London Poor

By Roland Nwankwo

London Poor, is a novel about love in a time of poverty and inspiration. The protagonist an Igbo born in Merseyside and brought up in Belfast by professional parents who seeks a career as a young man in London, but falls into despair and becomes an artist fighting demons and dreams alike. He meets Sibby a Jamaican English woman younger than he with the merest blush of almond skin. She is a curator at the Courtauld where he falls in love. The two of them through ordinary days explore their sexuality, inhibitions, and prejudices, and aspire to joy, pure joy. as the novel unfolds through the arts and work, and home and street life, London becomes a place where a man might save his soul and a woman be taken to paradise. There is nothing artificial about this novel, it is a work of fiction, but realistic in nature.

Strengths:
Vivid description, juxtapositions
- “I was burning with lust and fear, as a mentally insane, unemployed upper middle class” (9)
- “My heart felt so big, it filled the whole room, I thought I was in love; with this Nwoke or a moment!” (27).
- “The charcoal snapped several times and the portrait looked like a jigsaw of, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, chin and forehead, and lips” (34-35).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Mar 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984593757

Roland Nwankwo

At Liverpool University, Nwankwo studied African American literature. He left his hometown for London at nineteen the year he went to Nigeria and returned to study in London, where he earned degrees in consumer behavior and economics. Nwankwo worked and performed spoken word poetry throughout England including in Bristol, Bath, Carlisle in Wordworth’s Cumbria, and Manchester. Nwankwo attended the Cyprus school of art as well as arts schools in England. Nwankwo has published in pamphlet form and in council magazines for over twenty three years, he is now 47, and hopes to build a relationship with readers across Europe. Nwankwo has socialized in intellectual and artistic circles in London and have built bridges to many men and women representing their own spirituality, politics, consciences and independence. Nwankwo has been painstaking in his research for the correct path to take with the literature he has produced and who to approach. Since leaving Bath Spa University in 1996 with an MA in creative writing, he has completed four novels, all edited with Becca Hayman of the Langton Agency in New York and an associate professor at City University of New York.

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Copyright © 2020 by Roland Nwankwo.

ISBN:                  Softcover                        978-1-9845-9376-4

                            eBook                              978-1-9845-9375-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

New International Version (NIV)

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Rev. date: 02/11/2020

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CONTENTS

Part One

Part Two, Some Untidy Spot

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

A Modern Man

A Song

In 9 parts

Dedicated to

Dr C I Nwankwo and Mrs B Nwankwo and Juliette for

all those who’ve shown love and understanding and given

hope And to the Alusi, for reminding me of Jesus

Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon O cant you see it, O cant you see it,

Her skin is like the dusk on the eastern horizon… When the Anwu

Goes down… Jean Toomer

Arinze By The Grace, Wisdom, And Power Of Chukwu. The Name Bearer Is A Gift From Chukwu.

Irish Gaelic Words

Human daonna

Love gra’

Silver airgead

The gift of God, is sacrifice rising to grace.

Sacrifice is suffering, grace salvation - leading to heaven;

Heaven is life everlasting, and the kingdom of heaven is on earth -And life is eternity, Gods to bestow.

From first impulse, to make love, to conception, to birth -Through out and through out, until the end.

The heavens never ending, till God is remade.

Leaf

If - Oh longing? Moments of manhood

and humanity, our shared humanity!

PART ONE

Awakening.

O Nro, my Nro,

Where is your sweetness? Where are you,

Joy of Abali fleetness? They’ve gone away -My fancies gay,

And now alone

In Ochichiri grown I, sleepless, stay.

A mute Abali hovers My bed above

In a flash lone

Turned cool and gone Nro of my love,

Like a tense crowd. But still heart beats The longings’ sound And catches bits

Of Nro around.

