The Heartbreak Diary



  Tito O’tobi

  The Heartbreak Diary

  An esoteric exploration into the poetry of the dark side of love.

  Someday, you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing – Elizabeth Gilbert

  The Heartbreak Diary

  Copyright © 2016 held by Tito O’tobi

  e-ISBN:9781310043260

  No part of this publication should be printed, published, edited, copied, sold or distributed by any individual, group or company without the express written permission of the author.

  Mobile: +2348o56138414

  E-mail: [email protected]

  Website: www.otobi.me

  Tweet:@titotobi

  About the Author

  Tito O’tobi is the author of When We Made Men, The Heartbreak Diary. He is the founder and editor of The Humanetech Blog. He is a well-versed writer and poet with numerous unpublished works featured on blogs, magazines and newspapers around the world. His spare time is used up in humanitarian service with the Red Cross.

 

  Dedication

  This book as a work of art is dedicated to everybody who has ever loved anybody or anything and has been heartbroken. This is my personal note and poem to you on this journey of self-discovery. It is also my heart-written note to many of the child-soldiers whose stories will probably never get told.

  Content

  Haikus

  Quatrains I - VI

  Sonnet I – Sometimes Love

  Sonnet II – From a Heartbroken Nigerian

  Sonnet III – Love Made Us

  Sonnet IV – Love Like a Tear Drop

  Sonnet V – Living Love

  Sonnet VI – Ode to the May

  Sonnet VII – Death to the Broken-hearted

  Sonnet VIII – When I’m Lonely

  Sonnet IX – When I’m Lonely Too

  Sonnet X – Corpus Immortal

  Sonnet XI – Love’s Dark Heart

  Sonnet XII – Love’s fairness

  Sonnet XIII – Adam’s Muse

  Sonnet XIV – Heartbreak Strings

  Sonnet XV – Love Strong, Love Strung

  Sonnet XVI – Love’s Death Note

  Sonnet XVII – Kiss from A Rose

  Sonnet XVIII – Black Beauty (The Nation I Loved)

  Sonnet XIX – Ode to My Girl’s Lost Toy

  Sonnet XX – Love Stopped My Heart

  Sonnet XXI – Bleeding Love

  Sonnet XXII – To the Girl I Once Loved

  Sonnet XXIII – Meddling

  Long Verses – Ode to Chinua Achebe

  Long Verses – Epic of the Firebird

  The Book

  The Heartbreak Diary is a collection of deep poems that discusses culturally and versifies the complex emotional feeling that is called heartbreak. Its verses are arranged in four main styles, traditional English haiku, rhythmic quartets/quatrains, iambic sonnets and a few long verses that culminate in an ode sung to African literary juggernaut, Chinua Achebe. The theme of the poems range from a nationalist’s broken patriotism through exuberant teenage flings to somber vituperations of death and even the sober writings of a child-soldier who explores his literary abilities on the battle field.

  It’s a work that subtly draws on its reader and reminds one of the poetry classic Idanre and other poems.

  Haiku

 

  I

  Boomblast-er-shot smoke

  Looming mister, my head, broke

  Sister head, he broke

  II

  Mobster arsonist? No

  No – star, gormentagonist,

  North-East land blood flow

  III

  A staccato beat

  Of raining bullets and shots

  Shaytan’s bloody dance

  IV

  Who sings the cruel songs

  When the devil dances in

  This endless blood bath

  V

  Them tawdy songs of

  Death to book, women, children

  And all good sweet things

  VI

  Who made the Sahel (my homeland)

  The devil’s bloody dance floor

  Who are the beatmakers.

  VII

  Boy soldiers last six months

  I have seen ten and six months

  Death sits before me now.

  VIII

  In the town today

  The school doors are still closed

  The prisons stay opened.

  IX

  Immortality

  Is the words I write now

  To speak when I’m gone

  X

  The immortal blood

  Of my flowing pen will speak

  Of how I’m murdered

  XI

  A nation I once loved

  Committed me to prophet’s

  Teachings for Jihad.

  XII

  Boy soldiers die in

  Six to ten months, I’m so cursed

  To have lived sixteen

  XIII

  Every word I write

  Of me, kills me. I wish all

  Boys will write of us.

  XIV

  Quatrains

 

  Quatrain I

  There’s no rock as strong

  As the shred of love

  There’s no fall as hard

  As the betrayed love.

  Quatrain II

  In ink, I wrote down

  My first love note

  In blood, she wrote down

  My own death note

  Quatrain III

  Of all the things

  That makes love such

  Fearful feeling

  Passion’s the worst

  Quatrain IV

  Tears grace my eyes

  When I think ‘bout

  The wasted years

  I wasted ‘em

  Wasted ‘em loving you

  Wasted ‘em feeling blue

  Thinking of loving you

  Hearing you’re hurting too

  Hurting real sore

  Not finding love.

  Did my best, more

  In showing love.

  A deep red blood spurt

  On my green white blouse

  Is simply all that

  I’ve to show for it

  Quatrain V

  Will the time be right

  To love another

  Will you get the strength

  That comes from being loved

  You can know when

  The time is right

  You can know that

  Love is time less.

  Quatrain VI

  Sweet sells

  Suites tell

  Sheets tell

  Shit sells

 

  Sonnets

 

  Sonnet I - Sometimes Love….

  Sometimes love is patient

  Other times it’s latent

  Sometimes love is just kind

  Sometimes it is wicked

  Sometimes love’s not envious

  Sometimes it’s just devious

  Sometimes you’ll ring a bell

  Sometimes it’s with Jez’bel

  Sometimes it takes your heart

  Sometimes it tears you ‘part

  Sometimes love warms you too

  But love does kill you too

  So I’ll tell my son’s son

  Never love till you’re done.

