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: eng.otoby@yahoo.com
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 He is a well-versed writer and poet with numerous unpublished works featured on blogs, magazines and newspapers around the world.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.