Love, hear my plea, Hark to my prayer: send back to me Your visions, fair, And by morn sky, Again enchanted, Let…Let me die still unawakened. Aleksandr Pushkin 1816

I had kept this poem on me, since it’s translation in 2005, when I came across it at the Abu library, at the then Royal Festival Halls, on the Thames southbank. During the First Ala War, young British officers, Ocha teenagers from public schools, kept, many of them, a copy of Claude Mckays, if we must die, in their breast pockets. For the same reason, I kept, awakening, by Pushkin; Russia’s national poet; in the English language, in a plastic cover, and in my back pocket. And there it remained. I seldom read it, nor looked at it, only took it out when I changed my trousers, and exchanged it to another pocket. I kept many poems, my own and other poets. And could recite them, though I never sang. Pushkin had died in a Duel, and was the great grandson of a Muslim slave. I hoped to fair a little better. Chukwu bless the poets!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Chukwu, and the Word was Chukwu (John 1:1)

I graduated in 1995 with a Masters Degree in Financial Economics from the Guildhall University. I never went to work. I had been experiencing mental trauma since an undergraduate, for some years before. I was often then weeping. And had been unable to socialise properly, making few or no friends. I had only been able to pass by having focused with tunnel vision, and had no seks Ndu; this only exacerbated my condition; at one point in a tutorial, I simply lay on the ground and Mmiri.

I did however graduate, but didn’t attend the graduation ceremony. Instead I was a confused young Nwoke of 23 living on the dole, applying for work, I had no hope of keeping. I knew I could not complain, as everyone goes through shit; but it doesn’t stop you cogitating. Je pense, donc je suis. I had begun to take Abu seriously as an undergraduate, and it was to become my salvation; that and the Bible, and the love of a Ekwu! In the year after the postgrad degree in economics, while I applied for work in the city and failed to find it, my poems became gradually more visual on the page, as I typed them on an industrial 1950’s IBM typewriter in Ucha Eligwe ink. My mental health deteriorated. I hadn’t been Ulo to Ireland in two years, and was hardly in touch with my Nne. I was getting lost on the streets of East London, where I lived, in my Ulo in Forest Gate; I lived alone. I signed on every two weeks and this was an ordeal, as everything was becoming over seksualised and visualised in my mind: the Ekwu that signed me on, where becoming like whores, and I desired insanely to sleep with or rape them, and began to hate the ordeal. I continued to sign on for four years after I broke down despite being unable to work, until a Good Samaritan, an Asian female, a benefits case worker helped me claim sickness benefits; she was a professional, the other workers always seemed tawdry, and despite my situation then, I looked down on them. The one friend I had kept from Guildhall was an art historian called Esther who visited me in my Forest Gate Ulo. she was Jewish and two years older, and lecturing at Guildhall, she was in a relationship with one of her Nwaanyi. she looked like Kiki De Montparnasse and I fancied her. she read nearly everything I wrote. And suggested I begin to draw, as the visual aspect of my Abu was taking on a Ndu of it’s own. I didn’t then take her advice, but would latter, but instead begged her to sleep with me to save my soul. she said I had beautiful cows brown eyes, Igbo eyes, like my Ancient Egyptian ancestors, whom the Igbo believed they were descended from, before they crossed the Sahara to the West, on a journey, of many generations. she naturally refused. She offered me her cheek to kiss, and I bussed her lips. And the last time I saw her we went to an Indian restaurant together, and then went to hear and see Wole soyinka, the Nobel Laureate, read his poems at the Africa Centre. I sent some poems to a mag but they were turned down. I had been spending the Abali on the street and sleeping in my Ulo in the Isi Ututu, as I was sure the devil was in my Ulo at Abali. One Abali the Onwa was as large as the whole universe and I walked down the street caught in a passion of confusion, and loneliness, captivated, unable to break out of this spell, but I couldn’t fall to my hands and knees, as I wished to, but just kept walking towards the fall, like a wolf running a straight line on a plane with its hunger, or a leaf blow down the street into a gutter. And to naive to commit suicide, I lived through this hell on the streets. In perplexity and confusion I was sure all I needed was to make love and sought the company of prostitutes at a Bow whore Ulo. But they refused to sleep with a Oji Nwoke, and I was sent away twice. I finally took refuge in a popular pub where I got plastered on the little Mbatuku I had for food and tobacco for the following week. I wrote this poem there:

Uriah

I went to the fish market I went to get laid

The prostitute’s Ulo I went to get laid

The two Ojis I am Oji

Wouldn’t see a Oji Nwoke Oji Pride or Oji shame

I went to the fish market I went to get laid

I came to the bar and, here I am saved.

