THRENODY

1/3/2022

By Osho Olaìítan Jeremiah

i watch how my body begins to fold into the catharsis of poems in the library of my heart.

for many days, till today, i keep regurgitating the wax of a candle/ i do not know how to unmask the beauty of the fire from my face/ when i break a poem into my pupils' palms & bear my scars to the earth's mou/th --

- a boy clasps his tongue to his mother's chest/ he could not pin a fatherly love to himself
- a roaring gunshot behind the fallen day's dream
- gory/ eyes shut/ a metaphor for Rubygold & the portrait Jude painted in his mother's journey//
every day after other days, when i cannot bury the scars & go to bed alone, i tear the chains in the train & sing it, the threnody /take me/ to the throat of a dove/ where my skin annihilates thorns.

Writer's Biography

Osho Olaìítan Jeremiah is a young Nigerian poet, teacher and student blending his words into pieces of writing from the beautiful city of Abeokuta, Ogun state. He is an undergraduate of Lagos State University. He has poems published/forthcoming in Litround, Naijahotstars, Madswirl, Communicator's league, arts lounge and elsewhere.

When he's not writing poems, he's drafting lesson plans, cycling or walking side by side with a twin sister.

15 Comments

Nkemjika, Ifeoma Deborah

1/3/2022 11:14:16 am

The persona's devastated mood is quite consistent throughout the poem and it is evident in the unorganized writing and juggling imagery. This engaging.

Prisca link

1/3/2022 01:38:17 pm

This is well written. I love the flow. It tells a story of devastation, gloominess & mourning. I also felt that the poem was not just a wailing ode but it had a sense of comfort in it.

I also noticed "i" was used all through when standing alone instead of "I".

David Yunana

1/3/2022 02:16:20 pm

I wonder, the use of double and single forward slash (/, //)... Was that intentional?

There is a mix up of tenses.... present, past, past participle and present continuous....as such one is unable to tell what is going on...either writer is referring to the past, present or future.....

"boy clasps his tongue to his mother's chest/ he could not pin a fatherly love to himself"...this line is food for thought; food for very deep thought.

Overall, this falls in the category of poems that require an accompanying footnote/review/explanation (anthology) either by author or professionals.

Not that there's anything wrong with that .

Testimony link

2/3/2022 01:35:17 am

The emotions in threnody are strong and strangely familiar. A form of enjambed mourning mixed with syntax disobedience.

Like Jeremiah, there are some scars I can not yet bury for they carry my history with them. Still as I come back to earth while trying to understand what else the poet is saying. i stumble. i break. Because I can only say what I think he is saying.

Ugochukwu Anadị

3/3/2022 05:51:32 am

“ a boy clasps his tongue to his mother's chest/ he could not pin a fatherly love to himself”

This line is everything. Deep. Moving. Thoughtful.

Like the other poem, this poem is also affected by the issue of formatting thus making a mess of the forward slash (/) method of breaking lines and reducing the page aesthetics of the poem to almost nothing.

The tenses were not consistent. While this is allowed, the reader should be able to see the justification for it. I couldn't see any.

The words used in this poem invites its readers to think, deeply. It reminds me of Rene Descartes: I think, therefore I am.

The thing about memories is that they are wounds. They can be healed, but they will always remain there like the scars, no matter how faint. One can easily relate with the persona's failed attempt to bury the scars of past wounds, but, can scars be buried?

Faith

5/3/2022 11:02:35 am

The poem is oddly beautiful, one I like maybe because its gloomy tone makes you wonder what went on in the author's mind when he wrote it. A pure form of emotional release of anguish, It would be interesting to see the facial expressions if it was a spoken word poetry

Umm Aamilah

6/3/2022 04:30:17 pm

The first part shows that the poet persona does not know how tot express his feelings....the second part shows that the poet persona is in pain.....d/ till today, i keep regurgitating the wax of a candle/ i do not know how to unmask the beauty of the fire from my face/......while the last part shows that the poet persona mourns....

The poem can be said to be an elegy, in the sense that the poet has a painful past which probably he lost his parent in a fire accident.....

