TITLE: HOW THE DEMONS LEAVE: ESCAPE FROM THE UNSEEN DUNGEON
EDITORS: PETER OKONKWO
GENRE: POETRY
NO. OF PAGES: 112
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2023
ISBN: 979-8385981526
PUBLISHER: -
REVIEWER: JIDE BADMUS
A thick fog hangs over the nature of the poet persona’s predicaments in the first book, A Cry for Mercy. The author eases us into the answers from the opening verse in this collection. The Strangers Within, though still metaphoric, highlights possible sources of the ambiguous afflictions encountered in the first book. They can be spirits/They can be ghosts/They can be evil forces/They can be habits…
The suffering, this book reveals, is spiritual—a demonic infestation. The demons, in form of sin, illness, & addictions are the strangers within & they cannot be battled in the physical. For the thing(s) that/we cannot see, /is stronger than the/ones we can see (The Reality of the Spirit Realm). Peter also emphasized this in these lines from A Demon-Possessed Body:
Our inner eyes need to be opened to behold the hidden things.
Although How the Demons Leave offers some clarity, it gathers its own clouds of mysteries. Why are these spiritual forces devoted to destroying man? Why does it seem the malevolent spirits are more potent, more active than the beneficent forces? Perhaps we’ll get to know this in the third (& last) book in the series.
There’s a need for a discernment spirit to sense the strangers within. There’s usually the need for revelation—in a dream or trance or prayer—for the captive to realise his precarious position. In Getting Down to My Spirit Man in The Dungeon, prayer becomes a spiritual vehicle & dreams, a portal into otherworldly lands.
My prayer was the vehicle through which I traveled to the Spirit World. (page 62)
Dreams play a dual role—a gateway to possession & deliverance—an entrance & exit. Strange dreams, sexual dreams, & eating in a dream are some of the signs that confirm an individual’s need for spiritual cleansing. The author believes that nightmares are as mystical as they are psychological. Pay attention to the things/you see while you sleep…/for our dreams/are all meaningful. (Nightmares, pg 66).
This author writes from a place of literary comfort! The poems are largely prosaic, without conscious efforts at figurative distillation. The poems read, at times, like a sermon, a prayer, a testimony, or an instruction manual. Also, that lingering feeling from the first book, that the poet is holding something back hovers like a black moon. For instance, these lines (below) from Escape from Demons of Stagnation would have been haunting had the narrative been experiential than summary & equivocal. Poetry is a sentimental art. You want to give your expressions a heart—capture moods, incite feelings & transmit the pulse through the pages to your readers.
I've had several experiences that obviously reflected and showed that I ought to wrestle with the force of stagnation and delay in my life, but I was so careless.
The poems could also use some conciseness—purge tedious, redundant elaborations. For instance, the image in the expression My desires turned to/mirage that keeps/disappearing as/I approach them, from the second poem would have been stronger if the effect of mirage had not been spelled out in the following line with disappearing.
Peter Okonkwo detailed the signs of a demon-possessed body—depression, heaviness, chronic fear, & intense desire for self-harm. He emphasised the importance of prayer (& confessions) in the deliverance process. Words are spells./Words are incantations./Words are spiritual. (The Tongue, page 96). In the same poem, he reiterates the power of the tongue:
I confess what I want to myself. I command wealth and favor to come my way. I command success to come my way, and it obeys.
Unfasten Your Power in My Life is my favourite among the 19 poems in the 112-paged collection. It is incantatory, a direct confrontation with the demons, something I’d anticipated in earlier poems—warfare on paper! Read aloud, it feels like prayer points dished out to a congregation in a Wednesday prayer session. It’s lyrical & energetic. Here, the poet mentions the word “free” a dozen times. He declares: I am set free /and forever free. / The devil can never /oppress me anymore.
The title poem, How the Demons Leave, is instructive—to tell the demons to leave, you need to be saved, and stay away from/unclean things, and pray.
Jide Badmus is an engineer and a poet inspired by beauty and destruction. He believes that things in ruins were once beautiful. He is the author of several books including Obaluaye (FlowerSong Press, 2022) and What Do I Call My Love for Your Body (Roaring Lion Newcastle, 2022). He is the founder of INKspiredng, a Poetry Editor for CỌ́N-SCÌÒ Magazine, a mentor in the SprinNG Fellowship, and sits on the board of advisors for Libretto Magazine.