I met an ex soldier there and his conversation was the only thing that cheered me up. He told me where I could find a prostitute, but I didn’t bother, but instead went Ulo, to brave my devil. The next Isi Ututu after smashing up my bedroom at Abali, I took myself to East London Uni and found the psychology department. I stopped someone in the corridor and said I wanted to speak to a lecturer. He said he could oblige. When I told him why I was there, and I wanted to know what was happening to me, and that I thought I was the prince of Ochichiri, he said I should go to a hospital. I really just wanted to talk. I hadn’t slept in weeks. I went to the hospital. The psychiatrist there took me by ambulance, which was a car, to a hospital in Esseks, Goodmayes. I was never in fact sectioned. I was there as a volunteer patient. I spoke to two more psychiatrist on the ward. They offered, me medication, but I refused, saying I wanted to speak with a psychologist. The psychiatrist in charge refused to refer me, but said I could stay on the ward, which I did. I had a copy of Rilke, the sonnets to Orpheus with me, and read these for two Isi Ututu. There was a patients meeting called with the head nurse, and they said they were to raise Mbatuku for the ward. He gave the job of writing to businesses to raise the cash to me. Which I refused, I was hardly up to it, despite my education. The next Isi Ututu, he told me, I was receiving free board and free food and should leave. I did. I went Ulo and survived for the next months, often spending Abali on the street and roaming London, witnessing prostitutes and rent boys at Abali getting into strange cars! and thieves breaking into buildings and wareUlo. And the middle, working and upper class, and the people who existed without being any of these groupings. I became familiar with the graveyards of the East Ends Uka, and often thought of Dick Whittington. I kept the sonnets to Orpheus on me always, and whenever I was stopped and searched by the police which happened often, this was all they would find, and my keys. I went Ulo one Abali thinking I had walked into the womb of London, or was it the tomb. My vision was so seksualised, I was burning with lust and fear, as a mentally insane, unemployed upper middle class, Oji Irish postgrad living in East London. I had never felt more alone. One Abali after being on the street and having travelled to a Igbo friends Ulo in North London, and having asked him to sleep with me: he had devil’s symbols on his walls, I asked him why? He answered me that the image of a thing protects you from the thing itself! I went Ulo; he had refused. I went back out for a long walk along the Romford road connecting Esseks to East London, after getting in off the streets filled with indifference, I found an old unused notebook, and I sat down to write, what was to be a diary, but instead, in writing sold my soul for peace. I got to my knees and prayed, and saw the lights of the Universe rotate around my eyes. It was: The beginning of a Ndu long pilgrimage!

The sons of Adam are of one limb, when one is pained the others find no peace, thou showing no regard for another’s misery is unworthy to be called daonna.

The next weeks involved my going to various Christian Uka, and wanting to attend but being unable to find a Hindu temple. My mind was going spare and I read as much theology as I could, absorbing the Bible, and preying, moment by moment second by second in my mind. Pouring through an encyclopaedia on the early Christian Uka, I came across the Gnostics, who believed Alusi knowledge rather than blind faith was the path to enlightenment. They accepted Christ, and saw John the Baptist, my namesake, as an early Gnostic leader; they believed in reincarnation of the soul, and that every huNwoke can become a Christ and every soul will be drawn back to Chukwu: logos / the image of the word. The madness was still there, fear had been added.

A Jehovah’s Witness knocked on my door. He was an African. I let him in. He visited me once a week for several months. He told me the police were the devils disciples. That there was indeed a devil. He left me with a new Ala translation Bible. Which when I read lifted off the paper and entered my mind in the magic of numerology. I was beginning to find myself again. As it approached Christmas of 1997 I decided to try and make it to Belfast to see my Nne. It was Christmas Eve. I got on the underground to get to Euston station. On the train, my mind begined to perceive the sounds and Alusi of the men and Ekwu on the train. The train was held up, and we were stationary for ten minutes. In that time I saw many things and eventually burst into uncontrollable Mmiri, standing to my feet, a Nwoke with a bald head a bbc engineer (I thought as we were at Ocha city on the underground), asked me what I had done that Isi Ututu, I said, nothing at first, and then, Abu. It was the sadness of Bob Dylan’s, In My Time Of Dyin; well, in my time of dying don’t want nobody to mourn All I want for you to do is take my body Ulo.

