Valentine Okolo > Quotes

“You are
a water nymph
from the ocean
rising.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Black Girl

Your
skin
is dark
chocolate
dipped
in honey.
You are
a delicious
shade
of melanin.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“One

We are pulled
to each other
like paper clips
into the embrace
of magnetized iron
like a lightning rod
hailing the finger
of thunder,
and we can't
say why.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Scales

Balance
is
profit
and losses.
Acid
and alkali.
Vinegar
and sugar.
Depression
and
euphoria.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Portrait

True
beauty is hidden
in the fringes
of softness.
Something
which summons you
to experience
but not
to possess.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“For me poetry is the stuff of dreams. A world made up of words. The way these words sound to my ears and how they roll off the tongue. How they taste and how they feel. It is about the balance of the words I place on my lips and how they resonate past pages once performed. It is about the great power behind them. The massive creative force which moved a universe into existence and gave birth to life in Genesis. It is about poetic telegrams breathed out of the lungs and into an attentive ear.”
― Valentine Okolo

“Earwax

Allow me
to slowly undress
your hair
and make love
to your ears.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“For me poetry is not the exclusive domain of academia. Stuff to be studied and dissected in college classrooms like a lab rat to find out what makes it thick. It is a form of human expression. The transference of human emotion from one person to another whether it is written or performed.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Each time a child goes up as an incendiary, something within me rips open. Until a day of reckoning comes I don’t think I will ever get over the self-immolation of each of those children. And my words are inadequate to show the depth of my grief or my anger. Nothing can. Only my deliberations with silence.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Most times I feel the emotions of others when I write. In those moments I become that which I write about. I see with their eyes, I hear with their ears, I feel with their skin. In those moments I cease to be myself, and become someone else. I become her, they, it. I become someone’s dreams. And relive, sometimes, their nightmares.”
― Valentine Okolo

“I most times don’t plan a poem in advance. Some poems, if I may use the expression, fall at my feet, almost fully formed. They are a few poems, however, that I do make plans to write in advance. And in order to write them I have to enter into a period of poetic gestation. A period in which I allow the idea of the poem to take root and grow within me until it is ready to be birthed. Sometimes the gestation period may take a few days. Sometimes it can take months or even years.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Allow me
to slowly undress
your hair
and make love
to your ears.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“I can never be divorced from them. Because they exist within me. I am her, the molested and the raped. I am him, the detained and the sold. I am they, the legions of people killed in regional subsidised genocides without names and buried in anonymous tombs.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Woman,
may you always
remember your birthright.
For you are salt;
the jewel of the sea,
the maiden
with a thousand
shimmers.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Come with me
to this backroom of grey
behind a fortress of blood and steel,
where girls who would be mothers,
are carted away, codeine eyed,
to quest the Holy Grail on alien soil
by women who should be mothers to them.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Youth

You are
the breath
of dandelion
seeds.
An explosion
of fresh fuzziness
and abundant zeal,
unanchored
by the labors
of this life.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“What are we?

We are
a combination
of sand
and gunpowder,
cosmic energy
and sawdust.
We are
black holes
and novae,
children’s laughter,
and tears of time.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Watermaid

You walk
like a river
and I see you,
gliding over the tide,
each evening,
your feet
barely making prints
in the sands.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“When everyone tows a popular line, the truth itself becomes unpopular. And unfortunately, truth is never popular.”
― Valentine Okolo

“I empty my mind. And do something else that is not related to what I am writing about. Sometimes I take long walks, and focus on being in the present. As I walk, I take note of the rise and fall of the land, the diverse faces of people, the roaming animals, and the sounds coming from cars and motorcycles. Most times when I do this ideas flow to me freely, clearing my imaginative inhibitors.”
― Valentine Okolo

“You & I

Both of us
are like two hands in a painting,
gliding towards
each other in the dark.
Trying to communicate a message,
that no words,
but only touch can express.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“I am the messenger. And I will prick their conscience.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Moment

In my arms
you are
a trembling
leaf
licked
by the
erotic tongue
of the wind.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Flame

You burn
like a candle
or a hurricane lamp,
your eyes,
shut like a window at dusk.

Your hair, orange ropes.

The flames from your aura
reveal a rapture of release,
I see in the cleft of your teeth.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Most times the poetic in life is found in many things around us. You would find it in the deft play of a football player on a soccer pitch. An orange sky with the descending sun at twilight. The laughter of a toddler playing with dirt. Or the feel of the wind caressing your face. Poetry most times is found in the profound.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“Kiss

Twin lips,
surrounded by
white light.
The breath
from my mouth
make you quiver
like a jellyfish,
marooned
on the water shore.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“What does it matter to those
living across lines of hate and insanity,
spawned by centuries of oversight,
their border posts fortified by rifles?”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“It is always love at first-write.”
― Valentine Okolo

“It is about speaking with temerity and bearing witness for those who have no one to bear witness for them. Because they are poor. And the poor, unfortunately get trampled upon by the rich and powerful. They are those "underneath snake skin shoes and Mercedes tires" something which Niyi Osundare highlighted in one of his famous poems.”
― Valentine Okolo

“You seldom beg when you walk the streets,
immune to the music blearing from record shops
and cheap MP3 players.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent