweet their hunger
as a lioness grooms her cubs’ eyes
a reminder of not getting any younger
balmy heat new to arise.
warming eggos in a toaster or harvesting berries from a bush,
the sun will rise regardless, ending a drowned out shush.
See Life In Your Own Way
Chimezie Ihekuna
(i)
Deceptions try permeating my sub-conscious like a virus
Ugly events want to make me dance bad circus
I choose to see myself as the citrus
That grows in the field of peace
Never caught up by the weeds of disease
I’m hooked with creativity through my ability
To express my service to humanity
I see life my own way
Decided not to be in dis-array
It doesn’t matter the name;
Whose distraction is giving him the fame
For I know that’s his game
(ii)
I’m out for the money
but not down with the honeys
because they are monkeys
pretending to be like good mummies
I’m ahead of my time like time
That’s why you don’t see me all the time
That’s the way I see it…My own way
So, see life in your own way!
Allison Grayhurst
No One Wears Orange Except the Accused and Pumpkins
Who are you to judge me?
he asked incredulously.
The presiding judge over the district court,
the judge answered.
His lawyer stared at him.
He knew his lawyer.
And with formalities over,
it was back to the business
of retribution.
A pool of darkness. To himself and his neighbors. A weeping willow above it, dragging its whip-like branches across the surface in the afternoon breeze. The little stone springhouse at the edge of the woods where they kept the cream sodas, the Oranginas, the cokes. The light gurgling of the spring over the rocks as it entered the pool. The olive green scum off toward the far side, where the tall reeds started in a dark green screen. The sound of a dragonfly darting past his ear, then the sight of it hovering over the pool, its whirring transparent wings, its delicately pulsing body as thin as a small, black finger; then it darts off.
The sense that a world of busyness is happening all around him, a hidden universe of intense, purposeful activity, from the grasses to the leaves, from the worms boring through the mud to the beetles and flies, to the lizards and snakes, to the squirrels, to the birds flashing in and out of the trees, to the little shifts of air, zephyrs, breezes, to the wind and the sky, to the clouds, the clouds, the clouds, those little worlds of chaos, to the sun, the unseen moon, the silent mob of stars behind the blank, opaque blue—in the apparent stillness, an endless busyness, motion endlessly rich, constant birth, constant renewal, an infinity of novel and strange and oddly beautiful forms, a panorama, a spectacle of beings he was, in effect, and maybe even in fact, blessed with witnessing and living among. A formation of fighters thunders across the sky.
One day an ant decides that all of creation has been made for it and it alone—from its creation myth in a clump of eggs in the corner of a damp tree stump, its growth, scrambling over its myriads of cousins, into maturity, its dramatic adventures scurrying over the forest floor, its toilsome existence dragging pieces of dead leaves and beetle husks into the darkness of its anthill, and its heroic destiny as an ant-angel squeaking hosannas to an ant-god in a heaven full of fellow insects—and it toils at growing its anthill and ant society to ever greater heights and to ever greater glory, to prove its grand dreams were justified, that nothing is too good for it or for its fellow ants, and that the rest of nature exists to support it, and will be, if need be, sacrificed to its interests, its survival, pleasures, whims. That ant, in its little soul and clever brain, has even invented a weapon that, implausibly enough, could destroy not only its own anthill, and all other anthills in the world, in one fell swoop, but the entire forest, the county, state, nation—life on earth itself. Such a clever ant! Such a mighty ant! And it might do that one day, just to show it can. It’s just that smart, and on a bad day, just that mad.
—That ant, he said, is me.
She said nothing for a very long time.
xxxxx