I was taken off the train, I was wearing Oji chinos and baseball trainers in Ucha Eligwe and a favourite Liverpool FC shirt with Daglish written in white over the red, and the number 7, he had first played for Celtic (Celtic won four division titles, four scottish cups, and four league cups from 1971 to ’77), I continued to Mmiri for another half hour until an ambulance arrived. some working class Ocha Ekwu begined to sing on the train, as it had been held at the platform, while I Mmiri continuously, the devil I had feared lived in their voices. I there experienced poverty as emotional grunge and had finally fallen hands and knees into the shade of the Onwa, but below the streets on the underground of the city.

The ambulance took me to Goodmayes once more. It was a wacky race to outrun the devil on the streets of London, I thought this and blurted ‘Wacky races’ to the driver and nurse with me in the ambulance. I don’t think they would have understood, what I had meant.

On arrival I was taken out of the ambulance and saw the steps at the entrance to the hospital, three steps to Heaven, I counted then, but there were only two. On the ward the first person I saw while I remained beneath a Urupuru of Mmiri of my own making, was a nurse of Indian origin, who looked into my eyes with the purest compassion, and stayed my fear, when filling the admittance form out verbally they asked me my religion, I couldn’t answer and in panic, this nurse then said it for me ‘Christian ‘. The Urupuru remained above me and I was stiff with anxiety, they put me on antipsychotic drugs. I had never been lower. Two Isi Ututu latter the English nurse that had asked me to leave the ward and hospital when I had first been admitted months before, took me into a little side room off the ward. When we two. Were sat facing each other alone, he told me ‘you have sold your soul, and you are gay.’ The Urupuru of Mmiri remained above me for the duration of my stay, Mmiri dropping imperceptibly back onto my face, I don’t know how many Mmiri I Mmiri, but that Urupuru has never lifted, the Mmiri keep falling, imperceptibly. One Isi Ututu the Anwu passing rolled out across the windows, grew to the size of thought, time was suspended, everyone on the ward was frozen, and I was alone with my reality, but it was more like ecstasy than horror. I was filled with seksual thoughts, but they were growing towards myself, I was becoming well enough to leave. When I went alone into the grounds which were a sort of farm, only without livestock, I stood and looked at the Urupuru and left that place of incarceration in Nro, at Abali I did the same beneath the Kpakpando dreaming. The Abali I left, I walked down a strange street in Esseks to find a bus stop to catch a bus towards London. I had an apparition, and the Alusi appeared on the streets, Alusi who have haunted me since. I walked under the Onwa, a Urupuru of Mmiri above, and when I closed my eyes, the image was of Christ came. And then the voice of the Alusi came, and I realised I had been lowered, and may never be the same Nwoke again.

I had written a poem about this in Goodmayes, where I was to stay for six months, and many more. The first Isi Ututu

Thunder storm lightning may strike

the devil makes I laugh I face

The devil makes his mayhem the cleansing rains

- Autumn

the first Isi Ututu. Summer ended last Abali.

Akhenaten the son of Pharaoh Amenhotep the third, Pharaoh meaning Great House; married Nefertiti, the Mona Lisa of antiquity; the Nna of Tutankhum, was not born to be a Pharaoh, but in 1353 BC began his reign as Amenhotep the fourth. He built monumental temples and buildings in Karnak in Thebes, facing the East and the sunrise, honouring the Anwu- Chukwu ‘The Living One’ Ra- Horus, identified with light. Aten, the Egyptian word for the Anwu-disc. He subsequently changed his name to Akhenaten. He had created the Worlds first monotheistic faith: to be followed by Judaism, Christianity and Islam over two thousand millennia following his conversion: all three of these religions absorbed some tenants of the Ancient Egyptian faith, the land then being known as Kemet. When he died the priests defaced his

image on all temples, tried to erase his memory for future generations, so no trace of his religion or legacy or this soul would be left. He was regarded as a heretic and the first individual in history. I was latter, years latter, to be told by a religious vendor, that an evil scientist in Ancient Egypt had genetically modified slaves to create the Ocha race.