  Sonnet II - From A Heartbroken Nigerian

  I need to know the truth

  If you still think of me

  I need to k
now it’s true

  That you will still love me

  I wish to know this feel

  That you were my mistake

  Was I a misgiving

  You’ve been forgiven of

  I wish to really know

  How then we got this far

  I need to know now now

  If you do know me now

  And my patriotic love

  I just need to know now.

  Sonnet III – Love Made Us

  So then you left me

  My heart, it fell weak

  And its pale sickness

  No poultice could heal

  I ought to have thought

  That all we do love

  Shall someday leave us.

  But love with great strength

  ‘Twas that kept us whole

  Three score years or so.

  The night you left me

  I heard my heart spoke

  He’s near his heartbroke

  So I thought to die

  By the morning’s dawn.

  Sonnet IV – Love like a tear drop

  Just like a tear drop

  All that we ever do

  All we really make

  And man’s achievements

  Gets wiped off so soon,

  Vanishes sooner.

  Love like a tear drop

  Is just a blot when

  the wind of time blows.

  A simple tear drop.

  Only its trails remain.

  The big world is small

  Small like a tear drop.

  Sonnet V – Living Love

  You have to love

  For you to live

  You have to feel

  Your hearts own strength

  So you can trust

  And learn to care

  For all you see.

  There’s time you’ll see

  None to care for

  and none to trust.

  Just your heart’s strength

  is there to feel.

  Feel and fill it

  With love for you.

  Sonnet VI – Ode to the May

  She was the season of bloom

  She was reason of beauty

  She was of the golden light

  That made the garden so bright

  Sharp rays of golden yellow

  Lit the face of this fellow

  She was the true awakening

  Of a long-drawn slumbering

  Roses, lilies and lush lawns

  Posies, tulips, moss, soft-body fawns

  All the guests of my abode

  When springly May is just come

  May was the gentle light blade

  When she goes, we’ll wish she stayed.

  Sonnet VII - Death to the Broken-hearted

  Let him that cannot love be

  Let him be clubbed to death

  He let a dart pierce his heart

  Let him be bled to death

  He that’s forcefully un-milked

  Shalt be stabbed and poisoned

  He that hath so so little

  Hath the little taken

  He that hath none save his life

  Let not his life be safe

  His heart’s broke, why doth he live

  For the heart-less should die

  A bounty on the heartbroke

  Give his killer kings’ wealth.

  Sonnet VIII – When I’m Lonely

  When I’m lonely

  And my heart bleeds

  With none to cheer

  Or to talk to

  And my dreams are

  Dark and grim dreams

  And I’m so lonely

  And my thoughts, bright

  Rosy, red, light,

  Bloody, red, bright

  Then I’m lonely

  And every stroke

  Of my dear pen’s

  a needle’s prick.

  Sonnet IX - When I’m Lonely Too

  When I’m Lonely Too

  I think about you

  And my eyes cry too

  I know I love you

  With my bitter tears

  I try to get sleep

  By and by, I dream

  The dream’s not so grim

  Comes in sunny beams

  And bright flowing streams

  You laid your dear hand

  On my dearest chest

  And rend my dear heart

  A bloody love note.

  Sonnet X – Corpus Immortal

  Never look my eye again

  Never think to kiss my lips

  I won’t give my hand to hold.

  Milk from your breast tames no man

  Poisons the flow of my blood

  And your hair it strangles me.

  Your flow’ry scent chokes my breath

  My fancy now; drums of war.

  The rumbling that swings my axe

  The growl that drops my rival

  And makes his blood-kin childless,

  Sings the adulterer a dirge.

  Write an ode my fairest one

  That kills not my jealous deeds.

  Sonnet XI – Love’s Dark Heart

  The singers of hell

  Close round about me

  With fingers that tell

  Me screams of death.

  When love strangled

  My very throat.

  And love’s strings bound

  My very heart.

  It’s sting’s venom

  Crippled me whole.

  I reached and picked

  That which has pricked

  My heart, a gift

  To hell’s dark foal.

  Sonnet XII – Love’s fairness

  Hath Love fairness?

  Life’s unfairness

  You got the man

  He got satan

  You got the bow

  He, your arrow

  You throw tantrums

  He’s to crack them

  You bake cupcakes

  That give toothaches

  You have the home

  The Man? Lonesome

  Want to move on

  He’ll lose his son.

  Sonnet XIII – Adam’s muse

  Thou Daughter of Eve

  How’s the cold eve

  Fair Daughter of Eve

  Hear what I give.

  A just verse I sought,

  Mused from life’s wise bark

  Where I sit, times dark.

  Its leaves clothe my thought.

  But what food thy hand gives

  This dark orb, you shouldn’t give

  For ‘tis not yours to give

  Its good looks do deceive.

  Thou daughter of Eve

  Thy fruit, it gives death.

  Sonnet XIV – Heartbreak Strings

  Torture gives strength to the string

  The string’s torture strengthens the music

  That bound my frail heart to you

  The real strength of feminine magic

  It made me think of just you

  And love’s strength like death’s cunning arm

  Gripped my heart and sorely choked

  The very life out of my singed soul

  Wringing out the tiniest drop

  Of the warm blood that stayed my being.

  My head swooning and my heart screaming

  As I trudged through life’s dark hours

  The long hood over my shadowy head

  Tells me I’ll never learn to love again.