Lauretta Ebere-Uke

7/3/2022 11:42:25 am

I like poem, and though I did not understand it, I got an idea of what it was about from the comments of others.

I don't quite understand what the forward slashes are for, though. And I think as a writer, we should be consistent with proper use of capital letters. 😁

UJATA Samson Paul

9/3/2022 12:05:46 am

"for many days, till today, i keep regurgitating the wax of a candle/ i do not know how to unmask the beauty of the fire from my face/ when i break a poem into my pupils' palms & bear my scars to the earth's mou/th "
Threnody is an elegy that describes how he was emotional and weeping for loosing his loved one.
"a boy clasps his tongue to his mother's chest/ he could not pin a fatherly love to himself
- a roaring gunshot behind the fallen day's dream
- gory/ eyes shut/ a metaphor for Rubygold & the portrait Jude painted in his mother's journey".
He probably lost his father.
He has to endure the situation.
He described how his mother struggled or would struggle thereafter.

Taiwo Oluwabunmi

11/3/2022 05:13:13 pm

Threnody as the title imply shares the lamentation of the writer and a mourn of a means to nothing.
He feels lonely and anguish in pain with no love.
This might have been to the happenings in the life of the poet.
Things will get better.

Michael oluwatosin

13/3/2022 03:14:12 am

I think this is the most well scripted poem I've read in a while.....
It's beautiful in its own way,the poet communicated the emotions too well,like you can't help but read to the end and read all over again
Maybe there are some corrections to be made,but I'm too enchanted to notice, probably cause I can relate
Above all I must say,this is a wonderful piece,

Omidire Joshua

15/3/2022 12:43:27 pm

The poem “Threnody” encapsulates the sorrows of a mourner who in this case is the poet-persona.

“Threnody” itself means a song of lamentation for the dead. Yet we know that we don’t just mourn the dead alone, we also mourn dear things that die in our lives or the lives of our loved ones.
However, the first question that hits the mind of a percipient reader is: what or who is this poet mourning? While it is difficult to concretely answer this question, one thing is evident in the first two stanzas; that the poet employs poetry as an instrument of self-renewal, a purgation of his pain.

The third stanza begins to paint pictures of the things the poet is mourning. Here, he mourns a boy sucking his mother’s breasts, clings to it fervently because no love is coming forth from his father. The demise of a fatherly love is worth mourning.

The poet goes on to mourn a fallen dream. Dream is the substance of an authentic life. No dream, no life. The sound of gunshot against the dream reflects the kind of enmity that rises against the dream. The irony is from sound to silence.

How the poet tears “the chains in the train” by merely singing about the scars sustained in the course of living points to the therapeutic power of writing, voicing, telling your own story in the best way you can. The poem therefore is a healing tool.

The verb “take” in the final stanza should be in plural form if it were to read smoothly with the line before it. It should therefore read: “the threnody/takes me/to the throat…”

The formal structure of the poem gives credence to the poet’s heightened sense of style and state of confusion where a myriad of metaphors collapsed to form a well-penned piece.

Jesse link

15/3/2022 10:27:50 pm

I think he has a very good message but his write-up lacks composure and is not more or less error free due to punctuations. However, there is room for improvement.

Hannah

23/3/2022 10:18:24 am

I commend the writer's accurate use of metaphor,describing one using another,with that he creates a world of comparison where one could be replaced with so much. Then the strategic display of dolefulness and a desperate need for alleviation at the end.
He also talks about the boy not apprehending his father's love.
Probably because he couldn't see something visible he was benefitting from the father like the way he clasps his tongue and benefitted from the mother's breast.
He could not place the fathers love to his life like the way he placed the mothers own.
Hence, "he could not pin a fatherly love to himself".

However,This is a complex yet beautiful work of art that requires deep thinking.

Michael Treasure Victor

23/3/2022 05:26:58 pm

You are making sense, but you should be very careful about laying down too many figurative words to enhance the great continuity of the audience's presence and in limiting the beauty of your write-up...In a nutshell, your words are somewhat overwhelmed figuratively and need you to give commentary to keep the work's beauty...Nice write up brother

THRENODY

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THRENODY

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Copyright @SprinNG​

Copyright @SprinNG