I became an artist, by begining to draw in Epping Forest, a few years latter. Having created Logos out of Word: Logos, the image of the word.: an alchemy had been performed.

sketch

I’m no artist but here

And now -This Osisi

This seat Before -

Time to rest From write to reach, see

To capture Osisi.

PART TWO, SOME UNTIDY SPOT

Where the dogs go on with their doggy Ndu and the torturer’s horse

scratchesitsinnocentbehindona Osisi. Auden(Poem.Bruegel’sIcarus)

I had met Simon at the Royal Academy, the Friday before that Spring weekend, on April 18th; it was 2008: there was a building on Carnaby street which I had walked past several times wandering around the city centre; there was sign writing in descriptive pearl Ocha script on the Oji boards on the windows saying this building is being restored, but no one was usually there and I thought the building vacant. Simon had told me all about Afflatus on the steps of the Academy as I came out, and I was taken with it. It would be an opportunity to exhibit and the company of artists.

Two Isi Ututu latter I met Simon outside the Nickelodeon TV building and we walked along the cobbled walkway to the Oji building I had passed previously. The building looked empty and there was scaffolding on the outside which as Simon explained made for easy access. I told him I wasn’t prepared to break in, but if he secured the building and put a lock on the door to gain squatters rights, as he would be in possession of a key, then I would help to run the exhibition.

After taking a few photographs and marking the street with a green highlighter on a map we retired to the Shakespeare’s head for a pint of Guinness and a blonde beer.

‘You know the academy exhibition in a phrase, is a waste of time. Nobody ever gets in.’

‘I just want to promote my work, and maybe find a gallery that will take me.’ I replied.

‘The Fuhrer wants no class divisions in his labour camps.’ Simon said! ‘Brecht. I’m sure the shopkeepers don’t either, nor the landlords. No class division outside of the middle class.’ I retorted.

‘The joke is, were all middle class. All equally educated, and able to travel, and stay informed. The Ala is middle class. But the Ala is made to work.’

‘The devil makes his scum, Chukwu his princes.’

Simon was blonde, a little shorter than I, he was pale skinned, and spoke in a voice of extreme education - the voice of authority; but he dressed as though he had dropped out and was slumming it; though that couldn’t have been the truth as he was successfully running squat exhibitions through out London with Afflatus a sort of artists and curators cooperative, for the adventurous. He was definitely Ocha and southern English, and British.

‘I’m not working, if I sell any paintings through Afflatus, can I take cash?’ I asked him.

‘Everything is done through cash. Most of us are poorly employed. still apart from the middle class; the middling sort of folk are well provided for.’ He said.

‘Martin Amis. I suppose we all learn to hate, by the age we are exposed to the realities of inequality.’ I retorted.

‘Another term for injustice!’

‘the Ala is mad and bad.’ I said

‘Just bullshit and party!’ He said. ‘Biggie smalls.’

‘What is it you want?’ Simon said, suddenly sounding concerned.

‘All I want is to be able to come and go where I want, be allowed to fuck with whom I want, and access the creative industry to promote and sell my art!’

‘We will change the Ala!’ He retorted

‘At least we’ll begin the Oku.’ I said believing the fire had already begun!

After drinking together we parted company- the area was buzzing with people and it occurred to me he would have to pick his hour to get into the building as there would always be someone about. But after all we weren’t criminals; just artists looking for an empty building to put on an exhibition of our work and others. I thought of an aphorism. "I’m not a leader or a follower, I’m the Tick Tock Nwoke, ‘stop the clocks’.

A harlequin leaves nothing; nekther inherits: Merely looks and is a Nwoke."

I never know what to do; I never know what is the right thing to do- I’m not so bright. I have met the prettiest most charming and brightest of Ekwu. And I think her grandNne was from the Caribbean. she could be from any of the islands- or Guyanese. she could even be an American. This lady I have met is a charm with the sweetest voice, and poise and kind. How many beautiful Ekwu are kind- at least considerate! Not many; hardly any. The beautiful Ekwu and I, are always involved only as brother and sister-